200 years of Marius Petipa

Born in France, in 1847 Marius Petipa entered the service of the Russian Court as a dancer, and to the end of his days his life was connected with St Petersburg. Over almost sixty years dedicated to the theatre in St Petersburg, as a choreographer and a teacher, he trained several generations of Russian dancers, staged more than seventy ballets and with his long and steady dedication transferred the world's ballet capital to St Petersburg – everything that was anything in ballet of the latter half of the 19^th century was created in St Petersburg. Petipa's grand ballets created at the Mariinsky Theatre, combining classical ensembles with the plots, the vivid character dances, the genre spectacle scenes and pantomime became the crowning glory of 19^th century ballet and the starting point for new works in the 20^th century.