Andrew F

On 24/02/2018 at 18:16, Pas de Quatre said:

 

 

Peasant Pas de deux

The Peasant Pas de deux is another of the most famous passages in Giselle and has an interesting history. After the 1841 Paris première, one of the Paris Opèra ballerinas, Nathalie Fitz-James was determined to have her own pas in Giselle. Like many of her colleagues, Fitz-James was a mistress of one of the Opèra’s most influential patrons and used her relationship with him to influence the arrangement of a new pas to be added for her. However, Adolphe Adam was unavailable at the time to write new music, so Jean Coralli had to look elsewhere. In the end, he arranged a new pas de deux for Fitz-James to music by the German composer, Friedrich Burgmüller from his suite Souvenirs de Ratisbonne. This new pas was christened as the Pas des paysans (aka Peasant Pas de deux); it was first performed by Fitz-James and the danseur, Auguste Mabille and has remained in Giselle ever since.

In Petipa’s time, the Peasant Pas de deux was performed by the likes of Tamara Karsavina, Mikhail Fokine and Vaslav Nijinsky. The Sergeyev Collection includes notation scores for the pas de deux when it was performed by Agrippina Vaganova and Anatoli Obukhov.

 

The Petipa Society is wrong (-ish) to say that Nijinsky danced the peasant pas de deux. The pas de deux he danced in the 1907 Giselle was created for himself and Karsavina by Nikolai Legat, specifically to showcase their talents together. So successful were they together, that an outraged Anna Pavlova famously stormed out of the wings to berate Karsavina.

A minor point about Karsavina's "second autobiography" - she certainly did complete the book. The first 5 chapters were based on the reminiscences she sent to friends in letter form (those recently published) and the finished text ran to 24 chapters. After the document failed to find a publisher, she recycled much of the work as a series of articles for Dancing Times, covering her memories of Mariinsky roles, teachers she had worked with and the various partners she had danced with over her career.