It has been over 100 years since the ballet Swan Lake premiered in Moscow in 1877, and it is still loved by audiences around the world and has become synonymous with ballet. There is not a ballerina in the world who does not dance two excerpts from Swan Lake, and the production ranks as one of the most classic and perfect ballet works.

An epic romance about the forces of light and darkness, good and evil, love and hate, full of struggle and dramatic tension, the ballet Swan Lake is a world-class tragic work on a par with Shakespeare's work.

The music for Swan Lake was written by the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky in 1876, and many of the pieces have become heirloom classics. The music in the play has been described as "the first time that a dance piece was given a musical soul". Tchaikovsky enhanced the expressiveness of the dance music, deepening the drama of the work through symphonic unfolding and characterisation of the characters.

The path to fame for the ballet Swan Lake was as rocky as the fate of the Swan Princess, whose inability to capture the essence of Tchaikovsky's music by the choreographers of the time led to the curtain going down on its premiere in 1877. But Tchaikovsky's enchanting score, which he devoted his life to, was not buried. The father of classical ballet, Petipa, reintroduced the soft elegance and difficult dance moves to Tchaikovsky's rich and varied music, and after it took to the stage again on 21 January 1895, Swan Lake never left, and since then Swan Lake has become not just a symphonic legend, but a centuries-old dance classic.