In this week's episode, Sasha Drozzina considers the larger political symbolism of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s four-act ballet Swan Lake and the recent sampling of the ballet’s “Dance of the Little Swans” and its subversive use by a Russian rapper and singer-songwriter, Noize MC in his 2023 song “Kooperativ “Lebedinnoe Ozero”” (Cooperative “Swan Lake” in English)

This episode was produced by Mark Micchelli along with Team Lead Jennifer Weaver. Special thanks to peer reviewers Ellen Bakulina and Orit Hilewicz.

SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/

[SMT-Pod opening theme music]

[Audio Example 1: Noize MC_Cooperative Swan Lake 0:33–0:49]

Welcome to today’s episode, which provides a nuanced understanding of the larger political symbolism of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s four-act ballet Swan Lake (1875–77) and its recent sampling that you just heard in the 2023 song “Kooperativ “Lebedinnoe Ozero”” (Cooperative “Swan Lake” in English) by a Russian rapper and singer-songwriter, Noize MC. Noize MC’s full name is Ivan Alekseev, and I will refer to him by his stage name Noize MC, or his first name Vanya, which is diminutive for Ivan.

The artist was added to the Russian “foreign agent” list on November 18, 2022, due to his continuing antiwar statements. Alekseev has long been a social activist artist, making his political views opposing Putin’s leadership transparent to the Russian authorities as early as the 2010s, while still living in Russia. American music theorist Philip Ewell interviewed Alekseev in 2012, observing the musician’s early dissident activity when he was protesting the rise of nationalism in Russia under Putin.

“Cooperative “Swan Lake”” is a contemporary dissident statement by Noize MC, now a Russian émigré living in Lithuania, in which he publicly opposes the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, echoing views of Russian citizens, Russian and Russian-speaking diasporas abroad, who are also antiwar. Of note: according to the current Russian law, it is illegal to call the Russian “military operation” a war, and it is criminal to publicly oppose it.

Noize MC’s re-composition of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Little Swans” from Swan Lake ballet Act 2 incorporates poignant lyrics and adds electric guitar and drums—altogether becoming a form of protest. In May of 2025, the song was banned from circulating in Russia, and in this episode, I would like to highlight Noize MC’s persistent activist work, which is evident in this song.

My analysis focuses on the sampling of the “Dance of the Little Swans”, the translation and reading of the text that comments on Russian state-sanctioned television propaganda, Noize MC’s vocal delivery throughout this song, audience participation in concert, and a brief consideration of the official song video. To dissect the intertextuality present in this song, I build on Noriko Manabe’s work on protest music.

I also draw on Carol Vernallis’ and Lori Burns’ work on multimedia to address the image choices in the video. Additionally, I will share my personal account of attending Noize MC’s 2022 concert in Chicago, where this song was performed prior to its official release. The latter discussion spotlights the accompanying dance elements as embodiment of the song’s message, which I observed firsthand in the audience’s active physical and vocal participation at the concert.

Lastly, resulting from fieldwork observations from attending multiple concerts by several different Russian dissident musicians held in the United States since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, I position that these cultural happenings create a unique “third place” (“third place” as defined by Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 text, The Great Good Place) for the Russian and Russian-speaking diasporas. In these places, protest can be voiced in a safe environment. I refer to these concert spaces as “third émigré places.”

You may be wondering: has Swan Lake ballet been a coded form of protest in Russia prior to its inclusion in Noize MC’s song? Well, the answer is no.

In 1982, Tchaikovsky’s full-length four-act ballet (which typically lasts between two and three hours) was broadcasted after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1964, instead of regular programming by the Soviet state-controlled television station. This meant that beautiful dancing swans were gracing everyone’s television screens across the Soviet Union.

The ballet re-appeared on the Soviet television screens in 1984 after the death of Yuri Andropov (General Secretary after Brezhnev), again in 1985 after the death of Konstantin Chernenko (General Secretary after Andropov), and once more in 1991 after the failed coup during Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule, who was the last leader of the Soviet Union. The putsch attempt was commemorated 20 years later in 2011, when the ballet was rebroadcast on the Russian television channel, Kultura.

