Gender-bending 'Swan Lake': a new twist on an old favorite.

At first glance, the scene is arresting. A flock of swans fills the stage. But they're not pretty ballerinas in tutus, tights, and pointe shoes. Rather, all - including Odette - are bare-chested, barefoot men in feathery, knee-length shorts. The scene defies nineteenth-century Russian ballet convention and yet, somehow, after further examination, it seems completely natural.

That's just the conclusion that designer Lez Brotherston came to when collaborating with choreographer Matthew Bourne on their production of Swan Lake for the British dance company Adventures in Motion Pictures. Brotherston had turned a classic on its ear before; he collaborated with Bourne on Highland Fling (1994), a modern La Sylphide set in twentieth-century Glasgow. For both ballets the approach to design was the same. The costumes were inspired by the characters and the desire to interpret each story in a contemporary framework.

Just as street fashion comments on the times in which it is born, Brotherston's costumes astutely reflect the lives of the present-day characters depicted in Bourne's Swan Lake. He skillfully combines fashion attire with dancewear to give the audience instant visual recognition while permitting the dancers to move with ease. Brotherston has scrapped ballet slippers and tights to create costumes that depict the characters in a rational and honest way. The Prince and the Queen closely resemble a certain royal family that has been receiving a lot of media attention this year. The Prince, dressed in a high-button royal uniform jacket with slim-cut trousers and boots, appears constricted by the social obligations that his titled position has forced upon him. The uniform motif is repeated through the ranks of male dancers, with cadets in caps and short black jackets and attendants in long black million suits.

The Queen's costumes consist of an array of midcalf dresses styled with a 1950s Balenciaga feel. Upswept bouffant hairdos and low-heeled shoes complete a look that might be described as dowdy chic. The only traditional ballet costume in the piece is featured in a scene in Act I when the royal family attends a ballet performance, complete with acrobats and ballerinas in tutus.

And then there are the swans. Initially inspired by the power and aggression of the Tchaikovsky score, Bourne saw them as vicious territorial aquatic birds that had to be danced by men. Brotherston, inspired by the score and the choreography, created a took for Odette's flock that embodies strength and power. He covered the dancers in feathery knee-length shorts consisting of multiple layers of shredded white silk applied to knee-length Lycra leggings. Combining function and form, the shorts are joined to tapered waistbands that give the dancers necessary support while accentuating the length of the torso. The first version of the waistband, made of soft elastic, was replaced by a stiffer combination of plastic linoleum flooring and Lycra. To best highlight the aggressive choreography and masculinity of the swans, he kept arms, chests, and lower legs bare. To emphasize a birdlike quality and downplay their actual humanness, the swans' bodies are whitened with makeup, and long, black, beaklike stripes decorate their brows. Only one swan - Odile, the Black Swan - reveals any human qualities when he enters the third-act ball in black leather trousers and a long frock coat, creating as one can imagine quite a stir.

Designing for a modern ballet such as Bourne's Swan Lake is the sort of creative challenge that Brotherston relishes. Working with various artists and designers as well as his production team, he can test himself as an artist by conceiving ingenious ways to solve design problems. To create the swan costumes, he teamed with designer Phil Reynolds, who devised the rubber Catwoman costume in the movie Batman Returns. He also commissioned Robert Allsop, the artist behind the masks in the Sylvester Stallone movie Judge Dredd, to create rubber heads in the queen's likeness, worn by the nurses in one of the more poignant Swan Lake scenes.

Over the past decade Brotherston has created costumes and sets for more than seventy operas, plays, and dance productions. When creating for Adventures in Motion Pictures' ballets, he is able to ignore accepted ballet tradition and bring his unique vision to the stage. American audiences will have to forgo the pleasure of witnessing that vision until the company brings its Swan Lake to the United States. A U.S. tour is scheduled for the fall of this year.