Back from the Edinburgh Festival, where people stood in lines wrapped around Festival Hall hoping to get tickets for their sold-out Swan Lake, the Pennsylvania Ballet brings their triumph home. And what a triumph: Admirers left flowers and mash notes at the Festival stage door for the ballerinas. Festivalgoers stood to applaud when Pennsylvania Ballet dancers entered restaurants. Excellent international reviews poured in, and high expectations were met at every performance.

What's clear at this point is that Pennsylvania Ballet owns this ballet in its bones. Christopher Wheeldon's Swan Lake is much more than an expensive and glamorous addition to its repertory. Riolama Lorenzo's opening-night Swan Queen went beyond being a fine performance. Lorenzo has now performed this role to the point where she lives it. Calmly she brings grandeur and command to her performance that was not there before. She is effortless in astonishing balances and whips off the fouettes and other tough stuff like a walk in the park. And her arms and back virtually ripple and flutter like silk — or swan's down. Likewise her gracious partner, Zachary Hench, as the hero Siegfried, never disappears into the flock, so to speak, and is elegantly present to the unfolding story in a way that signals his own maturity in the male lead.

The physical (and travel) demands on our medium-sized ballet troupe have taken a toll. It's a situation where everyone dances pretty much all the time. The 19 swans basically are onstage for three acts, or about three hours every performance. Not surprisingly PAB has more people on the disabled list than the Eagles. There is no second string, so the whole company steps up to the plate ready or not. Very ready indeed is Jermel Johnson, an astonishing apprentice not yet a company member. Johnson was fantastic in his pas de trois with outstanding veterans Amy Aldridge and Valerie Amiss. He must be about three feet off the stage when he begins his battements. With Tara Keating hurt, Heidi Cruz slipped into Keating's Spanish Dance role. It is doubtful anyone in the audience noticed any of the changes, so polished is the show.

Swan Lake is not a big production rented for a week's run and then shipped back to Houston or Canada. PAB owns this lock, stock and barrel, because steps were created on these bodies, and PAB has risen to the challenge of performing world-class new choreography in a world-class setting.

SWAN LAKE Through Oct. 8, Pennsylvania Ballet, Academy of Music, Broad and Locust sts., 215-893-1999