There is no implied hierarchy in the ordering of the countries, although we did place Russia and Tchaikovsky deliberately in Grade 5, since this makes for a logical transition between the lower and higher Grades (Grade 6 starts with the music of Glazunov, who was the chronological successor of Tchaikovsky in the world of the Russian Imperial ballet). We have also been flexible with what 'French' or 'English' means – Pineapple Poll, for example, is included in Grade 4 because although Cranko was South African, Sullivan – who wrote the music – was English. Conversely, in Grade 3, Harald Lander's Etudes is admitted as a Danish ballet, even though Czerny, who wrote the music on which Riisager based the orchestral score, was born in Austria. It really is only a framework. 'Prism' might be a better word – all we have done is to use music to refract the syllabus and the Academy into the multiple colours of its origins.

The Musical Prism
This 'refraction' is fascinating process, because as you try and separate the light of where we are now into the rainbow strands of the past, those strands intertwine and fuse everywhere you look. For example, Coppélia is a French ballet with a German story, set in Galicia, a province of present-day Poland inhabited by Poles and Ukrainians, once under Austro-Hungarian rule. The first Swanilda was Italian (Giuseppina Bozzacchi), and the ballet was first presented in England in 1906 by the Danish ballerina Adeline Genée. Many productions today contain elements of the production by the Italian Cecchetti and Russian Lev Ivanov. And as if that were not enough countries to be going on with, Coppélia also contains dances from Spain, Hungary and Scotland!

Using this 'geographical' framework should make it much easier for students to understand the relationship between the ballet and character elements. As far as possible, we have tried to use character dances from the ballet repertoire for the rhythm and character sections, and in many cases, these will be the same works from which the music for the ballet exercises have been taken.

In the Free Movement section, we have extended the range of music to include pieces which are, in the broadest sense, related either to the country or ballets of the grade in question. In Grade 5, for example, there might be a waltz by Strauss, on the basis of the strong (but rarely mentioned) connections between Tchaikovsky, Strauss and the Viennese Waltz through the Great Palace of Pavlovsk.

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