Tamara Karsavina Talks of Performing in ’Les Sylphides’ with Pavlova and Nijinsky

Tamara Karsavina, the great Ballets Russes Prima Ballerina, talks to camera about dancing at the Paris premier of ’Les Sylphides’ on 2 June 1909 at Théâtre du Châtelet. She appeared with Anna Pavlova, Alexandra Baldina and Vaslav Nijinsky in this plotless ballet, a ’romantic reverie’. ’Les Sylphides’ was choreographed by Mikhail Fokine to piano music of Chopin, orchestrated for the ballet by the Russian composer Alexander Glazunov. First presented at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1907 as ’Rêverie Romantique: Ballet sur la musique de Chopin’, the work became known as ’Chopiniana’ and then as ’Les Sylphides’, for the Ballets Russes Paris season of 1909 and at the suggestion of the set designer, Alexander Benois. Mme Karsavina continues, discussing the choreography and the groupings, and the role of the corps de ballet as the basis of the ballet. And, in this context, she talks about and demonstrates the expression of the porte de bras - ’the arms should move softly’ and ’suggest unearthly ethereal beings’. Though we have no film of Tamara Karsavina performing in this ballet, at least here (with some imagination) we have snippets of how her upper body movement might have appeared to audiences at the legendary premier of this work at the Mariinsky Theatre and at the performances Ballets Russes. Enjoy!