​Les Sylphides, not to be confused with La Sylphide (a Romantic two-act ballet choreographed by August Bournonville in 1836) is considered the first plotless, or abstract, ballet. It was choreographed by Michael Fokine and premiered in 1909 in Paris with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Set to music by Chopin, the original cast included ballet stars of the time, Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. The Ballets Russes later performed in the ballet’s Stateside debut in 1916, a few short years after its world premiere.

The origins of Les Sylphides began 2 years before its world premiere with a 1907 debut of Chopiniana in St. Petersburg. This became the basis for Fokine’s reworked Les Sylphides.

Although in many ways a Romantic “white ballet” (in the same category as, for instance, Swan Lake), this ballet was a modern influence for 20th-century ballet. It was the first plotless, or abstract, ballet, performed in one act, where it is the “pure dance” that carries the piece, rather than an established storyline. To help provide a bit more context, the basic premise is a lone male (the ‘poet’) surrounded by woodland nymphs or, Sylphs, dancing in the moonlight.