First classical ballet created for Diaghilev
Balanchine has written: "Apollo I look back on as the turning point of my life. In its discipline and restraint, in its sustained oneness of tone and feeling, the score was a revelation. It seemed to tell me that I could dare not to use everything, that I, too, could eliminate." Apollo was the first classical ballet created and not simply revived for Diaghilev in the twenty years that followed Fokine's Les Sylphides. Although since 1957 Apollo has been performed without sets or costumes, past productions of the ballet have been designed by André Bauchant and Coco Chanel (Ballets Russes, Paris, 1928), Stewart Chaney (American Ballet Ensemble, New York, 1937), Tomás Santa Rosa (Ballet Caravan tour, South America, 1941), Pavel Tchelitchev (Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, 1942), and Karinska (New York City Ballet, New York, 1951).
