Two playwrights and a former burlesque queen travel to Louisiana to research a musical they're planning on a local Southern hero.

This ballet is choreographer Michel Fokine's new reading of his ballet created a few years before, Chopiniana, where he pays a tribute to the old days romantic ballets. The work does not follow a logical narrative progression, as Karsavina says in the introduction, it is a "Romantic reverie." The unique male dancer (John Field in this version) embodies a Poet. The corps de ballet and the three women soloists Alice Markova, Violetta Elvin and Svetlana Beriosova are intimately linked to the Russian Ballet and to Russia as a whole.

The great Alicia Markova talks with Dominique Delouche about her life and her roles with the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev.

A studio performance of the ballet Les Sylphides by Michel Fokine, first broadcast on 3 April 1953 and starring Alicia Markova, John Field, Violetta Elvin and Svetlana Beriosova.