Zoltán Balázs’ Tchaikovsky staging is a ballet performance without ballet. It is an art of movements without dancers. An old woman is sitting in the centre of walls, which appear by the two sides as fans, she has ground long white hair, she is between forever frozen metal flames or icicles, and she is telling a tale. She tells the story of the swan girls, who have been enchanted by the Red Bearded man, and the of the prince in love, who will finally free them. And the story comes to alive with the help of wonderful fans – the puppet masters are moving them: all of them that one, which characterizes the most their own characters’ individuality. There is a huge, fire-red at the magician, there are black and white feathers with the women: their dance at the party is nothing else than the airy floating of the huge amount of fans and the changing of them, which is similar to the changing of partners. The rhythm of the music follows everything, the fans, which become attributes – and in the case of men: the swords – can show a choreography, which well over-thought, the enchanting aesthetic experience can become smaller only a little bit by the fact, that the fans fall down ten times more, that it should have been acceptable. But it is hard to forget, that the communication of the Puppet Theatre, which offers the performance from the age of six, is bad: without the always noisy and demonstrative bored children, in a smaller and more intimate place, the performance can be incomparably more effective.

For the distraction of children’s attention we can partly blame Gyöngyi Blasek too, who is tells the text, which is formed to this stage by Judit Góczán, very monotonously, sometimes with bad stresses and without holding any difference between the replies of the dialogues. Anyways it can reform the stresses of the story, and it changes the Swan Lake into a simple tale of love, into a cruel joke instead of the reign of terror, with a fulfilment of love instead of the fact of becoming free. All of it is an absolutely valid interpretation, but its lesson becomes easier, the only important thing becomes the love. That way the especially powerful “experience of beauty” cannot become a spiritual performance.

Bálint Kovács, Magyar Narancs, 2011

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)