Les Sylphides: Fokine’s Chopin Ballet and Its Place in Dance History

Music, design and choreography

The score brings together nocturnes, waltzes, mazurkas and a polonaise by Chopin to produce a continuous, dreamy soundscape. The original scene and costume designs were by Alexandre Benois, whose pale, poetic sets and the long white tutus referenced the Romantic era. Fokine's choreography distilled gestures and poses associated with 19th-century Romantic ballets into a short, cohesive sequence that highlights the corps’ shimmering textures and the soloist's refined port de bras.

Origins and premiere

Les Sylphides developed from an earlier Fokine work titled Chopiniana, first presented in St Petersburg in 1908. That earlier version included stylized vignettes — including references to a Polish wedding and a ballroom polonaise — but was soon pared down to a plotless sequence that evoked Romantic feeling. The renamed Les Sylphides received its celebrated international premiere in Paris when Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes staged it at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 2 June 1909. Early casts included prominent dancers such as Nijinsky and, in other performances, Tamara Karsavina and Anna Pavlova.

Structure and typical numbers

Though lengths and ordering have varied, productions of Les Sylphides commonly assemble several short Chopin pieces into a single suite. The program often includes a polonaise, nocturnes, one or more waltzes, a mazurka and a grande valse, arranged to create contrasting moods while maintaining an overall lyrical thread. The score’s variety allows for changes in tempo and ensemble patterns while preserving an ethereal ambiance closely associated with the word "sylph." The ballet deliberately evokes the style and look of earlier Romantic works — a quality that critics and audiences have often described as an homage to the Romantic ballet tradition.

Reception, legacy and notable facts

From its first season the work was praised for its poetic restraint and became a staple of 20th-century repertory. It helped establish Fokine’s reputation as a reformer who favored expressive, integrated choreography and theater design. The use of Chopin’s intimate piano pieces in a concert ballet and the adoption of the long white tutu linked Les Sylphides to earlier Romantic images—most famously the costume innovations associated with Marie Taglioni in ballets such as La Sylphide. Over the decades Les Sylphides has been revived and reorchestrated, and it remains frequently staged by companies worldwide as a compact study in mood, texture and classical line.

Examples and further reading

• Notable companies that have preserved the work include long-running companies of the 20th and 21st centuries; different productions highlight varying orchestrations and tempos.
• Recordings and staged productions exist in many archival formats; selected versions present Stravinsky’s orchestration while others favor more transparent scoring for chamber orchestra.
• For analyses of Fokine’s revision from Chopiniana to Les Sylphides and the ballet’s place in modern dance history, see standard histories of the Ballets Russes and studies of early 20th-century choreography.

Les Sylphides continues to be taught and performed as a compact example of how choreography, music and design can create atmosphere without narrative drive. Its endurance lies in the combination of Chopin’s intimate musical voice and Fokine’s succinct, evocative movement language.

source: choreographer reference | design notes | Ballets Russes history | Paris premiere context | Theatre information | premiere date | Karsavina biography | Pavlova biography | Romantic ballet | St Petersburg premiere | Polish roots | polonaise reference | Taglioni and costume | La Sylphide