In praise of Diaghilev

I wish I had been at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris on the evening of 18 May 1909 for the dress rehearsal of the new Saison Russe, organised by Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, or ‘de’ Diaghilev as he liked to be called. That evening, the notable audience invited to the exclusive event were to see ballet as they had never seen it before. Gone were the pretty ladies in frilly skirts, conventional backdrops and purely ornamental choreography. What Mr ‘de’ Diaghilev gave his respectable — and not so respectable — audience (he had intentionally invited some notorious ladies as a publicity stunt) was a cultural shock. When the curtain rose on the dances from Borodin’s Prince Igor, the second item on the programme, the public gasped at the sight of fiercely jumping male dancers in boots and the sensual, exotic movements of their veiled captives. The group of Russian dancers temporarily ‘borrowed’ from the Imperial RussianTheatres became immediately the latest must-see in town. Two years later, most of them were to form the legendary Ballets Russes, a ballet company that revolutionised the entire arts world.

One hundred years down the line, traces of Diaghilev’s artistic legacy are still vividly detectable in our culture, in high art and popular entertainment, as demonstrated by movies and docu-dramas on the subject as well as the many citations found in the videomusic industry and in blockbusters such as Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge. Yet, the man who masterminded the Ballets Russes remains to date a rather mysterious, contradictory figure.

Diaghilev was no artist as such, but he was the man who turned managerial craft into pure art. His incessant quest for the new — ‘surprise me’ he told young Stravinsky — fed his desire to make waves and to stand out from the crowd. He was unique in using the old art of ballet to start a cultural and artistic revolution, at the core of which was a modernist adaptation of the Gesamtkunstwerk principle, which attracted artists such as Balanchine, Stravinsky, Satie, Picasso, de Chirico and Cocteau. Whether it was because he was a real innovator, or simply because he thrived in succèss de scandale, he instigated provocative experimentations such as Nijinsky’s and Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring, 1913). Still, paradoxical as it may sound, it was thanks to his self-professed love for old ballets that classics such as Giselle and Sleeping Beauty made it into the 20th century and are still popular today.

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