ABSTRACT
By the late 1980s, Schnittke had become a significant ballet composer with several major works for companies in Russia and Germany. But his path towards ballet was indirect. In his earlier career, he compared his own music to dance, saying that both convey connections between the personal and the universal but added that he had little interest in writing for dance (Shulgin 2004, 93). Even so, choreographers were drawn to Schnittke's music, and each of his ballets – Labyrinths, Sketches and Peer Gynt – was instigated by the respective choreographer.
