biography
pronunciation:
[peteepa]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1818–1910)
|
| biography:
| Ballet-master, dancer, and choreographer, credited with the development of Russian classical ballet, born in Marseille, S France. After touring France, Spain, and the USA, he went to St Petersburg in 1847 as the principal dancer at the Imperial Theatre. There he staged his first ballet, Pharaoh's Daughter (1858), setting the style of ballet à grand spectacle which was to dominate Russian ballet for the rest of the century. In 1867 he became ballet-master at the Mariinsky Theatre (Kirov Ballet) in St Petersburg, creating 50 original ballets and restagings, the most famous being Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty (1890). In collaboration with Tchaikovsky he planned in detail the 1892 production of The Nutcracker. |
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