VIDEO REVIEWS

Edited by Leslie Andersen

〫
THE ART OF THE BALLETS RUSSES CAPTURED:
RECONSTRUCTED BALLET PERFORMANCES ON VIDEO
By Eftychia Papanikolaou

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 to-
gether 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 mo-
nopolized the audiences’ attention for almost two decades. More than
simply being a ballet company, it promoted and facilitated the interac-
tion 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, choreogra-
phers and visual artists that included George Balanchine (1904–1983),
Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950), Tamara Karsavina (1885–1978), Mikhail
Fokine (1880–1942), Léonide Massine (1896–1979), Léon 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 & Chloë), Claude Debussy ( Jeux), Richard Strauss
( Josephslegende), Erik Satie (Parade), Manuel de Falla, Sergei Prokofiev,
Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and, of course, Igor Stravinsky. The lat-
ter’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

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of the otherworldly and the supernatural. The geography of European

ballet history in the later part of the nineteenth century makes for a fas-
cinating 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 sus-
tain the public’s taste for the exotic and the extravagant (which, interest-
ingly 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 se-
ries 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 jour-
nal 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 Léon Bakst, he put on art exhibi-
tions 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 artis-
tic 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

1. It may not be a coincidence that in 1910, the year that also saw the premiere of the Firebird,
Diaghilev chose to reintroduce Giselle to the French public, almost seventy years after its Parisian pre-
miere, but this time with a new choreography by Fokine and with Karsavina in the title role. Diaghilev
certainly meant to pay tribute to ballet’s French heritage in the 1920s—when avant-gardism was spiraling
out of control in the company, he chose to revisit Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty (this time renamed as The
Sleeping Princess), with additional choreography by Nijinska and new sets and costumes by Bakst.
566 Notes, March 2008

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 con-
vey 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 aes-
thetic: 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’ move-
ments, 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 jetés 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
Video Reviews 567

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 produc-
tion at the Mariinsky). In 1907 Fokine had also created for her the Dying
Swan, a captivating solo on Saint-Saëns’s music, which became her signa-
ture 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 danger-
ous 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 pop-
ularized by Petipa, but Fokine is nonetheless able to insert subtle but im-
portant elements of his own aesthetic into the frame of this very tradi-
tional form. For example, he “fragments” Petipa’s symmetrical approach
to the ensemble, while the soloists are allowed to also participate in it
with more freedom. Benois’s backdrop setting of a ruined monastery
cannot but add a note of irony: the Sylphides remain part of the roman-
tic tradition but they also seem to have been emancipated. The video
performance is solid and full of grace, directed expertly for television au-
diences by the experienced Brian Large. It is hard to believe that only a
year later modernist aspirations would sweep the artists of the Ballets
Russes and land them in uncharted territories. Les Sylphides is also a re-
minder that the company included primarily dancers and choreogra-
phers who were steeped in ballet’s classical tradition—which makes their

2. An unauthorized video of Pavlova dancing the Swan may be viewed on the Web at http://
youtube.com/watch?v=PoClZ9ekGCk (accessed 21 November 2007), a testament to the incredible
achievements of that dancer.
568 Notes, March 2008

accomplishments all the more extraordinary. One wishes that a recon-

struction of Le pavillon d’Armide could be found on video. Benois’s 1907
Mariinsky production exemplified an artistic breakthrough—Versailles
never looked more historically accurate or elegantly represented on the
stage, as evident from the sources, and it enjoyed great success with
Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes.

ENTER NIJINSKY

1910 was a year of firsts for the Ballets Russes. In addition to a new
production on the music of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Schéhérazade, the season
saw the first ever ballet created on music commissioned specifically for a
Ballet Russes performance and based on a Russian theme: Stravinsky’s
Firebird. It was the only one of Fokine’s ballets that was hailed as the
product of true collaboration among the artists involved. Mutual under-
standing seemed to not always work out among the artists of the Ballets
Russes—an attitude that would be made even more obvious in later
years. In spite of disagreements and misunderstandings, however,
Diaghilev’s productions seemed to have an amazing degree of coherence
and integrity, in spite of occasional lack of collaboration. Garafola rightly
argues that it was not a collaborative spirit that held together Diaghilev’s
works, but rather “the community of values to which their contributing
artists subscribed” (Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, p. 45).
Schéhérazade owes its opulent orientalism to Bakst’s lavish sets and cos-
tumes and, above all, Fokine’s choreography. The sensuality of
Schéhérazade is magnificently captured in the Kirov Ballet’s production of
the ballet (Kultur D2918 [2002], DVD). In his photos as the Golden
Slave, Nijinsky exhibits an aura of eroticism probably never seen before in
ballet literature. Similarly, Farukh Ruzimatov is seductively appealing in
the Kirov production, while Svetlana Zakharova’s tall, lean and expressive
body is reminiscent of that of Ida Rubinstein’s in her photos in the role of
Schéhérazade (Zobeide) that she created.3 Their sensuous twelve-minute
pas de deux, danced almost barefoot and with incredible freedom of the
upper body, elegant and free of stale choreographic conventions, is in-
dicative of the reasons why exotic subject matters seemed to suit Fokine’s
historically informed (or, magnificently imagined) choreography.
Nijinsky and Rubinstein’s dance was immortalized in George Barbier’s
pochoir plates (stencils) included in his series of Designs on the Dances of
Vaslav Nijinsky (translated from the French by C. W. Beaumont and pub-

3. Ida Rubinstein would later commission Debussy’s Le martyre de Saint Sebastien, Ravel’s Bolero, and
Stravinsky’s Le baiser de la fée.
Video Reviews 569

