Le Spectre de la rose

After a ball, a young girl is holding a rose in her bedroom ; she is enraptured by its voluptuous scent and finally goes to sleep in a armchair. In her dreams, the spectre of the rose comes in through the window…

A few lines by the poet Théophile Gautier inspired Jean-Louis Vaudoyer for this short ballet, created on 19th April 1911 by Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinski, in a choreography signed by Michel Fokine.

After a ball, a young girl is holding a rose in her bedroom ; she is enraptured by its voluptuous scent and finally goes to sleep in a armchair. In her dreams, the spectre of the rose comes in through the window. She joins him in a magic dance before he disappears. She wakes up, feeling troubled, she looks around but can only see the rose.

A dream is essentially a window open towards all sorts of fantasies. This young girl’s dream is about the ghost of a rose, a spirit full of various symbols. It means love, desire, spilled blood, when thorn-pricked, life-saving blood. A gallery of scattered images to be visited with the key of dreams.

Thierry Malandain