This ballet was first performed in 1944 as part of Billy Rose's Broadway revue The Seven Lively Arts. The work is scored for full orchestra and piano, and choreographed for two solo dancers. It is a short work, a "ballet suite," with a performance time of only fifteen minutes. It is a "classical" ballet, far removed from the programmatic, avant garde ballets and ballet hybrids of Stravinsky's earlier years. Stravinsky insisted that the parts of the ballet were conceived as abstract, absolute music, "free of any given literary or dramatic argument," although significantly there are three Pantomime sections in the work, with dramatic interplay between the male and female dancer. The piece is divided into roughly eleven parts. The ballet, as is usual with Stravinsky, contains frequent metric irregularities, syncopations, and shifting barlines. It is a predominantly tonal work with triadic harmonies and key signatures, but also with some considerable chromaticism. Thematic material is distributed equitably between the different instrumental groups, with the piano typically assuming a prominent role. Scènes de ballet is similar to the Danses Concertantes of 1941 - 42 and also to Apollon Musagetes of 1928, both examples of classical ballet, or ballet blanc. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this work had shaky beginnings, and was not terribly well-received by critics. Billy Rose, the ballet's original producer, is alleged to have disliked the orchestration so much that he requested that Stravinsky allow another orchestrator to make improvements on it. Characteristically, Stravnisky refused. Some critics have dismissed the work as overly sentimental and bombastic.



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