lished in London in 1913).4 Barbier worked as a costume and set de-

signer for the Ballets Russes, and was inspired by Nijinsky’s dancing to
create this series of magnificent art deco prints; those of Schéhérazade
capture Nijinsky’s feline sensuality and Rubinstein’s iconic glamour. In
Fokine’s choreography, the Golden Slave bursts onto the stage with raw
physical energy, and he “ravishes” rather than “court[s] his mistress,”
Garafola remarks; “sex incarnate, Fokine’s erotic primitive did onstage
what respectable men could only do in fantasy” (Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes,
p. 33). In the orgy scene that ensues, the dancers’ bodies contort and
convulse in ecstasy, as if “Fokine’s crowds replicated the paroxysm of rev-
olution itself,” Garafola continues. Watch the last six minutes of the bal-
let, as scimitars clash, dead bodies pile up (including that of the Golden
Slave), and the eponymous heroine takes her own life. The music may
not be reflective at all times of the plot, and its arbitrary repetitions to fit
the story line can be distracting (after all, Fokine had to work from a pre-
existing score). But the sumptuously reconstructed Bakst sets and cos-
tumes, the unprecedented sexual energy implied in Fokine’s choreogra-
phy, and the overall faithful performance of the Kirov Ballet are a great
testament to the original production’s appeal.
Not recommended, but carrying its own appeal, is the Schéhérazade cin-
ematic version included in the “Return of the Firebird,” the second of
the DVD set titled The Magic of Russian Ballet (Philips 074 307-3 6 PH3
[2004]). The sets and costumes are only “based on” Bakst’s originals,
and Fokine’s plot line has been retouched. The harem could have easily
been inspired by Jean L. Gerome’s 1889 painting Harem Pool, or Ingres’s
more orientalist Odalisque with slave (1840). In this version, the ballet was
adapted to create a sumptuous orientalist fantasy caught on film rather
than to film a faithful stage performance of the ballet. Consequently, it
has none of the vigor and passion of a live dance, it is way too refined, re-
sembling those operas on film where singers lip-synch their prerecorded
voices—the camera is free to move around and make use of several cine-
matic tricks, but the link that connects the reaction of the human body
to the music is lost. Andris Liepa, the Russian ballet superstar who also
dances the role of Shakhriar, has directed all three films on the “Return
of the Firebird” DVD (more details about his versions of Firebird and
Petrushka below). I would recommend this performance only for its en-
tertaining value, but not as an alternative to the Kirov’s faithful recon-
struction of Schéhérazade.

4. In an online rare-book source, the original edition sells for $7,500.

570 Notes, March 2008

FIREBIRD

Stravinsky wrote the score for Firebird, his first “Russian” ballet,
Alexander Golovin provided the sets and costumes (with additional cos-
tumes by Bakst), and Fokine, who originally conceived the choreography
for Pavlova, had to tailor it to the new female star of the company,
Tamara Karsavina. With the exception of Thamar, this would be the com-
pany’s last ballet that featured a female lead. Bakst designed the cos-
tumes for both the Firebird and the Tsarevna, and the difference, sym-
bolic of their fairy-tale characters, could not be more pronounced. The
appropriately bashful Tsarevna is wearing a white dress, with a few color-
ful splashes of sparkling embroidery that perfectly indicate her royal
heritage. At least three different designs for the Firebird’s costume by
Bakst exist, all wonderful essays in visual orientalism: free-flowing pieces
of red, orange, and yellow fabric ornamented with feathers, ornate
bracelets in the forearms, long braids running down the headpiece and,
in one famous sketch, a plunging V-neckline for the top of costume—the
Other cannot but be voluptuously portrayed.5
Photos of Karsavina as the Firebird wearing Bakst’s costume are the
sole evidence of Bakst’s realized inspiration. After his and Golovin’s sets
were destroyed in a fire, the Ballets Russes revived the ballet for the 1926
performances in London, with sets and costumes redesigned by Natalia
Gontcharova. It is this later production, rather than the original by Bakst
and Golovin, that is now traditionally used in reconstructed perfor-
mances of the ballet, including the one by the Kirov on DVD (Kultur
D2918 [2002]). Koshchei and his kingdom’s monsters are similarly exag-
gerated in the Gontcharova-inspired Kirov production, dressed in the
most atrociously-looking masks and costumes, acquiring almost cartoon-
ish characteristics. Golovin’s fanciful costumes for the petrified warriors
who come to life after the dissolution of Koshchei’s enchantments,
survive in the end of the Kirov production of the Firebird. The daylight
that gradually emerges from the background and symbolically salutes
the victory of good over evil, seems to parallel precisely the arrival of
diatonicism—night and chromaticism being old-fashioned markers of
evil and the supernatural, as Stravinsky’s score clearly demonstrates.
Interestingly, in Fokine’s choreography only the Other, the supernat-
ural Firebird dances on pointe and even a quasi-traditional pas de deux
with Prince Ivan. Amazingly enough, it is their encounter, replete with
erotic overtones, that stays memorable and overpowers his trifle dance

5. It is of interest to note that, the Tsarevna in Bakst’s designs is a brunette, whereas two of the three
DVD productions under discussion feature a fair-skinned, blond-haired dancer. One can only imagine
what the producers of Shrek would have done with such fertile ground for parody.
Video Reviews 571

with the Tsarevna, in which the ensemble of young girls, all imprisoned
princesses in Kashchei’s magic garden, also participate. Mime and acting
constitute an important part of Fokine’s choreographic language, and
the Kirov Ballet’s reconstruction again showcases not only amazingly tal-
ented dancers but also the group’s sincerity to its past. Golovin’s surviv-
ing sketches for the sets of Koshchei’s magic kingdom sparkle with exotic
colors, and one wishes that one day a company will undertake the recon-
struction of his and Bakst’s original production.
The Royal Ballet’s production of Firebird (Opus Arte OA 0833 D
[2002], DVD) provides an equally enticing version of Gontcharova’s pro-
duction, filmed live at Covent Garden. Unlike the Kirov’s production,
one is here constantly reminded that this is filmed onstage, since the bal-
let is shot entirely from orchestra-level cameras. I tend to prefer the
Kirov performance for its dramatic qualities, although I find that the
scene where Ivan steals and breaks the egg containing Koshchei’s soul is
much more beautifully synchronized with the music, almost in a “mickey-
mousing” way. A nice feature of the Opus Arte DVD is that, during the
orchestral introduction of the ballet, we are able to read a summary of
the story on the screen, before frozen frames from respective places of
the ballet’s performance. Since this is a live performance one assumes
that this feature was produced specifically for home audiences. The DVD
also comes with a booklet that contains summaries and information in
three languages (English, French, and German).
I have to admit that I find Andris Liepa’s cinematic adaptation of the
Firebird in the “Return of the Firebird” extremely enticing. The Firebird,
emerging from a misty set, makes an entrance with jumps initially filmed
in slow motion. With the ability for close-ups and a greater attention to
detail (Ivan is actually holding a bow and arrow and is realistically shown
to target the Firebird), Liepa’s Firebird turns out to be a real treat. Nina
Ananiashvili as the Firebird is exceptionally expressive, exaggerating
every body twist and contortion indicated in Fokine’s choreography. The
ending, where bright light usually floods the stage for the wedding of the
Tsarevna and Ivan, is filmed in a blaze of dazzling light that can only be
compared to the astonishing deluge of color in the Wizard of Oz. Only
here one also might wish for the Firebird to come back, since her magi-
cal world is a lot more alluring than the happily-ever-after ending of the
story.
THE SAD PIERROT

