Win Les Sylphides and Giselle on DVD

Posted on June 21, 2011

Great stars of 1950s ballet are captured in studio films of Les Sylphides and Giselle, now made available on DVD for the first time.

The new DVD range from ICA Classics presents rare archive performances, with amazing casts. This 1953 recording of Les Sylphides stars Alicia Markova, Svetlana Beriosova and Violetta Elvin. The performance is introduced by Tamara Karsavina, who danced in the first cast of Fokine’s ballet. On the same DVD, the 1958 recording of Giselle features Nadia Nerina and Nikolai Fadeyechev, with the Ballets Russes star Lydia Sokolova as the heroine’s mother. This is the first in a series of archive DVD releases. The next DVD, available from September, will be a double bill of John Cranko’s ballets Pineapple Poll and The Lady and the Fool. ICA Classics have kindly given us five copies of the Sylphides/Giselle DVD as competition prizes. To win, see page 7 of the July Dancing Times.

Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray is editor of Dancing Times. He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. For 16 years he was a member of the curatorial department of the Theatre Museum, London, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet’s productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty. He has also contributed to the Financial Times, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005.