The Cuban National Ballet Company began a two-weekend season of Swan Lake, the most famous classic in the history of ballet.

Directed by dance legend and prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, the Cuban company is set to dance Swan Lake on June 21, 22, 27, 28 and 29 at Havana’s National Theater. The main roles of Odette-Odile and Prince Siegfried are being played by prima ballerina Viengsay Valdés; premier dancers Yanela Piñera and Amaya Rodríguez; principals Grettel Morejón and Estheysi Menéndez; principals Víctor Estévez, Camilo Ramos, Arián Molina; and premier dancers Dani Hernández and Ernesto Álvarez.

Swan Lake mixes the musical mastery of Piotr Ilich Tchaikovski and a cozy dramaturgy in which the two main characters, the pure, fragile and seductive white swan, and the perverse, seductive and aggressive black swan, represent the struggle between good and evil.

At the end of the 19th century, great choreographer Marius Petipa and his closest collaborator, Lev Ivanov, gave a boost to the beautiful love story, when they rearranged the ballet’s initial and original structure and added complex steps of unimaginable beauty. In the second half of the 20th century, Alicia Alonso created her own version after Petipa and Ivanov, with higher technical demands in line with her own virtuosity.