by Julia Guiheen | Jan 6, 2021 | Viral Videos
Les Sylphides, choreographed by Michel Fokine to music by Frédéric Chopin, is often considered the first plotless ballet. It transports the audience, not through a story, but through mood and music. The ballet’s romantic aesthetic allows dancers to make artistic...
by Julia Guiheen | Aug 22, 2018 | Profiles, TBT
When Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn began dancing together in the early 1960s, they made an unexpected pair—he was a young, hot-tempered Soviet defector and she was a distinguished prima of The Royal Ballet, 19 years his senior. Yet their partnership (which lasted...
by Hannah Chang Foster | May 25, 2016 | Company Life
Pop quiz: which ballet looks just like Giselle, La Bayadère’s Kingdom of Shades and La Sylphide’s forest scene, but has little in common with any of them? Hint: it’s often confused with the last ballet on that list. Les Sylphides , originally named...
by As Told To Amy Brandt | Mar 31, 2016 | Profiles, Technique
This story originally appeared in the April/May 2016 issue of Pointe. The Dying Swan, choreographed by Michel Fokine for Anna Pavlova, is a short but powerful solo often reserved for the most revered ballerinas. Mariinsky Ballet principal Uliana Lopatkina shares the...
by Hannah Chang Foster | Nov 4, 2015 | Company Life
“With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan…” -From The Dying Swan (1830) by Lord Alfred Tennyson Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Dying Swan, along with a lifelong fascination with swans, inspired ballet legend Anna...