Le Spectre de la rose

***Le Spectre de le rose*** () is a short French ballet. It is about a young girl who dreams of dancing with the spirit of a souvenir rose from her first ball. Diaghilev liked the idea of a ballet based on Gautier's *Spectre* because it could be tied to the centennial of Gautier's birth.

## Music 
In 1819, Carl Maria von Weber wrote a work for piano called *Aufforderung zum Tanz*. He also wrote a program for this work about a young man and woman who meet, dance, and part at a ball. The quiet music at the opening of *Aufforderung* leads to some beautiful (and busy) waltz tunes before the work ends with the opening music.  In 1841, Hector Berlioz  *Aufforderung*. This  of the music was used for a short ballet in Weber's opera *Der Freischütz* at the Paris Opéra. It was the Berlioz version that was used for the ballet *Le Spectre de la rose*.

## Dance 
Michel Fokine completed the dance in three or four rehearsals. He later wrote that the ballet was almost an improvisation. Grace Robert writes in *The Borzoi Book of Ballets* that *Spectre* is a *pas de deux*, but not the sort of *pas de deux* that looks back to complex 19th-century technique and . , it is a forward-looking, modern dance of continuous movement and . 

Fokine dropped the *port de bras* (position of the arms) of classical ballet in designing the dances for Nijinsky. He used instead curving, -like movements of the arms and fingers. Nijinsky became an  character in this ballet, one showing masculine power in his legs and a feminine delicacy in his arms. Some of his gestures, Ostwalt writes in *Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness*, "lent a feminine aura (an invisible force)" to the character. After every show, the  would touch up the petals with her . Ostwald writes that Nijinsky's costume was like a ballerina's. Sometimes, petals would become loose and fall to the stage. Nijinsky's servant Vasili would collect the petals and sell them as souvenirs. It was said that he built a large house called Le Château du Spectre de la Rose with the profits from the sale of the petals.

## Nijinsky's leap 
The ballet became famous for Nijinsky's leap through one of the two large windows at the back of the stage. The height of the leap was an illusion though. Nijinsky took five running steps from the middle of the stage and leapt through the window on the sixth step. The skirting board (base board) under the window was very low, giving the illusion that the leap was higher than it was. Behind the set, four men  Nijinsky in the air and put warm towels on him. No one saw Nijinsky land. It looked like he would fly on for all time. The illusion was helped by the conductor in the orchestra pit who held the next to the last chord. In doing so, the leap was given a sense of great length and height.

## First night and what people thought 
*Spectre* was first presented on 19 April 1911 by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the Théâtre de Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo. Tamara Karsavina danced The Young Girl and Nijinsky danced The Rose. Grace Robert writes that *Spectre* was an "immediate success".

## After Nijinsky 
Many dancers attempted to match Nijinsky as The Rose, but failed. After all, the ballet had been designed for Nijinsky's very special talents.  The Young Girl has been called "the  woman of ballet", and, as time , the part became . By the middle of the 20th century, *Spectre* had become nothing but a  ballet: people paid only to see the leap through the window.

*Spectre* was one of the first ballets Rudolph Nureyev danced in the West after leaving Russia. This was for German television in 1961. He first danced The Rose on stage (24 times) in New York City for the Joffrey Ballet's Diaghilev program in 1979. *Spectre* was the last ballet Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn danced together. That was in June 1979, when the ballerina was 60. He danced The Rose in Paris in 1981 and 1982, and last danced the part in August 1987 at the London Coliseum with the Nancy Ballet.

The ballet was first seen in Australia in 1936 when it was part of the Monte Carlo Russian Ballet program. In 1962, Margot Fonteyn danced The Young Girl as part of her 1962 tour of Australia.

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