Les Sylphides
Music by: Frederic Chopin
Costumes by: Mike Gonzales after Benois
Lighting by: Kip Marsh
Scenery by: John Claassen
Originally entitled Chopiniana, this ballet was first produced as a charity benefit in St. Petersburg in 1907 as a series of idealized incidents in Chopin's life.
Restructured and presented in the first 1909 Ballets Russes season in Paris under Diaghilev's title, Les Sylphides, Fokine created this dance suite unifying music and movement in an implied drama of Romanticism.
Les Sylphides is famous as the first "abstract" classical ballet without narrative structure or defined characters.
Although it atmospherically suggests Giselle and La Sylphide, the sentiments aroused spring from the sublime music of Chopin - evanescence of dreams, desire, melancholy. The first Ballet Russes' cast included Pavlova, Karasavina, Baldina and Nijinsky.