Les biches

The ballet has no story, and depicts the random interactions of a group of mainly young people in a house party on a summer afternoon.

[n 2] The original plan was that Poulenc should write music for a ballet scenario with the title Les demoiselles, written by the fashion designer Germaine Bongard.

The following July it became clear that Bongard did not wish to go ahead; Poulenc wrote to his friend and fellow member of Les six, Darius Milhaud, that instead "I will probably write a suite of dances without a libretto.

"[1] At about the same time he told Igor Stravinsky that after consulting Diaghilev and the designer, Marie Laurencin, "I have a clear conception of my ballet which will have no subject – simply dances and songs.

"[3] The titles of the numbers in the score indicate that Poulenc followed this plan, but he nonetheless retained two important features of Bongarďs proposed work: a choral element, with unseen singers giving a commentary on the action, and the "demoiselles".

[1] In an analysis published in The Musical Quarterly in 2012, Christopher Moore describes the former as reminiscent of Stravinsky's Pulcinella, and the latter as "a corps de ballet of flirtatious young women".

[1] For the words, Poulenc spent a considerable amount of time in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, seeking out texts for the choral interjections.

Moore expands on the definition: "As has been often noted, the word biches is itself pregnant with double entendre, referring most obviously to does, but also, in the underworld of Parisian slang, to a woman (or ironically, a man) of deviant sexual proclivities.

[9] Les biches was an immediate success, first in Monte Carlo in January 1924 and then in Paris in May, under the direction of André Messager and has remained one of Poulenc's best-known scores.

[14]The analyst Gérald Hugon writes that other influences on the young composer's score are French eighteenth-century song (in the Rondeau), ragtime (in the Rag-Mazurka) and composers ranging from the classical era (Mozart and Schubert) to contemporaries such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, via Tchaikovsky: Hugon quotes Claude Rostand's comment that according to Poulenc the Adagietto was inspired by a variation from The Sleeping Beauty.

It is dominated by a gentle oboe theme in its outer sections, and unlike much of the score it does not have frequent changes of key or time signatures.

"[25] The initial mood of wistful charm – "doucement mélancolique" according to the score – is briefly interrupted by a louder and more emphatic section for a few bars, before the music becomes calm again, leading to a quiet close.

The music, which refers back to the rondeau in its material, veers between what Del Mar calls "gentle ingenuousness" and "rumbustious moments".

C'est à la Saint Mathieu que nous marierons, donnez moi des giroflées qu'il faut se marier.

[32] A short section in the middle of the finale is more relaxed, but the tempo increases again and the initial theme returns at the same high speed as before to conclude the piece.

In an article about Les biches written in 1930, Frederick Ashton wrote, "the whole ballet is new, and yet it is, at the same time, composed entirely of classical movement with a new expression.

"[34] In The International Encyclopedia of Dance Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller writes that the Les biches was influenced by the legacy of the 19th-century choreographer Marius Petipa, given a modern twist by Nijinska: Taking the classical repertory of steps as her starting point but using an inventive port de bras, flexed arms, a new kind of pas de bourrée, variations of épaulements and pointe, and asynchronous movements of the torso and legs, she developed new possibilities for classical technique.

[36] Clement Crisp describes the ballet as a "delicious piece", noting the "cunningly different ports de bras, the freshness of use of the classical dance, the clarity of texture in the movement all make it a delight", and contends that the soundness of the choreography have contributed the lasting popularity of the work.

[37] The preface to the published score states: "The action passes in a large, white drawing room with just one piece of furniture, an immense blue sofa.

"[1] Moore gives the last word on the plot to the English dancer Lydia Sokolova, a member of the company in the premiere: "There was no story to Les biches – it was far too chic to have anything so obvious".

They are: The tableau is danced by the twelve female members of the corps de ballet, dressed in identical pink frocks and ostrich-feathered head-dresses.

The androgynous figure often called la garçonne performs a slow dance, largely en pointe, watched by the women and the athletes.

The Hostess enters the empty stage and performs a virtuoso solo dance (with intricately rhythmic steps, described by the ballet critic Jan Parry as "a fiendish tongue-twister for the feet").

[51] Those who praised the work included Cocteau, Malherbe, Louis Laloy, Boris de Schlözer, and the correspondent of The Times, who judged the choreography "ingenious" and the score "full of irresistible good spirits and delicious tunes".

There was some speculation beforehand that the official theatre censor, the Lord Chamberlain, might ban the piece for its suggestions of unconventional sexuality, but a licence was granted to perform it, and it was given at the Coliseum, under the title The House Party.

The London theatre critic of The Times was tepid about the music, the choreography and the designs,[53] and did not mention – as the highly favourable review in The Manchester Guardian did – the enthusiasm with which the public had greeted the piece.

[56] Nijinska staged the work, as The House Party, for the Markova-Dolin Ballet in 1937; Alicia Markova took the part of Nemtchinova and Anton Dolin that of Anatole Wilzak, and Diana Gould was among the cast as the Hostess.

[42] Subsequent performers of the role of the hostess in the Royal Ballet's production have included Deanne Bergsma, Monica Mason, Marguerite Porter, Darcey Bussell and Zenaida Yanowsky; the garçonne has been danced by Vergie Derman, Viviana Durante, Mara Galeazzi and Leanne Benjamin.

In 1964 BBC television commissioned and broadcast Houseparty, choreographed by Peter Darrell, which took the original Nijinska scenario and sought to update it to reflect the mores of the mid 1960s.

[75] Later LP and CD versions of the suite have been recorded under the batons of French conductors including Louis Frémaux, Louis de Froment, Prêtre, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Stéphane Denève and Jean-Luc Tingaud, and non-French conductors including Charles Dutoit, Thierry Fischer, Anatole Fistoulari and Michael Gielen.