"O Canto do Cisne" was one of the last pieces danced by Ballet Gulbenkian before its extinction. Challenged by Companhia Nacional de Bailado (National Ballet of Portugal), the choreographer revisits her piece together with the original artistic team.
Based on the theme launched at the time, “The fascination of distant worlds”, Clara Andermatt seeks the unknown through mystery and surprise towards what is probably most enigmatic in everything we do not know: death. Formally, the choreographer chooses Camille Saint-Saens's "The Death of the Swan" as a starting point, asking the music composer Vítor Rua to create variations on the original theme.
Andermatt approaches death not as the end, but as the beginning of the future it contains, plunging into metamorphosis and its transforming power. It is this moment that the choreographer identifies as the swan song. The present ends up revealing itself as a continuous realization that it is both past and future, because everything is in constant change. An idea that Clara Andermatt emphasizes by quoting Peggy Phelan:
“When you think you've found a way to love, to observe or to remember someone, everything has changed.”