Le Pas d'acier (The Steel Step or The Leap of Steel), Op. 41

The ballet was commissioned by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had been greatly impressed by the exhibition in Paris in 1925 of Russian contemporary artists at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, and was originally intended to "celebrate Soviet industrialization." Prokofiev wrote the score, based on a scenario by the Constructivist artist Georgi Yakulov and himself, in 1925–1926, much of it during his tour of the United States. Prokofiev wrote that his music represented "a move towards a Russian musical language, not that of the Fairy Tales of [the folklorist] Afanasyev, but one which could describe contemporary life. [...It] was a decisive step leading me towards chromaticism and diatonics [...] A whole series of themes is composed solely for the white keys."