Who doesn’t immediately have the "Dance of the Four Little Swans" in their mind’s eye when they think of the subject of ballet? Or the touching pas de deux of the swan princess Odette and her prince Siegfried? Hardly any other work has had such a strong influence on ballet history up to the present day as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s "Swan Lake". Yet the reaction to the premiere at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater in 1877 was rather muted: the music too symphonic, but above all the choreography rather bland. The triumphant success of "Swan Lake" did not begin until 1895, when the choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov revised the ballet and staged it at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg - Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) had already died.
The choreography around the innocent white swan princess Odette, her seductive counterpart Odile in the form of the black swan and Siegfried searching for his great love is still considered the basis for all productions today.