Vilia Putrius dances the role of Odette in Swan Lake, presented by Festival Ballet Friday through Sunday in Providence.

Tom Stio

PROVIDENCE — Mihailo Djuric is not a big fan of death. So the artistic director of Festival Ballet Providence has decided to do without it in this weekend’s production of Swan Lake at Veterans Memorial Auditorium.

“I’m a positive person who sees a bright future for me and everyone else. I don’t want to end the season with tragedy, but with optimism.”

This is the finale of Festival’s 30th season, the foundation for which was established at the finale of the company’s 20th season. That was the spring of 1998. Djuric had just been hired to head Festival for the next season. He decided to take in a company performance: Swan Lake.

It was good, Djuric thought; but, on second thought, only to a point. One of the principal dancers in the production was from Boston Ballet; another was from American Ballet Theater; and 10 in the corps came from the Joffrey Ballet School.

“Only half the dancers were local. The rest had been hired.”

Swan Lake is a big and demanding ballet. Generally small companies can’t do it, at least not without hired feet. Ten years ago, Festival was a small company with about a dozen dancers. That would change, decided Djuric, who set out to increase the quantity and quality of its dancers.

“If the core and heart of the program is not your own, you’re not building a company. It is nice to put on a big production and say it is Festival Ballet.”

This Swan Lake is Festival Ballet. Djuric and Milica Bijelic, Festival’s ballet mistress, are staging the classic based on the choreography of Marius Petipa and the music of Tchaikovsky. The company’s 19 dancers and three apprentices will be accompanied by numerous Festival students and alumni. In all, the production will involve a cast of 55, performing 85 roles.

“The dancers are dancing a lot. They’re happy. But their bodies are screaming.”

Everyone at Festival, Djuric says, is chipping in.

“I might be dancing in a show. Maybe my board of trustees will be dancing. We will do Swan Lake.”

Swan Lake, Djuric says, is “a jewel,” “one of the most precious and loved ballets.” It is the story of good and evil, of beauty and love. An evil sorcerer, Von Rothbart, has put a curse on young women so that by day they live as swans in a lake of their tears. But at night they are women again. Only true love can break the curse.

One night Prince Siegfried meets Odette, the queen of the swans. And he falls in love. But later at a ball, Von Rothbart tricks the Prince into thinking that his daughter is Odette, so the Prince pledges his love to her.

Odette’s dreams are dashed, or so they would seem.

In the most common version of Swan Lake, woe wins out. Odette kills herself in despair, and the prince follows suit. But Djuric doesn’t like that ending.

“The sad ending is depressing. What’s the point? Everyone loses. You have the good guys dying and the bad guys dying. No one’s left.”

But there’s also a happy-ending version to the story. This is the one Djuric favors, where love triumphs and the Prince and Swan Queen live happily ever after.

“We don’t kill everyone, just evil.”

Swan Lake will be performed Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. in Veterans Memorial Auditorium, One Avenue of the Arts, Providence. For tickets, $17 to $62, visit www.tickets.com or call (800) 919-6272, or Veterans Memorial at (401) 272-4862, or Festival Ballet at (401) 353-1129 or info@festivalballet.com.

brourke@projo.com