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Review: A Startling ‘Swan Lake’ That’s Hard to Recognize

In a work opening with a goat tethered to a cinder block, the closest we get to Tchaikovsky’s ballet is four dancers representing swans.

Rachel Poirier is among the dancers representing swans in the production, which features costumes by Hyemi Shin.Credit...Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times

A goat is tethered to a cinder block by a rope tied to its neck. As audience members take their seats, the poor animal paces in a circle, bleating miserably. It is a heartbreaking sight. Eventually three men dressed in black appear and begin to dance; the goat panics as they get closer and closer, its cries becoming increasingly shrill.

That the goat is played by the actor Mikel Murfi, wearing only underwear, doesn’t alleviate the creeping feeling of dread.

This opening of the Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan’s dance-theater piece “Swan Lake/Loch na hEala,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, makes quite a statement, but of what? Even though I found myself constantly thinking back to that first scene throughout the show, no satisfying interpretation came to mind. Some viewers will find this open-endedness bracing; others may see it as fancy obfuscation.

The three men, billed as Watchers in the program, eventually help Murfi get dressed, and he starts narrating the story. Which, as you might have guessed by now, bears little resemblance to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.”

The closest we get to that beloved, if startlingly creepy, ballet is the presence of four dancers representing swans, wearing simple dresses and carrying large wings on their shoulders (Hyemi Shin designed the costumes). They are the most familiar sight in a tale that Keegan-Dolan, who wrote, choreographed and directed the show for his company, Teac Damsa, has reset to a bleak version of contemporary Ireland.

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Mikel Murfi, center, starts out playing a goat in “Swan Lake/Loch na hEala.” Credit...Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times

The narrator introduces us to Jimmy O’Reilly (Alexander Leonhartsberger), a hollow-cheeked man in baggy pants, tracksuit top and beanie who has sunk into a deep depression since the death of his father a year earlier. To celebrate Jimmy’s 36th birthday, his mother, Nancy (Elizabeth Cameron Dalman), who uses a wheelchair, gives him his father’s shotgun — a loaded gift, as it were.

The protean Murfi (hailed for his solo plays “I Hear You and Rejoice” and “The Man in the Woman’s Shoes”) also portrays the show’s take on the sorcerer Rothbart of the original “Swan Lake.” Here, he is a priest, who assaults the 17-year-old Finola (Rachel Poirier) and then tries to silence her and her sisters by cursing them; if they mention what happened, they turn into “a filthy animal.” And now here they all are, living by a lake represented by a giant black tarp in Sabine Dargent’s industrial-grim set.

The lake happens to be where Jimmy comes to contemplate death, only to be startled by Finola’s sudden appearance. A pas de deux ensues, tentative at first, then as confident as liberation can be.

Keegan-Dolan intermingles text and movement throughout the evening, yet the most effective mood-setter is the hypnotic acoustic score by the Dublin band Slow Moving Clouds. Performed live by three musicians, it is unrelenting in its spareness. The use of the nyckelharpa, a medieval hybrid of a hurdy-gurdy and a viol, adds the sense that despite the modern setting, we are witnessing an ageless folkloric morality tale about hypocrisy, moral rot and the oppression of women. (Finola shares a name with the daughter in the ancient Irish story “The Children of Lir,” in which a resentful stepmother turns four royal siblings into swans.)

For all that, the show, which feels rushed at 75 minutes, ends on a startling crowd-pleasing scene that attempts to insert an element of levity, suggesting perhaps that even age-old tragedy can be freed from fatalism.

It’s probably not a coincidence that “Swan Lake/Loch na hEala” has been chosen to open BAM’s Next Wave, the first season programmed by the new artistic director, David Binder. The show is an unclassifiable hybrid that remixes a classical ballet beyond recognition and makes the audience an active participant in constantly pondering not just the meaning of the story, but its very form. What are we watching: Woman or swan? Dance or theater? No matter the answer, it looks as if there are heady times ahead in Brooklyn.

Swan Lake/Loch na hEala
Through Oct. 20 at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn; 718-636-4100, bam.org. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes.

A correction was made on 
Oct. 17, 2019

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the dancer portraying a swan in "Swan Lake/Loch na hEala.” She is Rachel Poirier, not Anna Kaszuba.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s Tchaikovsky. Really, It Is.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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