The success of the Firebird brought Stravinsky immediate recognition,

and Diaghilev was quick to capitalize on the young composer’s talent. He
commissioned a second ballet, and Stravinsky started working on an idea
572 Notes, March 2008

that would later become Le sacre du printemps. It was interrupted by an im-

pulse to compose a “sort of Konzertstück,” as he later wrote, “an orchestral
piece in which the piano would play the most important part.” Diaghilev
detected the dramatic possibilities in Stravinsky’s music and persuaded
him to rework it as a ballet. Soon Stravinsky had a title: Petrushka, whom
he described as “the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all
countries.” Moving away from the world of fairy tales and into Russian
folklore, Stravinsky saw in the Slavic counterpart of Punch, Pierrot, and
Pagliacco not the happy commedia dell’arte character, but the essence
of a suffering soul. By making him a doll he dehumanized him even fur-
ther, to the point where the line between Petrushka the doll and
Petrushka as a living being is constantly blurred. One need only look at
Picasso’s Seated Pierrot of 1918 to realize that, modernism detected in the
“theme of Pierrot, the poet [i.e., artist] beleaguered and betrayed by
philistine society,” as Garafola notes—an idea also dear to symbolist
artists. It is no coincidence that Picasso’s famous painting of Three
Musicians (1921) is nothing but a cubist trope on the idea of the artists
“boxed in” their quasi-commedia dell’arte masked personas.
The first performance of Petrushka, given on 13 June 1910 at the
Théâtre du Châtelet, was tremendously successful. Benois, who had col-
laborated with the composer on the scenario, provided the sets and
costumes, with an ingenious choreography by Michel Fokine. Tamara
Karsavina was the Ballerina, Alexandre Orlov, the Moor, Enrico
Cecchetti, the Magician, and the incomparable Vaslav Nijinsky danced
the title role. A semblance of that performance is captured in a few pho-
tos and, especially, in the animated poses of Nijinsky in Petrushka’s cos-
tume. In my opinion, nobody came as close to embodying Nijinsky’s
spirit as Rudolf Nureyev did—and for that reason his performance of
Petrushka with the Joffrey Ballet (Nonesuch A52015 [1998], VHS) is ex-
emplary of the remarkable technique that, admittedly, both dancers had
in common.
The video, appropriately subtitled “Tribute to Nijinsky,” opens with a
three-minute commentary by Nureyev on Nijinsky’s art, and also in-
cludes a short documentary on the legendary dancer’s life and career.
(Similarly, small documentaries, featuring pictures from the original per-
formances with Nijinsky, precede the performances of Le spectre de la rose
and L’après-midi d’un faune on the video.) When, to the astonishment of
the crowd, the three puppets come to life and engage in the exuberant
Dance russe, Nureyev’s body also comes to life. It is the second tableau,
however, illustrating Petrushka’s anguish, where Nureyev seems to make
every single muscle of his body pulsate in distress. The Joffrey Ballet’s
version of the story (or, Nureyev’s?) adheres to a definitive interpretation
Video Reviews 573

to the ending of the puppet: as Petrushka’s ghost appears on the theater

roof, he mocks the magician with provocative gestures and mimes his tri-
umph with hands stretched upward, symbolic of his victory, before his
lifeless body inevitably collapses. I admit that I have a slight fondness for
the ending that the Paris Opéra Ballet presents in its reconstruction:
instead of simply symbolizing Petrushka’s victory over the magician,
Petrushka’s last appearance continues to scream helplessness. His final
“cry” seems to be less victorious and more evident of the cyclical nature
of the story. This scene has often met with a gasp by my students, at the
unexpected nature of the ending.
The Paris Opéra Ballet’s Petrushka (Elektra Entertainment 40159-3
[1990], VHS) also has an incredible cast. Although Thierry Mongne’s
Petrushka may not carry the depth of Nureyev’s performance, it
nonetheless appears to be more suited to the character. Nureyev’s mus-
cular build looks less flexible at times, whereas Mongne’s tall and lean
figure truly looks the part. The music’s metric and rhythmic irregularity
is perfectly evoked in the jerky motions of the dancer’s body. I find it
hard to take my eyes off of Mongne’s jerking limbs that, I believe, come
as close as humanly possible to those of a wooden puppet.
Liepa’s cinematic version of Petrushka is wonderful for its imaginative
direction and liberties that only a filmed reconstruction is allowed to
take. For example, the opening of the ballet at the Shrovetide fair in
St. Petersburg is full of lovely realistic touches; the merrymaking is de-
picted in the crowd, but all those unrelated characters (dancers, musi-
cians, coachmen, wet nurses, masked revelers, peasants, merchant,
Gypsies, and Cossacks) are caught in briefly highlighted moments that
reveal their individuality. The second tableau, in Petrushka’s room, mar-
velously highlights the character’s despondency by mirroring his angular
moves on a reflective floor. Petrushka is also seen eavesdropping on the
Moor’s encounter with the Ballerina in the third tableau, a delicate
touch on Petrushka’s tormented soul. And finally, I find the ending re-
ally touching, as the ghost of Petrushka appears on the roof of theater:
the last sound of the trumpet leaves a terrifying silence, during which the
camera shifts sharply, possibly mimicking the angular movement of the
suspended puppet, his body still swinging in the air.
NIJINSKY’S SPECTRE

In April of 1911, Nijinsky had already scored his first triumph of the
season in Monte Carlo, as the Spirit of the Rose in Diaghilev’s produc-
tion of Le spectre de la rose. Jean Cocteau, who had created the poster
for the Ballet’s 1911 season, insightfully highlighted the character’s am-
biguous persona. Nijinsky’s petal-covered headpiece and costume are
574 Notes, March 2008

immortalized in pictures that underscore the androgynous nature of the

spirit. Fokine’s choreography is similarly vague: the spirit appears to be
in constant motion. As Nureyev characteristically remarks on the Joffrey
Ballet production, when people talk about Le spectre de la rose they talk
about the final jump through the frame of an open window; the jump
“takes probably two seconds; but what you do with the other nine-and-a-
half minutes . . . [is what counts].” Although, I would say, in his case,
Nureyev makes everything count.
Another beautifully reconstructed performance of the Bakst-Fokine
production may be found on the Paris Opéra Ballet video, exuberantly
danced by Manuel Logris. Additionally, in The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky
DVD, Le spectre de la rose receives an exemplary interpretation by Igor
Kolb. His final jump is so spectacular that the audience in this live per-
formance erupts in applause before the young girl has the chance to
awaken from her sleep for the ballet’s conclusion. Although in this ballet
Fokine uses steps that are associated with classical bravura dancing, he
infuses a restless momentum in the protagonist’s movement that defies
academicism. “Dancing is the poetry of motion,” he remarked in 1904,
and his Spectre is a valuable miniature that presents us with its essence.

