The Polovtsian Dances are perhaps the best known selections from Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor (1890). They are often played as a stand-alone concert piece. Borodin was the original composer, but the opera was left unfinished at his death and was subsequently completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov. In the opera the dances are performed with chorus, but concert performances often omit the choral parts. The dances do not include the "Polovtsian March," which opens Act III (No. 18), but the overture, dances, and march from the opera have been performed together to form a suite from Prince Igor. In the opera, the dances occur in Act II (in the original edition). A typical performance lasts between 11 and 14 minutes. The overture, never written out by Borodin, was reconstructed by Glazunov from his memory of the composer playing it at the piano and a few sketches. The overture file is scanned from the separate offprints for the Overture, Dances, and March.
