The Steadfast Tin Soldier (ballet)
The Steadfast Tin Soldier is a ballet made on New York City Ballet by co-founder and founding choreographer George Balanchine to Bizet's Jeux d'enfants (1871), Op. 22, Nos. 6, 3, 11 and 12.
The premiere took place on July 30, 1975, at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, New York, which commissioned the work. It is based on Hans Christian Andersen's eponymous 1838 fairy tale of wistful love between a tin soldier and a paper-doll ballerina. Balanchine, Francisco Moncion and Barbara Milberg choreographed the entirety of Jeux d'enfants in 1955, and the context and woman's variation of The Steadfast Tin Soldier derive from this earlier collaboration.