The original title of the score by Igor Stravinsky was Apollon musagète. The music had already been choreographed by Adolf Bolm in Washington DC in April 1928, but it is the ballet by George Balanchine, which was premiered at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on June 12th 1928, and called just Apollon, that changed the look of ballet for the next century. A stellar cast of Serge Lifar as Apollo, Alice Nikitina and Alexandra Danilova alternating as Terpsichore, Lubov Tchernicheva as Calliope and Felia Dubrovska as Polyhymnia, set the mould for the future. The costumes (originally designed by Coco Chanel) have changed, the dancers have changed, technique has changed, the pulse of life has changed and Balanchine himself has changed the staging from time to time, but nothing can destroy the perfect balance of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Olympus. This is where the partnership of Stravinsky and Balanchine began, and where neo-classicism in ballet, or more generally what we think of as the Balanchine style, was born. Ballerinas in every corner of the world now feel the need to test themselves in and against this distinctive work.