Le Lac des cygnes

Angelin Preljocaj, a leading choreographer on the French stage, revisits the most famous of Russian ballets. After Snow White and Romeo and Juliet, he propels Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece into a more contemporary dimension. From the original ballet by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, Preljocaj keeps ‘the love story, the bewitching tale of a woman’s transformation into a swan’. The rest is fundamentally new: the tale is transposed into the world of industry and finance, which is opposed to the mystery of the threatened lake. The current themes of environmental urgency and a predatory economy blend perfectly with the original work without ever betraying its essence. With 26 dancers on stage, the piece is a formidable palimpsest carried by an exceptional formal exactness and by the precision of the bodies, typical of Angelin Preljocaj’s creations.