Piano-Rag-Music
Piano-Rag-Music is a short ballet made by Peter Martins, then balletmaster in chief of New York City Ballet, set to Stravinsky's 1919 solo piano work of the same title. It premiered on June 10, 1982, as part of NYCB's Stravinsky Centennial Celebration at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center — one of many pieces the company mounted that season to mark the composer's centenary.
What is danced
The article gives no synopsis, scene breakdown, or description of steps, so nothing about the actual vocabulary — holds, partnering, footwork — can be stated on its authority. What can be drawn from the record is structural: the original cast lists one woman (Darci Kistler) against four men (Cornel Crabtree, Afshin Mofid, Peter Schetter, Ulrik Trojaborg), which points to a chamber-scale piece built around a single female lead and a male ensemble or a set of shifting partnerships, consistent with the piece's origin as a solo-piano score rather than a large orchestral one. Beyond that grouping, the source is silent on technique, so no claims about pointe work, character shoes, or specific choreographic idiom can be attributed to it.
Context
The 1982 Stravinsky Centennial Celebration was NYCB's second company-wide festival devoted to the composer, following Balanchine's 1972 Stravinsky Festival; Martins, who had begun taking on leadership of the company's repertory before formally succeeding Balanchine, contributed new stagings to lesser-known and non-orchestral Stravinsky scores as part of that effort. Piano-Rag-Music belongs to that wave of centenary commissions, made for a company whose identity had been built substantially on danced settings of Stravinsky since the 1920s Ballets Russes commissions and Balanchine's decades of Stravinsky ballets.
How to watch it
Because the article supplies no description of the choreography, a viewer has to look for what the source can only imply: a small ensemble built around one woman and four men, danced to a compact solo-piano score rather than a full orchestral one. Attend to how the choreography handles that unusual scale — whether the piece reads as a series of solos and duets passed among the five dancers, or as a continuously grouped ensemble — since the article does not settle this and it is a genuinely open question for anyone studying the work.
Credits
- composer: Igor Stravinsky