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Swan Lake
The most famous love story in ballet, one of the most prominent roles in the art form. Swans and ballet have become almost the same in popular culture, partly because of how often this ballet is shown in movies and TV shows.
Think of Natalie Portman in Black Swan, Rudolf Nureyev in The Muppets, or Taylor Swift's ballerinas in Shake It Off. Swan Lake is one of SF Ballet's most popular shows because of its long history, exciting dancing, and beautiful music in Helgi Tomasson's 2009 production.
How it was made
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake between 1875 and 1876. It tells the story of Prince Sigfried and the young Odette, who is cursed by the sorcerer von Rothbart to live as a white swan and can only turn back into a person at night.
Vladimir Petrovitch Begitchev, director of the Imperial Theater in Moscow, commissioned the symphonist to create one of the earliest ballets.
Tchaikovsky based it on a summertime tune he wrote for his nephews. The most famous version of the ballet was led by Marius Petipa, a ballet master, and Lev Ivanov, a choreographer, shortly after the composer died.
How it started
There are a lot of ideas about where the story of Swan Lake came from. Vladimir Begitchev's first book was primarily based on a German folktale called "The Stolen Veil" by Johann Karl August Musaus.
This story is about a woman who turns into a swan. But there are also references to The White Duck, a Russian fairy tale. In Act III of the ballet, there is also a reference to a Buryat legend.
This legend may have been the basis for The Six Swans, a famous fairy tale by the Grimm brothers.
The Success
Tchaikovsky could not have known Swan Lake would be so famous when he died in 1893. The audience didn't like the first performance at the Imperial Bolcho Theater in Moscow, and the composer called it "a humiliating disappointment."
The choreographer, Julius Reisinger, was said to have been overwhelmed by how ambitious Tchaikovsky's piece was. As a result, the dancers' movements did not match the grandeur of the piece and were seen as shaky.
It wasn't until Ivanov and Petipa took charge of the ballet in 1895 that it was a real success.
A cosmopolitan ballet
One of the most exciting things about Swan Lake is how different its choreography is. Marius Petipa's choreography is full of dance moves from Poland, Hungary, Italy, Russia, and Spain.
The eclectic form of ballet popular at the Italian court during the Renaissance drew inspiration from this. Marius Petipa asked Riccardo Drigo to write a score with elements of Spanish, Hungarian, and Venetian dances.