The event comes nearly 75 years after Bronislava Nijinskaya --ballet's first independent woman choreographer and the sister of legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky -- fled Soviet Russia in 1921.
"Les Noces", a work which exemplifies the Russian avant-garde movement in many disciplines, was directed by Nijinskaya in Paris in 1923 in collaboration with Stravinsky, another Russian emigre, whose revolutionary score interweaves folk songs with contemporary musical elements.
The idea was originally hatched in 1921 when Jacques Rouche of the Paris Opera commissioned two new works by Stravinsky -- "Les Noces Villageuses" and "Marva."
Stravinsky had actually begun "Les Noces" as far back as 1913 and had played it to Sergey Diaghilev. Originally arranged for a large orchestra, it was steadily simplified, and by 1921, Stravinsky decided on its definite scoring with four pianos, percussion and voice.
Natalia Goncharova was invited to design the sets and costumes, which were first done in raucous reds and yellows. Later she changed them for a more subdued set of costumes in pastel blues and pinks and browns embroidered in gold and silver.
With the music, sets and costumes ready, all that was needed was a choreographer to put the new creation together with dance. Nijinskaya came from Vienna and met with Diaghilev, who said, "Now I want you to do "Les Noces"."
After the meeting Stravinsky played the music to her but when she saw Goncharova's gorgeous designs -- about 80 of them -- laid out on the table, they struck her as all very well for a Russian opera but not quite suited to Stravinsky's style of music.
The story goes that Diaghilev was furious with her and told her, "You won't be doing "Les Noces" then, Bronia." He was bluffing; she won the day and finished the project within three weeks.
But it was not until 1923 after Stravinsky had shown Diaghilev the final orchestration of "Les Noces" that the ballet was ready to be performed in Paris.
It tells the story of a peasant wedding. As Stravinsky said, ""Les Noces" is a suite of typical wedding episodes told through quotations of typical talk from the bride, groom, their parents and guests and it appears to the observer that he overhears scraps of conversation without the connecting thread of discourse."
For the St Petersburg premier, the Mussorgsky Theater company is being trained by Howard Sayette, ballet-master-in-chief of the Oakland Ballet, who has been given exclusive rights to the original choreographic score by the Nijinskaya Trust and has staged Nijinskaya's ballet in the US, Mexico and Portugal.
Sayette said, "Many of the rituals in the wedding are taken from pagan times. For example, the bride has her hair braided. It is cut off the instant she marries, after which she is sent off with her husband, a man she did not know prior to her marriage."
Nijinskaya herself described the conversation she had with Diaghilev over the scene.
"Bronia, are you ready to begin rehearsing this ballet?" asked Diaghilev. "How do you see it? You remember the first scene. We are in the bride's house. She sits in a big Russian armchair."
"Sergey Pavlovich," Nijinskaya interrupted. "There must be no armchair, no comb and no hair!" She took a sheet of paper and sketched the bride with plaits three meters long. "Her friends holding her tresses form a group around her, and their dance on point and hers will express the rhythm of plaiting."
Diaghilev burst out laughing. He couldn't imagine a Russian ballet on point. His fears later vanished when Nijinskaya said, "It must be danced on point and that will elongate the dancers' silhouettes and make them resemble the saints in Byzantine mosaics."
At its first performance at the Gaiete Lyrique on June 13, 1923, "Les Noces" was received by the audience with rapture which was only equaled by the critics' incomprehension of Stravinsky's music, which "fails to charm the ear."
Bronislava Nijinskaya was a seminal figure in dance, helping to create an international 20th-century dance idiom deeply indebted to Russian classical ballet tradition.
Schooled in that tradition at St Petersburg's Imperial Ballet, Nijinskaya left Russia in 1921 to work with Sergey Diaghilev's Ballet Russe in Paris, and spent the rest of her life in the West where she trained a generation of influential choreographers.
As a defector from the Soviet system, Nijinskaya was systematically ignored by her homeland and none of the 80 ballets she created was ever performed by a Russian troupe. The June 10 performance will virtually mark the 72nd anniversary of the premiere of Les Noces at the Ballet Russe in Paris.
The ballet will be performed with the original score, for four pianos, percussion ensemble and chorus.
The original architectonic set and costumes by Natalia Gonchorova -- one of Russia's most famous avant-garde constructivist artists -- are being recreated for this production.
The Mussorgsky company plans to take "Les Noces" on tour to cities throughout Russia, introducing local ballet troupes and audiences alike to Nijinskaya's work.
Nikolai Bayarchikov, the Mussorgsky Theater's ballet master-in-chief, said, ""Les Noces" is a Russian work and Russians -- indeed everyone -- must see it."
According to Sayette, "This has been one of the most trying experiences in my life in terms of trying to organize this here, yet on the other hand I am working with some very talented people who have been just wonderful.
"In 1982 Nijinskaya's daughter Irina came to Oakland and although she had remained in the shadow of her mother all her life she traveled with her and helped her constantly after 1960.
"Consequently she knew all the original steps, which she then conveyed to me, and the version we are doing on Saturday is largely based on a production done in Venice in the 1960s. It is considered to contain much of Nijinskaya's original interpretation."
In conjunction with the premiere, a three-day symposium featuring 16 internationally renowned dance critics will convene in St Petersburg to explore Russian influences on 20th century choreography.
David Eden, the American producer and initiator of this Russian-American effort to return Nijinskaya's masterpiece to St Petersburg, said, "I hope the premiere and symposium serve as a catalyst to make available to the dance community and general audiences throughout Russia this missing piece of their country's rich artistic legacy."
The premiere, which is part of an American-Russian collaboration called St Petersburg 2003, is one in a series of projects being organized by CEC International Partners in New York. These projects are aimed at strengthening St Petersburg's visual and performing arts community in the lead up to the city's tercentenary celebrations in 2003.