The Diaghilev Festival presents revivals/re-stagings of the original versions of Le Pavillion D’Armide, Bolero and L’Apres-Midi D’Un Faune.

Russian Ballet stars Nikolai Tsiskaridze, Ilze Liepa, Maria Alexandrova, Mikhail Lobukhin, Irma Nioradze, Ilya Kuznetsov and the Kremlin Ballet Theatre perform at the London Coliseum in celebration of the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev with several of the ballets he commissioned that have since gone onto become a major part of the dance repertoire.

Le Pavillion D’Armide was originally choreographed by Fokine (a new version by Jurijus Smoriginas) and designed by Benois to music by Nikolai Tcherepnin based on a story by Gautier. It was premiered in 1907 at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, with Pavlova, Gerdt and Nijinsky; Diaghilev presented it on his first night at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 19 May 1909.

Like Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring, Ravel’s Bolero caused a sensation by pushing the musical boundaries of its time and was originally choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, the first lady ballet-master and Nijinsky’s sister.

A faun encounters a group of nymphs in the dreamlike and sensual L’Apres-Midi D’Un Faune, one of Claude Debussy’s most famous works and, again, considered a turning point in the history of music, causing great shock and scandal when it was first performed by Nijinsky; who also choreographed it.

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