American musicologists Simon Morrison and Roland John Wiley have written at length about Tchaikovsky’s life and his ballets, focusing on Tchaikovsky’s compositional process and reception of his works. And Janice Ross, in her 2015 book Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia, emphasizes that the [quote] “The televising of Swan Lake during a political crisis seemed to offer membership in the imagined fraternity of Soviet citizenship just when its cohesion needed bolstering and mobilizing for political ends.” [end quote]

In short, the Soviet viewers were meant to be reassured by the peaceful swans on their screens, their organized dancing eclipsing any suggestion of political instability happening right outside their windows. Ross also writes about foreign dignitaries visiting the Soviet Union, and later Russia, who were often taken to the showing of the Swan Lake ballet, since it displays artistic excellence and symbolizes the state’s power, political stability and eternal peace. However, for many Soviet citizens, the broadcast ballet signified political instability and government control of information, and this significance of the ballet showing established itself in the Soviet and then Russian collective memory over the years.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the screening of the ballet returned during closures of independent Russian news outlets, such as TV Rain, which was swiftly shut down on March 3, 2022. After the closure announcement, TV Rain journalists were seen walking out of the studio with Swan Lake playing on all studio screens. Since then, TV Rain has been based in the Netherlands.

Currently, the original “Dance of the Little Swans” music is used in the opening credits of Ekaterina Schulmann’s show Status, streamed on YouTube. Her show begins and we hear this familiar tune:

[Audio Example 3: Tchaikovksy_Dance of the Little Swans 0:00–0:22].

And sometimes, instead of the original, we hear the electronic dance remix of the “Dance of the Little Swans”, which was used in the 2014 official video advertisement for Emporio Armani Swiss Collection of watches. This is the upbeat remix:

[Audio Example 4: Schulmann_Swan Lake intro 0:00–0:20]

Schulmann is an extremely popular Russian political scientist, who, alongside Noize MC, also joined the Russian “foreign agent” on April 15, 2022. She is now a non-resident scholar and teaches political science in Berlin.

At the start of her show, “Dance of the Little Swans” plays against the black-and-white image of four Russian riot police officers in uniform and helmets that hide their faces, linking arms just like ballet dancers do in the little swans’ dance, as they dance so-to-speak to the song of the Russian regime and diligently follow its orders. This image is a reproduction of the 2022 painting by Pavel Otdelnov, “Swan Lake”, which also comments on the recurrence of the ballet’s broadcast during the Soviet Union and its symbolism.

Of course, unlike the lack of shared information during the looping of the ballet in the Soviet Union, Schulmann openly talks about recent Russian political updates, such as new laws. She provides relevant news to Russian citizens and those abroad, news that might not be communicated otherwise on state-sanctioned television channels in Russia. Her choice of music for the show’s opening credits is thus sarcastic and provokes a knowing chuckle from the viewers, who are familiar with the history of Swan Lake broadcasting.

Noriko Manabe’s research on music in social movements addresses use of preexisting music, text, and symbols in protest song, and the effectiveness of its use. She recently developed a typology for locating intertextuality in protest music. She adopts Gerald Genette’s term transtextuality as her definition of intertextuality—and it encompasses “all that sets the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts.”

To clarify: text is not always a written text but can be another object. In this episode, I use the same definition of intertextuality since it accounts for factors outside the text, meaning factors outside of Tchaikovsky’s original ballet music, dancing, visuals, and storyline.

More specifically, Noize MC’s “Cooperative “Swan Lake”” falls under the category of hypertextuality, one of the five transtextuality types as defined by Genette, and on which Manabe draws. In hypertextuality, “any relationship uniting a text B [the hypertext]—in this case Noize MC’s song—to an earlier text A [hypotext]—in this case Tchaikovsky’s ballet music—as it points to large-scale relationships.”