TRIBUTE TO A FAUN
Nijinsky continues to fascinate and excite. His dance has never been
captured on video, yet his technique, elevation, power, and stage pres-
ence are legendary. Even if he had never choreographed anything, his
name would have entered the annals of ballet history. We owe Diaghilev
for having pushed his younger lover and protégé to try his hand in
choreographing. To create his first ballet, Nijinsky was inspired by the
Prélude à “L’après-midi d’un faune,” Claude Debussy’s 1894 instrumen-
tal composition based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un
faune (1876). As the originator of the symbolist movement in literature,
Mallarmé sought to experiment with ambiguity through language, to
evoke rather than to define. His Faun is a mythological creature of the
forest that is half man half animal, and the poem’s story is loosely based
on the Greek myth of Pan and Syrinx. The Faun awakes in the woods
and tries to remember whether he was successful at seducing the
nymphs. At the end of the poem he goes back to sleep, without really
ever knowing whether or not it was but a dream. Nijinsky picked up on
the vague eroticism of the story and exaggerated the main character’s
implicit sexuality. The sensuality evoked in the archaic landscape of clas-
sical Greece acted as a liberating force for numerous modernist artists,
and Nijinsky can certainly count among them.
Nureyev’s Faun is ravishing. Viewers willing to suspend their disbelief,
may find themselves among visions of Nijinsky’s Faun while watching
Video Reviews 575

Nureyev in Joffrey Ballet’s “Tribute to Nijinsky” (note also the appear-

ance of Robert Joffrey in the informative documentary that precedes the
performance). Thanks to Baron Adolf de Meyer’s series of photos that
captured his elusive movements, now we have at least twenty-five pictures
that document Nijinsky’s lost choreography. De Meyer, a fashion photog-
rapher of the era’s celebrities for Vogue and Vanity Fair, took the series
of portraits immediately after the 1912 premiere. Together with the in-
credible work of Ann Hutchinson Guest, who reconstructed the choreog-
raphy from Nijinsky’s own notebooks and idiosyncratic dance notation,
a reconstruction of the ballet became a reality in the 1980s. (Ann
Hutchinson Guest and Claudia Jeschke, Nijinsky’s ‘Faune’ Restored: Vaslav
Nijinsky’s 1915 Dance Score Translated into Labnotes [Philadelphia: Gordon
and Breach, 1991].) Against the fluid, rhapsodic language of Debussy’s
music, Nijinsky juxtaposes a colorful but flat set, created in layers by
Bakst in order to avoid any sense of three-dimensionality. Similarly, the
nymphs appear statuesque and in blocks, with a two-dimensional freeze-
like movement, reminiscent of ancient vase designs. These movements
break every rule of classical dancing. Nijinsky’s choreography does not
clash with the music’s fluidity, but rather balances it out. His characters
do not exude the kind of emotional drama we encounter in Arnold
Böcklin’s Faun and Nymph painting of 1856; they are rather influenced by
the antique austerity and “noble simplicity” that characterized Isadora
Duncan’s pioneering contemporary dance at the turn of the twentieth
century.
Mallarmé’s ambiguity is still there, as is Debussy’s floating unresolved
harmonies. The end finds the Faun not perplexed about the nature of
his visions but intoxicated with passion. For Nijinsky it presented an easy
solution: the Faun had to release his sexual desire using the Nymph’s
scarf, the only real indication of his unresolved pathos. The audience re-
volted and a scandal erupted. The title “Un faux pas” headed the ballet’s
review on the following day’s publication of Le figaro; and Nijinsky’s
Faun, a role he revisited seven more times that season and performed at
least fifty more times around the world until 1917, became the stuff of
legend. Auguste Rodin, fifty years his senior and already enamored of
Duncan’s art, defended Nijinsky and immortalized his Faun in an exquis-
itely modernist bronze sculpture. Almost sixty years had to pass before
Nijinsky’s vision would finally find its greatest champion. Nureyev’s Faun
is superbly danced, acted, and mimed, and the ending is electrifying. He
lays down the scarf in an almost ritualistic fashion, kisses it, lies on top of
it, his body jerks in an animalistic manner, he gives out a silent cry, and
lies in a final repose.
The reconstruction performed by Paris Opéra Ballet’s star Charles
Jude is equally magnificent. It is worth noting that Jude, a longtime
576 Notes, March 2008

friend and protégé of Nureyev’s, learned the role from Massine, the
dancer-choreographer who ended up replacing Nijinsky in the Ballets
Russes. In a rare piece of archival material, included in “Revoir Nijinsky
Danser,” this exact moment is shown on tape, as well as Jude in turn
teaching the role of the Faun to the dancers of the Opera of Bordeaux,
the company he ended up leading after 1996.6 Jude is appropriately sen-
sual and seductive, although the ending seems to be curiously more re-
fined than that of his mentor’s, even a bit sanitized compared with the
overt sensuousness that Nureyev exudes.

