Scottish Ballet

Swan Lake is a bold addition to Scottish Ballet’s future-forward repertoire

When Scottish Ballet premiered David Dawson’s radically re-imagined Swan Lake in 2016, there were talking points aplenty. He’d stripped out classically familiar tropes - no tutus, no Rothbart casting spells, no Royal panoply. Instead, the central encounter between a misfit Siegfried and an other-worldly Odette gained nuanced intensity, with Dawson’s physically, riskily, fierce duets bringing them together in touching distance of possible happiness. That it ends with Odette betrayed and Siegfried bereft, touches us to the core: 19th century myth acquired everyday humanity.