Swan Lake Network

2024

This network explores the collaborative history behind Swan Lake performances at the Royal Opera House. The Royal Ballet and Opera Collections’ performance database is a remarkable resource catalogues ballet performances from 1946 to the present, including choreographers, composers, dancers, designers, and other specialized talent involved in each production.

The network below shows all ballet professionals that have participated in a Swan Lake production at the ROH. In this network, each ballet professional is represented as a node, and two nodes are connected if they collaborated in the same Swan Lake production. Node color reflects the role of each contributor—such as choreographer, composer, designer, specialized talent (e.g. media producer), or dancer—making visible the artistic diversity and influential leaders behind this iconic ballet. For example, the network highlights the central role of Sir Frederick Ashton, a towering figure in British ballet and a key architect of the Royal Ballet’s artistic identity. His contributions as a choreographer appear as a highly central node, reflecting his creative leadership and influential power across historical Swan Lake productions, highlighting his enduring legacy within the company’s repertoire.

Below, a hierarchical network visualization zooms into the 1961 production of Le Lac des Cygnes, illustrating a typical team structure of a ballet production. This layout shows how the composer and choreographer stand at the creative core, guiding designers and specialized collaborators, who together shape the world that dancers ultimately bring to life on stage.

This work emphasizes the usefulness of robust data and network science to better understand collaborative dynamics of creative ballet work. The ROH database provides a unique opportunity to trace the evolving careers and influential roles of choreographers, dancers, designers, and composers over decades of ballet performances. Using a network approach, we bring understanding of their partnerships, showing how creative leadership takes shape within an art form defined by collaborative work.

Source: https://rohcollections.org.uk/performances.aspx

Data accessed: September 20, 2023