Alexander Shiryaev created “The Fool’s Dance” in Marius Petipa’s 1896 revival of the ballet “Mlada”, with music by Ludwig Minkus, at the Mariinsky Theatre. His innovation of combining high leaps with the characteristic squatting step, prisyadka, was so dangerous that Petipa turned his back during Shiryaev’s solo, and in fact he broke his fibula while performing it in London in 1912.

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