Manabe prefers to call hypertextuality “contrafacta” and reports that this is the largest category of protest music. By choosing to sample the celebrated ballet, Noize MC relies on his listeners from Russia, as well as from numerous other post-Soviet countries now dispersed across multiple temporalities, to recognize the dance music and the symbolism behind it.

In his song, Noize MC changes the instrumentation of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, reserves the sampling of the first four measures of the original “Dance of the Little Swans” for the chorus only, and surrounds it with new material in the verse and the pre-chorus. Furthermore, he subverts the original meaning of Tchaikovsky’s ballet as one of state stability and greatness.

Manabe highlights the importance of familiarity and repetition in covers prevalent in protest music, and Noize MC’s song fulfills both of these criteria as the song’ driving chorus is set to the music of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Little Swans” and repeats only one word, ty in Russian (which is “you” in English). I imagine that the ballet sampling in the chorus allowed for faster creation of this song, which was composed and released quickly following the 2022 invasion and performed live in concerts that same year.

In her chapter “Intertextuality in Protest Music: A Typology” in the Oxford Handbook of Protest Music, Manabe writes, [quote] “Songs associated with past events can invoke the emotions associated with it, which the listener fuses with new political situations; this process compounds the emotional power of these songs with new layers of meaning.” [end quote]

Let’s now dive deeper into the lyrics' semantics and examine the hypertextuality present in the newly created layers of the song. The text addresses the Russian nation’s reaction to the Russo-Ukrainian War; Noize MC frustratingly highlights how the older Russian generations continue to watch and rely on state-sanctioned television channels for news updates, just like they did in the Soviet Union.

Whereas the younger generations now rely on other informational outlets, such as internet and Telegram Messenger. Notably, the song opens with the chorus part that samples Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Little Swans”, keeping the original rhythm and melodic contour. I will return to the chorus as the driving force in this song but first let’s hear the first verse.

Verse 1 lyrics are set to Noize MC’s own music and they are: “I would like to talk to you / But the TV is overwhelmingly loud / It pretends to be your head / Its loudspeakers look just like your mouth // My country has risen from its knees / To its full negative height / I negatively agree to everything /That’s what I reply to your non–question.” The first four lines come back later at the end of Verse 2, creating a sense of doomed circularity meant to reflect the current grim state of Russian affairs. Let’s now take a listen to Verse 1.

[Audio Example 5: Noize MC_Cooperative Swan Lake 1:02–1:27]

We heard drums and electric guitar, and also snippets of the original swan dance at the end of selected lines.

In the prechorus, Noize MC’s initially stable vocal delivery starts to waver as he lets his anger take over. At this point, the text is delivered in an increasingly strained manner that borders on yelling. The text’s translation is: “Where have you been these past 8 years / F*** monsters?! / I want to watch the ballet, / Let the swans dance! // Let the old man tremble in fear / About his “Ozero” / Get the f*** nightingales out of the screen / Let the swans dance!” Who is he chastising? Who are the monsters? And who are the nightingales getting in the way of the swans dancing? That’s a lot of birds.

The prechorus is essentially a call and response. In the first two lines of the first stanza, Noize MC is positioning the recurring question that Russian citizens, including himself, have been simultaneously facing and asking from those opposing war, marking the year 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea as the beginning of the war rather than the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The second two lines are meant to be a reassuring response by the state supporters continuing to uphold Soviet and now Russian traditionalism symbolized by the ballet and thus being content watching it on a loop on their television screens. They are insisting: “I want to watch the ballet.” They are also demanding the removal of protesters like Noize MC, who are the nightingales.

Nightingale is the English translation of solovey, which is a reference to solovey-razboynik, the “outlaw” character in Russian folk culture. In fact, Noize MC has a song called “Nightingales” on his most recent album alongside this song. The second repetition of the prechorus includes the fans’ sing-along, demanding to see the swans dance.

