Rhapsody

Rhapsody is a plotless, abstract ballet with no narrative, characters, or story in the conventional sense. Instead it stages a contrast between two ballet traditions: a virtuosic male principal dancing in a bravura Russian idiom (made on Mikhail Baryshnikov) against a lyrical female principal dancing in the more restrained English/Ashtonian style (made on Lesley Collier), supported by an ensemble of six men and six women. The two leads dance mostly separately, meeting for a central pas de deux, before the work builds to a bravura male solo and closes with the male principal raised aloft by the male ensemble. Created for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's 80th birthday, it is often read as a meditation on balletic virtuosity itself rather than a story.