It is a rare narrative ballet that achieves as much with music and design as it does with dance. New York City Ballet’s full-length “Swan Lake,” however, is that rarity. It sweeps the viewer into a beautiful, artistic world that enhances the plot’s icy stab of betrayal and the cold chill of lost love. Not only do you see the drama in the dance, you sense it from the surroundings and hear it in the music.

Now 10 years old, this “Swan Lake” production is as modern as the ballet is classic. City Ballet’s Peter Martins created the choreography after the 19th-century original and Balanchine’s 1951 one-act version. He hewed closely to Tchaikovsky’s score in tempo and content, but broke significantly with the past by inviting the Danish painter Per Kirkeby to lend the ballet an abstract sensibility. With his majestic contemporary paintings – transformed into backdrops and echoed in the costumes – Mr. Kirkeby both created a new visual theme and reinforced the story’s essential core. As Mr. Kirkeby put it: “It is a very simple story about love. Then you are suddenly alone.”

PETER AND PER Though this production has become a regular part of City Ballet’s repertory, it received its premiere at the Royal Danish Ballet. Mr. Martins, a native of Copenhagen, had been invited to create a full-length ballet of his choice. “When you do a full-length ballet, you have to live with that music for over a year and a half, so you’d better love it,” he said. ” ‘Swan Lake’? I can live with that.”

Mr. Martins then set out to find a Danish painter to create the scenery.”[A friend] said, ‘You know who the best is.’ I said, ‘Yes, but he’ll never do it. He’s such a big star.’ “

As it turned out, Mr. Kirkeby – a masterful artist who has worked in a broad range of media and had created theatrical sets previously – readily accepted the offer.

THE DESIGN The two began their work by settling down in front of the television. “The first thing we did was to look at all the DVDs of existing ‘Swan Lakes’ and decide what we did and didn’t like. We were defining our own approach,” Mr. Kirkeby said.

To understand their approach, one need only appreciate the difference between representational and abstract art. Imagine a figurative painting of a castle with a courtyard by a lake. Now imagine an abstract painting of the woods, streams, and terrain surrounding that castle.

This production eliminates the traditional storybook setting and replaces it with Mr. Kirkeby’s abstractions of nature. The visual motif that runs throughout is a jagged marbling that suggests random rivulets of water slicing through rocks or curving around trees. The audience’s first look, during the overture, is a drop that introduces a snowy, rocky forest. For the ballet’s one indoor scene, the set is deliberately spare: The ballroom is indicated by a series of wood and marble panels. At a key moment in the story, these panels are whisked away, and as the interior deconstructs before your eyes, you land at the lake.

Lakeside scenes, though, require some imagination: You’ve got to know to look for the body of water, so much so that when Mr. Martins initially saw Mr. Kirkeby’s small painting for the lake scene backdrop, he grew nervous. “I said, ‘Per, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but, where’s the lake?’ He said, ‘You don’t understand. You’ll see. You’ll see the lake.'”

The lake’s presence is not so much a facet of the painting but of the lighting. “There’s a lot of black in those backdrops. They also let a lot of light in,” Mr. Kirkeby said. “There are many types of dark, but this is ballet, so you want to see the dancers.”

Indeed, lighting was a crucial component for Mr. Kirkeby. Mr. Martins was especially impressed by the artist’s insistence that the lighting be created delicately to bring up aspects of the backdrops – and then eliminate them as needed. “He said, ‘This can’t be a gallery showing of Per Kirkeby. It cannot overwhelm the ballet,'” Mr. Martins said.

THE COSTUMES Though Mr. Kirkeby had free rein on the paintings that would become the drops (which were created by set painters, then touched up by the artist), he collaborated closely with Mr. Martins on the costumes. “We decided everything together,” Mr. Kirkeby said.

Garments fluctuate among time periods, but some also suggest past and present simultaneously. The wide, stiff tutus for the ballerina are supremely traditional, yet they contain Mr. Kirkeby’s signature marbling. The opening party scene looks like a French medieval gathering, and the ballroom scene sends you into high collared Spanish aristocracy.

The variation was intended “to stress certain points in the story,” Mr. Kirkeby said. “In the castle, it’s kind of Baroque, more threatening.”

As for color, “Swan Lake” is ultimately a conflict between black and white. Odette is a woman turned into a white swan under the black magic of Von Rothbart. The spell can be broken only by true love, which the prince swears to Odette. Later he is seduced by the black swan, Odile, and tricked into breaking his vow. As a result, Odette must remain a swan forever.

Though this production features the requisite black and white, it also has a strong palette of greens, browns, and bright oranges, especially for the outdoor court scene. “I wanted a lot of color in the first act,” Mr. Martins said.

City Ballet’s costume shop director, Holly Hynes, who oversaw the New York replication of the Danish costumes, was surprised with some of the color choices. “There is a large amount of green, and that’s not a color you see often in ballet,” she said. “When you see it as a whole, the greens and browns all make sense.”

Party dresses of sheer and opaque green punctuate the vibrant orange and brown setting in Act I. An iridescent green and orange fabric adds shimmer to delicate costumes in Act II. Orange marbling also turns up on the bodice of the black swan’s tutu. (But it is icy blue marbling that gives the white swan’s costume a sense of coldness.)

MUSIC AND DANCE In researching the music for “Swan Lake,” Mr. Martins learned that Tchaikovsky’s intentions for the score often are ignored. “You discover how people butcher it,” he said. “I spent a long time listening to the original ‘Swan Lake’ in the order that Tchaikovsky had intended.”

That artistic standard, though, competed with his practical goal of squeezing the ballet from four acts to two. “I took out a lot of the repeats, where appropriate,” Mr. Martins said.

Even so, this production includes musical sequences – a pas de quatre and a Russian variation – that are rarely performed. More importantly, it adheres to Tchaikovsky’s notes on tempos, so that the score is heard in all its gripping, swirling glory. These choices contribute to a strong emphasis on dance. And that, of course, is why we go.

Though the must-have aspects of the classical ballet are present, they are delivered in moderate doses: Mime is reduced to only the key plot elements. This being City Ballet, there is a distinctly neoclassical style to the dancing. Mr. Martins built the choreography to express or visualize the music, rather than tell a story scene by scene. The dancing unspools naturally before you as the music surges up from the pit: The result is a ballet that succeeds as dance.

These smoothly joined performing arts then are placed within the context of the unusually rich visual arts. The sum total of these energies harnessed together is transfixing. And it gives this work an uncommon status: It is a ballet that illustrates the power of art.

pcatton@nysun.com