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Ulyana Lopatkina – is there anything that hasn't been written about her Odette/Odile? The Queen is now supposedly past her prime, and yet, in Baden-Baden, she stepped on a foreign stage and delivered an astonishingly moving Swan Lake, brushing aside all concerns. Her spirituality opens up layers of emotion, and on that particular day of December, she combined it with a surging eagerness to tell the story. She looked at Korsuntsev with wide-eyed, intense fear. Details were changed in her famed interpretation, lending life to the gorgeous marble; entering the stage with sweeping, revolving bourrés, she seemed to find new musical accents by the lake. The Queen was breathing – the shimmering beauty of her pointe work, her arabesques in the coda, unfurled with soft, understated emotion, crowned a white act there was no need to compare with any other.

The Black Swan has never been quite as natural for her, but Lopatkina masters it with subtlety. She takes advantage of her mature persona to alternate smiles and deep seriousness, thus highlighting the concealing nature of Odile – a master of her own appearance and effects. A queenly shrug of the shoulders towards Siegfried when exiting said it all. This Odile doesn't resort to tricks. What she does is consummate art, and the coda itself was devoid of any agressivity. Beyond the fouettés, the subsequent diagonal of arabesques was danced with an arm repeatedly darting towards Siegfried, from deep in her back – a snake designating its own prey.

A mourning Odette came back for the strange happy ending devised by Sergeyev. Lopatkina repeatedly projected the « no » she gives Siegfried, as alive in her distress as she was in the first act. The only thing that detracted from her line was the broken wrists here and then; and yet her body still sings the same soulful symphony. So many details linger in the mind: her musical hops pulling away from the prince, the way she comes back to him, her head leaning on her arm as it was when she first entered the stage, suggesting nostalgia. Her Odette/Odile - a spiritual landscape on its own, still supreme in the strength of its imagination.

Her quiet empathy with Daniil Korsuntsev was touching. They have been dancing together for a long time, and he does sometimes appear merely as her cavalier – in Baden-Baden however, they connected as two long-separated heirs of a family. They are not the most passionate pairing, but the feeling they project is that of being tenderly safe together. Korsuntsev certainly presented himself at his most princely – calm yet more expressive than I have seen him in the past, displaying a range of emotions in the first scene. His technique is impressively clean for so tall a dancer, and he punctuated his variation in Act II with a remarkable series of double tours en l'air.

The chance to gaze at such serene maturity doesn't come along all that often. It may go unnoticed as striking new waves of dancers take to the stage but something does set Lopatkina, Korsuntsev and others apart on stage - the flow of the movement, the revelling in the music, the stagecraft. This was also apparent at soloist level, with Yana Selina doing triple duty as a Friend, a Cygnet and leading the Napolitan Dance. Her recent promotion to Second Soloist was long overdue after a decade of such workloads. A petite dancer, finely groomed in the best tradition, she brings wit to every part. She stood out in the Pas de Trois for her elegant demeanor, acknowledging everyone around her. She doesn't stare in space or smile at walls – she seems to know the prince, and looks at her two friends with a degree of interest. Such craft is what makes the fiction come together. Also on duty were Polina Rassadina and Alexandra Iosifidi, two long-time members of the company. Rassadina shone in the Hungarian dance with a grounded, womanly approach. Tall Alexandra Iosifidi was cast as one of the two swans in Act III and in the Spanish Dance, and presented herself with laudable maturity.

The corps de ballet, on the other hand, featured many very young dancers, and although the dancing itself remained very precise, the swans often gave the feeling of a well-drilled army, seldom breathing. The constant touring may be taking its toll, since what is lacking is hardly rehearsal – it is poetry. Not all poses were perfectly realised, as the dancers seem to have diverging opinions on upper body positioning. A clearer idea of what they are actually doing in the initial castle scene would also sharpen its impact. That said, the Mariinsky remains a grand ensemble – it is reborn again and again, but let us hope it is not ultimately worked to death.

Here is a similar prayer : let Ekaterina Kondaurova, Konstantin Zverev and the likes of them breathe into their dancing. The stunning Kondaurova danced a Big Swan and one of the Two Swans in Act III, and whenever she found freedom in the choreography, she softened the attack of her steely limbs and allowed us to glimpse at her own Odette in the making. Konstantin Zverev is a Rothbart that has many great years ahead of him, on the strength of his excellent performance – his feline jumps and hawk-like movements culminated in a vivid death scene, despite the ridiculous ending. Grigory Popov was less convincing as the Jester. He bumped into another dancer center stage at the very beginning, and made a few mistakes, hardly giving a smile in Act I – he got stronger and stronger though, with technical fireworks to compensate. The same goes for Alexey Timofeyev in the Pas de Trois, who has impressive technique but still lacks the stagecraft to smooth the transitions. Although Lopatkina and others hopefully have many more such swan songs ahead, an artistic lineage also depends on the future inspiration of the young and overworked.