Swan songs: Dance Magazine went to some of the ballerinas who are known for their portrayals of Odette/Odile. We gathered their experiences and advice for young dancers just starting to learn the part--and for those who dream of performing it someday.

YUAN YUAN TAN 

SAN FRANCISCO BALLET 

Before the performance, I just calm down, get quiet, and visualize my bird. I try not to think too much because it will mess me up. Onstage it just happens, because of the muscle memory. But you have to think of the details--the swan-like neck, your fingertips as the tips of the wings. The entrance is always the hardest moment. After all the dry ice disappears, you have to do glissade, pique arabesque, and then hopefully I can stay on that arabesque. I need to rehearse more and more for that. If I can do the step well I can open up to the role.

When the ballet is over, my left leg is killing me. The pas de deux is on left leg, and the variation in second act, the long pas de deux and long variation and fouettees are on the left side. And so many bourrees--my toes hurt, too.

Some guys think about technique too much, and in the pas de deux you know they are saving energy for their variation. I can't stand that.

Advice: Study a lot of videos. Every famous ballerina does it differently; they are doing what suits their body. You can study them and try out what works for you. And gets lots lots lots of rehearsal.

IRINA DVOROVENKO

AMERICAN BALLET THKATRE

In one act you are vulnerable and delicate, sensual and fragile. You don't need to do too much eyes or too much emotion; your body will tell more.

In another act you are spontaneous, hot, and sexy. You magnetize the prince and make him fall in love. You can look at him with evil eye and do it in a way that he won't see.

In the dressing room as I change costume, hairpiece, and makeup, I look at myself differently in the mirror. Red lipstick on Black Swan changes the character in one second. As I am walking onstage in a circle, I can feel everybody's eyes on my back, from audience to stage and wings, wondering who I am. It gives me energy.

In the last act, I have little tearball in my throat. For love she decides to leave this world. You want to cry but are holding back.

Advice: If you know the steps it doesn't mean you know the role. It takes years to learn what you want to say with each attitude, each bourree. If you're just counting, you will be lost. Each movement has a meaning.

ULIANA LOPATKINA

KIROV BALLET

My first Swan Lake I danced with fear and trepidation, trying to be up to the mark of the Maryinsky Theatre. Now I'm trying to make the image more complex, to embody the musical intonations as if in speech. Odette is all love and hope; she is very cautious and uncertain of her Prince. She is waiting [to be released from the spell] in the state of endless despair. Odette is a pure ideal; she is a question without an answer. I sympathize and admire her. Odile's character on the other hand is foreign to me. She is elegant and fascinating, but beguiling like a society lioness. She knows how to "sell" herself. Some people say that my Odile lacks eroticism, temptation, black magic. But that wouldn't be me. Evil is more dangerous when concealed. We often get entrapped by hidden evil.

Advice: Spend time scrupulously working out the details. It should not become just a showcase of one's facilities and abilities, but a beautiful song.

SVETLANA ZAKHAROVA

BOLSHOI BALLET

When you are young it is hard to master both the technique and the drama, to make arms to be wings, to combine the emotional expressiveness of the upper body with strong legwork. I am still searching for ever more beautiful poses as Odette, for new emotional nuances, and I'm working on making technical difficulties invisible. It feels as if I start from scratch every time.

In St. Petersburg I was taught to show Odile as a bright, beautiful seductress. But in the Bolshoi's version, Odile is more mysterious, more secretive and deceiving. It's easier for me to transform into Odile. The bright lights, chic black costume, and crown all help to create the right mood. Besides, all women have in them a bit of this toughness.

With today's schedule, touring, and guesting, I may have just a handful of rehearsals. Sometimes only onstage you find out if your partner is intelligent, responsive, and helpful.

KAREN KAIN

NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA 

Technique-wise the hardest things for me were the rondes de jambe (to make them really big doubles) in the first part of Odette's variation--and the fouettees. For a long time I would do only 24, finishing with pique turns. But after Rudy Nureyev said he'd kill me if I didn't finish them, I made myself stop having this mental breakdown. As a partner, Nureyev, with his emotional generosity, forced me to look into his eyes and believe in the moment. Erik Bruhn gave me the courage to trust my instincts and the freedom to phrase things my own way. (Before working with him I was very coached--every pose, every finger was specified.)

