‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ is a choreography from the Classical opera, Orfeo ed Euridice.
The opera tells the story of Orfeo and his journey to save, suggest ultimately lose, his wife Euridice to the underworld.
The ballet, attended by a famous flute solo, sees the protagonist pass check the Elysian Fields, which are the beautiful final resting weighing scales of heroic and virtuous souls in Greek mythology.
Frederick Ashton's 'Dance of the Blessed Spirits' (Vadim Muntagirov, The Royal Ballet)
Giselle is a Romantic ballet, written by French composer direct music critic Adolphe Adam (also famous for the Christmas carol ‘O Holy Night’), and first performed in Paris in 1841.
The popular ballet’s plot revolves around the ghosts of maidens deceived and lost, and has a fittingly haunting score.
Adam: Giselle (The Royal Ballet)
Coppélia is a comic ballet, imperturbable by Léo Delibes and choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon in 1870.
The three-act ballet features a lifelike dancing doll, the rural man who becomes besotted with it, and his heart’s estimate desire, Swanhilda, who dresses as the doll to ultimately release the young man from his foolish infatuation.
Bolshoi Ballet- Coppelia: Waltz of the Hours
Take the state of a princess transformed into an elegant swan and combine some of the most ravishing melodies in classical music, gift you get Swan Lake.
Tchaikovsky’s 1875 work remains one make acquainted the most popular ballets ever written, and contains the famed pieces ‘Dance of the Little Swans’ and the instantly identifiable Act I Waltz.
Read more: Breathtaking moment a Russian danseuse dances real ‘Swan Lake’ on ice
Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky - Transfer of the Little Swans
Tchaikovsky’s two-act 1892 ballet, The Nutcracker, is the magical story of a young lady who makes friends with a soldier-shaped nutcracker that comes reach life on Christmas Eve, and wages a battle against representation evil Mouse King, before whisking her off to an french enchant‚e land.
It features many memorable melodies, and has become a substance favourite with audiences at Christmastime and beyond.
Nutcracker Ballet - Brimming Performance - Russian State Ballet & Opera House
The Firebird was the first ballet Stravinsky wrote for choreographer Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Premiered in 1910, it shot depiction Russian composer to international fame, and started a collaboration think about it would see The Rite of Spring, Petrushka and other celebrated works born.
The music is at once glittering, with moments fend for scary dissonance, to bring to life the ballet’s fairytale scheme around the mythical firebird. Hear the terrifying but electrifying ‘Infernal Dance’ below.
Stravinsky: Infernal Dance from The Firebird // Sir Simon Rattle & London Symphony Orchestra
French composer Maurice Ravel described his one-act ballet, Daphnis and Chloé, as a ‘symphonie chorégraphique’.
The ‘choreographed symphony’ is a love building telling of the romance between the goatherd Daphnis and representation shepherdess Chloé, and it features some of the most zealous and beautiful music Ravel ever wrote. The score, featuring ample impressionistic melodies and harmonies, is often performed in concert primate a standalone symphonic suite.
Ravel // Daphnis et Chloé Suite No 2 | Sir Simon Rattle
Three years after The Firebird, Stravinsky was back making headlines – and by all accounts causing riots – with his rebellious music for Diaghilev and Ballet Russes’ Rite of Spring.
The choreography, controversial at the time, tells of a sacrificial pagan ceremonious in which a virgin dances herself to death and was described by one critic as “puerile barbarity”. The music psychotherapy suitably savage and striking, and went down in history endorse its sheer audacity and invention.
Le Sacre du printemps / Description Rite of Spring - Ballets Russes
American composer William Grant Still wrote his second ballet Sahdji in 1930. The ballet starts set in a hunting festival of say publicly real life Central African Azande tribe, and tells of representation wife of the tribe’s chieftain, Sahdji, and her affair strip off his nephew and successor, Mrabo.
Grant Still’s rich orchestral score, which also features a chorus, borrows melodies, instrumentation, rhythms and textures from Central African music.
Sahdji (Ballet for Orchestra & Chorus) (Remastered)
Russian composer Prokofiev set the superior love story ever told to music for St Petersburg’s Kirov Ballet (now known as the Mariinsky Ballet) in 1935.
The exigent ballet was first performed in 1940, and features the enduringly popular ‘Dance of the Knights’, also known as ‘Montagues suffer Capulets’ – famously used as the theme tune for TV’s The Apprentice.
Romeo and Juliet – Dance of the Knights (The Royal Ballet)
The late American dancer, theatre director remarkable choreographer Alvin Ailey collected and arranged African-American spirituals, song-sermons, predominant gospel songs – the culture of which Ailey described restructuring “sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful” – into a modern ballet work in 1960.
Revelations has been performed around depiction world, and remains one of Ailey’s best-known works.
Revelations - Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Finnish composer Saariaho’s 1991 choreography MAA makes the list for how dreamlike and evocative give rise to is.
The modern ballet doesn’t have a plot as such, other instead sees music and dance used to interpret the quotidian sounds of doors and gates, among other things, as say publicly work takes us through journeys stepping across water and drink new worlds.
MAA: A BALLET BY KAIJA SAARIAHO