Russian Music History or Russian Ballet History

Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

Perhaps one of the greatest influences on Russian ballet was Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes from 1909 until his death in 1929. The Ballets Russes made an incredible impact on the world of ballet, spreading like wildfire from France to London, and later to America, and encompassing such legends as Nijinsky, Massine and Balanchine, as well as many other leading European composers and artists of the period. Thanks to Diaghiliv and his regisseur Serge Grigoriev, we now have the beauty of such ballets as Les Sylphides, The Firebird and Petrushka.

Serge Diaghilev was born of Russian nobility in Perm, Russia, on March 19, 1872. In 1890 his family moved to Saint Petersburg, and at the university there, Diaghilev was supposed to study law, but he soon became enamored with the arts and realized that was where his future lie. Shortly after entering the university, Diaghilev left school and became immersed in the world of art and dance in Saint Petersburg (Chochran). In 1899, together with some friends, Diaghilev founded an art journal called Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), which continued to be published until 1905. Also that year, Diaghilev joined the administration of the Imperial Theatres as artistic advisor and produced a number of ballets and operas (Fowler and Atkinson "A Tribute to Serge Diaghilev").

Prior to Diaghilev's advent onto the scene of ballet, dance in Russia tended to be very romantic. Marie Taglioni, though not from Russia, was very popular in La Sylphide (1832), as was Australian dancer Fanny Essler in Le Diable Boiteux (1836). During this time in Russia, a Frenchman named Marius Petipa was the chief choreographer of the Imperial Russian Ballet. Under his direction, the ballet became a full-length, evening-long story, combining mimed scenes and set dances. His best-known works are The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and Swan Lake, co-choreographed with Lev Ivanov and set to the music of Peter Tchaikovsky (Tsiounis).

Diaghilev felt that the ballet needed a big change, but because his ideas were considered unconventional in Russia, Diaghilev was forced to take his ideas elsewhere. In 1909, he took his troupe of Russian dancers and singers to Paris, and there, the Ballets Russes was born. Besides Paris, the Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev appeared in London, other European cities, and America. Diaghilev made it a point of recruiting the very best dancers, including Nijinsky (Fowler and Atkinson "Diaghilev"). The talent of Nijinsky attracted attention that was in itself quite revolutionary because male dancers had fallen from favor in France.

The list of people associated with the Ballets Russes reads like a "Who's Who" list of the art world: George Balanchine, Michel Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, Leonide Massine, and Tamara Toumanova, among many others. His designers included Picasso and Matisse, and those who composed for him included Debussy, Milhaud, Ravel, and Stravinsky (Cochran).

Several factors contributed to the success of the Ballets Russes. First, Russian ballet was so very different and vital compared to the traditional French ballet, and that difference alone made a huge impact on society. Second, Michel Fokine, father of the plotless ballet and Diaghilev's main choreographer, was a genius whose talent would have made him an immense success in Russia had it not been for the control and entrenchment of Russian companies. Third, Diaghilev had the uncanny ability to spot talent; he was first and foremost a showman with the ability to gauge exactly what his audiences wanted to see. Although his ballets may seem old-fashioned to us now, they were very different and exotic for their time, and for that reason alone, were very influential on the future and history of ballet (Souche).

Diaghilev's ballets are some of the most important works ever created. Numbering more than 60, the most well-known include Les Sylphides (1909), The Firebird (1910), Le Spectre de la Rose (1911), Petroushka (1911), Afternoon of a Faun (1912), The Rite of Spring (1913), The Song of the Nightingale (1920), Apollo (1928), and Prodigal Son (1929). The life and death of an individual ballet is often as short as that of the phoenix, but many of Diaghilev's ballets are still performed even to this day.

In order to ensure that his tradition would survive him, Diaghilev trained his regisseur Serge Grigoriev to follow in his footsteps. Grigoriev was the rehearsal director for the Ballets Russes and the only one of Diaghilev's colleagues to remain with the company until it was disbanded in 1929, after Diaghilev's death in Venice, Italy. After that Grigoriev's career included many notable productions: he was the producer of the revivals of Fokine ballets for Sadler's Wells Ballet, which later became the Royal Ballet, the rehearsal director of Massine ballets, and he staged ballets for the London Festival Ballet, and La Scala, Milan (Fowler and Atkinson "A Tribute to Serge Grigoriev"). His most famous and influential productions are The Firebird (1954), Les Sylphides (1954), and Petrushka (1954).

After Diaghilev died, creditors claimed the company and its properties and the company members scattered. But the tradition founded by Diaghilev lived on as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Original Ballet Russe (Souche). These offshoots of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes had an impact that reached all over the world. Anna Pavlova formed her own company and toured all over the world. Fokine went on to work with many companies, such as the American Ballet Theatre. Two former members of the Ballets Russes, Dame Marie Rambert and Dame Ninette de Valois became the founders of British ballet. Balanchine went to work in the United States, and Lifar worked at the Paris Opra and dominated French ballet for many years (Tsiounis).