Saturday Classics

Dance critic Mark Monahan goes on a whistle-stop tour through the first 100 years of the ballet as we know it today, looking at the ground-breaking works that took cities such as Paris and St Petersburg by storm. He traces the history of ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake which were - surprisingly - both resounding flops when Tchaikovsky premiered them, only being rescued later by the dance-maker Marius Petipa. And he looks at the enormous influence of Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, beginning with Mikhail Fokine's 1907 ballet Chopiniana, leading to famous scores by Stravinsky and Ravel. Image of Mark Monahan courtesy of David Rose.