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.

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.