It is at this point that Vanya’s voice finally cracks and makes space for the audience, who chants, “Let the swans dance!” In this instance, both the artist and his fans are sarcastically asking for the return of the ballet, when they are really opposing the conformism that the ballet symbolizes. In this frenzied call-and-response pre-chorus, everyone involved is implicated: Noize MC, his fans, and his cancellers. Let’s hear this prechorus.

[Audio Example 6: Noize MC_Cooperative Swan Lake 1:28–1:54]

Personally, despite the many times that I have heard this prechorus, I still find it hard to listen to Noize MC’s grating voice as he screams the text leading to the song hook, “let the swans dance.”

The furious energy drops as we move into the chorus. Warning: this part may quickly become an earworm. Let’s hear it now.

[Audio Example 7: Noize MC_Cooperative Swan Lake 1:55–2:07]

The chorus contains only one word that repeats relentlessly, ty. Ty translates to “you”, “you” as singular and informal. Ty is a hard-sounding single-syllable word that points straight at each individual listener, both in its direct address and Vanya’s harsh vocal delivery. Vanya growls at this point—his voice again sounds on the verge of losing control especially toward the end of the second repeat of the chorus.

His manner creates an aggressive timbral opposition to the underlying musical reference to Tchaikovsky’s ballet scene that is light in its sound and visual appearance. I also hear the persistent word repetition turning into a neutral syllable stream—tytytyty—lending the chorus a playful energy if one were to disregard the narrative lead-up heard in the verse and the prechorus. It’s extremely effective that Noize MC opens the song with the chorus and gets the dance started before hitting the audience with the condemning lyrics.

As a result, by combining Tchaikovsky’s original “Dance of the Little Swans”, his own music and biting commentary, Noize MC subverts the earlier established meaning of the ballet as one of stability and instead portrays it as form of conformism demonstrated by those who side with today’s Russian elite authorities and official state power. In his song, we are now in the upside down.

In December of 2022, I attended Noize MC’s concert as part of his first North American tour titled, “Vse Kak u Lyudei” (translating to Everything Is Like It Is for Everyone Else). Noize MC learned that he was added to the Russian “foreign agent” list during this tour. While we were waiting for the show to start inside the Concord Music Hall, there was instrumental music playing, and it was from Swan Lake.

While this selection might not have been immediately clocked by everyone in the audience, those who did recognize the ballet music, also seemed to appreciate the symbolism behind it. I heard a couple beside me exclaiming, “O, Чайковский, в тему” (meaning Oh, Tchaikovsky, how fitting). And then this happened when Noize MC began playing his Swan Lake song.

[Audio Example 8: Noize MC_Chicago concert 0:00–0:20]

Just now, you heard him introduce the “greatest ballet “Cooperative “Swan Lake”” but then abruptly stopping the song to instruct the concert attendees to link hands as if in a ballet formation and dance side-to-side, just like little swans. He then re-started the song, at which point the audience closer to the front of the stage began to energetically skip and dance.

I want to emphasize how the recent North American tours of multiple Russian émigré musicians, including Noize MC, have been successfully creating unique “third places” for the Russian and Russian-speaking diasporas, where they are able to express their socio-political views of opposition safely.

Oldenburg defines the third place/great good place as such: [quote] “Public place where people can gather, put aside the concerns of home and work (their first and second places), and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation. They are the heart of a community’s social vitality and the grassroots of a democracy.” [end quote] Such places, these musical events, are especially vital for Russian and Russian-speaking emigrants, who find themselves away from home and wish to finally express their opposition to the war publicly and without repercussions.

Concert attendees are not only able to voice their protest, but they are also able to meet and make connections with others, who hold similar views. For instance, in the official video for “Cooperative “Swan Dance”” we see Ukrainian flags waving in support in the audience. At the Chicago concert, I also saw Russian white-blue-white flags, which are symbolic of opposition to the Russo-Ukrainian War and are often used by antiwar protesters.