PERFORMING RITES
The following year saw the creation of Nijinsky’s second ballet for the
Ballets Russes, set to a commissioned score by Debussy. Jeux, with designs
and costumes by Bakst, premiered on 15 May 1913 at the Théâtre des
Champs-Elysées, and inaugurated a fashion for contemporary subjects.
Nijinsky’s stylization reached it apogee and the plot’s erotic ambiguity
(two women and a young male tennis player engage in a flirtatious
game) might have been too explicit for the pre-war audiences. In the
words of Nijinsky from his Diary, “Jeux is the life of which Diaghilev
dreamed. He wanted to have two boys as lovers. He often told me so, but
I refused. In the ballet, the two girls represent the two boys and the
young man is Diaghilev. I changed the characters as love between three
men could not be represented on stage.” Millicent Hodson and Kenneth
Archer’s 1996 reconstruction for Verona Ballet (also performed by the
Joffrey Ballet of Chicago in 2001) has never been made available on
video.
The year 1912 did not witness any new collaboration with Stravinsky,
but in many ways the season paved the way for the events that sur-
rounded the infamous performance of Le sacre du printemps. Nijinsky had
taken choreography into his own hands and at the same time he moved
decidedly away from the decorative roles that he had been famous for
creating. At the same time, the emancipation of his artistic vision found
fertile ground in the ballet that became synonymous with dance and mu-
sical modernism. Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps premiered less than
two weeks after Jeux, on 29 May 1913, on an unusually hot evening at the

6. Interestingly, Marius Petipa was principal dancer at the Grand-Théâtre of Bordeaux before leaving
for Russia, and Serge Lifar, future star of the Ballets Russes, visited it often. “Revoir Nijinsky Danser,” a
twenty-six-minute film by Hervé Nisic created under the auspices of the Musée d’Orsay, Artline Films,
and the Réunion des Musées, is out of print and has never been made available in the U.S. “The film ex-
plores Nijinsky’s possible sources in conceiving his ballet and his dance notation system. It tries to link
the Laban translation of Nijinsky’s score by [Ann] Hutchinson Guest to a possible recreation of the bal-
let with the Life forms software, widely used by Merce Cunningham” (e-mail communication with Hervé
Nisic, 1 October 2007).
Video Reviews 577

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and, depending on how one looks at it, it

either defied or fulfilled everyone’s expectations. Diaghilev was too good
an opportunist to let another good scandal (after the Faun) slip away.
Why else would Les Sylphides appear on the evening’s first part of the
program? What he probably did not count on was the severity of the
incident.
Choreography is ephemeral. At best, it is immortalized in precisely
recorded dance notation, at worst it survives only in the memory of those
present. The latter was the fate of Nijinsky’s work on Le sacre. For almost
twenty years, Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, arduous dance
archeologists, painstakingly gathered material scattered in archives, li-
braries, attics, and museums in order to reconstruct Nijinsky’s formida-
ble choreography and Roerich’s costumes. (Millicent Hodson, Nijinsky’s
Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for
“Le Sacre du printemps” [Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1996]). In 1987,
the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago had the honor of presenting Le sacre to
the world in its first ever revival since the 1913 premiere.7 And the world
noticed. The story of the reconstruction became the basis for a
handsomely-made half-hour documentary for PBS that preceded a full
performance of the work by the Joffrey Ballet. It was originally aired on
PBS and was never made commercially available. For a very long time
tapes circulated among friends who had friends whose friends had taped
the program. Recently, unauthorized digitized copies of the original air-
ing became available on the Web. For as long as there seems to be no in-
tention to release this exquisite material to the wider public, Nijinsky’s
creation seems to be destined to remain continuously elusive.
Those of us who have been lucky to watch the reconstruction, cannot
but feel awe and amazement—first at Hodson’s accomplishment and sec-
ondly at the unimaginably raw energy exuded on stage. The first part,
Adoration of the Earth, takes us back not only in time but also in space.
The spring celebrations begin, and music and dancers erupt in a ritualis-
tic frenzy. The percussive sounds form a perfect backdrop to the bizarre
story: prehistoric tribes choose a young girl to be sacrificed in order to
propitiate the deities, by—appropriately—dancing herself to death. I am
particularly partial to the second part, the Sacrifice, where young women
form mystical circles to choose their victim. The Chosen One starts trem-
bling vigorously; her knees shake, her body convulses; she hunches over
in the most unrefined poses; she grabs her leg in an effort to start the

7. In 1920, Léonide Massine presented it with his own stripped-down choreography in Paris. Nowadays
it forms part of the standard repertory for Kirov; most recently it was performed at the Teatro dell’Opera
in Rome, Italy, by the Rome Opera Ballet (together with Stravinsky’s Persephone) in March 2007.
578 Notes, March 2008

dance; the music’s dissonant qualities parallel her agony. As the dance
grows more violent and frenzied, the Chosen One falls exhausted; she is
dead, and the cycle of life can go on.

VIVA ESPAÑA

The War years found the Ballets Russes in deep financial and artistic
trouble. Unable to sustain a full season in Paris, they led a peripatetic ex-
istence that took them from Switzerland to Spain, New York, Rome, and
back to Paris. In the meantime, Fokine had left the group, and
Diaghilev’s personal and professional relationship with Nijinsky disinte-
grated the moment the latter married Romola de Pulsky in Buenos Aires
in September 1913. His heir, Léonide Massine, brought virtuosic artistry
(he was an extraordinary dancer), and a fresh air of new ideas. His choreo-
graphic ventures with the Ballets Russes included Les femmes de bonne
humeur (music by Domenico Scarlatti, 1917), Parade (Satie, 1917), La
boutique fantasque (Rossini, 1919), Le tricorne (Manuel de Falla, 1919), and
Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale (1920) and Pulcinella (1920). Of these,
only a recreation of Manuel de Falla’s Le tricorne exists on video (Picasso
and Dance, Kultur D2285 [2005], DVD), featuring sets and costumes by
Pablo Picasso. In fact, the entire ballet pays homage to Picasso’s native
Spain. Le tricorne was premiered on 22 July 1919 at the Alhambra Theatre
in London, with Massine himself in the role of the Miller, to showcase his
incredible technique.
The Three-Cornered Hat originated as a farsa mimica, a pantomime, pro-
duced in Madrid in 1917. It attracted the attention of Diaghilev, who
wished to turn it into a ballet. At his suggestion, Manuel de Falla, Spain’s
nationalist composer par excellence, revised the work to assume its present
guise as a ballet in two scenes.8 De Falla had already been established
both in his native country and in France with his opera La vida breve
(Life is Short, 1905), and the ballet El amor brujo (Love, the Sorcerer,
1915), works replete with an unmistakably Spanish flavor. Similarly, the
Three-Cornered Hat, saturated in vibrantly colorful orchestration, exuber-
ant dances, and mercurial rhythms, betray De Falla’s attempt to fuse na-
tional folk idioms with Western compositional techniques. The story is a
witty tale about the Corregidor (village magistrate) who wishes to seduce
the Miller’s wife. After many farcical moments, the Corregidor is finally
put in jail and ridiculed by his own people, an event that the villagers
celebrate with the final dance, an exuberant jota. The work abounds in

