Schwanensee. Rotbarts Geschichte

In his first full-length creation for the Staatsballett Hannover, Goyo Montero presents his own take on the famous "ballet of ballets" in breathtaking dance images: he tells a prequel to Swan Lake - the story of the traumatized son of a king, Red Beard, who discovers love in the middle of the night on a lonely lake. A cautious approach leads to an ecstatic frenzy. But with the dawning of day comes fear, and the boundaries between dream and reality begin to blur. Red Beard finally builds his own kingdom out of broken desires and dark fantasies. But the past catches up with him.
"The Staatsballett Hannover shines with a completely new approach to the eternal classic that is likely to write ballet history," was Annette Bopp's conclusion on tanznetz.de after the world premiere of Swan Lake. Rothbart's story. And Dorion Weickmann summed it up in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: "That is the ingenious, the political moment of this performance - which, incidentally, is fantastically danced, conducted and scored: it makes it unmistakably clear that spirals of violence always have a run-up, but never come to a standstill of their own accord."
After all performances of the 2025/26 season were sold out before the premiere, Goyo Montero's dance fairy tale about the emotional abysses of an outsider, which ends where the classic Swan Lake begins, will now be performed again: a prince goes into a forest and encounters a flock of white swans in the dead of night.