In this reimagining of Swan Lake by Ivan Cavallari, artistic director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and former principal dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet, the story shifts from an enchanted kingdom to the world of a film studio, where an advertising campaign is being created for a new fragrance, Vertige Noir. Beneath the gloss of spotlights, auditions and photo shoots, everything is image, artifice and carefully crafted appearances.
Through this original dramatic treatment, the characters of the original tale are reinvented, and the iconic white act, with its procession of swans, finds new resonance here. Drawing from the score of Swan Lake as well as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique,” Cavallari makes Odette’s metamorphosis into a white swan a rite of passage, where the climb toward the ideal comes at the cost of a gradual loss of self. Combining fascination, control, and the quest for identity, The Lake offers a fresh take on the myth, as distinctive as it is unexpected.
