Impressing the Czar is a four-act, award-winning,[1] postmodern[2] ballet choreographed by William Forsythe to music by Thom Willems, Leslie Stuck, Eva Crossman-Hecht, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
[3] The work's title is a reference to the Czar Nicholas II's lukewarm reception of Marius Petipa's lavish production of The Sleeping Beauty.
Though the work has no continuous narrative theme, the ballet comments ironically and often humorously on the history of Western civilization and its economies of culture.
The third section, "La Maison de Mezzo-Prezzo," features characters being auctioned off, clothed in gold, as a comment on the commoditization of the arts.
A large group of dancer surround Mr. Pnut, whose name headlines the next act and who is portrayed as a Saint Sebastian-type character complete with an arrow in chest.