Swan Lake is the most popular ballet in the world. It's the ballet that captures like no other the full range of human emotions - from hope to despair, from terror to tenderness, from melancholy to ecstasy.

Surprisingly upon its debut, Swan Lake was hailed as a monumental flop. At its first performance,It was given a poor choreographic treatment, and the ballet was said to have no future.The version that survives today is the combined achievement of Russia's Petipa and his assistant, Lev Ivanov, the brilliant choreographer who fully developed the central dramatic idea of a woman trapped in the body of a bird through the movements of the dancer's arms, the articulations of her feet and positioning of her head and neck.