Michel Fokine

Michel Fokine was a Russian choreographer, dancer, and Broadway performer, born in Saint Petersburg on 23 April 1880. At the age of nine, he was accepted into the Saint Petersburg Imperial Ballet School, the same year he made his performing debut in The Talisman under the direction of Marius Petipa. On his eighteenth birthday in 1898, Fokine debuted at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Paquita with the Imperial Russian Ballet. Beyond dance, he cultivated interests in painting and music, playing the mandolin in an ensemble led by Ginislao Paris, as well as the domra and balalaika in Vasily Andreyev's Great Russian Orchestra.

In 1902, Fokine accepted a teaching post at the Imperial Ballet School, which opened the door to choreography. His first full-length ballet, Acis et Galatée, based on a Sicilian legend, was performed by his students in 1905. Among those students were Bronislava Nijinska and Desha Delteil. The 1905 production also featured a young Vaslav Nijinsky performing an acrobatic dance as a faun. Fokine went on to choreograph The Dying Swan in 1907, a solo for Anna Pavlova set to the music of Le Cygne, and Chopiniana that same year, later renamed Les Sylphides in 1909 and featuring Nijinsky.

In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev invited Fokine to serve as resident choreographer for the inaugural Paris season of the Ballets Russes. His work with the company produced several landmark productions. Scheherazade, which premiered in 1910, drew on symphonic poems by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the tales of the 1001 Nights, with sets by Léon Bakst and Nijinsky in the role of the Golden Slave. That same year, The Firebird was created with music by Igor Stravinsky through a collaborative process modeled on the Wagnerian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. Petrushka followed in 1912, also with a Stravinsky score and set design by Alexandre Benois, centering on a sinister Magician played by Enrico Cecchetti and three puppets portrayed by Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, and Alexander Orlov. Le Spectre de la Rose, also from 1911, showcased Nijinsky as the spirit of a rose, his exit culminating in a grand jeté timed to leave him suspended in mid-air as the curtain fell. Fokine also created an adaptation of Daphnis et Chloé in 1912 before departing the company. Diaghilev persuaded him to return in 1914, during which time Fokine created Midas, Josephslegende, and Le Coq d'Or, the last of which premiered in Paris as an opéra-ballet with set design by Natalia Goncharova.

The outbreak of World War One in August 1914 disrupted the touring circuit that had sustained the Ballets Russes, and Fokine, like many dancers, returned home. He relocated to Sweden with his family in 1918 before eventually settling in New York City. There he founded a ballet school in 1921 and continued performing alongside his wife, Vera Fokina. That same year, Fokine appeared on Broadway in the play Getting Together. One of his New York pupils was Patricia Bowman. By 1924, he had organized the American Ballet Company, which performed regularly at the Metropolitan Opera House and toured the United States. The company's first production was the comedy Bluebeard, set to a score by Jacques Offenbach. In 1937, Fokine joined Wassily de Basil's offshoot of the Ballets Russes, eventually called the Original Ballet Russe, for which he created Cendrillon in 1938 and Paganini in 1939, with his choreography featured by the company through 1941. Les Sylphides served as the inaugural production of the American Ballet Theatre on 11 January 1940.

As a choreographer, Fokine sought to move ballet beyond virtuoso technique toward a form capable of expressing the full range of human emotion. He studied Greek and Egyptian art, incorporating elements of vase painting and sculpture into his work. He advocated for the removal of pointe shoes when they served no expressive purpose, and for his 1907 ballet Eunice requested that dancers perform barefoot — a request denied by management, leading him to have toes painted onto the dancers' tights. He also shifted choreographic emphasis away from the lower body toward the whole body, integrating freer movement of the arms and torso. In 1923, he choreographed Ajanta Frescoes for Anna Pavlova following her visit to the Ajanta Caves. Over the course of his career, Fokine staged more than eighty ballets across Europe and the United States, with Chopiniana, Le Carnaval, and Le Pavillon d'Armide among his best-known works. He died in New York City on 22 August 1942, at the age of 62. In tribute, seventeen ballet companies around the world performed Les Sylphides simultaneously.