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Article Excerpt
It is impossible to underestimate the influence of Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) on twentieth-century ballet history. But it may be easy at times to underestimate his uncanny ability as an impresario to bring together artists from diverse backgrounds and aesthetic and unite them with a common goal of artistic excellence. Established in 1909, the Ballets Russes made an extraordinary impact on Parisian life and monopolized the audiences' attention for almost two decades. More than simply being a ballet company, it promoted and facilitated the interaction of some of the most avant-garde artists of the time. During their twenty-year run (the company disbanded in 1929 after Diaghilev's death), the Ballets Russes collaborated closely with dancers, choreographers and visual artists that included George Balanchine (1904-1983), Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978), Mikhail Fokine (1880-1942), Leonide Massine (1896-1979), Leon Bakst (1866-1944), Georges Braque (1882-1963), and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Some of the musicians who either lent their scores to be choreographed or created music particularly for the Ballets Russes included Maurice Ravel (Daphnis & Chloe), Claude Debussy (Jeux), Richard Strauss (Josephslegende), Erik Satie (Parade), Manuel de Falla, Sergei Prokofiev, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and, of course, Igor Stravinsky. The latter's groundbreaking collaboration with Diaghilev led to three landmark works, all inspired by the composer's native Russia: Firebird, Petrushka, and the notorious Rite of Spring.
THE WORLD OF ART
By the time Diaghilev realized his interest in the arts at the dawn of the twentieth century, the world of the romantic ballet had virtually been dead for years. At its zenith, it was represented by works such as La Sylphide and Giselle, made popular in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s mainly thanks to the superhuman accomplishments by ballerinas like Marie Taglioni (the "first Sylphide"), whose graceful ballons and ethereal dancing on pointe (a novelty at the time) ideally embodied the concepts of the otherworldly and the supernatural. The geography of European ballet history in the later part of the nineteenth century makes for a fascinating read. In spite of the immense popularity that it enjoyed in France until the middle of the nineteenth century, the formulaic and predictable aspects of ballet that once made it popular, now failed to sustain the public's taste for the exotic and the extravagant (which, interestingly enough, both ballet and opera shared). Around that time, Marius Petipa (1818-1910), the greatest choreographer of the time, had moved to Russia, where he established the standard for classical ballet with a series of legendary creations that included Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. In 1869, he was appointed chief ballet master in St. Petersburg and was single-handedly responsible for defining classical ballet, as well as for putting the Russian Imperial ballet at the forefront of European ballet in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Ironically, France would regain its former ballet glory through the opposite trajectory, this time via Russia with the help of the Ballets Russes. (1)
Diaghilev was neither a dancer, nor a choreographer, nor a composer, nor did he aspire to become the great impresario of a Russian ballet company that would take the Parisian audiences by storm and that would have a tremendous impact on twentieth-century ballet history. It was rather through Mir iskusstva (The World of Art), the group and art journal he founded in 1898, that his artistic aspirations became manifest. With the help of artists who shared his symbolist aesthetic, such as Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) and Leon Bakst, he put on art exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Paris, and soon it became apparent that his goals would be better served with him as the intellectual force behind the talent and aspirations of young artists he would help promote. The content, but also the look of the sumptuously illustrated Mir iskusstva (see, for example, the 1902 Jugendstil-inspired cover by Bakst) already gave a glimpse into Diaghilev's aims for the future.
FOKINE THE LIBERATOR
The origins of the Ballets Russes are inextricably linked with the artistic vision of Michel Fokine. Lynn Garafola, the high priestess of Ballets Russes scholarship, eloquently summarizes the significance of Fokine's role as the leading choreographer of the group in the opening chapter of her Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), titled "The Liberating Aesthetic of Michel Fokine." As Garafola claims, "[h]is art sprang not from a dissatisfaction with realism, but from what he perceived as the inadequacy of late nineteenth-century ballet to convey a modern sense of beauty and a personal poetic vision." The latter two ideas might be applied not only to choreography, but also to all other aspects of a ballet performance: subject matter, music, set designs, costumes, stage space, even the dancer's physical appearance. Fokine's artistic vision happily translates into other aspects of his early ballets. For example, his Polovtsian Dances--extracted from Borodin's opera Prince Igor and premiered on the opening night (18 May 1909) of the inaugural season of the Ballets Russes in Paris--managed to showcase his new aesthetic: naturalism over classicism, with almost an ethnographic eye for the proper depiction of the Tatars. Nicholas Roerich, with his quasi-archeological interest in prehistoric cultures, provided vibrant designs that matched the almost barbaric force of Fokine's choreography. Diaghilev's venture proved to be extremely successful.
In The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky (Kultur D2918 [2002], DVD), the Kirov Ballet with the orchestra and chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre do plenty of justice to Fokine's vision, almost one hundred years after its creation. Watching Fokine's "dramatic realism" exhibited in the dancers' movements, coupled with Roerich's colorful extravaganza (although slightly less brilliant in this production than evidenced in the drawing that survives for the original set), one understands completely the tone of the review that appeared in Le temp after the ballet's premiere: "The vibrant music, those archers, ardent, wild, and fierce of gesture, all that mixing of humanity, those raised arms, restless hands, the dazzle of the multicolored costumes seemed for a moment to dizzy the Parisian audience, stunned by the fever and madness of movement" (cited in Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, p. 34). Traditional ballet gestures are still there, but the jumps, pirouettes and grand jetes are paired with free movements of the torso and the arms, and imbued with naturalism and dramatic intention. His was a truly liberating technique and, in general, a liberating aesthetic. Without sounding anachronistic, one might even detect here the origins of the forceful gestures and ritualistic moves that would later show up--in a modified form--in the context of Le sacre du printemps: Vaslav Nijinsky, who danced in Le pavillon d'Armide that night, learned a lot.
One does not have to look very far to understand that Diaghilev was a savvy promoter. The Polovtsian Dances together with Le pavillon d'Armide might have been chosen to inaugurate the opening season, but the greatest star on the bill was scheduled to appear a month later. Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), the former Mariinsky prima ballerina, had just joined the Ballets Russes and was going to revisit the principal role in Benois's version of Les Sylphides (known as Chopiniana in its 1907 production at the Mariinsky). In 1907 Fokine had also created for her the Dying Swan, a captivating solo on Saint-Saens's music, which became her signature role. (2) In a now famous poster for the 1909 season based on Valentin Serov's blue-hewn aquarelle, Pavlova was captured as an ethereal Sylphide (with echoes of the swan) advertising the "Saison Russe" in Paris--thus the Ballets Russes was introducing their newest star to the public in her signature role and she, in turn, acted as a magnet for the company that had just ventured into the world of ballet production. Pavlova soon realized that the troupe's new aesthetic prioritized male over female dancers. The fact that she created only two roles for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, may be viewed as evidence of, not only dangerous cutting-edge novelty that the Ballets Russes offered their new artists, but also the culture that was taking shape within the group.
Fokine's choreography for Les Sylphides, a staple now of every ballet company, is featured on the American Ballet Theatre's performances from the Metropolitan Opera House, featuring Marianna Tcherkassky as the female soloist, and showcasing the incredible talent of a young Mikhail Baryshnikov as the poet, the role first created by Vaslav Nijinsky (Kultur D2024 [2003, 1984], DVD). Reading the literature, one is led to believe that Fokine was coerced by Diaghilev to create the third and final version of this classically-oriented ballet for the opening season, and one can see why. The dancing adheres to a classical ballet style, the one popularized by Petipa, but Fokine...
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