Review: Misty Copeland Debuts as Odette/Odile in ‘Swan Lake’ (Published 2015) (2024)

When Misty Copeland made her New York debut in the double role of Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake,” the most epic role in world ballet, two aspects of the performance on Wednesday afternoon proved marvelous. One: that it all happened successfully. Two: the curtain calls.

Let everyone know henceforth that an African-American ballerina has danced this exalted role with American Ballet Theater at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera House. Let everyone know that other African-American dancers, Raven Wilkinson (who danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1955-61) and Lauren Anderson (who, with the Houston Ballet, was the first African-American ballerina to become a principal of an American ballet company), brought her bouquets onstage. And let everyone know that her fellow dancers shared her applause with pride. (The enthusiasm and affection shown by James Whiteside, who partnered her as Prince Siegfried, was especially engaging.)

As Odette, the Swan Queen, Ms. Copeland has moments of courage and grandeur when you feel the heroic scale of Tchaikovsky’s celebrated drama. She runs boldly around the stage like a creature accustomed to vast space; she raises her arms with the epic sweep of mighty wings. In other respects, she’s admirable but without striking individuality. The substance of “Swan Lake” is there, but in potential. I hope she dances it again and reveals more in it.

For her sake and everyone else’s, I wish that Ballet Theater’s “Swan Lake” was a good one. Odette is dully good in the first lakeside act, Odile is vampily bad in the ballroom act, and then we go back to the lakeside act to watch Odette being dully good again — more dully this time because she has no choreography worth looking at.

As Odile, Ms. Copeland follows in the misguided Russian tradition of tucking her head down and repeatedly looking hard at the audience under her brows (as if at the mirror) to let us know she is a scheming villainess. The result makes her look unclassical and makes Siegfried, by falling for her, look even more of a ninny than usual.

The only obvious technical feature in which Ms. Copeland can improve is the notorious — and overrated — fouetté turns. She did the first half of the usual quota, though wandering across the stage; then she did a series of quick single turns — a smart alternative since they had more musical dynamics than most accounts of the fouettés.

Still, it’s the flashes of bravery in Ms. Copeland’s dancing, especially as Odette, that begin to illumine this ballet. As yet they’re only intermittent; but since they’re part of Ms. Copeland’s story as well as Odette’s, they’re more than welcome.