LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

La Sylphide
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2

The most recent of the enduring classic story ballets to enter NYCB’s repertory, Peter Martins’ staging of August Bournonville’s La Sylphide is filled with passion and unrequited love. Returning to the stage from its Spring 2015 premiere for eight performances, this celebrated romance tells the tale of love led astray and features the elusive fairy all little ballerinas dream of one day becoming and a diabolical witch who preys upon the conceits of an unsuspecting man. Paired for the occasion is Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, an ebullient outpouring of classical virtuosity with tiaraed tiers of corps de ballet dancers.



A Note from Peter Martins:

La Sylphide is the first ballet that I ever saw. I danced in it when I was a student at the Royal Danish Ballet School, and more than a decade later I graduated to the role of James, the male lead. Working my way up through various corps roles, I came to know this ballet very well, and whenever I look at the cozy domestic scene that provides the setting for Act I, it’s as if I’m staring into my own living room.

August Bournonville, the fountainhead of classical Danish choreography, saw the Paris Opera Ballet perform its production of La Sylphide in 1834, and for two francs and some change, he bought a copy of the libretto and commissioned a new score from Herman Løvenskjold, who happens to be my mother’s sister’s husband’s grandfather. Two years later, the Royal Danish Ballet premiered Bournonville’s version of La Sylphide, and in an unbroken tradition, the work has remained in the company’s repertory ever since.

Over the years several descendants of the Royal Danish Ballet have staged their own versions of La Syphide. In my staging, which was originally created for the Pennsylvania Ballet in 1985, I chose not to change anything, there is virtually nothing of me in the production. I simply went back to the essential La Sylphide. This is the Romantic ballet that I was brought up on; this is Bournonville as I know it. Oh yes, I did contribute something—I eliminated the intermission!


Balanchine first staged Tschaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto for the American Ballet Caravan in May 1941. Under the sponsorship of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs under the Roosevelt administration (Nelson A. Rockefeller, coordinator), the Caravan undertook a tour of South America, performing in every country except Paraguay and Bolivia. It was felt that a ballet should be presented demonstrating the pure classic dance. Instead of reviving an actual classic, Balanchine created a work in the style of Petipa and the Petersburg tradition. The decor, by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, showed the Neva, with the Peter-Paul Fortress, framed in the Imperial blue and white of the Winter Palace. Ballet Imperial was revived in 1964 by New York City Ballet with new decor by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, who followed a similar visual approach. In 1973, Balanchine felt that the allusion to Imperial Russia was outmoded, and that the ballet could stand on its relation to the music alone. The title was changed, the decor dropped, the costumes simplified, and some of the pantomime in the second movement altered, but the choreography as a whole remained the same. Tschaikovsky’s regal Piano Concerto No. 2 is often overshadowed by his First Piano Concerto, one of the most frequently performed concertos ever written. But Piano Concerto No. 2 has had many champions, including Balanchine, who was drawn to this immense, romantic work.