“Pas de Deux” from Apollon Musagète by Igor Stravinsky [1928] performed by Sandor Végh and the Salzburg Camerata Academica [1995]

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The ballet Apollon Musagète marked the end of one strong business relationship and the beginning of another for Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. In 1910 the young composer had received a real career boost when legendary ballet director Sergei Diaghilev commissioned The Firebird for his Ballets Russes dance troupe. After that initial achievement, Stravinsky wrote many of his most remembered works under the commission of Diaghilev, including his raucous, dissonant The Rite of Spring in 1913.

In 1928 Apollon Musagète was the last Stravinsky ballet Diaghilev directed before his death the following year, although the Ballet Russes production was in this case not the commissioned premiere. That had occurred in Washington, D.C., a few months earlier (side note: one of the dancers in the original American production was Berenice Holmes, the ballet instructor for Gene Kelly). Read more about Diaghilev and Stravinsky here.

Diaghilev had a sense for talent and, as shown previously by his trust in a teenage Stravinsky, in 1924 he selected 20-year-old George Balanchine as balletmaster of Ballets Russes. Balanchine was the primary choreographer for nine ballets under Diaghilev. The third of those, Apollon Musagète, was both Balanchine’s first with Stravinsky and his first popular triumph. The two worked together often for the remainder of their careers. 

Apollon Musagète expressed the relationships between the Greek god Apollo and three of his Muses: Dance, Mime and Poetry. The short neoclassical ballet contained no character conflicts. The dancers wore white and Stravinsky’s music was appropriately relaxed, relying on soft dynamic changes to shift the mood rather than bringing different voices to the fore. The “pax de deux,” posted above, occurred near the end of the work as Apollo leads the Muses to their home on Mount Parnassus. (Another side note: The famed Oracle of Delphi sits on one side of Mount Parnassus. I have seen both the ruins and the mountain in real life!).

If the names Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Balanchine, and Apollo aren’t enough to impress you, consider this: a year after the initial production the costumes were redesigned by none other than Coco Chanel.