- Irene Silverman, who later gained posthumous fame as the murder victim of con artists Sante Kimes and Kenneth Kimes, studied with him.
- At the age of 9 was accepted into the Saint Petersburg Imperial Ballet School. That same year, he made his performing debut in The Talisman under the direction of Marius Petipa.
- Fokine aspired to move beyond traditional ballet, toward a method of utilizing ballet to communicate the natural beauty of Man. He did not believe virtuoso ballet techniques to symbolize anything, and thought they could be substituted with forms that better expressed emotions and themes.
- The Mariinsky Ballet performed a retrospective of Fokine's work at London's Covent Garden in July 2011.
- Some of Fokine's early works include the ballet Acis and Galatea (1905) and The Dying Swan (1907), which was a solo dance for Anna Pavlova choreographed to the music of Le Cygne. Acis and Galetea included an acrobatic dance with young boys playing fauns, one of whom was Vaslav Nijinsky.
- In 1902, he was offered a teaching position at the Imperial Ballet School and was able to explore the artistic possibilities of choreography. In 1905, he created his first full-length ballet, Acis et Galatée, which was performed by his students and based on a Sicilian legend. Among his students were Desha Delteil and Bronislava Nijinska.
- The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, disrupted the established touring circuit, which included countries now on opposing sides. Many dancers, including Fokine, returned to their home countries. He moved to Sweden with his family in 1918, and later established his home in New York City, where he founded a ballet school in 1921, and continued to appear with his wife, Vera Fokina.
- In 1937, Fokine joined Wassily de Basil's offshoot of the Ballets Russes, which was eventually named the Original Ballet Russe. Among the new works Fokine created during this period were Cendrillon (1938) and Paganini (1939). His choreography was featured with the company until 1941.
- Fokine staged more than eighty ballets in Europe and the United States.
- By 1924, he organized the American Ballet Company, which performed regularly at the Metropolitan Opera House and toured the United States. His first piece for the company was the comedy Bluebeard, set to a score by Jacques Offenbach.
- He was a groundbreaking Imperial Russian choreographer and dancer.
- In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev invited Fokine to become the resident choreographer of the first season of the Ballets Russes in Paris.
- Fokine died in New York on 22 August 1942, aged 62. In tribute to his passing, seventeen ballet companies around the world performed Les Sylphides simultaneously.
- At Ballets Russes, he collaborated with other artists to create a ballet of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, which premiered in 1910. The ballet was inspired by symphonic poems composed by Rimsky-Korsakov and the tale of the 1001 Nights. The sets designed by Léon Bakst matched the sexualized choreography. Despite the lack of historical accuracy, the ballet was successful due to its brilliant colors, exoticism, and sexual overtones. The 1910 production featured Nijinsky in the role of the Golden Slave.
- He also played musical instruments, including mandolin (played on stage in ensemble led by Ginislao Paris), domra, and balalaika (played in Vasily Andreyev's Great Russian Orchestra).
- He also experimented with shifting the emphasis of movement away from the lower body and towards the whole body, with freer use of the arms and torso and using each muscle with clear intention. In doing so, Fokine sought to unify motion with emotion and the body with the soul, bringing new life to the ballet as a language and an art.
- In 1898, on his 18th birthday, he debuted on the stage of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Paquita, with the Imperial Russian Ballet.
- In addition to being a talented dancer, Fokine was also passionate about painting and displayed talent in this area as well.
- In 1923, he choreographed the ballet Ajanta Frescoes for Anna Pavlova after she had been inspired by her visit to the Ajanta Caves.
- His best-known works were Chopiniana, Le Carnaval (1910), and Le Pavillon d'Armide (1907). His pieces are still performed internationally.
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