Swan is on the menu again this summer

The National Theater will be home to a flock of visiting swans next week as the English National Ballet (ENB) makes its Taipei debut.

Such swan sightings, once rare in Taipei, are becoming almost an annual event, with international companies such as the Cullberg (2003), the Kirov (2004), Moscow City Ballet (last year) and the Russian Festival Ballet (in April) bring their versions of this most popular of ballets.

This will be only the ENB's second visit to the region since it toured China in 1979. Asia has certainly changed since then and so has the company.

The ENB was founded as the London Festival Ballet in 1950 by two of Britain's greatest ballet dancers and teachers, Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, who despite their Russian stage names were English born and bred. The troupe changed its name in 1989 to reflect its role as a touring company both at home and abroad.

The ENB has weathered its fair share of ups and downs in its 56-year history, including the perception it was always second to “the” British company, the Royal Ballet. Its financial situation has also been very rocky in the past few years and then there's the fact that despite its title, the company is now more international than national — only two of the principal dancers are English, while the others hail from Cuba, Estonia and Japan, among other places.

But globalization is a way of life for dance companies these days, as typified by the company's new artistic director, Canadian-born Wayne Eagling. He grew up in California, was a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet for 16 years and then artistic director of the Dutch National Ballet from 1991 to 2003.

Eagling joined the ENB late last year and has frequently spoken of his plans to keep up the troupe's touring schedule while trying to improve its finances.

He is bringing the entire 64-member company to Taipei, although not its orchestra. The Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra will be tackling Peter Tchaikovsky's magnificent score (the first ballet he ever composed), led by the ENB's own conductor.

Such a big company means big ticket prices and so swan may be off the menu for many dance lovers here. But this could be the only chance that most people will have to see the ENB, and its production of Swan Lake has won critical acclaim.

The ENB's Swan Lake, which premiered in 2000, was choreographed by the company's then artistic director, Derek Deane, who wanted a more stage-friendly version than the arena-sized extravaganza he had created just three years before with swans galore for the Prince Albert Hall (more than 60 in the corp de ballet as opposed to the conventional 32).

In his slimmed down version, Deane kept most of the original Swan Lake choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov from 1895 but also incorporated passages created by Frederick Ashton for the Royal Ballet in 1952 and 1963, including the pas de quatre, waltz and the Neapolitan dance.

Deane's ballet also ends on a happy note, with the love of Prince Siegfried and the Swan Queen Odette defeating the evil magician Rothbart.

The production runs for approximately three hours, including a pause after Act One and two intermissions.

For dance fans who care about such things, the cast schedule for the principal roles of Odette/Odile and Seigfried will see the pairing of Daria Klimentova and Dmitri Gruzdyev on opening night and again for the final performance on Sunday night. Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur will dance Wednesday and Saturday nights. Elena Glurdjidze and Arionel Vargas are paired for Thursday night and Saturday's matinee, while Erina Takahashi and Cesar Morales will dance Friday night and the Sunday matinee.