There’s a scene in Swan Lake where the hunky, crossbow-toting protagonist, Prince Siegfried, loses his swan princess, Odette, in an enchanted forest. Suddenly, he finds himself confronted by dozens of identical ballerina swans. Bedazzled and confused, Siegfried runs uselessly up and down the doppelgänger ranks searching for his betrothed. He is beguiled by the multiplicity of swans and the scale of their shared, robotically precise movements.By the time Swan Lake premiered in the late 19th century, the princely protagonist’s confusion amidst a slew of synchronous ballerinas was already a trope. Romantic ballets are littered with such …
