{"id":7783,"date":"2010-09-27T02:05:52","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T01:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=7783"},"modified":"2022-09-28T14:19:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T13:19:10","slug":"diaghilev-and-the-ballets-russes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2010\/09\/27\/diaghilev-and-the-ballets-russes\/","title":{"rendered":"Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"diaghilev1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ida Rubinstein as Zobeide and Vaslav Nijinsky as the Golden Slave in Sch\u00e9h\u00e9razade (1913) by George Barbier.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another great exhibition at the V&A, London, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes<\/em> gathers a wealth of costumes, stage designs, photographs and ephemera\u2014including some of Stravinsky’s manuscripts\u2014to present a history of the legendary ballet company and their visionary impresario. For those who can’t get to London the museum website<\/a> shows some of the items which will be on display, and there’s also a blog<\/a> about the installing of the exhibition. The enormous frontcloth from 1924 based on Picasso’s Two Women Running on the Beach<\/em> received a flurry of attention in the press here but my own attention was caught by the picture<\/a> of Natalia Goncharova<\/a>‘s even more enormous backcloth for The Firebird<\/em>. The exhibition runs to January 9, 2011.<\/p>\n

\"diaghilev2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cover of Le Th\u00e9atre showing Tamara Karsavina in costume as the Firebird, May 1911.<\/em><\/p>\n

While we’re on the subject, a new biography of the impresario, Diaghilev: A Life<\/em> by Sjeng Scheijen, was reviewed last week<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Diaghilev loved beautiful young men, and at a time when the fashion in ballet was to exchange patronage for sex, his company provided a bounty. Scheijen dexterously plays his sources against one another to examine the erotic and professional dynamics between Diaghilev and his stars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For a fictional (and necessarily heterosexual) account of those erotic and professional dynamics, I recommend Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes<\/em><\/a> (1948) which not only has a central character based on Diaghilev but includes among the cast of real dancers L\u00e9onide Massine<\/a>, dancer and principal choreographer of the Ballets Russes from 1915 to 1921.<\/p>\n

See also:
\n\u2022 Russian Ballet History<\/a> | An archive and documentary site.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Pamela Colman Smith\u2019s Russian Ballet<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Ivan Bilibin, 1876\u20131942<\/a>
\n\u2022 Jack Cardiff, 1914\u20132009<\/a>
\n\u2022 Magic carpet ride<\/a>
\n\u2022 Le Sacre du Printemps<\/a>
\n\u2022 Images of Nijinsky<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ida Rubinstein as Zobeide and Vaslav Nijinsky as the Golden Slave in Sch\u00e9h\u00e9razade (1913) by George Barbier. Another great exhibition at the V&A, London, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes gathers a wealth of costumes, stage designs, photographs and ephemera\u2014including some of Stravinsky’s manuscripts\u2014to present a history of the legendary ballet company and their visionary impresario. … Continue reading “Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,56,4,7,5,3],"tags":[1100,355,314,695,1779,1778,864,1783,354,1776,696,547,165,1777,1782,291,1781],"class_list":["post-7783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-dance","category-design","category-film","category-gay","category-music","tag-ballets-russes","tag-emeric-pressburger","tag-firebird","tag-george-barbier","tag-ida-rubinstein","tag-igor-stravinsky","tag-ivan-bilibin","tag-leonide-massine","tag-michael-powell","tag-natalia-goncharova","tag-nijinsky","tag-pamela-colman-smith","tag-picasso","tag-sergei-diaghilev","tag-sjeng-scheijen","tag-stravinsky","tag-tamara-karsavina"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-21x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}