The swan is perhaps the animal most frequently associated with ballet. In fluffy white tutus and pink pointe shoes, ballerinas glide across the stage like swans floating on a lake. Of course, the swan isn’t the only avian character in ballet. There is the dramatic red mythological bird of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.” “Sleeping Beauty” features a bluebird couple and a canary fairy, both of whom usually wear feathery costumes and flap their arms like wings as part of their choreography. There even is a barnyard chicken dance in the 1789 ballet “La fille mal gardee.”
Swan Lake
“Swan Lake” is one of the most famous and most frequently performed ballets. The ballet features a celebrated score, written in 1877 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The main theme, played by an oboe, mimics a birdlike call.
The ballet features a gentle white swan, Odette, and her evil doppelganger, the black swan Odile. There also is a handsome prince, Siegfried, and a wicked sorcerer, Baron von Rothbart. Odette was turned into a swan by the evil Rothbart. She and her Swan Maidens transform back into women at night.
The Dying Swan
“The Dying Swan” is an entire ballet comprised of only one dance by a single dancer. The music is “The Swan” from “Le Carnaval des animaux” or “The Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saëns, a French composer, who was a colleague and good friend of Tchaikovsky.In “The Dying Swan,” the white tutu-clad ballerina enacts the last moments of a swan’s life before gently folding up on the floor in death. Smooth cello notes evoke the bird’s swan song, as a swan sings for the last time before dying. The piece is between three and four minutes long, depending on the tempo.
Anna Pavlova gained fame for performing this ballet, which was choreographed for Pavlova by Russian choreographer Michael Fokine. She first performed it in St. Petersburg in 1905 and would perform it around 4,000 times. Other ballerinas have also performed this unique one-person ballet. Mid-20th century British ballerina Alicia Markova has been most associated with the dance, which prompted Vladimir Tretchikoff to immortalize her in the 1949 painting “The Dying Swan.”
Feathered Grace
“Swan Lake” and “The Dying Swan” have the common theme of a shared topic. In terms of technical difficulty, however, they are very different. “Swan Lake” is one of the hardest ballets for the prima ballerina, since it is four acts long and extremely intense in terms of acting and dancing.The greatest challenge is playing the dual role of Odette and Odile. The ballerina must embody two separate characters and execute two very different styles of dancing. While Odette is sad and vulnerable with slow, controlled movements, Odile is sinister and enticing with flashy technique, including the impressive 32 turns, known as fouettés.
“The Dying Swan” is a simple solo routine with only a few dance moves, depicting the final moments of a swan’s life. In fact, most of it consists of graceful steps gliding across the floor, known as bourrées, and flapping arm movements. Many ballerinas have been inspired by the choreography of this dance to incorporate more swanlike movements into their interpretations of Odette. Appropriately, this has become the final piece many ballerinas perform in their careers, a true swan song.
It’s a popular misconception that the pieces are related, as many videos posted on the internet are titled “’The Dying Swan’” from “‘Swan Lake’.” Yet, although one is only four minutes and the other is four acts, both ballets are beautiful works of classical ballet, epitomizing grace, beauty, and tradition.
