Grand Pas Classique
Choreography · Victor Gsovsky (1949)
music by Daniel Auber (music drawn from his 1830 opera Le Dieu et la Bayadère; the concert full-orchestra edition credits the arrangement to William McDermott)
Grand Pas Classique is a plotless showpiece with no narrative or characters, existing purely to display the technical and stylistic command of a principal ballerina and danseur. A couple enters and performs a slow, sustained supported adage together, after which each dances a solo variation showing off individual virtuosity (sustained balances and pointe work for her, turns and jumps for him). The two then reunite for a fast, bravura coda of turns and jumps that brings the piece to its climax. Conceived as a tribute to 19th-century Petipa-style classicism, it functions as a self-contained grand pas rather than an excerpt telling any story.