Boléro originated as a short theatre piece set in a Spanish tavern, in which a young woman dances provocatively on a trestle table surrounded by men, gradually exciting them to the point where they turn on one another, fighting over her until her partner intervenes and restores calm. By contrast, Ravel wrote Ma mère l’Oye (‘Mother Goose’) as a piano duet to entertain a friend’s children and then expanded it into a ballet from which the present Suite was extracted. With the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, set in ancient Greece, we return to the perils of a young woman surrounded by unruly men, this time the innocent Chloé captured by bloodthirsty pirates.