information:extraction, linguistic:paraphrasing
Tchaikovsky pas de deux 1877

On 26 April 1877, Anna Sobeshchanskaya made her début as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, and from the start, she was completely dissatisfied with the ballet. Sobeshchanskaya asked Marius Petipa — Premier Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres—to choreograph a pas de deux to replace the pas de six in the third act (for a ballerina to request a supplemental pas or variation was standard practice in 19th-century ballet, and often these "custom-made" dances were the legal property of the ballerina they were composed for).

Petipa created the pas de deux to music by Ludwig Minkus, ballet composer to the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres. The piece was a standard pas de deux classique consisting of a short entrée, the grand adage, a variation for each dancer individually, and a coda.

Tchaikovsky was angered by this change, stating that whether the ballet was good or bad, he alone should be held responsible for its music. He agreed to compose a new pas de deux, but soon a problem arose: Sobeshchanskaya wanted to retain Petipa's choreography. Tchaikovsky agreed to compose a pas de deux that would match to such a degree, the ballerina would not even be required to rehearse. Sobeshchanskaya was so pleased with Tchaikovsky's new music, she requested he compose an additional variation, which he did.

Until 1953 this pas de deux was thought to be lost, until a repétiteur score was accidentally found in the archives of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre, among orchestral parts for Alexander Gorsky's revival of Le Corsaire (Gorsky had included the piece in his version of Le Corsaire staged in 1912). In 1960 George Balanchine choreographed a pas de deux to this music for Violette Verdy and Conrad Ludlow, performed at the City Center of Music and Drama in New York City as Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, as it is still known and performed today.