8. The same story had also served as the basis for Hugo Wolf ’s only complete opera, Der Corregidor
(1895).
Video Reviews 579

vibrant, boisterous dances like the fandango and the farruca, which,
although transferred to the orchestra, lose nothing of their authentic
Andalusian quality.
A three-minute documentary introduction in Picasso and Dance, featur-
ing photos of the collaborators, provides a summary introduction to the
DVD performance, although I would recommend that viewers first watch
the opening fifteen-minute documentary, an overview of all of Picasso’s
collaborations with the Ballets Russes. About four minutes through this
documentary, we learn that Diaghilev invited Picasso to work on Le tri-
corne immediately after his wedding to the former ballerina of the Ballets
Russes, at a time when the artist sought a return to his Spanish roots. To
capture a semblance of authenticity in the production, Diaghilev and
Massine traveled to Spain together in 1917 (a charming picture exists of
the two on donkeys carrying props for a performance of Schéhérazade,
with De Falla leading the way), and were introduced to the Gypsy dancer
Félix Fernández—also shown in a remarkable black-and-white clip danc-
ing a zapateado. Fernández was hired to introduce “the Russian [Massine]
to the secrets of Spanish national dance gesture and movement,” and we
immediately watch the transformation in short clips showing Massine
and the dancers of the Ballets Russes (in Picasso’s costumes and in
color!) rehearsing Le tricorne in fabulous Andalusian fashion.
In an analogous manner, Picasso’s set is “sun-baked and evening-
cooled,” to use a critic’s description, and the fancifully striped costumes
are stylized enough to still be able to convey local color. Among the jew-
els of Picasso’s imagination was the hand-brushed drop curtain he de-
signed, a fanciful tribute to Spain’s folklore. In an interesting twist, this
curtain (formerly owned by a French conglomerate) has been on display
at a major New York City restaurant since 1959, and in December 2005 it
was finally donated to the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which is
also responsible for its preservation (http://www.toprestaurants.com/
ny/fourseasons.htm [accessed 21 November 2007]). The DVD perfor-
mance of the Paris Opéra Ballet opens with a wonderful recreation of
Picasso’s curtain, to the sound of the castanets, hand-clapping, and can-
taores singing the cante jondo. The entire ballet is a feast for the eyes and
ears. From the beginning one can clearly see its origins as a pantomime—
the dancers have to act and mime in order to keep the farcical elements
of the plot alive. De Falla’s music, using a mixture of authentic songs and
dances, transplants us to the world of Spanish folklore. After the initial
comic episodes at the expense of the Corregidor, the ensemble arrives
on the stage with Picasso’s exquisitely curious costumes, dancing the
seguidillas. In the middle of the second scene, the Miller performs a dy-
namic farruca, a cante chico, the quintessential male “macho” dance. For
580 Notes, March 2008

the next three minutes the viewer is treated to an electrifying perfor-

mance by Kader Belarbi, the Paris Opéra Ballet’s premier danseur. It is re-
ported that De Falla wrote the music for the farruca shortly before the
ballet’s premiere, in order to give Massine the opportunity to showcase a
virtuoso solo display that would come very close to an actual improvisa-
tion. The music stops momentarily for the audience’s applause, only to
continue with the four-note opening motive of Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony (!)—fate knocks on the door and the police arrest the Miller.
After a series of farcical episodes that involve mistaken identities, the
Corregidor reappears in a ritual procession (this time in the form of a
life-size straw puppet), and receives his final humiliation, as the crowd
seizes him and tosses him up in the air—a gloss on the traditional tossing
of the pelele unforgettably portrayed by Francisco Goya in his 1792 paint-
ing El pelele. A brilliant jota sounds, an exuberant dance whose intensity
keeps growing as everyone joins in. The energy of this masterful recon-
struction is contagious, and one cannot resist tapping to De Falla’s music
even after the ballet ends.
Picasso, who had already collaborated with Massine and Cocteau on
Parade (1917), would go on to design the production of Stravinsky’s
Pulcinella (1920), Massine’s Mercure (1924, music by Erik Satie), and the
drop curtain for Le train bleu (1924), the second of the pair of ballets in-
cluded in this Picasso and Dance DVD. The opening documentary also
pays tribute to all of the above productions, and it is only fitting since, to
my knowledge, reconstructions of the other three ballets do not exist on
video.
LE TRAIN BLEU

Le train bleu marked the last collaboration between Bronislava Nijinska

and the Ballets Russes. Nijinska first joined Diaghilev’s company in 1910,
immediately after her brother, and, after a short career back in Russia,
she returned to the Ballets Russes in 1921 as producer and choreogra-
pher for the London production of The Sleeping Princess. In the years that
followed she created the choreography for Stravinsky’s Renard (1922)
and Les noces (1923), Poulenc’s Les biches (1924), and Auric’s Les fâcheux
(1924). Nijinska’s collaborators for Le train bleu form a veritable who-is-
who of contemporary Parisian art scene: Jean Cocteau wrote the sce-
nario, Darius Milhaud the music, Henri Laurens provided the sets,
Picasso added the curtain, and the couturiere Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel
created costumes that looked like they “might have come from her cus-
tomers’ wardrobes” (Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, p. 108). The bal-
let was premiered on 20 June 1924 at the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées
with Nijinska as the champion tennis player, Lydia Sokolova as La
Video Reviews 581

