Les Sylphides

A studio performance of the romantic ballet Les Sylphides, first broadcast on 3 April 1953 and starring Alicia Markova, John Field, Violetta Elvin and Svetlana Beriosova.

Created by Michel Fokine and set to music by Frédéric Chopin, the ballet premiered in 1909 and was unusual at the time for being non-narrative, where grace and movement carry the piece rather than a storyline.

The programme is introduced by renowned Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina, who had danced in the first performance of the ballet in Paris on 2 June 1909.

Les Sylphides is the first complete ballet in the BBC archive and was recorded by pointing a film camera at a television screen and filming the result (a method used for all recording until the arrival of video tape in the 1960s).