Charlotte Kasner casts her eye over ‘Five Ballets from Paris and St Petersburg,’ a new book by Doug Fullington and Marian Smith.
There can’t be many 800-plus page reference works that are as an enlightening and enjoyable a read as Five Ballets from Paris and St Petersburg.
Ballet abounds with myths and legends, offstage and on. They were initially, and still are to some extent, passed down by word of mouth, although notation would be increasingly used. And nowdays, we also have film. But notational literacy in particular, of whatever flavour, is not widespread within the ballet world and historical research is often consigned to the purely academic. Chinese whispers are an ever-present danger.
Choreographers and directors may assure you that they are creating a faithful reproduction of the original, and no doubt they believe it. But how often is that really true? And that’s before we question what is ‘original’ anyway. Of course, veering wildly away from the traditional can be just as acceptable as ballet is a living, performance art.

in Paquita, 1846.
Pencil, watercolour. Bibliotèque National de France, Bibliotèque-Musée de l’Opéra, D216-15 (80-91)
Illustration courtesy Oxford University Press
There is an entire strand of production that does seek to reproduce original productions as accurately as possible but, whilst that has an intellectual validity and can often be extremely interesting, it isn’t in itself sufficient to keep productions relevant over the centuries.
Whatever the approach, ballets need to have a connection with contemporary audiences and, whether aiming for fidelity or going out on a limb, it is necessary to know, as far as is possible, how things were done in the first place.
We can no more see a ballet with ‘nineteenth-century eyes’ than we can hear music with the ears of the century in which it was written. We cannot unknow what we know. Even over short decades, sensibilities change. Other things change too. Watching a ballet in a theatre lit by electricity and accompanied by a post-1860 orchestra changes it in a way that would be beyond recognition to the audience at the première.

Justament staging for Paquita, c1854
Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität Köln, Schloß Wahn, Inventory number 70-479, no page number
Illustration courtesy Oxford University Press
Fullington and Smith demonstrate this admirably as they invite the general and specialist reader alike to rethink nineteenth-century ballet. The extent of their research leaves no stone unturned. There are copious musical illustrations, libretti reproduced and translated from various incarnations of productions across countries, and extensive reference made to choreographers’ notes. The book is also illustrated with more than fifty images from various archives.
We allow divertissements a lot of leeway and will accept ‘Spanish,’ ‘Indian’ and other various nineteenth-century interpretations not only expecting authenticity, but indeed in a way that some may now regard as ‘cultural appropriation.’
Ballet was never immune to censorship, though. The first libretto for Le Corsaire was rejected for the way that it depicted the Ottoman Turks as sensitivities focused on political allies, thus depriving the plot of some of its nuance. Great care was often taken to be accurate in costume designs, bearing in mind that of course, many costumes were contemporaneous with the audience in the first years of these ballets’ existence.
If you’ve ever doubted a claim of authenticity or wondered just how technically accomplished dancers were in the past, Five Ballets from Paris and St Petersburg will provide the answers, at least for Giselle, Paquita, La Bayadère, Le Corsaire and Raymonda.
The libretti alone are revelatory. No mere synopses, the authors show how they were full scripts; effectively spoken text that was then expressed in mime and augmented by dance. A flavour of how they might have been enacted in practice is revealed in Mary Skeaping’s 1971 production of Giselle, currently in the English National Ballet repertoire, and which restored a great deal of the mime as it clearly demonstrates ‘conversations’ between the characters, especially Hilarion, Loys and Giselle. It rounds out their characters and explains the motivations behind the action.

AA Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, KP107384_i. fond 205, op 1, ed. kHz, 705
Illustration courtesy Oxford University Press
Just as today’s dancers and choreographers tend to prioritise athleticism over the sort of choreographic detail that is evidenced in Bournonville for instance, dance has been privileged over mime for several decades. Fullington and Smith reveal just how much has been lost in the process.
Watching ballets in the classical cannon can often seem like comparing a list of technical criticisms of each dancer with little opportunity to see well-rounded artists inhabit their roles. It’s not the fault of the dancers, who too often get far too little tuition in character-building and mime.
We may now snigger at Wilis being hoisted across the stage or into trees but we can be assured that they were acting their pointe shoes off in the process. Bumbling pashas in Le Corsaire may be racist stereotypes but they were also fully developed characters in their own right with a dramatic integrity.
Take the mime and the full meaning away, and there is no doubt that one is left with a two-dimensional representation that is much more likely to offend and may end up killing the classical canon as it makes it all too easy to deride as irrelevant and outdated.
Five Ballets from Paris and St Petersburg is a comprehensive and unprecedented reference source that may well play an important role in preserving these works for another couple of hundred years. It is also a page-turningly good read.
Five Ballets from Paris and St Petersburg
Authors: Doug Fullington and Marian Smith
856 Pages with 54 images
25.4 x 17.8cm
ISBN: 9780190944506 (hardback), 9780190944513 (paperback)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date (UK): December 25, 2024
Cover price (from OUP): £81.00 hardback, £35.99 paperback. Also available as an ebook.