Perlouse, Anton Dolin, the company’s new star, as the swimming cham-
pion (Le Beau Gosse), and Leon Woizikowski as the golf player. The pro-
duction was for the first time revived in 1989, and saw only its second
reincarnation in 1992 by the Paris Opéra Ballet—which essentially con-
stitutes the production included on this DVD. The ballet is superbly
recreated and performed, a sincere tribute to an historic production.
The narrator of the opening documentary put it best when he remarks
that “Diaghilev was a master at fixing unlikely meetings leading to
sparkling partnerships.” Occasionally, however, they also led to clashing
relationships, as was the case with Nijinska and Cocteau in this work. In
Le train bleu “the salon has become a fashionable beach; the flappers and
athletes, sun-worshipping tarts and gigolos. Beginning with the title, in-
spired by the train that sped Paris pleasure-seekers from the Gare de
Lyon to the resorts of the Azure Coast, Le Train Bleu belonged to the
folklore of fashion. There was a tennis player . . . a golf player . . . a
bathing belle (La Perlouse), who emerged from a cabana with yards of
pink georgette [and] a ‘handsome kid’ (Le Beau Gosse), who per-
formed breathtaking acrobatic stunts” (Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes,
p. 108). Garafola’s eloquent description reflects exactly the experience
that the viewer has at the opening of the first scene—that, and the addi-
tion of Milhaud’s witty score. The music hall seems to have been trans-
planted onto the ballet stage, and the visual playfulness harkens back to
the pre-war carefree era. Simply put, the viewer is treated to twenty-five
minutes of sheer pleasure and entertainment. The extreme avant-
gardism that characterized the productions of the Ballets Russes in the
1910s, gave way to what Garafola calls “frivolity” in the 1920s. Diaghilev’s
“lifestyle modernism identified the new consumerist chic of the upper
class” (p. 115) and social and market-imposed privilege, but came at the
expense of losing the company’s own identity. The plot of Le train bleu
“adds up to nothing,” Diaghilev remarked; it is “not a ballet but a danced
operetta. It’s danced by the real Russian Ballet but has no connection
with it.” There is little wonder that this ironic observation concealed an
uncomfortable feeling that his role as the leader of the company more
and more was relegated to that of an observer.
PARADING MODERNISM

Explicitly modernist tendencies in the productions of the Ballets

Russes, already evident in the war-time ballets, reached a zenith in Parade
of 1917, Cocteau’s conception of an avant-garde trope on the tradition
of impromptu sketches performed at the entrance of fairground theaters
in eighteenth-century Paris. “Astonish me,” demanded Diaghilev, and
Cocteau responded with a work that, even ninety years after its genesis,
582 Notes, March 2008

does exactly that. With libretto by Cocteau, music by Erik Satie, choreog-
raphy by Massine, and designs by Picasso, Parade is regarded as a land-
mark collaboration that had enormous impact on the history of not only
dance, but also theater, art, and music. Satie’s music, replete with popu-
lar music styles, collage and parody, makes use of modernist aesthetics—
the score calls for sirens, car horns, pistol shots, typewriters, and lottery
wheels; Cocteau’s scenario borrows from futurism, Dadaism, and surreal-
ism; and Picasso’s larger-than-life (literally) cubist costumes form an ex-
travagant spectacle. It is a real pity that this iconic production, although
since revived by several companies, has never been captured on video.
Two-dimensional surviving photos and pictures of modern-day perfor-
mances give only a surface idea of the impressive, sculpture-like cos-
tumes by Picasso for the American and French Managers, the two char-
acters that embodied vulgarity and philistinism.
The postwar productions of the Ballets Russes in Paris reflected the di-
versity of styles and aesthetic approaches that revolutionized the artistic
world after 1914. I hope that the lack of reconstructions of these later
productions on video are not reflective of a lack of interest to document
some of the most important treasures that the ephemeral art of ballet
created in the twentieth century. The only remaining reconstruction
available on video also happens to be a milestone production, that of
Nijinska’s Les noces, to texts and music by Stravinsky and designs by
Natalia Gotcharova. Les noces was permiered on 13 June 1923 at the
Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique in Paris, although Stravinsky had originally
conceived of it about eleven years before, around the time when he was
working on Le sacre. Any interconnections between Les noces and Le sacre—
musically, choreographically, or narrative-wise—are interesting to detect,
especially given the wider historical, cultural, and artistic contexts that
the two works inhabit.
With Les noces Stravinsky returns momentarily to the roots of the com-
pany’s initial inspiration: Russian folklore. It depicts a Russian wedding
in four tableaux: “The Blessing of the Bride,” “The Blessing of the Bride-
groom,” “The Bride’s Departure from her Parents’ House,” and “The
Wedding Feast.” Stravinsky’s intention was, in his words, “not to repro-
duce the ritual of peasant weddings. I paid little heed to ethnological
considerations. My idea was to compose a sort of scenic ceremony, using
as I liked those ritualistic elements so abundantly provided by village cus-
toms which had been established for centuries in the celebration of
Russian marriages. I took my inspiration from those customs, but re-
served to myself the right to use them with absolute freedom. . . . I
wanted all my instrumental apparatus to be visible side by side with the
actors or dancers, making it, so to speak, a participant in the whole the-
Video Reviews 583

atrical action. For this reason, I wished to place the orchestra on the
stage itself, letting the actors move on the space remaining free. The fact
that the actors on the stage would wear uniform Russian-style costumes
while the musicians would be in evening dress not only did not embar-
rass me, but, on the contrary, was perfectly in keeping with my idea of a
divertissement of the masquerade type” (Robert Craft, Stravinsky:
Chronicle of a Friendship [New York, NY: Knopf, 1972]).
Neither production under review here adheres to Stravinsky’s original
vision. In both reconstructions—by the Paris Opéra Ballet (Elektra
Entertainment, 1991), and by the Royal Ballet (Opus Arte, 2002)—the
chorus, soloists, and orchestra are concealed from the viewer. In particu-
lar, the Paris Opéra Ballet’s production is filmed under studio conditions
and not in front of a live audience, whereas the Royal Ballet’s is a live
performance. In place of the traditional orchestra, now a chorus, singer
soloists, four pianos, and a wide array of percussion populate the Covent
Garden’s pit, and the four pianists are even acknowledged on the stage
at the end of the performance to receive a thunderous applause.
Another major difference between the two productions, however, may
impact the potential viewer’s decision to choose one version over the
other: the Paris Opéra Ballet performs the texts in a French translation,
while the Royal Ballet adheres to the original wedding lyrics in Russian,
as Stravinsky collected and set them to music. Both are brilliantly per-
formed and danced—Kader Belarbi, whom we previously saw in Le tri-
corne, assumes the role of the Bridegroom, and Elizabeth Platel creates
the role of the Bride for the Paris Opéra Ballet; these roles are danced
by David Pickering and Zenaida Yanowsky, respectively, in the Royal
Ballet production.
For the first time ever in Ballet Russes history, significant emphasis is
given on the corps de ballet. The marriage ceremony may involve the
bride and groom, but visually, musically, and choreographically the two
are seldom distinguished from the group. Nijinska wants us to focus on
the corps, as an extension of the main characters’ uniformity and lack of
individuality, accentuated by their geometrical mass movements and
blank facial expressions. As Drue Fergison remarks, the “look of the bal-
let, with its sculptural and architectural massings, stylized movements
from the vocabulary of Russian folk dance, and uniform brown and
white costumes inspired by Russian peasant dress, underscored the com-
munal, ritualistic, austere, and mechanistic aspects of both libretto and
score” (“Bringing Les Noces to the Stage,” in Lynn Garafola and Nancy
Van Norman Baer, eds., The Ballets Russes and Its World [New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999], 171). Feminist, political, or other interpretations
notwithstanding, the story of Les noces, with its emphasis on Russian
584 Notes, March 2008

