“Traditions and testaments of Petipa are not forgotten”: Oeuvre of the great choreographer in the reception of Igor Stravinsky

Abstract

The theme of the composer’s entry into the ballet theater is extremely important when studying the output of Igor Stravinsky, the creator of the great ballet scores of the 20th century. Usually, as the first guide of Stravinsky to the world of choreography, they name a stage director of The Firebird Mikhail Fokin, a student of Marius Petipa. In this article, the emphasis is shifted towards Marius Petipa himself, at whose performances Stravinsky was brought up in the years of his youth in St. Petersburg, comprehending the aesthetics and technique of classical ballet. No wonder the composer calls The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky stage one of his earliest and brightest theatrical impressions. Documentary evidences help to reconstruct the picture of Igor Stravinsky contacts with Petipa’s art: account books of Fyodor Stravinsky, a friend of Marius Petipa and his colleague in the imperial troupe; letters and memoirs; archival sources. The presented materials allow to assert that Petipa’s choreographic poetics influenced the formation of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism and became one of the important components in the composer’s system of artistic values.