Mikhail Fokin

Mikhail Fokin (Michel Fokine) was a Russian-American choreographer and dancer. He was born Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokin on April 23, 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the seventeenth of eighteen children, only 5 of whom grew to adulthood. His father, Mikhail Fokin, was a wealthy Russian merchant in St. Petersburg. His mother, Catherine, was a migrant from Germany. Fokin studied ballet from the age of 9 at the Ballet class of the Imperial Theatre School in St. Petersburg. Upon his graduation in 1898, Fokin was hired in the rank of soloist with the Imperial Russian Ballet at Mariinsky Theatre. He made his stage debut in 'Paquita' (1898), as a partner with the famous Anna Pavlova. He also resumed a teaching career at the girls junior class from 1902, becoming the youngest faculty member at the Imperial Ballet School. Fokin became dissatisfied with the stagnant traditional choreography based on solo performances and dominated by hand gestures. A mere dancing to the background music was not for Fokin. His new ideas reformed the classic dance and expanded beyond the boundaries of traditional school. Fokin introduced changes to the dancer's movements, by upgrading the principles of mime, posture and gesture to "free movement" of the entire body of a dancer. While his ideas were not accepted by the conservative management of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, Fokin and his partner, Anna Pavlova, won attention of the Russian group of art connoisseurs known as 'Mir Iskusstva' (aka World of art), such as Prince Volkonsky, Alexandre Benois, and Sergei Diaghilev. Among Fokin's early works were the choreography for 'Chopiniana' (1903), later revised as 'Les Sylphides', ballet 'Acis and Galatea' (1905), and 'The Dying Swan' (1907), performed as a solo dance by Anna Pavlova. Fokin was the first great choreographer who worked with Sergei Diaghilev for his "Ballets Russes" in Paris during 1909-1914. There he fully implemented his ideas of an ensemble dance with the grater interplay between the dancers and music. Even before his work with Sergei Diaghilev, Fokin brought innovations to the genre of classical ballet by creating a new format of "one-act ballet." However, for the "Ballets Russes" productions he made revisions and updates to his earlier ideas, such as 'Les Sylphides', premiered in 1909 at Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. His most significant works for Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes" were 'Firebird' (1909), starring his wife Vera Fokine, 'Carnival' (1909), starring Vaslav Nijinsky, and 'Petrushka' (1911) on the music of Igor Stravinsky. Fokin also choreographed 'Daphnis and Chloe' (1912) by Maurice Ravel, and 'Scheherazade' (1910) and 'Le coq d'or' (The Golden Cockerel, 1914) on the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Mikhail Fokin's mutually beneficial collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev came to an end in 1914. Fokin terminated their hectic relationship, because he was jealous of Diaghilev's close association with Vaslav Nijinsky. In 1914 Fokin returned to Russia and lived there until 1918. In 1919 he moved to New York and founded his own ballet school. During the 1930s, Fokin toured the world with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, and created the ballet "Paganini" set to the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Fokin staged more than 70 ballets in many countries all over the world. His choreography survived through the commercialization of dance. His best known works were 'Chopiniana' (also known in a revised version as 'Les Sylphides'), 'Le Carnival' and 'Le Pavillion d'Armide'. Fokin's work with Sergei Diaghilev prepared ground for the era of the powerful innovator George Balanchine. He died on August 22, 1942. Fokin's wife Vera Fokine continued teaching in Fokin's studio in New York. Fokin's choreographic miniatures are still performed by many ballet troupes across the world.