La Fête étrange is a one-act ballet by Andrée Howard that she created in 1940, initially for London Ballet, and then for Ballet Rambert. Howard was a well-regarded choreographer and created more than 30 ballets between 1937 and 1958. Highly respected by many, it is something of a tragedy that of all her work only La Fête étrange has survived. The ballet is based on an incident from Alain-Fournier’s magical Le Grand Meaulnes, a novel published in 1913 that captured the imagination of generations after World War One, as Alain-Fournier himself was killed in September 1914. In the novel’s key episode, an ordinary village boy stumbles on to a seemingly enchanted costume party in a château. He is entranced and falls in love, but he is unable to find the scene again, or his inamorata. The rest of the book describes how his quest does work out, and the complexities that underlay what actually happened on that magical night.
Howard’s ballet is based on this episode (the strange party), though it also brings out what the hero fails to understand at the time, namely the way that his falling in love with the young châtelaine unintentionally brings about her estrangement from her fiancée and subsequent tragedy. Howard’s ballet was set to music by Gabriel Fauré, with designs by Sophie Fedorovitch.
The original cast included Maude Lloyd, David Paltenghi and Frank Staff.
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