 Fokine's granddaughter, Isabelle, notes that the ballet does not make "enormous technical demands" on the dancer but it does make "enormous artistic ones because every movement and every gesture should signify a different experience," which is "emerging from someone who is attempting to escape death." She notes that modern performances are significantly different from her grandfather's original conception and that the solo today is often made to appear to be a variation of Swan Lake — "Odette at death's door." The ballet is not about a ballerina being able to transform herself into a swan, she states, but about death, with the swan simply being a metaphor for that.
