The 20th century

The Ballets Russes

The Russian ballet troupe that Diaghilev took to Paris in 1909 boasted some of the best dancers from the imperial theatres in St. Petersburg and Moscow. They set all Paris ablaze. No living person could remember ballets of such quality. For the next 20 years the Ballets Russes, which never appeared in Russia, became the foremost ballet company in the West. Diaghilev, who never choreographed a ballet himself, possessed a singular flair for bringing the right people together. He became the focus of the ballet world, striving for the integration of dance, music, visual design, and libretto into a “total work of art” in which no one element dominated the others.

Between 1909 and 1929, the contributions of many of the finest dancers and choreographers and of some of the most avant-garde, style-setting painters and composers made the Diaghilev company the centre of creative artistic activity. The group became a haven for Russian dancers who emigrated after the 1917 Revolution. It was the first large, permanently travelling company that operated on a private basis and catered to a cosmopolitan Western clientele.

Michel Fokine (1880–1942) was the first choreographer to put Diaghilev’s ideas into practice. He worked with contemporary composers, notably the Russian Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and the Frenchman Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Stravinsky composed the score for two of Fokine’s best known ballets, L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird; 1910) and Petrushka (1911); both are based on old Russian folktales. He drew also upon many eminent composers of the past, such as the Russians Aleksandr Borodin (1833–87) and Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), and the Pole Frédéric Chopin (1810–49). His major scenic artists were Benois and Bakst, whose contributions to theatrical design had influences beyond the sphere of ballet. Among his dancers were the Russians Anna Pavlova (1881–1931), who left after the 1909 season to dance with her own company throughout the West as well as the Orient, and Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950), who succeeded Fokine as the company’s choreographer. A classic dancer, Nijinsky was an anticlassic choreographer, specializing in turned-in body movements and in unusual footwork. In 1912 Nijinsky choreographed L’Après-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun) to music written by the French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918)—it is the only Nijinsky ballet still performed. The following year he created Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) to Stravinsky’s music. The unconventional ballet was considered scandalous and nearly caused a riot at its Paris premiere.

After Nijinsky’s career was cut short by his insanity, the dancer Léonide Massine (1896–1979) assumed the role of choreographer. He quickly became noted for his wit and the precisely characterizing gestures of his dancers. His musical collaborators included Stravinsky; Manuel de Falla (1876–1946), whose work was full of the flavour of his native Spain; Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936), noted for his musical evocations of Italian landscapes; and Erik Satie (1866–1925), a Frenchman known for his originality and eccentricity. Massine’s designers included leading painters of the School of Paris such as André Derain (1880–1954) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). Following Diaghilev’s death, Massine created a furor in the 1930s with his ballets based on symphonies by Tchaikovsky and Johannes Brahms. It was considered inappropriate to use symphonic music for dance, and the incorporation of the style and movements of modern dance into the plotless ballets added to the controversy.

Another of Diaghilev’s choreographers was Nijinsky’s sister, Bronisława Nijinska (1891–1972), who became famous for her massive ensemble groupings, used to great effect in Les Noces (The Wedding; 1923), and her talent for depicting the follies of contemporary society. Diaghilev’s last choreographic discovery was the Russian-trained George Balanchine (1904–83). Balanchine’s 1928 ballet, Apollon Musagète, was the first of many collaborations with Stravinsky and led the way to the final enthronement of neoclassicism as the dominant choreographic style of the following decades.

The continuing tradition

When Diaghilev died his was no longer the only ballet company touring the world. Anna Pavlova’s company visited places in Europe, the Americas, Australia, and the Orient that had never heard of, let alone seen, ballet. A troupe assembled by Ida Rubinstein (1885–1960) had Nijinska as a choreographer and Stravinsky and Ravel as composers. The Ballets Suédois featured, from 1920 to 1925, another group of avant-garde, largely French and Italian composers, painters, and writers. New dancers came from the schools in Paris, London, and Berlin that were directed by self-exiled Russian teachers. Important developments took place in London, where Dame Marie Rambert (1888–1982), a Diaghilev dancer, founded the Ballet Rambert, and Ninette de Valois founded the company that became in 1956 the Royal Ballet. In New York, Balanchine set up the School of American Ballet in 1934. From it he drew the dancers for the several companies that led ultimately to the founding of the New York City Ballet in 1948.

The Soviet ballet

Although Diaghilev’s achievements were ignored there, the Soviet Union in the 1920s abounded with the daring choreographic experiments of Fyodor Lopukhov (1886–1973) and others. Despite the official imposition of “socialist realism” as the criterion of artistic acceptability in 1932, ballet gained enormous popularity with the Soviet people. They loved their dancers, who were superbly trained by generations of teachers under the leadership of Agrippina Vaganova (1879–1951).