Ballet music is an important genre of the canon of Western Classical Music. Composers and choreographers have collaborated on large-scale productions since the sixteenth century, but it was in the late nineteenth century that the art of ballet rose to unprecedented heights with the work of Marius Petipa. Petipa’s collaboration with specialist composers of ballet music had important consequences for the genre going into the twentieth century. As Petipa worked with these specialists, including Ludwig Minkus and Riccardo Drigo, the relationship of dance and music in ballet evolved from a hierarchical relationship (dance over music) to a more equal pairing. This evolution correlates to the changing cultural and political tides of St. Petersburg from the Great Reforms in the 1860s to the October Revolution in 1905. In the 1890s and early 1900s, Petipa collaborated with more established Russian composers, including Peter I. Tchaikovsky, Alexander K. Glazunov, and Arseny N. Koreshchenko. This project considers several ballets by these composers, analyzing various Adagio movements from these works to show how ballet composing was approached first by ballet specialists and subsequently by symphonic composers. These dances are examined within the context of the Grand Ballets they come from as well as from a cultural and historical perspective.