Odette's sincerity is closer to my nature, but I struggled with Odile for a long time. Erik Bruhn [then artistic director of NBC] used to tell me, "Convince me that you can tell a lie." It takes a woman, not a girl, to do Odile.

Advice: When you start working on the role, first learn the "words," be able to dance them, and then shape them to make them understandable. Take your time; you cannot have it all at once.

LAUREN ANDERSON

HOUSTON BALLET

The White Swan has wings, and the Black Swan has wings that have been clipped so she's pissed about it. Odette is soft like air, like music, like vapor. The Black Swan can be soft but vicious and can tear you apart. She is the water of the sea and the water of a hurricane.

When you finish the ballet, you feel like you've been hit by a truck and then it backs over you two more times. But it's satisfying. In the most pitiful section of the fourth act when you're reaching the end of the tunnel, it's one of the best pains of the world. Everything hurts--my back, my feet, my hip joints, my toes; my face is sore.

The fouettees-that's a piece of cake. If you're stressing over the fouettees, you're stressing over the wrong stuff. You want that second-act variation to be good. I need to feel the right emotion. After the first time, I realized, Ohhh, I have to do a lot less. There's a feeling of air under the pits and air under the butt. When I did less, it was lighter, easier.

Advice: You can't be grounded, you're on the water and you float. You can't just flap your wings; you must fly.

EVELYN HART

ROYAL WINNIPEG BALLET 

While I was working on the film [Swan Lake, with London Festival Ballet, produced by Thomas Grimm] I met Natasha Makarova, who was my idol. She gave me ideas and ways of moving that allowed me to inhabit the Swan. Over time my interpretation got more expansive. I could breathe in it and not analyze everything (as I did at first). First my Odette had innocence and vulnerability; then I added fear, trepidation, curiosity, and after that hope and courage. Odile is not evil; she is all that Odette is but with misaligned purpose.

I felt very protected with Henny Jurriens as a partner; I knew he'd never let me down. With Manuel Legris I felt like with an equal; he inspired me to be technically brilliant. Rex Harrington, who is charismatic and natural, brought out sensuality in me. It's like a kaleidoscope: You've got hundreds of colors to choose from.

Advice: What helped me to get through the fouettees was saying to myself Maya Plisetskaya's comment: "It's just a stupid circus trick." The finish after the fouettdes is a real triumph--no other role can take you there!

CYNTHIA GREGORY

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE 

I had been brought up on the classics done by The Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi. When I went to ABT, Agnes de Mille was always trying to make you as real as possible on the stage. That stuck with me when I started to do Swan Lake. I wanted to make Odette more womanly--vulnerable, yet regal. She was a tragic figure so I tried to dig deep down in myself and find what tragedy in my life could help bring that across. Yet there was hope when she met the prince.

I walked on for my variation as a woman, feeling that all the swans were part of my family and part of the tragedy. I wanted to find places within the pas de deux where I could look deep into my partner's eyes. The pas de deux was the growing of hope within me. In the variation there are some very difficult steps. I didn't have a fantastically supple back, so I really had to work at that.

I always felt Odile as soon as I got on the stage. The music, the stage, the prince looking at you, seeing you as Odette although you're Odile. With each partner I had a different feeling and excitement. I tried to stay as much Odette as I could, just making her more alluring, brilliant technically but still showing him a vulnerability. She was hard-edged, but she had to be meltingly soft so he wouldn't seem the fool.

Advice: Think about what you want to do with the role and who you want to be. And then put that out of your head and just work on getting the technique as pure and clean as possible. And then onstage, those thoughts from before will come through in your dancing.

WENDY WHELAN

NEW YORK CITY BALLET 

The Balanchine one-act version is the Reader's Digest version and you don't have to have that dark side. In the Martins version, you have to develop that. It's a marathon versus a sprint.

Odette is airy and feathery and connected to nature; it's a sad song. Odile is more of a manmade thing, a black diamond made to hypnotize the prince.

With my partner, I need to be able to look into his eyes, honestly and not with faux acting. When somebody's giving back melodrama, I can't take that.

In the coda, all I can think of is "Get this over with!" But one of my favorite steps is the big diagonal just after the fouettees--glissade and the leg brushes front and into arabesque, like she's throwing daggers at him with her feet. I've been on the verge of vomiting, and it pulls you to give more when you have nothing left.