To Float Like a Swan

Ballet is amazing.  You can let go of all your worries and soar like a swan across the stage.  I have been dancing since I was 4 and currently dance at Portland Dance  School (Portland Festival Ballet).  Before class, I watch the trainees (they are very serious about ballet and do online school so they can do ballet all day) and I am entranced as they glide across the room leaping and twirling in their pointe shoes.  Ballerinas go through excruciating pain and hard work to get where they are, but some people just think ballerinas are fragile and that ballet is not brutal enough to be a sport.  A person at my ballet studio once performed 10 shows with 4 broken toes on one foot.  This shows endurance, dedication and determination.  Sometimes when I watch ballerinas flutter and float across the stage, I think about all of the other people who danced that role.  Who were they? Where did they come from?  Was ballet what did they did for a living?  I wonder about the first time a ballet was ever premiered and how someone even choreographed everything in it.   One ballet that initially failed and is now is one of the most popular ballets is Swan Lake.  

The music of Swan Lake was composed in 1875 - 1876 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.  Swan Lake tells the tragic story of a young princess named Odette, who was transformed into a swan by a curse casted by an evil sorceress.  On Friday, March 4, 1877, Swan lake was premiered.  The role of Odette was performed by Pelageya Karpakova (Polina Karpakova).  It was originally intended to be performed by Anna Sobeshchanskaya,  however she was removed from the performance after a governing official accused her of  receiving a few items of expensive jewelry from him, only to sell the items of jewelry for cash and marry a fellow danseur.  The premiere was not well-accepted, and there was almost unanimous criticism concerning the orchestra, the stage sets, and the dancers.  The “failure” of the production was said to be due to a few other reasons.  One issue was regarding German origins of  the Swan Lake story.   Another reason was that the ballerina that danced the role of Odette (and possibly Odile) was “not particularly convincing” and was a secondary soloist.

 During the early 1890s and late 1880s, Vsevolozhsky and Pepita were conversing with Tchaikovsky about reviving  Swan Lake.  Unfortunately, on November 6, 1893, Tchaikovsky died just when the plans for the revival of Swan Lake were about to be fulfilled.   As a result of the tragic death, Drigo had to revise the score by himself.  Two memorial concerts that were planned by Vsevolozhsky were given and yielded in honor of Tchaikovsky on February 1894.  In the production, the ballerina who danced as Odile and Odette was Pierina Legnani, the Italian virtuoso.  The revival prospect of  Swan Lake had been planned for Pierina’s 1894-1895 season benefit performance because of her amazing talent.  

Her performance during her début in Cinderella with the Imperial Ballet demonstrated her phenomenal technique.  During the grand pas, in her variation, she executed thirty-two or more fouettés en tournant (turns on one foot) which at that time that was the most ever performed.  At the beginning of  1895, on Friday January 27, the revised Swan Lake was premiered.  The premiére of  the revival was a huge success.  Today it is the revised Tchaikovsky’s score  that is used when many ballet companies perform Swan Lake.

There are so many talented ballet dancers who have come before us and future rising stars that will come after.  Many of them may have endured similar hardships and criticisms in the harsh world of ballet.  Now when I am on stage, I look out into the ocean of people in the audience and through the blinding stage lights, and wonder...

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake

• http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbl7rkbPTK1qmy8oho1_500.jpg

• http://warmjello.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/misty-copeland-swan-lake-103.jpg

• http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbl7rkbPTK1qmy8oho1_500.jpg