Histoire du soldat (1918)

What is danced

The one dance role built into the drama is the Princess, danced by a silent performer. She is revived from her sickbed by the Soldier's violin playing and performs 'Trois danses' — a tango, a waltz and a ragtime in sequence — before the Devil arrives undisguised. The article gives no notation for these numbers: their titles name the popular dance idioms Stravinsky quoted in the score (alongside a pasodoble in the Marche royale and klezmer-like instrumental colour elsewhere), but the actual step vocabulary used to realise 'Tango', 'Waltz' and 'Ragtime' onstage is left to whoever choreographs the production, and productions have varied widely — from vaudeville-inflected specialty numbers to fully balletic solos.

The Devil gets a matching physical set piece, the Danse du diable, once he confronts Joseph and the Princess directly: the synopsis describes him as 'unable to resist the music' and made to 'contort, grows exhausted, and falls to the ground' — a dramatic collapse rather than any named step vocabulary, closer to expressionist stage combat/mime than to a codified dance technique.

Outside these two numbers, the work's other named sections (Marche du soldat, Marche royale, Marche triomphale du diable) are marches structuring the Soldier's journeys rather than danced numbers, and the closing Marche triomphale is described purely as an instrumental 'rhythmic duel' between violin and percussion with no dancer specified. Because so little of the piece's actual staged movement is described, this entry cannot responsibly assign specific dance techniques beyond naming the idioms quoted in the score.

Context

The work was made in wartime Switzerland as a portable alternative to full-scale ballet or opera, designed for a touring company of a handful of actors, one or more dancers and seven instrumentalists, underwritten by the private patron Werner Reinhart. Stravinsky's septet score openly absorbs cosmopolitan popular and social dance vocabulary of Belle Époque Paris — tango, waltz, ragtime, pasodoble, klezmer-inflected texture — folding it into an art-music idiom of shifting metres, a gesture the musicologist Danick Trottier ties directly to Stravinsky's pre-war Paris years. In dance terms this makes the piece an early instance of a modernist score built from vernacular dance genres rather than academic ballet music, even though the choreographic demands of the original production were modest.

Staging history

The 1918 Lausanne premiere carried choreography by Georges Pitoëff, who also danced the role of the Devil opposite his wife Ludmilla Pitoëff as the Princess. The piece reached Paris in 1924 in a staging produced by Sergei Diaghilev, and the UK saw its first full staging in Newcastle in 1926. In the United States it was given as a 'Ballet version' by New York City Opera in 1978 (directed by Frank Corsaro, choreographed by Gardner Compton, with Barry Bostwick as the Soldier and Mercedes Ellington as the Princess), and in 1981 Peter Martins extracted a freestanding Suite from L'Histoire du Soldat for New York City Ballet, danced by Darci Kistler, Kyra Nichols, Ib Andersen and others, revived in 1987 and 1999. More recent adaptations — including a 2022 rewriting as A Soldier's Tale with choreography by Arielle Cole for her company ArcTangent, and a 2026 Costa Rican production relocating the story to organized-crime violence — show the piece continuing to be recast rather than preserved as a fixed choreographic text.

How to watch it

Watch how a given production handles the 'Trois danses' sequence, since the article specifies only the titles (Tango, Waltz, Ragtime) and not the steps — this is where a choreographer's reading of the piece is most exposed. Note whether the Devil's 'Danse du diable' collapse is staged as mime, acrobatics, or formal dance technique, since the source text gives only the dramatic outcome (contortion, exhaustion, collapse), not a vocabulary. Also be aware that many well-known recordings and stagings of this work use only narrator and instruments with no dancer at all, so a fully danced staging is itself a notable choice rather than the default.

Structure

1. Act Part 1
   The Soldier, walking home on leave, trades his violin to the Devil for a book that predicts the stock market; he returns to find three years, not three days, have passed and everything he valued lost, and eventually tears up the book.
2. Act Part 2 · Marche royale
   Penniless, the Soldier hears the ailing Princess will marry whoever cures her; he wins back his money and his violin from the Devil at cards.
3. Act Part 2 · Trois danses (Tango, Waltz, Ragtime)
   The Soldier's violin revives the Princess, who then performs a sequence of three dances — tango, waltz and ragtime.
4. Act Part 2 · Danse du diable
   The Devil appears undisguised and, unable to resist the Soldier's violin, contorts, tires and falls to the ground, allowing the couple to drag him away.
5. Act Conclusion · Marche triomphale du diable
   Having crossed back over the forbidden frontier, the Soldier loses the Princess to the Devil in a closing instrumental duel between violin and percussion.

Structure read from an encyclopaedia article, not from a libretto or score we hold. Confirm against a programme before treating the numbering as authoritative.

Credits

• composer: Igor Stravinsky

Questions