Question: The Dying Swan is a famous solo associated with Anna Pavlova. Whose music is it based on?

Françoise Prévost (c. 1680 – 1741) was a French ballerina who helped establish dramatic dance in the early world of classical ballet.  She was expressive, light and dramatic in style.  Prevost debuted at the Académie d'Opera in the ballet, "Atys", later replacing Marie-Thérèse de Subligny as the female lead.  In 1708, she performed with Jean Balon in the final scene of Corneille's "Les Horaces".  The performance, though only of the final scene of the play and entirely in pantomime, is said to have caused the audience to weep.  The "pantomime" came from the popular theaters of the time and freely used bold gestures and body language to communicate the narrative to the audience.  The goal was to convey a story of meaning using purely movement, without spoken word.  Maintaining her interest in the dramatic potential of dance, Prevost created a famous solo in 1714 called "Les Caracteres de la Danse."  Choreographed to a suite of dances by composer Jean Ferry Rebel, the "characters" depicted a series of lovers of varying ages and sexes, and Prevost enacted each one to a different piece of music: the bourree, the menuet, the passepied.  She taught this solo to her two most accomplished female students: Marie Camargo and Marie Sallé.  Camargo was the first to learn the solo for her debut at the Paris Opera.  Her growing success incited jealousy in Prevost, and she relegated Camargo to the corps de ballet.  One day however, Camargo made an spectacular impromptu improvisation solo for a missing male dancer.  The arrival of Marie Salle, and her dramatic recreation of the famous solo into a pas de deux of rich emotional interaction, highlighted the different approaches to dance of the period: technical flash verses dramatic depth. <SEP>  The short ballet (4 minutes) follows the last moments in the life of a swan, and was first presented in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. The Dying Swan (originally "The Swan") is a solo choreographed by Mikhail Fokine in 1905 to Camille Saint-Saëns's "Le Cygne" from "Le Carnaval des animaux" as a "pièce d'occasion" for the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who performed it about 4,000 times.  The ballet has since influenced modern interpretations of Odette in Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" and has inspired non-traditional interpretations and various adaptations. <SEP> Anna Pavlovna (Matveyevna) Pavlova (Russian: Анна Павловна (Матвеевна) Павлова ; February 12 [O.S. January 31] 1881 – January 23, 1931) was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.  She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev.  Pavlova is most recognized for the creation of the role "The Dying Swan" and, with her own company, became the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world. <SEP> Alicia Markova "The Dying Swan" (also known as "The Dying Swan", but not to be confused with another painting with the same title by the same artist started in 1949 and completed in 1951) is a painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff painted in 1949.  In this portrait fantasy, Tretchikoff has identified the prima ballerina Alicia Markova in her most famous role - "The Dying Swan" - from which, as did Anna Pavlova, she has become inseparable in the minds of all lovers of the ballet; it is for this reason that the artist painted the swan and Markova as one and the same being.