Choreographer | Michel Fokine

Michel Fokine

Michel Fokine, the son of a prosperous merchant, was born on 23 April 1880 in the Russian capital, St. Petersburg, where, at 9, he joined the Imperial Ballet School. He made his debut with the Imperial Ballet on his 18th birthday in 1898, in Petipa’s Paquita at the Mariinsky Theatre, and besides dancing with the company, was appointed in 1902 to teach at the school, numbering Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava among his students.

Fokine encountered problems arising from his determination to innovate

beyond the sometimes-stultifying traditions of the Imperial Ballet, wanting to experiment with barefoot dancing or dispense with artificial mime techniques, meaningless virtuoso displays, and inappropriate or outdated costumes. After choreographing such early works as Acis & Galatea (1905), in which a youthful Nijinsky appeared in a dance for young boys, The Dying Swan solo for Pavlova and Chopiniana/Les Syphides (both 1907), Fokine’s chance came in 1909 with Diaghilev’s invitation to become choreographer to The Ballets Russes.

In a few years, Fokine created a series of important ballets collaborating with leading designers and composers (notably Bakst, Stravinsky, and Ravel) as well as setting existing music by Debussy, Chopin, Weber, Saint-Saëns, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. These ballets included Cléopatre, Le Pavillon d’Armide, Carnaval, Scheherazade and The Firebird (all 1910), Le Spectre de la Rose (1911), Daphnis & Chloe and Petrushka (both 1912), many of them showcasing the extraordinary dancing of Nijinsky and Karsavina. Fokine also staged dances in operas such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel in Paris (1914). This fruitful period ended in 1912 when Fokine left The Ballets Russes, angered at Diaghilev’s promoting Nijinsky as a choreographer.

After the Russian Revolution, Fokine moved with his family to Sweden and New York, where he and his wife Vera opened a ballet school. Fokine became a US citizen in 1932 and continued teaching and staging his many ballets in Europe and the USA. He died in New York on 22 August 1942.

Many of Fokine’s ballets are in constant performance worldwide, and the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet mounted a retrospective season at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in July 2011.