Cast of “Polovtsian Dances” from the opera “Prince Igor,” with choreography by Michel Fokine, 1923. Music Division
On June 4, 2009, the Library of Congress opened “Serge Diaghilev and His World: A Centennial Celebration of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 1909-1929.” On display in the Performing Arts Reading Room through Oct. 10, 2009, the exhibition features one of the most influential dance companies of the 20th century. Objects include photographs of Diaghilev and members of the company, musical scores, production photographs, costume designs, dance notation manuscripts, souvenir programs and posters. The exhibition may be viewed online at myLOC.gov/exhibitions/balletsrusses/.
The Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev burst onto the cultural scene of Paris in 1909. For the next 20 years, the company cultivated an extraordinary group of emerging choreographers, composers, and artists, who collaborated to produce the first great ballet classics of the 20h century, including “Les Sylphides,” “The Firebird” and “L’Après-midi d’un Faune.”
By pioneering innovations in choreographic practices, scene and costume design, and in the very concept of ballet music itself, the Ballets Russes expanded the dramatic and emotional potential of ballet.
Left: Impresario Serge Diaghilev (left) and his protégé, dancer Léonide Massine. Music Division. Right: Diaghilev and dancer Olga Khokhlova (better known as the first wife of Pablo Picasso) in 1928. Music Division.
The man behind this achievement was the Russian impresario and entrepreneur Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929), who had the wisdom, imagination, shrewdness and, most importantly, the ruthlessness required to nourish an artistic enterprise that revolutionized art, music and dance.
Born in Perm, Russia, Diaghilev studied law at St. Petersburg University and enrolled in the conservatory to study composition. In 1905, he mounted an exhibition of Russian portrait painting in St. Petersburg. The following year, he brought a major exhibition of Russian art to the Salon d’Automne in Paris. In 1907, he presented five concerts of Russian music in Paris, and in 1908 mounted a production of “Boris Godunov” starring Fedor Chaliapin at the Paris Opera. In 1909 he presented dance along with opera, which established Diaghilev as a ballet impresario. The company included the best young Russian dancers, among them Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. The opening night of the 1909 Saison Russe at the Théâtre du Châtelet on May 19, 1909, was a sensation.
Diaghilev commissioned ballet music from composers such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, whose international career was launched by Diaghilev. In 1910, he commissioned his first score from Stravinsky, “The Firebird.” Other Stravinsky works for the Ballets Russes included “Petrouchka,” “Le Sacre du Printemps,” “Pulcinella” and “Les Noces.” Other collaborators with the Ballets Russes included the artists Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Natalia Goncharova and Pablo Picasso.
Left: Alexandra Danilova and Léonide Massine as cancan dancers in “La Boutique Fantasque,” 1919. Massine joined the Ballets Russes as dancer and chief choreographer from 1915-1920. Right: The program from “Firebird,” 1910. Music Division.
The grand epoch of the Ballets Russes came to a close on Aug. 19, 1929, when Diaghilev died in Venice. Left without an heir to its founder, the Ballets Russes ceased to exist. Its dancers and choreographers dispersed and formed other companies that crisscrossed the world for the next 30 years, but none exerted the creative influence of the original Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev.
Serge Diaghilev and His World:
A Centennial Celebration of Diaghilev’s
Ballets Russes, 1909–1929
The Collections
This exhibition draws from the rich collections of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, including the Bronislava Nijinska Collection; Serge Diaghilev/Serge Lifar Collection; Serge Grigoriev/Ballets Russes Collection; the Alexandra Danilova Collection; Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Fund Collection; and the Spivacke Fund Collection. Nijinska, sister
of the legendary Ballets Russes member Vaslav Nijinsky,
was also a dancer and a choreographer for the company.
