Swan Lake

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Swan Lake by the Ballet of the Greek National Opera returns for eight performances at the Stavros Niarchos Hall, featuring Konstantinos Rigos’ successful choreography. The Director of the GNO Ballet revisits Tchaikovsky’s classical masterpiece, recontextualizing extensive parts of Petipa / Ivanov’s original ballet choreography and raising new questions about how major works of the classical ballet repertoire can be reinterpreted in the present day.

Konstantinos Rigos explores some of our era’s fears and obsessive images to immerse himself in his own lake. A landscape in a post-destruction era. A deserted gas station serves as a reminder of a world that has run out of fuel. A lake where the natural and the supernatural co-exist and alternate. Prince Siegfried emerges as a romantic hero who constantly challenges himself against the absolute, possessing a transformative gaze that shapes those around him. Siegfried’s gaze is, after all, the main narrator. The white swan and the black swan appear as his fantasy projections, which he is called upon to hunt and kill; yet, as they are merely parts of himself, his arrow will ultimately strike him too.

The original choreography by Petipa and Ivanov dominates the lake scene, resembling a ritual that is repeated in this atemporal setting. By creating a choreographic palimpsest, the dancers alternate between classical and various other choreographic styles, ranging from neoclassical to contemporary.

Konstantinos Rigos notes: “In Swan Lake, I present a version that flirts with the enchantment of classical dance and neoclassical dance. The heroes preserve the characteristics of the classical version, but their roles are portrayed as projections of the prince himself. I see the roles of the white and black swan as two sides of the same person, aiming to illuminate the struggle between them; the innocence and the need for self-destruction hidden within every human. Human existence is drawn to both good and evil. I believe this is an ingenious feature of this work and one of the elements I want to bring out.”