In this “third émigré place”, created under special circumstances, the individual voices of the diaspora are amplified in a communal setting that levels participants and permits protest—protest that is not conceivable in Russia today. While these concerts may not provide immediate influence over the current Russian political course, they do allow for development of positive and inclusive democratic grassroots movements abroad.

The official video for the song was released on January 23, 2023, and it includes shots from the 2022 tour, filmed precisely during the audience swan dancing. Drawing on Vernallis’ and Burns’ research on music and media, I want to consider the narrative in the video and how it visually responds to the song lyrics.

During the verses, we see footage of Noize MC while on this tour, which arguably heightens a sense of realism in his call for action, as well as his artistic and personal authenticity. He is intimately showing the viewers how he is living as a “foreign agent” while continuing his artistic work. Vernallis points out that oftentimes, a word or part of phrase in a video will break away from the overall texture and be presented as unique.

In this song, the singular word in the chorus, ty, is accompanied primarily by the images of the fans rather than the singer. This focus on the people creates a strong connection for the viewer and seemingly invites them to join in the dance, becoming involved in the protest as a result. In her work, Burns points out that seeing the performing body invites increased reflexivity for the viewer.

I argue that the choice to include the concert footage of the swan dancing turns the concert attendees into active participants and furthermore, presents them as examples of antiwar and anti-Putin protest for those, who watch this video. Noize MC is deliberately showing real individuals in this video revealing that there are those, who do agree with his dissident views.

After watching this video, the viewer is likely to remember the layering of the original graceful ballet dance with the concert mosh dancing that is no longer delicate. Now, the swans dancing is representative of open protest and not being afraid to speak up against the present-day Russian political regime.

Lastly, I’d like to point out another quotation in the song finale—Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, which is heard in the official video though not in the released song version. The video ends with clips from the past Russian television show “Namedni” that was created and narrated by Leonid Parfenov, now another Russian émigré.

The inclusion of this particular episode on the topic of Putin’s dacha (meaning cottage) near St. Petersburg, known as the cooperative Lake and referenced in the song verse, is a signifier of truth-telling, as the show was known for its factual accuracy and Parfenov discussed notable historic events that took place in the Soviet Union and then in Russia.

In conclusion, the intertextuality in the song “Cooperative “Swan Lake”” quickly captures attention and accesses collective memory of the Russian and Russian-speaking listeners. Noize MC’s dissident statement does not vaguely allude to the current issues, it openly critiques them and, as a result, the song did not escape Russian government censorship.

In 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal has deemed the song as banned information in the Russian Federation due to apparent signs of hostility, hateful speech, and propagandistic statements that, as reported in the independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Ironically, since the ban of the song, the majority of the comments under the official YouTube video note the importance of the song and support Vanya’s activism and point of view.

In November of 2025, this song was performed by street musicians in St. Petersburg, gathering a crowd of supporters. This performance, unfortunately, landed the musicians in jail, and they had to emigrate. Considering that Noize MC has been living in emigration in Lithuania since 2022, he long ago “gave up” on eluding the wrath of Russian authorities instead welcoming them head on while physically remaining outside of his home country. Of course, this upheld position of protest prevents the artist from returning to his Russian home. So for now, let the swans dance.

[Insert Audio Example 9: Tchaikovsky_Dance of the Little Swans 1:08–1:28]

A big thank you to my two wonderful peer reviewers: Ellen Bakulina and Orit Hilewicz. Your kind feedback and thoughtful suggestions were immensely helpful in the structuring of this story. And thank you to the team lead for this episode, Jennifer Weaver, and producer, Mark Micchelli, for their guidance and assistance throughout the development of this episode.

Visit our website smt-pod.org for supplemental materials related to this episode and to learn how to submit an episode proposal. Join in on the conversation by tweeting your questions and comments @SMT_Pod. SMT Pod's theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. Thanks for listening!