ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
It is a convoluted story, but it's a must-see for ballet lovers - "Swan Lake." One-hundred-twenty years ago this month, the version most often performed today premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia. NPR's Elizabeth Blair wondered why audiences still flock to it.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Yes, there's the music.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALLET, "SWAN LAKE")
BLAIR: Thirty-two ballerinas moving lyrically in unison can be a marvel to watch. And for Vielda Milano and her seven-year-old daughter, Abigail, from New Jersey, the costumes are to die for.
VIELDA MILANO: They looked absolutely stunning.
ABIGAIL: Glittery and pink and silver.
BLAIR: They went to see the legendary Mariinksy ballet perform Swan Lake at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Tickets are expensive - up to $175 a pop. But the one-week run is nearly sold out.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALLET, "SWAN LAKE")
BLAIR: It's been said that dancing the lead in "Swan Lake" is like climbing Everest or playing Hamlet. The principal dances two roles, the black and the white swan. And both birds go through a lot, changing from swan to human, falling in love, getting tricked and jilted, duets, solos and at one point dancing the 32 fouettes, which is literally 32 whip-fast turns.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALLET, "SWAN LAKE")
BLAIR: For dance scholar Lynn Garafola, it's simple. "Swan Lake" has endured because when well executed, it's a gorgeous, dramatic story.
LYNN GARAFOLA: Something that begins at the beginning and ends at the end and goes through so many different states of mind and emotional moments that at the end, I really feel I've had an experience.
BLAIR: That's assuming you've made it to the end of the roughly three-hour performance and not fallen asleep.
MELODY DATZ HANSEN: Everybody that I took to "Swan Lake" who was not a diehard ballet fan already was just bored to tears.
BLAIR: Melody Datz Hansen is a dance critic in Seattle. She is passionate about all kinds of dance. She appreciates "Swan Lake" both as a ballet and a moneymaker for companies, but she says the story about a royal prince deciding which girl swan he loves is outdated and sexist, and that can be a turnoff.
DATZ HANSEN: For many people, ballet and dance performance starts and stops with those traditional performances.
BLAIR: But "Swan Lake" hardly represents all of the exciting things happening in dance, says Datz Hansen. The last time Pacific Northwest Ballet did "Swan Lake," she says even the dancers looked bored.
DATZ HANSEN: There was no spark, and it was just very, very drab.
BLAIR: But it can be just the opposite, she says, when the same dancers do a contemporary piece, like choreographer Justin Peck's "Debonair."
(SOUNDBITE OF BALLET, "DEBONAIR")
DATZ HANSEN: Their faces are more expressive, and their bodies are just shooting energy out of their fingertips. It's amazing.
BLAIR: Now, there are fresh interpretations of "Swan Lake." There's Matthew Bourne's Tony Award-winning almost all-male version...
(SOUNDBITE OF BALLET, "SWAN LAKE")
BLAIR: ...And another gender bending "Swan Lake" with an African twist by Dada Masilo.
(SOUNDBITE OF BALLET, "SWAN LAKE")
BLAIR: But these are the exceptions. Most productions of "Swan Lake" stick to the rules.
MISTY COPELAND: Every spring season we do it, and it's like riding a bike.
BLAIR: Star dancer Misty Copeland's first performance with American Ballet Theatre was "Swan Lake" in the corps de ballet in 2001. Now she's a soloist with the company, dancing the lead.
COPELAND: It's huge.
BLAIR: Copeland is African-American. This spring she will do something that is rare in the mostly white world of professional ballet. She and another African-American, Brooklyn Mack, will dance the leads together for two performances with the Washington Ballet at the Kennedy Center.
COPELAND: To see two black leads is just not something that you see, so it's a big deal I think for the ballet world, and especially for minorities within the ballet world as well.
BLAIR: They'll perform the classic, the pure, the relatively unchanged late 19th century "Swan Lake" choreography. And yet, it feels like a breakthrough. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.