“It starts in the unsuccessful first production of 1877, when Tchaikovsky’s new music was accompanied by a staging that inspired too little enthusiasm … It would be 15 years before the music finally got the staging it deserved, the iconic version in St. Petersburg created by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. But the oral tradition in ballet theatre was strong, and the images of Swan Lake coupled with its music were what people clung to, not to any idea of the inviolability of great choreography, which was considered soft material, to be remodelled at will. And so it changed and changed.”