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Voiceover: The classical ballet Swan Lake is the story
of Odette, a princess, cursed to live as a swan
unless a prince declares his love for her.
The lead role of Odette, the white swan,
and Odile, the black swan, is so physically
and mentally demanding that it has to
be divided among three different ballerinas
during its six show run.
Teresa: There are three Odette, Odiles
Sara Mearns, Ashley Bouder and myself.
I don't think you could pick three
more different dancers, at least among
the principal women.
Sara: This ballet has been one
of my favorites or maybe my favorite
since I was 10.
Swan Lake was my first solo principal
anything when I was 19.
Teresa: Sara is this great adagio dancer.
She's so emotional.
Sara: It's kind of crazy that it was
the first thing that I did,
and I'm still doing it now, love it.
It makes me cry every time.
Tess is like she has the legs
for days, arms for days.
She has a long neck which I wish I had.
Teresa: For me it was the dream role.
It is the dream role.
I understudied it for like many, many years,
and he hadn't chosen me so I felt like
so happy when it was finally my turn.
That's kind of hard to believe
that I'm like up there with those people.
I don't know if I really believe it yet.
Ashley: Well, the other two dancers are
tall, bigger than me and blonde.
Sara: Ashley, she's such a spitfire,
and she's so great at the black swan.
Ashley: I turn and jump a lot so people
would definitely see me as black swan
but not so much as white.
When I'm dancing white swan in my head
I'm thinking this is not your thing
because I've been told this is not my thing.
Teresa: I think all three of us have
a different idea of how we want to play
the characters which is kind of the beauty of it
because every time you go to a show
it will be completely different.
Odette was just kind of like doomed from the beginning,
but she's also this beautiful creature
so you have to fit that all in
and tell your story.
Then Odile is just like this evil temptress
trying to lure in her prey.
Sara: She's very selfish.
She doesn't really care about the prince's feelings.
She's there to completely trick him
to manipulate him and you don't want
to be that person,
You don't want to be Odile,
but it's fun to be that because
it makes you feel powerful.
Teresa: There's three of us who do six shows
just because it would be impossible
to do it every day in one week.
Ashley: The first pas de deux in Swan Lake
the main pas de deux of the white swan
and by the time you finish that you have
massive foot cramps because you've been
on point for over five minutes.
You have right in the middle of the ballet
one of the hardest pas de deuxs, solos,
and codas in all of ballet and right after
that you have to run off stage,
run into your dressing room, change
from a black tutu to a white tutu,
change your headpiece, come back out
and start crying on stage.
Teresa: A normal ballet is 20 minutes,
and it's unusual for you to be out
on stage for the whole 20 minutes.
Odette, Odile is probably dancing
for over an hour of the two and a half hours.
So it's a lot.
Ashley: Two or three weeks before the ballet
completely stop drinking alcohol, or soda,
or antyhing that was dehydrating.
I would take potassium in the morning
and at night just to prevent muscle cramping
because the ballet is so long and difficult
for muscle stamina.
Teresa: To get ready for it, I just tried
to do as much dancing as possible just
to build up the tolerance for that much dancing.
Sara: If you know you can do it, and you know you've
done it before, you work smarter.
You work in a different way.
You don't push your body to the limits now
if you don't need to.
I had a major back injury last year.
I came down from a jump and my back went.
I didn't even know if I was going
to be able to come back.
The instincts that you build after an injury
are insane like you know every single part
of your body and how it's going
to react to something and when to stop.
Swan Lake is both very hard technically,
and very hard emotionally.
It's classical ballet. It's pure,
and we can all do those things,
but it's the character on top of it
that makes it very hard.
There's so much that you have to convey
to the audience but so subtly.
Female: I think the more you stay on point
the more birdlike for me. You know what I mean?
The minute this happens, you're a human.
Ashely: Yeah.
Sara: Especially in the black swan
it's like she's not only trying
to fool the prince,
she's fooling the entire audience
and that's what makes them go nuts.
I feel like after you're done,
you're just so emotionally wrecked
at least I am, it takes a couple days
afterwards to get yourself back again.
Teresa: After the first performance I ate a
burger and fries and a beer.
Last night I kind of had two dinners,
half a bottle of wine,(laughs) and a
margarita, and that's it. That's it.
Sara: Most people when you're in the audience
you watch from waist up especially
in a role like this when it's such theater
and it's so much acting, so much storytelling
with your body language and your arms,
where your eyes are.
That will do it all for the audience.
That will make them cry at the end,
That's kind of what we're going for.
I want tears.