folklore, harkens back to the original aesthetics of the Ballets Russes’s

focus on Russian traditions. If only for that reason, it forms a fitting per-
oration for an essay that began with an exploration of the company’s
Russian roots.
***
As Jean Cocteau eloquently put it, “rebellion is indispensable in art,
and . . . the creator always rebels against something if only instinctively—
in other words, that the spirit of creation is the highest form of the spirit
of contradiction.” In many ways, the rebellious nature of many of the
productions of the Ballets Russes during its last decade inevitably reflects
its underlying contradiction—that is, the desire for revolution for revolu-
tion’s sake rather than any preservation of a cohesive aesthetic. Diaghilev
continued to surround himself with some of the greatest minds of the
time, and provided the conduit for their artistic aspirations: Michel
Larionov, Juan Gris, Georges Braque, Georges Balanchine, Alicia
Markova, Anton Dolin, Serge Lifar, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Giorgio de
Chirico, and Georges Rouault, among others, lent their artistic vision to
the company’s later productions, in a kaleidoscopic fashion that, occa-
sionally, lacked an underlying reliable ideology. The fact that the major-
ity of ballet companies active after the Ballets Russes was disbanded in
1929 can trace part of their ancestry back to Diaghilev and his Ballets
Russes, is a testament to their unique place in history.
I was surprised to find out how little we still know about the majority of
the collaborations that resulted in the remarkable legacy of the Ballets
Russes. Trying to put together a course that placed an emphasis on both
the musical and visual aspects of the art of the Ballets Russes proved to
be more cumbersome than I had ever expected. The above musings pre-
sent a distillation of my efforts to offer my former students at Miami
University as complete a picture as possible of the Ballets Russes’s incom-
parable achievements—we all enjoyed it tremendously, and we continue
to learn.
VIDEOGRAPHY

American Ballet Theatre at the Met, Mixed Bill. DVD. Directed for television
and video by Brian Large. Includes Les Sylphides, Sylvia, Triad, Paquita.
West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 2003, 1984. D2024.
The Firebird and Les Noces. DVD. John Carewe / Orchestra and Chorus of
the Royal Opera House, Royal Ballet. [London]: Opus Arte, 2002. OA
0833 D.
The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky. DVD. Mikhail Agrest / Orchestra and Chorus
of the Mariinsky Theatre. Includes Shéhérazade, Le spectre de la rose,
Polovtsian Dances, Firebird. West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 2002. D2918.
Video Reviews 585

The Magic of Russian Ballet. DVD. 1. Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker; 2. Return

of the Firebird: Stravinsky, Firebird and Petrushka, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Schéhérazade; 3. Essential Ballet: Kirov Ballet Gala at Covent Garden,
London, and Russian Ballet Gala, Red Square, Moscow. [London]:
Philips, 2004, 1992. 074 307-3 6 PH3.
Nureyev and the Joffrey Ballet in Tribute to Nijinsky. VHS. Terence Kern /
National Philharmonic Orchestra. Includes Petrouchka, Le spectre de la
rose, L’après-midi d’un faune. New York: Nonesuch, 1998, 1981. A52015.
Paris Dances Diaghilev. VHS. Michel Tabachnik / Orchestra of the Paris
Opera. Four works of the Ballets Russes, Petrouchka, Les noces, Le spectre
de la rose, L’après-midi d’un faune, recreated in their original sets, cos-
tumes and choreography, performed by the Paris Opera Ballet as a
tribute to Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev. New York: Elektra Entertain-
ment, 1990. 40159-3.
Picasso and Dance. DVD. Includes Le tricorne, Le train bleu. David Coleman
/ Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux, Paris Opera Ballet. With a
bonus film, “The Story of a Marriage,” a documentary about Picasso
and his wife Olga Koklova. West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 2005, 1994.
D2285.

BRIEFLY NOTED

By Leslie Andersen
The Plow That Broke the Plains and
The River. DVD. Written and directed
by Pare Lorentz. Music by Virgil
Thomson. [United States]: Naxos,
2007. 2.110521. $19.99.
Arguably two of the most important doc-
umentary films of the twentieth century,
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and
The River (1937), have been beautifully re-
stored on this DVD. The scores by Virgil
Thomson, whose original soundtracks were
damaged beyond repair, have been nicely
realized by the Post-Classical Ensemble con-
ducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Expert nar-
ration is provided by Floyd King.
These first film scores by Thomson (he
was to compose some six others including
Louisiana Story, which won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1948), are considered by many to
be among his finest work. His utilization in
the scores of musical Americana, including
hymn tunes, cowboy songs, and “white spir-
ituals” (traditional folk tunes from the
British Isles) anticipates the work of Aaron
Copland. In fact, it can be argued that
Copland’s landmark score for a similar doc-
umentary, The City (1939), would never
have existed but for Thomson’s work in
these films.
The DVD includes several extras includ-
ing interviews with documentary film-
maker, George Stoney about both films;
composer, friend, and colleague of
Thomson’s Charles Fussell, interviewed by
artistic director Joseph Horowitz; and a
rare audio interview of Thomson himself.
Although the music itself seems to have
been recorded a bit too low, the perfor-
mance by the Post-Classical Ensemble is
first-rate and the entire DVD presentation
is a boon for both the documentary film
repertoire and devotees of the music of
Virgil Thomson.
Strings Attached: Sarod & Cello. DVD.
Performed by Amaan Ali Khan,
Matthew Barley, Ayaan Ali Khan and
others. [England]: Navras, 2006, 2002.
NRDVD 513-N. $19.98.