Boys Will Be Swans: ‘What Is That Show, and How Do I Do It?’

In “Swan Lake,” an evil magician transforms a beautiful princess into a graceful swan, an image now intimately linked to the idea of classical ballet itself. When Matthew Bourne’s version first appeared, at the Sadler’s Wells stage in London in 1995, it turned this story on its head. Instead of the white swan as an image of purity and femininity, Mr. Bourne created a corps de ballet of bare-chested, fiercely alluring male swans, and an unhappy, repressed prince who falls in love with their leader.

At the time, Mr. Bourne’s overtly theatrical approach in “Swan Lake” was unusual in contemporary dance. It combined high drama and ribald comedy, and evoked social and sexual politics in a contemporary royal family. It was also an immediate hit with audiences, despite the homoerotic relationship — noteworthy in the ’90s — between the prince and the Swan (and his alter ego, the Stranger).

“Swan Lake” moved to the West End in London a year after its premiere, had a four-month run on Broadway in 1998 (winning Mr. Bourne two Tony Awards, for directing and choreography), and has been performed all over the world for more than two decades. It returns to New York City Center Thursday through Feb. 9.

Did this “Swan Lake” help to change perceptions about young men dancing? While girls are generally encouraged to take dance lessons, boys who want to do the same — especially when it’s ballet — have long faced hostile questions about their sexuality, bullying from peers and opposition from parents. (Even recently, Lara Spencer, a host on “Good Morning America,” laughed at the idea that Prince George of England was planning to study ballet; a significant outcry ensued, and she apologized.)

Mr. Bourne said that when he choreographed “Swan Lake,” he hadn’t set out to alter ideas about men in dance; but he was conscious of wanting to create something for a group of men that “had beauty to it, that played a part of expressing a different kind of masculinity.”

Speaking from Washington, where he was rehearsing, he said he had been surprised by the strong reactions to the piece. “Before ‘Swan Lake,’ there were often gay elements in my work, or homoerotic relationships, and I never thought about it as a problem,” he said. “But it’s when you take something so iconic and change it; that image of the woman in a white tutu and point shoes is so imprinted, and here you had a man taking that place.”

Aside from its gender reversal, what was important about “Swan Lake” was that “it returned the dramatic male dance performance to center stage,” said Luke Jennings, a former dance critic for The Observer in Britain. Mr. Bourne’s work appeared “at the point when male dancing was more and more riveted on technique and tricks,” he said. “But here, you needed the old-fashioned business of charisma, drama, acting, understanding, pacing and nuance.”

Mr. Bourne’s “Swan Lake” also helped to bring more men into dance by offering a true-to-life range of physical types and personalities to emulate, said the former Guardian dance critic Judith Mackrell. “If you were funny or weedy or magnificent or strange, if you were a guy who weren’t sure how your body or personality fitted into the dance landscape,” she said, “here was something for you.”

Mr. Bourne said that his ballet, along with “Billy Elliot” — which featured a short segment from the Bourne “Swan Lake” — gave opportunities to male dancers and provided different types of role models, which dance on television does in a similar way now.

“The swans have always been a different way for young men to express themselves,” he said. “I think there are a lot of guys who wouldn’t go to a classical ‘Swan Lake’ and identify with the prince in white tights. But many of them who see this show think, I would like to do that.”

Four dancers, all British, in the troupe touring “Swan Lake,” spoke about the place of the work in their lives. (Interestingly, none experienced much prejudice when they began to dance, perhaps because of what Ms. Mackrell called “the ‘Billy Elliot’ effect.” And one of them wasn’t born when the piece was created.) Here are edited excerpts from conversations with them about why they were drawn to the work, Bourne boot camp and what it’s like to be a swan.

Matthew Ball, 27 (the Swan/the Stranger)

I went to see “Swan Lake” when I was about 8, and it really cemented the idea of a male dancer in my mind. In traditional ballets, which I had seen, the man is mostly a foil to the ballerina. To see male dancers perform as a group, in a corps de ballet setting, but with great power, grace and sensitivity, was awe-inspiring.

It was around that age that it really clicked for me that I wanted to dance, and I went to the Royal Ballet School when I was 11. “Billy Elliot” was a big thing, and there was quite a supportive atmosphere around me going from my school.

I’m with the Royal Ballet, but I really wanted to do this role, because it has an amazing amount of acting leeway. You can be masculine and otherworldly, and also a gate-crashing troublemaker. In ballet, it’s usually the women who get those different dramatic ideas and conceits.

I had performed Siegfried with Natalia Osipova as Odette/Odile in the classical “Swan Lake” about four months before working on this version, and I remember watching her animalistic qualities in that part, and the way she combined delicacy and power. I try to explore something like that, in my own way, in this part.

Max Westwell, 34 (the Swan/the Stranger)

I was 11 when I saw “Swan Lake.” It completely blew me away because of the storytelling. It wasn’t using classical mime, which is the way ballets told stories, and it made sense and was funny. It was the first dance work I had seen that made total sense in the way a film made sense to me. You could follow the story easily, and it wasn’t overacted or stylized, which narrative dances can often be.

It was also really different in the way it showed the men. The Swan-Stranger figure was beautiful and controlled, but also just really cool. He comes on in leather trousers and terrorizes everyone; at 11, I was like, He’s the one!

Of course at the time it was shocking and controversial. There was a lot of talk about it being a “gay Swan Lake,” and I remember my parents talking about it pushing boundaries. But that seemed cool and different, too.

I think it was really the pure masculinity and level of testosterone onstage that I was interested in. Even the way I play it now is not as a relationship between two men; it’s between a man and a bird, an ethereal savior creature.

It was fascinating to learn the swan material. The company does a boot camp when all the new guys learn the materials and the motifs. We even watch videos of swans. You go through an awkward phase when you don’t feel at all like a swan, but like a deranged dragon.

Will Bozier, 28 (the Swan/the Stranger)

I first saw a bit of Matt’s “Swan Lake” when I was about 7, in the film “Billy Elliot.” There is that final scene where you see the male swans and then Adam Cooper, as Billy, does that huge leap across the stage in slow motion. I remember coming out of the film and saying to my mother, “What is that show, and how do I do it?”

I didn’t catch the whole show until some years later, but I had the same response: When you see 15 men onstage together in those swan sections, it’s really a powerful image. We used to talk about this “Swan Lake,” watch clips of it.

When I was younger, I wanted to do everything. My training was classical and contemporary dance, and I also danced in musicals after I graduated. I always knew that one day I would work with Matt and do “Swan Lake.”

The choreography is very demanding, very physical, and you need to do a lot of outside training for stamina and stability. The movement is very grounded, it really involves using your plié and your breath — we jump a lot. It takes quite a long time to get used to it and get it into your body. And then you also play the Stranger, so you have a big difference there in terms of acting.

When I was about 6, I became obsessed with “Billy Elliot.” It’s a cliché, but true. There was that shot of Adam Cooper jumping at the end, and I was fascinated by that. I was completely enthralled, and I started watching Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” over and over again on YouTube. I had seen the ballet version, where the women are in the forefront, and to see this very male, contemporary, dramatic version, that maybe one day I could be involved in, was enthralling.

Luckily for me, one of my teachers heard about Matt’s “Lord of the Flies” project, which gets local boys in each city they visit to join the cast of the production. Later I did a Swan School, where about 20 guys who have just finished their training, do two weeks working with Matt and Etta Murfitt, working on the technique and taking acting classes.

For me, what was major was to realize that this kind of work existed, and that the dream of being an expressive man onstage was possible.