Les Patineurs (ballet)

Les Patineurs (The Skaters) is a ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton to music composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer and arranged by Constant Lambert. With scenery and costumes designed by William Chappell, it was first presented by the Vic-Wells Ballet at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, on 16 February 1937. It has been called "a paradigm of an Ashton ballet, perfectly crafted with a complex structure beneath the effervescent surface."

The ballet, in one act, depicts a Victorian skating party that takes place on a frozen pond on a winter's evening. A semicircle of arched trellises painted white separates the pond from the snowy woods behind. Suspended above are colourful Chinese lanterns, shedding light on the white canvas stage covering, simulating ice, and dimly illuminating the dark trees silhouetted against the starry night sky. The first skaters to enter are four couples dressed in matching brown jackets. They are soon joined by others: two girls wearing blue jackets and bonnets, two girls wearing red jackets and bonnets, a girl and boy dressed all in white, and a lone boy wearing blue. This happy group of young people dance together in various combinations, gliding and leaping and spinning across the ice until snow begins to fall and the single boy is finally left alone, whirling like a top in the middle of the pond.

With a cast of only fifteen, Les Patineurs is a ballet in divertissement form rather than a story ballet: the dances simply proceed in sequence from beginning to end, with no narrative development. At the premiere, the principal dancers, the White Couple, were Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann. The Blue Girls were Mary Honer and Elizabeth Miller; the Red Girls were June Brae and Pamela May; and Harold Turner was the Blue Boy, the virtuoso soloist in the group. The Brown Girls were Gwenyth Matthews, Joy Newton, Peggy Mellus, and Wenda Horsburgh, who were partnered by Richard Ellis, Leslie Edwards, Michael Somes, and Paul Raymond as the Brown Boys.

...
Wikipedia