
Tatiana Riabouchinska as Michel Fokine's Golden Cockerel, circa 1930s. Photography Maurice Seymour
The Golden Cockerel
The Golden Cockerel, based on the Rimsky-Korsakov opera, was first made by Michel Fokine for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes; the cockerel itself was a puppet. When Fokine restaged the ballet as a one-act work in 1937 for Colonel de Basil’s Ballets Russes, the Cockerel role blossomed into a dancer en pointe, a role for the sensational 'baby ballerina' Tatiana Riabouchinska - but she didn't dance with the melting grace of a swan queen. The Cockerel's movements were abrupt, swift and savage, befitting a creature that pecks to death a treacherous king at the ballet's climax and struts over his body. In 2012, Alexei Ratmansky revived The Golden Cockerel for American Ballet Theatre.