$32 to See Oregon Ballet Theatre Present “Swan Lake” at Keller Auditorium (Up to $64 Value). Five Showtimes Available.

Ballet dancers spend an unusual amount of time on their toes, much like the coworker who creeps up behind your chair every day just to watch you for a while. Gaze at grace with this GrouponLive deal to see Oregon Ballet Theatre present Swan Lake at Keller Auditorium. For $32, you get one G-Pass for seating in the second balcony (up to a $64 value, including all fees). Because the ticket is a G-Pass, Groupon customers can use it to enter the venue directly; they will not need to redeem their Groupon at will call. Doors open one hour before showtime. Choose from the following performances:

• Saturday, February 16, at 7:30 p.m.
• Sunday, February 17, at 2 p.m.
• Friday, February 22, at 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, February 23, at 2 p.m.
• Saturday, February 23, at 7:30 p.m.

The Plot

Had he been less rash, Romeo might have avoided his plight, but what chance did Prince Siegfried from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake stand when his quest for love was bent by wizardry? Made melancholy by the necessity of marriage, the young prince sets out to distract himself with a swan hunt. To his surprise, however, the flock he’s tracking lands beside a crystalline lake and transforms into a group of beautiful maidens, led by Odette, the most beautiful of all. The evil sorcerer Von Rothbart has cursed them to be birds by day and women by night, making true love the only key to their freedom. Prince Siegfried seems like the dashing young man for the job, but he would do well to remember that sorcerers stoop to cheating—even at the game of love, and especially at Monopoly.

The Choreography

Former artistic director Christopher Stowell devised this choreography in 2006, based heavily on Petipa’s immortal 1895 version. In opposing outfits of white and black, the principal dancer plays Odette and her insidious doppelganger Odile, the transformed daughter of Von Rothbart. With expressive physical action and elaborately evocative costumes, this staging entices the eye and ear even as it breaks the heart.

Accolades

Since debuting in 1989, the Oregon Ballet Theatre has built its reputation on two seemingly opposed elements: strict balletic classicism and newly commissioned works. The unusual combination has paid off. Under founding director James Canfield, the company mastered more than 80 traditional and contemporary pieces, and subsequent directors have only expanded the troupe’s scope. Christopher Stowell in particular has been a magnet for positive criticism, earning rave reviews from the likes of Bob Hicks from the Oregonian, who writes that Stowell’s Swan Lake is “a work of sumptuous geometric balances that echo the story’s mirror-image theme.”