In 2015, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Swan Lake, Shanghai Ballet invited Derek Deane, the former artistic director of the English National Ballet, to serve as the choreographer and premiere the grand version of Swan Lake, creating an unprecedented "Swan Ocean" composed of 48 swans in the Chinese ballet world.

 

 

This scale is not only the first time in China, but also the first Swan Lake with a luxurious group of swans to be performed in a theater worldwide. On the stage with deepening depth, the swans move and change into simple or complex graceful formations, and every freeze frame is a shocking picture.

 

In 2024, Shanghai Ballet debuted with Swan Lake on CCTV Spring Festival Gala for the first time, but the charm of Shanghai ballet has long been famous around the world with this "Swan Ocean". After the grand version of Swan Lake was born, it went to Beijing, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Chengdu, and Hangzhou. It not only set off a craze in the country, but also performed in Europe four times. The tour covered the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Australia.

 

In 2020, it performed 4 consecutive shows at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the United States. In just a few years, there were a total of 256 performances at home and abroad. The romantic and beautiful performances won the warm pursuit of audiences all over the world.

 

 

Choreographer: Derek Deane 
Derek Deane joined the Royal Ballet in 1972 and soon became a principal dancer in 1980. He later created many ballets for the Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet. He left the Royal Ballet in 1989 to explore a broader world of dance art creation.

In the spring of 1993, Derek Deane was appointed artistic director of the English National Ballet and the English National Ballet School. In 1997, after his work Swan Lake premiered at the Royal Albert Hall, it received two nominations for the Laurence Olivier Awards, the highest award in British drama, in February 1998. In 1999, Swan Lake was staged again and toured five times in theaters in Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. The tour set a record of 250,000 audiences in total. In the fall of 2000, he created a new version of Swan Lake, and the work toured in the UK and Japan in the following six months.

In 2000 and 2004, Shanghai Ballet introduced Derek's versions of Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet. After that, Derek tailored several ballets for Shanghai Ballet, including the Shanghai Grand Theater version of The Nutcracker (2010), the grand version of Swan Lake (2015), Hamlet (2016), Sleeping Beauty (2018), and the Shanghai Ballet version of La Traviata (2019). From 2018 to date, he has served as the artistic director of Shanghai Ballet.