This magnificent new biography of the extraordinary impresario of the arts and creator of the Ballets Russes 100 years ago draws on important new research, notably from Russia. ‘Scheijen masterfully recounts the phenomenal way in which Diaghilev contrived, under virtually impossible circumstances, to nurture a sequence of works … he triumphs in making clear the degree to which, despite the cosmopolitanism of so much of the work, Russia was at the core of Diaghilev' Simon Callow, Guardian ‘It's a fabulous, complicated, very sexy story and Sjeng Scheijen takes us through it with a steadying calm that fudges none of the outrage on or off stage' Duncan Fallowell, Daily Express 'Magnificent … filled with extraordinary glamour' Rupert Christiansen, Daily Mail
The era of the Ballets Russes is probably the most chronicled in dance history, yet this book is the first to explain the company as a totality--its art, enterprise, and tudience. Taking a fresh look at familiar sources and incorporating fascinating archival material previously unexamined by Diaghilev scholars, Lynn Garafola paints an extraordinary portrait of the Ballets Russes, one that is bound to upset received opinion about the wellsprings and impact of early modernism.
"This book was published to coincide with the exhibition Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes 1909-1929 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 25 September 2010-9 January 2011"--Title page verso.
In the two decades between its debut performance and the death of impresario Sergei Diaghilev in 1929, the Ballets Russes was an unrivalled sensation in Paris and around the world. But while scholarly attention has often centered on the links between Diaghilev’s troupe and modernist art and music, there has been surprisingly little analysis of the Ballets’ role in the area of tastemaking and trendsetting. Ballets Russes Style addresses this gap, revealing the extent of the ensemble’s influence in arenas of high style—including fashion, interior design, advertising, and the decorative arts. In Ballets Russes Style, Mary E. Davis explores how the Ballets Russes performances were a laboratory for ambitious cultural experiments, often grounded in the aesthetic confrontation of Russian artists who traveled with the troupe from St. Petersburg—Bakst, Benois, and Stravinsky among them—and the Parisian avant-garde, including Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Satie, Debussy, and Ravel. She focuses on how the ensemble brought the stage and everyday life into direct contact, most noticeably in the world of fashion. The Ballets Russes and its audience played a key role in defining Paris style, which would echo in fashions throughout the century. Beautifully illustrated, and drawing on unpublished images and memorabilia, this book illuminates the ways in which the troupe’s innovations in dance, music, and design mirrored and invigorated contemporary culture.
Ballet impresario Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev and composer Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev are eminent figures in twentieth-century cultural history, yet this is the first detailed account of their fifteen-year collaboration. The beginning was not trouble-free, but despite two false starts (Ala i Lolli and the first version of its successor, Chout) Diaghilev maintained his confidence in the composer. With his guidance and encouragement Prokofiev established his mature balletic style. After some years of estrangement during which Prokofiev wrote for choreographer Boris Romanov and conductor/publisher Serge Koussevitsky, Diaghilev came to the composer's rescue at a low point in his Western career. The impresario encouraged Prokofiev's turn towards 'a new simplicity' and offered him a great opportunity for career renewal with a topical ballet on Soviet life (Le Pas d'acier). Even as late as 1928-29 Diaghilev compelled Prokofiev to achieve new heights of expressivity in his characterizations (L'Enfant prodigue). Although Western scholars have investigated Prokofiev's operas, piano works, and symphonies, little attention has been paid to his early ballets written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Despite Prokofiev's devotion to opera, it was his ballets for Diaghilev as much as his concertos and solo piano works that earned his renown in Western Europe in the 1920s. Stephen D. Press discusses the genesis of each ballet, including the important contributions of the scenic designers (Mikhail Larionov, Georgy Yakulov and Georges Rouault) and the choreographer/dancers (L id Massine, Serge Lifar and George Balanchine), and the special relationship between the ballets' progenitors.
A Best Book of the Year at The New Yorker and The Telegraph “Amusing and assertive . . . [Christiansen’s] delight is infectious.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review Rupert Christiansen, a renowned dance critic and arts correspondent, presents a sweeping history of the Ballets Russes and of Serge Diaghilev’s dream of bringing Russian art and culture to the West. Serge Diaghilev, the Russian impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, is often said to have invented modern ballet. An art critic and connoisseur, Diaghilev had no training in dance or choreography, but he had a dream of bringing Russian art, music, design, and expression to the West and a mission to drive a cultural and artistic revolution. Bringing together such legendary talents as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, this complex and visionary genius created a new form of ballet defined by artistic integrity, creative freedom, and an all-encompassing experience of art, movement, and music. The explosive color combinations, sensual and androgynous choreography, and experimental sounds of the Ballets Russes were called “barbaric” by the Parisian press, but its radical style usurped the entrenched mores of traditional ballet and transformed the European cultural sphere at large. Diaghilev’s Empire, the publication of which marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of Diaghilev’s birth, is a daring, impeccably researched reassessment of the phenomenon of the Ballets Russes and the Russian Revolution in twentieth-century art and culture. Rupert Christiansen, a leading dance critic, explores the fiery conflicts, outsize personalities, and extraordinary artistic innovations that make up this enduring story of triumph and disaster.
The play opens in semi darkness as we see two men in overalls shining torches and looking for something on the ground. the men turn out to be police officers carrying out the horrific task of looking for body parts on a railway line. Their supervisor, a soft and caring sergeant, appears and they tease him for his softness. He has had the fortune of marrying one of the boss's daughters but cant stand the nastiness at ground level. The men have to load the parts into a bag and tease the sergeant because he's scared to look into the nastiness of the bag. Then they here a noise and a young child appears who has run away from home. The child wants to know whats in the bag but they wont tell him. A car is heard and they escort the boy away back into the real world where there is hope for the future.
Defining Russian Graphic Arts explores the energy and innovation of Russian graphic arts during the period which began with the explosion of artistic creativity initiated by Serge Diaghilev at the end of the nineteenth century and which ended in the mid-1930s with Stalin's devastating control over the arts. This beautifully illustrated book represents the development of Russian graphic arts as a continuum during these forty years, and places Suprematism and Constructivism in the context of the other major, but lesser-known, manifestations of early twentieth-century Russian art. The book includes such diverse categories of graphic arts as lubki (popular prints), posters and book designs, journals, music sheets, and ephemera. It features not only standard types of printed media and related studies and maquettes, but also a number of watercolor and gouache costume and stage designs. About 100 works borrowed from the National Library of Russia and the Research Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia-many seen here for the first time outside of Russia-are featured in this book. Additional works have been drawn from the Zimmerli Art Museum, The New York Public Library, and from other public and private collections. Together they provide a rare opportunity to view and learn about a wide variety of artists, from the acclaimed to the lesser known. This book is a companion volume to an exhibition appearing at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.
When, almost twenty years ago, we founded the World of Art, we had a burning desire to liberate Russian artistic activity from the tutelage of literature, to instil in the society around us a love of the very essence of art, and that was the aim we had when we took the field. We considered enemies all those “who fail to respect art as such”, those who either fasten wings to an old nag or harness Pegasus to the cart of “social ideals”, or reject the idea of Pegasus altogether. For that reason, we addressed ourselves to the artistic world with the slogan “Talents of all directions, unite!” And that is how in our ranks Vrubel immediately appeared alongside Levitan, Bakst alongside Serov, Somov alongside Maliavin. – Alexander Benois
