When Stéphane Mallarmé wrote The Afternoon of a Faun in 1876, he wanted to write poetry for the theater. The poem inspired Claude Debussy to compose Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, in 1894. In Paris in 1912, Vaslav Nijinsky created his first choreography, based on the poem. The work was permeated with a ritualistic, sensual tone inspired by the movements of the Greek friezes. When Marie Chouinard created her Faun, she chose to study the photos of Nijinsky's choreography taken by Adolphe Meyer and put together a piece that was based on horizontality, as in the original choreography. However, in the solo, the seven nymphs of the 1912 performance turn into dreams, revealed through the lighting design.

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