I'm not sure if I've got the right section named properly... but I'm wondering about Raymonda's variation with the hand claps and all the bourees... Is it by Petipa? It seems so different from his other ballerina variations... didn't he farm out some of the national dances to Shirayev? Would that have happened with something like this? I notice the Wikipedia entry (as of this post) on Raymonda says:




I know there are a lot of variations, having watched a few on youtube recently... but what is this 1941 reference?


Here's a youtube clip of Guillem in the variation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fskhknk66A which I assume is Nureyev's version...

and Makarova: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8v__X-QavU...feature=related

Van Hamel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh6cH-Z6834...feature=related

Bessmertnova: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNiO9iWPT4I


It's kind of like Nikiya's, I guess, from Bayadere... but otherwise it seems more in common with Odette, which I thought was Ivanov rather than Petipa... are there any stories?

The 1941 reference is to the Konstantin Sergeyev revision of the ballet, and as far as I can tell, Shirayev did set some character work in some of the Petipa ballets, much as Pavel Gerdt set his own variations. There is nothing in the "cembalom" variation that says anything but Petipa to me.

Well... what started me on this thought was learning the variation recently in class... but admittedly it was Dennis Nahat's version, which while similar, was perhaps less like Petipa than the youtube links above. Will reconsider.

While I've never seen Dennis' version of it, it sounds like another example of variations being a lot like used cars - it really does help to know who had it before you.

The Bolshoi performs only one of the added variations (I'm not sure which one as I don't know the music on its own but I think the first one) as a variation for Jean de B. But I'm pretty sure the famous clapping variation comes down--at least fairly close, from the Petipa.