"I heard that you like the bad girls honey, is that true?" - Lana Del Rey
Enter Odile—
Moving through all the ethereal white backstage, she parts a sea of white swans like like a dark oil spill upon the Third Act. Black tulle flutters all around her like a smoldering smokescreen, the crystal embellished bodice sprouting ink dark wings up towards her pretty clavicles to create a deep "v" for a more daring d"colletage than her demure opposite, Odette.
Odile.
Patron Saint of the Blind—the sweet irony and tragedy of it all. She is no saint. A beauty like hers is too bewitchingly blasphemous with the pretty pomegranate red of her mouth— like she's just freshly supped with Persephone in the underworld.
Now, she's eager for a dance.
One has to wonder if is it indeed the spell that blinds the Prince" Or is this little catalyst both the mask and the cruel reveal of the truth' When such "true love" sworn is so quickly forgotten, could it be that it may be only skin deep" Odile loved to dabble her pretty fingers in such pot stirring notions.
VonRothbart presents her, but she needs no introduction, anymore than she needs his permission to enter. No need for names. Her presence announces itself. This dark daughter of a sorcerer has a hidden secret tucked in a shadowed dimple of her smile. Daddy dearest thinks she's there to do his bidding, but it's really for her own amusement that she agrees—wicked, unrepentant party crasher that she is.
He's brought a pretty little weapon to such a proper party and he knows it as he releases her—unleashes her onto the scene. Her obsidian pointe shoe hits the stage like a blade, head cocked like a gun to the side as she's lapping up the sweet cream of all the head turning whispers.
Lait lady lait....
But she's too good to be truly distracted by them as her gaze locks upon her princely prey. Like he might be something she could sink her little claws into for the night to amuse her.
She extends her arm slowly to the Prince, hand gifted as if she invites him to make an offering upon her dark altar. Something more interesting than simpering, social niceties, mundane introductions and all that suffering bore small talk. She wears no crown and covets no throne. Not a queen that commands, but rather a dark goddess that inspires a bended knee and lust laced idolatry.
And she almost looks like...
She could almost pass for...
But yet she's nothing like the sweet, innocent...
Odette.
Was that the yearning call of his beloved white swan, fervently pulling at Seigfried's heartstrings" The sweet ache of a warning through the striking glide of a violin's pretty bow"
Alas, Odile is so much more than a dark doppelg"nger. She is her own enchanting entity. There is a dissonance in this once's beguiling music if one listens closely. Haunting hints that all is not what it seems with this dark swan. A variation of Odette's theme, Tchaikovsky is truly a Master and Odile adores being the wicked muse for her Maestro.
Dark winged lashes rise and fall at the proper moment to reveal only glimpses of her captivating gaze, but never the core of her wild hearted mystique. That tantalizing flick upwards like a geisha's fan to meet his eyes, only to coyly lower lashes when she senses the Prince on that palpable precipice of touch...
Snap—
goes her wrist upwards, a torturous tease when she removes her fingers a millisecond before he attempts to kiss them. The sizzling electricity still hanging heavy in the air at such a cruel denial.
She's a sly little thing, with a 'catch me if you can' dare in that brazen glance she casts over her winged shoulder blade. She dances around the prince, curling come hither fingers to lure him and she's relishing every moment with those perfect piqu" turns.
Though she dances to the beats of the prince's palpitating heart, her spell is truly woven in the sinuous silence in between the notes. She's in his veins soon enough like a sweet, potent, poison that will leave him lovesick for the wrong girl.
Tsk.
Refusing to release him from the hypnotic lullaby of her finely tuned little lie, she leads and he follows offstage in a cunning bit of choreography, leaving appetites whet for more and tongues wagging in the wake of her grand jet".
When they return moments later, the two dance their passionate pas de deux, with the creme de la creme culminating in Odile's clever coda. A dizzying feat of femme fatale fouett's.
As she spins, it seems as if she's drawing all the energy in the room to her like a dark winged vortex. Feeding off the rising build in momentum and music, the black swan has a voracious, unrepentant appetite for more.
Those fouett's are unstoppable—their very own force of nature. How like a whip she lashes that leg and head around, this cruel little mistress spinning faster and faster, a dark blur of chaotic entropy and transmutation.
She will not be satisfied before she at last has the prince on bended knee and the audience on its feet, whipped up into a frenzied cacophony of sound that could bring the house down. For who could possibly sustain such a thing for so long"
Finally, she releases all that that whirling energy back to her audience as she strikes that final pose, sending seismic shockwaves of vibration after completing her final fouett' turn with such triumphant victory, the audience explodes in an eruption of applause.
There is such sweet release when she finally touches down, it leaves her breathless and flushed with a heady kind of high, head thrown back and arms extended like wings before she finally gifts the prince with her hand as he bends a knee to proclaim to the court his love for her.
The dark swan exits the stage and the curtain soon closes upon Act 3. A haunting harbinger for the rest of this beautiful tragedy.
