The evening of ballets will open with a hypnotic and eerie procession of the Shades from Act III of La Bayadère. This tribute to Rudolf Nureyev is symbolic in that he considered this act, The Kingdom of the Shades, to be the absolute masterpiece of Marius Petipa, his favourite choreographer. Furthermore, it was as the male lead of this ballet (Solor) and in this act, that he debuted on the stage of Palais Garnier on 19 May 1961 at the age of 23. And it was on that same stage that he attended the Première of his La Bayadère on 8 October 1992, which turned out to be his final ballet. He died three months later at the age of 54. With this La Bayadère marking the beginning and end of his career in the west, Rudolf Nureyev creates a synthesis of the transmission of ballet over several generations; the original by Marius Petipa (1877) was enhanced by numerous revisions added by the dancers and choreographers of the Maryinski, over the course of more than a century.