White tutus, a compelling love story and 'goosebumps music': no production is more symbolic of classical ballet than Swan Lake. One hundred and fifty years after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote his masterpiece, this is still a ballet that you must have seen.                                                                             

When Tchaikovsky composed his iconic Swan Lake music in 1877, it was not a success. It was not until 1895 that the piece became popular, thanks to the choreography of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. The preserved parts of this choreography have since been picked up and adapted worldwide. Also by choreographer Rudi van Dantzig, former artistic director of Dutch National Ballet, who in 1988, according to a leading reviewer, created the 'most beautiful Swan Lake ever 

Rudi van Dantzig (1931–2012) was a distinguished Dutch choreographer who led the Dutch National Ballet for many years. He was not the creator of the original Swan Lake (which premiered in 1877 with Tchaikovsky's music and Reisinger's choreography, and gained worldwide fame in the 1895 version by Petipa and Ivanov). In 1988, van Dantzig created his own choreographic version — not just an adaptation, but a complete reimagining.

His main goal was bold for its time: to dust off the "museum piece" and make the old music speak to audiences of the 1980s and beyond in the language of psychology, not fairy tale. He removed the magic and turned the story of the swan into the tragedy of a person who seeks an ideal, cannot find it, and shatters against reality.

At the core of van Dantzig's version is not the struggle between good and evil, but the collapse of a dream. Prince Siegfried suffers not from the sorcerer's evil spells, but from the impossibility of living up to his own ideals. Odette is not an enchanted girl, but a symbol of purity and unattainable beauty — an ideal he carries within his soul. Rothbart is not a magician, but a projection of the pressures of the world in which the prince is suffocating.

Furthermore, van Dantzig was deeply inspired by Tchaikovsky's biography. He studied the composer's letters and saw in them the same pain — the need to hide one's true nature, to conform to conventions, to suffer in solitude. During the performance, portraits of an aging Tchaikovsky appear on the curtain, creating an invisible but very important link between the composer's fate and the prince's tragedy.

In the classical version, Siegfried often seems passive: he simply falls in love, then makes a mistake, then begs for forgiveness. In van Dantzig's version, he is the central nerve of the performance. He is a naive, dreamy young man suffocating under court ceremonies. He does not want to rule, does not want to stand around at the ball, does not want to make the choice expected of him. Odette becomes for him not so much a beloved, but the embodiment of everything he lacks in life: sincerity, beauty, freedom.

In the original, the prince's friend Benno is a minor figure. Van Dantzig not only gives him a new name — Alexander — but turns him into a key character. Alexander is the only one who understands Siegfried. He arranges his celebration, accompanies him to the lake, tries to support him after the betrayal. This figure makes the prince's loneliness even more palpable: if you have a friend, but he cannot save you — the tragedy only deepens.

In van Dantzig's version, there are no real transformations. Odette appears not as the sorcerer's prisoner, but as a vision of Siegfried — his ideal, taking the form of a girl in white. Odile is not Rothbart's daughter, but temptation — a sensual shadow of the ideal. When Siegfried dances with her and swears his love, he betrays not a specific woman, but his own dream. Rothbart is not an evil magician, but rather a force that governs this world: cold, demanding, relentless.

Despite all his innovation, van Dantzig fully understood the greatness of the material he was working with. He preserved the most famous fragments of the traditional choreography — the second act (the "white act") as staged by Lev Ivanov, and the Black Swan pas de deux with its 32 fouettés. However, the character dances (Hungarian, Spanish, Neapolitan, and Polish) in the third act were completely reworked. They were staged by Toer van Schayk — van Dantzig's long-time collaborator, who also designed the sets and costumes for this version. The visual style of the production is inspired by the golden painting of the 17th-century Dutch masters.

The 1988 production became one of the hallmarks of the Dutch National Ballet and is still performed regularly. Critics call it "Swan Lake for the thinking viewer" and one of the most important psychological ballets of the 20th century. Rudi van Dantzig's version is not a story about an enchanted girl. It is the tragedy of a person who cannot live by the rules, who creates an ideal in his own soul, then betrays it — and ends up in utter loneliness. There is no evil sorcerer here. There is only a world that breaks dreamers.