State Ballet of Georgia: Swan Lake

London Coliseum
July 17, 2026

With the continued absence of major (and minor) Russian companies due to the war in Ukraine, it falls again to Nina Ananiashvili’s Georgian State ballet to visit the Coliseum this summer, again bringing Swan Lake, albeit a new production.

This version is set in vaguely medieval court. However, the setting is reminiscent of something you might find in a pop-up fairy tale book, something that a ballet-obsessed young girl might imagine in her dreams. While they may have splashed the cash on the costumes, less effort appears to have been made with the drama. Ananiashvili also gives us a happy ending, preceded by Rothbart having one of his wings ripped off, Odette to divest herself somewhat awkwardly of her mock tutu onstage as she becomes a woman again

As last year, the pairing of Nino Samadashvili as Odette/Odile and Oleg Ligai as Siegfried danced the opening night, but also as last year showed the same lack of connection. Both failed to convince as real people, their facial expressions alternating between grim solemnity or an unconvincing rictus. While Samadashvili made all the set gestures in her first lakeside scene but they were totally devoid of feeling, or at least any that registered out front. And it was difficult to tell her Odette from her Odile in terms of character. Indeed, Siegfried may as well have chosen one of the pink princesses or Spanish dancers who danced with considerably more get up and go.

Designer Cyrille Gassiline seemed to have run out of glitter when it came to Odile’s matte black tutu although I did like the detail of the blue waves on the plate.

Ligai’s dancing was polite. He has the limbs of a gazelle, but is a little untidy in his landings and tends to forget to get his heels down. He brought no sense of the foolish, sometimes even anguished adolescent that is Siegfried. It was all about the steps. And ballet is not and never has been that.

Masaaki Goto had more charisma as Benno, always a thankless role for a dancer. Perhaps not too surprising when one considers he was only added to the ballet in the first place to cover for the ageing Pavel Andreyevich Gerdt’s inadequacies as Siegfried.

Elsewhere, no-one batted an eyelid when Rothbart and Odile interrupted the national dances and they didn’t even seem that bothered when Siegfried pledged his undying love to the wrong girl.

Even Marcelo Soares could not rise above the costume and pantomime villain make up that he was landed with this year as Rothbart. A ludicrously vast pair of wings made him look like a cross between a sparrow and an albatross, fortunately jettisoned for all but the opening and final scene.

For all its fairy story veneer, Swan Lake is a ballet about emergent nationalism and dynasties. Even in its original form, contemporary audiences would have immediately identified with the importance of marrying to create alliances, whether on the international stage or the domestic. Siegfried’s error results in the destruction of his kingdom; he has thrown away his inheritance. Grigorovich famously made it a ballet centred around Siegfried, almost presenting him as a sort of Hamlet.

Nina Ananiashvili’s new production does have family appeal, but it does the ballet, and very much the score, a great disservice by ignoring the dark undercurrents.