Artists

Ballet del Teatro Mariinsky de San Petersburgo

Yuri Fateev, artistic director 

Programme

Chopiniana

Music: Fryderyk Chopin

Choreography: Michel Fokine (1908)

Revised version by Agrippina Vaganova (1931)

Scenario: Michel Fokine

Set design based on original sketches by Orest Allegri

Piano: Alexandra Zhilina

World premiere: 8 March 1908, Mariinsky Theatre

Running time: 35 minutes

In the Night

Music: Fryderyk Chopin

Choreography: Jerome Robbins (1970)

Stage: Ben Huys

Costumes: Anthony Dowell

Lighting: Jennifer Tipton

Piano: Liudmila Sveshnikova

Recreated by Nicole Pearce

World premiere: 29 January 1970, New York City Ballet, New York

Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 18 March 1992

Premiere of the revival: 5 May 2009

Performed by permission of The Robbins Rights Trust

Running time: 25 minutes

INTERMISSION

Marguerite and Armand

Music: Franz Liszt (Piano Sonata in B Minor). Orchestrated by Dudley Simpson

Choreography: Frederick Ashton

Production Coach at the Mariinsky Theatre: Grant Coyle

Set Designs and Costumes: Cecil Beaton

Original Lighting Concept: John B. Read

Piano: Vladimir Rumyantsev

World premiere: 12 March 1963, The Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London

Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: July 2014

Running time: 30 minutes

Exceptional 20^th century choreographers reinterpret the romantic ballet

In the Mariinsky Ballet’s second programme, Chopin and Liszt are the basis upon which three key 20^th century choreographers reinterpret romantic ballet. Namely, Michel Fokine, with whom Diaghilev created his Ballets Russes; Jerome Robbins, symbol together with Balanchine of North America’s neoclassical dance since the New York City Ballet, and Frederick Ashton, the Royal Ballet’s great founder. With Chopiniana, Fokine takes us into an oneiric world, leaded by the character of the poet and his muses, the sylphides, dressed in long white tutus. In his already classic In the Night, Robbins acquires his inspiration from Chopin as well, endowing three couple of dancers with a singular personality through his intimate nocturnes. Ashton, on his side, adapts the novel La Dame aux Camélias for his famous and passionate ballet Marguerite and Armand, based on Franz Liszt’s Piano sonata in B minor. He created the ballet for the couple of stars of the time, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who in the night of the premiere in 1963, had to take a bow twenty one times due to the applause of the audience attending Covent Garden.