1966 – The Royal Ballet dances Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces for the first time

The acquisition of a second Bronislava Nijinska work by The Royal Ballet ensured the survival of perhaps her greatest masterpiece. Les Noces, an austere depiction of a Russian peasant wedding, was first performed by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1923 in designs by Natalia Goncharova. Igor Stravinsky’s extraordinary score is matched with movements of great weight and meaning, the large company often forming blocks of constructivist movement. It remains an overwhelming experience in performance. The first performance by The Royal Ballet was led by Svetlana Beriosova, Robert Mead, Georgina Parkinson and Anthony Dowell.

Nijinska’s Les Noces is a ballet in four scenes that evokes ancient Russian peasant wedding rituals. Austere and severe throughout, it goes beyond something personal between two people, or even two families. It is not spontaneous, but a ritualistic way of expressing the important aspects of a wedding. It is almost a ceremony of grief; not necessarily real grief, but an expression of leaving a former life and moving into another stage of existence. It is a rite of passage celebrated by a peasant community, but one that leaves the main protagonists passive and manipulated by forces beyond them. The ballet was first presented by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris in 1923 with Felia Doubrovska as the Bride and Leon Woizikovsky as the Bridegroom. Diaghilev said that Les Noces was the most Russian of Stravinsky’s compositions and he loved it very much. Certainly, the heavily rhythmic score for four pianos and four solo singers has something ancient, almost atavistic about it.