Les Sylphides

Les Sylphides
Anna Pavlova in Les Sylphides, 1909
Choreographer	Mikhail Fokine
Music	Frédéric Chopin
Based on	Chopiniana
Premiere	(as Chopiniana): 1907 (as Les Sylphides): 2 June 1909 (as Chopiniana): Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg, Russia (as Les Sylphides): Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris
Original ballet company	Ballets Russes
Characters	the poet, sylphs
Design	Léon Bakst
Created for	Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, and Alexandra Baldina
Genre	Ballet blanc
Type	Romantic reverie

Les Sylphides (French: [le silfid]) is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc. Its original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with music by Frédéric Chopin orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov had already set some of the music in 1892 as a purely orchestral suite, under the title Chopiniana, Op. 46. In that form it was introduced to the public in December 1893, conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The ballet, described as a "romantic reverie", is frequently cited as the first ballet to be simply about mood and dance.Les Sylphides has no plot, but instead consists of several white-clad sylphs dancing in the moonlight with the "poet" or "young man" dressed in white tights and a black tunic.

Identifying the premiere of the fuller ballet poses a challenge. One might say that it premiered in 1907 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg as Rêverie Romantique: Ballet sur la musique de Chopin. However, this also formed the basis of a ballet, Chopiniana, which took different forms, even in Fokine's hands. As Les Sylphides, what we consider the work was premiered by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on 2 June 1909 at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris. The Diaghilev premiere is the most famous, as its soloists were Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky (as the poet, dreamer, or young man), Anna Pavlova, and Alexandra Baldina. The long white tutu that Pavlova originally danced in, and that the entire female corps de ballet adopted soon after, was designed by Léon Bakst and inspired by a lithograph of Marie Taglioni dressed as a sylph.