Marius Petipa
Choreographer
Marius Petipa Ballets Performed by PNB
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Marius Petipa (1818 – 1910) was a ballet dancer, teacher, and choreographer. Petipa is often given the title “Father of Classical Ballet,” and is cited nearly unanimously by the most noted artists of the classical ballet to be the most influential balletmaster and choreographer that has ever lived (among them—George Balanchine, who cited Petipa as his primary influence).
Petipa is equally noted for the ballets he created, some of which have survived to the present day in versions either faithful to, inspired by, or reconstructed from the original—The Pharaoh’s Daughter (1862); Don Quixote (1869); La Bayadère (1877); The Sleeping Beauty (1890); The Nutcracker (choreographed by Lev Ivanov, with Petipa’s counsel and instruction) (1892); Raymonda (1898).
Petipa also resurrected a substantial amount of works created by other choreographers which had long left the stage of other European theaters. By way of Petipa’s productions, many of these works lived on to the present day—Le Corsaire (1856, 1863, 1868, 1885, and 1899); Giselle (1850 with counsel and instruction from Jules Perrot, 1884, 1899); La Esmeralda (1866, 1872, 1886, and 1899); Coppelia (1884, 1894 with Enrico Cecchetti); Paul Taglioni’s La Fille Mal Gardée (1885 with Ivanov); The Little Humpbacked Horse (also known as The Tsar Maiden) (1895); and Swan Lake (1895 with Ivanov). There are a number of various divertissements and incidental Pas from Petipa’s original works and revivals that have survived in performance even when the full-length work did not, either in versions based on Petipa’s original or choreographed anew by others—the Grand Pas Classique, Pas de Trios, and Children’s Polonaise and Mazurka from Paquita (1881); the Venetian Carnival Grand Pas de Deux (also known as the Fascination Pas de Deux from Satanella) (1859/1870); The Talisman Pas de Deux (1889); the La Esmeralda Pas de Deux (1899); the Diane and Actéon Pas de Deux (1903/1931 in a version by Agrippina Vaganova); The Cavalry Halt Pas de Deux (1896); the Don Quixote Pas de Deux (1869); the La Fille Mal Gardée Pas de Deux (1885/1894); and the Harlequinade Pas de Deux (1900).