I only recently noticed how early in Petipa's career he staged Paquita. Whenever I see Paquita, I find myself thinking it looks like so much fun to dance, but very much like classroom exercises... (perhaps teachers just like to incorporate them and the music into class?).. so I'm not surprised that he would have made this while his own performing career was still current or not far gone... it seems like something a dancer would enjoy making... perhaps I'm wrong in this, but I sense that it's is perhaps more fun for less experienced dancers to tackle than say the Sleeping Beauty choreography...

From Wikipedia, it seems that Paquita is the earliest of his work that is still performed... but is it is a re-staging of Mazillier? Or is what we think of as Paquita nothing to do with Mazillier but rather the new version with new music Petipa made in 1881?

I'd like to mentally tie the choreography to Petipa's youth... but I can't, right?

Just wondering...

Which staging of Paquita are you considering, Amy?

if by PAQUITA you mean the grand pas classique from the last act, it's safe to say that besides the entre and maybe the adagio and the coda (as well as the children's dances) the rest, that is the string of individual variations, is a sampler of solos from 'all over the map' of ballets in and around Petipa's era.
as we've seen from Burlaka's careful look at the notations, etc. from past runs of the Grand Pas Classique for his recent Bolshoi, the spread is wide, and a corrective to years of being told the full ballet divertissement as it was presented in Leningrad or Moscow was the work of Petipa and somehow all intended for the culmination of the narrative.
as for the results of any attempts to stage PAQUITA fully - and i know only of Lacotte's pastiche, and that only on video -these all remain 'educated guesses' at best. i don't know when what passed for Petipa's own production was last given complete in Russia, but was evidently long ago and we've not been shown it in the west so far as i know.
(there are numerous exchanges somewhere in BT's archives concerning the solos and their 'authorship' but i'm not good at finding old threads.)

Thanks, rg, that's very enlightening... And in answer to the much valued photographer: various & sundry...


It's interesting how a ballet becomes sort of a living entity on it's own... here is Paquita.. no longer much attached to it's creator and yet attached to it's earlier selves all the same... ballet as virus.... ideas morphing through generations... surviving almost by morphing... At what point do they just give up and die off? When no one remembers the good ones? Do they shed their original choreography like old skin? Or did they die long ago and we now value the ghost more than we would have the original?

Well, isn't K. Sergeyev's SB kind of the standard nowadays...?

The choreographic plan of the Grand Pas from Paquita as it was reconstructed recently by Yuri Burlaka at the Bolshoi is still online at the Bolshoi website. As Burlaka pointed out, in the course of time certain choices are being made and in some cases the choices intentionally differ from the model, simply because the model is no longer compatible with contemporary tastes and conceptions. For example in Russia there are several sources available, such as drawings from Pavel Gerdt, preserved at the Moscow Bakhrushin Museum since the 1910's (!) of the adagio from the GP which help to understand Petipa's intentions, yet they were never ever used (that is until 2008) because considered off kilter with current tastes.


choreographic plan

Introduction
Edouard Deldevez - Riccardo Drigo

Child Polononaise and Mazurka
Ludwig Minkus

1st entree
Ludwig Minkus

Grand adagio
Ludwig Minkus

2nd entree
Ludwig Minkus

Pas de Trois

* 1st entree
Edouard Deldevez
* 2nd entree
Ludwig Minkus
* 1st female variation
Edouard Deldevez
* 2nd female variation
Entree - Ludwig Minkus, variation - Edouard Deldevez
* Male variation
Adolphe Adam, from La Diable a quatre
* Coda
Ludwig Minkus

Variations
(according to dancers’ choice 7 of 11 female variations are performed)
1. Andante-Allegro moderato. Riccardo Drigo for King Candaule by Pugni
2. Allegro. Alexei Barmin (known as Amour variation from Don Quixote by Minkus)
3. Moderato. Riccardo Drigo for La Sylphide by Schneitzhoffer
4. Tempo di valse. Ludwig Minkus for The Naiad and the Fisherman by Pugni
5. Moderato. Riccardo Drigo for La Camargo by Minkus
6. Allegro. Alexei Barmin
7. Allegro moderato. Ludwig Minkus or Alexei Barmin (violin solo)
8. Allegro. Riccardo Drigo for La Source by Minkus and Delibes
9. Allegro. Yuli Gerber, from Trilbi
10. Allegro. Ludwig Minkus for Armida by Pugni
11. Tempo di valse moderato. Riccardo Drigo for King Candaule by Pugni
12. Male variation. Choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky. Riccardo Drigo for La Source by Minkus and Delibes

Depends on where you are. N. Sergeyev's is kind of the standard for western Europe and environs. K. Sergeyev's is the Maryinsky and associated spheres of influence.

Marc, agreed. Also, a bit similar to it's Swan Lake, I think the Royal Ballet has a version of SB with a very good pedigree. On a telecast of Sleeping Beauty from the ROH in the late 70s, Nikolai Sergeyev was still listed as "after Petipa". Until the Kirov unveiled their reconstructed new/old version, it was probably the most authentic one around . I would say the MT now does have the most "authentic" version now but they seem to
be unimpressed by it and favor the watered-down K Sergeyev instead.

But I think we are veering from Paquita!

it also seems there is some confusion above of THE SLEEPING BEAUTY for SWAN LAKE.
MT's SWAN LAKE is still more or less in the vinogradov version, if mem. serves. there is no new/old SWAN LAKE on the boards there along the lines of Vikharev's SLEEPING BEAUTY and BAYADERE.
there is (was?) talk of trying to get SWAN LAKE back a la the recent BEAUTY and BAYADERE efforts at either the MT or the Bolshoi, but I haven't heard any news of such plans of late.

Confusion.... the Mariinsky Swan Lake is still by Konstantin Sergeyev, just like their Sleeping Beauty and Raymonda.
More recently Sergei Vikharev revived versions of Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadère closer to Petipa, but these productions are now in the fridge.

Interestingly, it's now Vikharev's reconstruction of Coppelia that the Bolshoi will revive this week (premiere on March 12).

And now back to Paquita!

sorry to be still off topic, but, does anyone know if the upcoming Vikharev COPPELIA is the same one he produced for novisibirsk? or a newer one just for the Bolshoi?

It's the same, the Petipa/Cecchetti 1894 staging for St. Petersburg.

Must be the balmy weather....