When I was younger, I would sometimes ask my mother to tell me stories her mum had told her about their village when she was growing up: When the forests were denser and there were fewer people around, my grandmother would tell my mum, spirits roamed freely in these parts. Now, there are fewer trees for them to hide in, more people competing with them for space.
In Europe, long before the Industrial Revolution changed the lives of its people, stories would be shared inside sparse cottages, warmed by the nourishing fire of the hearth. It was the women who did most of this storytelling. They would be working on their spindles, or knitting sweaters or darning socks, and they would be speaking of a time when "the world was still magic" and "wishing still effective". They would tell each other stories–about princes and princesses, about witches and sorcerers and children and stepmothers. Often, there were ghouls, goblins, fairies and giants in these tales,and often, these stories would recount feats of mysterious transformations and grand narratives of love, loyalty, trust and betrayal.
Sometimes, when I imagine a 'mystical' setting, I visualise a moonlit night by the little fish-pond behind my mother's house and the numerous stone paths and mud trails that needed to be climbed and descended to get there before pitched roads arrived. I see a fire that has been raging in the chulho and tiny crevices in rocks from which sweet water flows downstream. There are charmed silver channels that need crossing to get from one house to another in this half-real world, and there are stories, of a golden-haired girl and her goat, and of a river fairy who grants wishes most of us can never even dream of.
All over the world, children grow up with stories that have a bit of magic in them. Fairy tales–dressed up in the early nineteenth century as "children's tales", and later branded as "fantasy stories"–have changed considerably these past centuries but they still remain entrancing fables that do not quite surrender their meanings to us. What do these strange stories, spun as if in a tangle of webs, mean after all? And why is it that we find they fascinate us immensely?
Swan Lake, a musical that was staged at the Mandala Theatre, Anamnagar, the first two weeks of July, was a fairytale indulgence in many ways, a fantasy that, for fifty minutes, enveloped the audience in a strange romance. The story took place "once upon a time", "in a land far, far away" where three beautiful swans danced to their own ends. With clever, deft movements of their nimble limbs and torsos, these three central characters fellin ill-fated love with each other. The narrator (Nishma Ghimire) recounted the tale of the three lovers–the White Swan Queen (Kripa Bajracharya), the Black Swan (Mohammad Nazir Hussain, who also co-directed the play with Namrata KC) and the White Swan (Suraj Malla)–in rhyming couplets to the audience, and accompanied them through what proved to be a tragic tale of love, lust, anger and death.
The story was that of two brothers: the strong and zealous Black Swan–he whose fragrance was frightfully enchanting, and the calm and stoic White Swan–he whose feathers were gorgeous and alluring. Fate, as audiences learnt by the end of the musical, played a cruel game with the two and the lady love both wished to call their own.
The beautiful White Swan Queen, whose days were spent in the blissful company of her charming companions (Binita Gurung, Srijana Rai, Renu Yogi and Ranjana Oli) before love–and the accompanying loss of innocence and the anguish and turmoil of experience–changed things, was portrayed as a tragic figure in the play, fated to an ill-end from the very beginning. She could smell the Black Swan in the air–a stirring, passionate sequence in which the two fall in love–but only ever saw the White Swan and mistook him for her lover. By the time the Black Swan finally made himself visible to her, she found that she was caught between two impossibilities. There was no way out for her–not unless the way out was death.
Although the musical, which was choreographed in the 'contemporary' style of dance by the Anzel's Crew, derived its name from the world-renowned Swan Lake–often believed to be the most watched and well-known of ballets–by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky, it bears little, if any, resemblance to the original. It is said to have been based on old Russian fairy tales and it will be best to leave it at that. Besides the swans and the eponymous Swan Lake, the shared title and a loosely connected story of a love that has been most illusory are the only elements Mandala Theatre and Anzel's Crew's production of Swan Lake has in common with its namesake. Everything else has been changed; even the characters are new–not one of them comes from the original ballet.
And this was all perhaps for the better. For artistes in Nepal to have been able to put up a ballet, we would have needed institutionalised dance schools in the country. Dancers–and they would have had to have begun their training at a very young age–would have had to put in years of toil in mastering the complex techniques of classical ballet. We would have needed a grand concert hall, an orchestra, none of which we can boast of. Instead, by employing their skills and expertise at hand to their best use, Mandala and Anzel's Crew managed to create a quite pleasurable experience for their audience. Kripa Bajracharya was often mesmerising and always appealing in her role as The White Swan Queen, and many times the men seemed as if they were performing only to complement their leading lady. The choreography itself was a somewhat interesting mix of styles and influences, proving more effective in some sequences than in others. But because the dancers–who have certainly never trained in ballet but perhaps dabbled in the Indian Classical dances that require as much discipline and finesse–were more often than not a joy to watch as they attempted to the best of their abilities to mimic the movements of the graceful swan, the sequences never came across as particularly awkward.
To the audience that had gathered at the Mandala hall, it was evident that the actors had given their all to their performance, and there were a few, very powerful moments when the energy of the stage was palpable in the air. It is commendable that the Swan Lake team attempted to put up a musical that has all the charm and fantasy of a European fairy tale and pulled most of it off in the end. And although there were glitches, the transition of scenes could have been smoother—as it was, Swan Lake was a musical in vignettes; and the score selection could have been much wiser. But the play succeeded in captivating its audience, something fairy tales, one might argue, have been specifically designed to do.
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