Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake

Overview

At the end of Billy Elliot, the main character (all grown up) steps on stage. He's about to dance the lead role in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, the now-world-renowned retelling of perhaps the most popular ballet ever, where all the traditionally delicate, graceful, tutu-ed female swans are replaced by men.

We don't get to see any more in the film, but to those who felt cheated of the brawn and feathers and highly talented dancing boys (the story follows a prince, attracted through curiosity and lust to the leading Swan — a dark, predatory, menacing and morphing sexual predator), you're now in luck. The once-controversial, always-audacious ballet is coming to Sydney, for a limited run of performances. (So get on it.)

Bourne's Swan Lake did show here back in 2007, but this time it's been revamped a bit. According to Bourne himself, there's less of the naff and childish humour in some of the prince's scenes, and even more of the wild, raw, animalistic masculinity that this reinvention of Tchaikovsky's classic is famous for. Yes please.