Marisa

Hello,

There is also a smaller

"The Ballets Russes Celebrating the Centennial" Feb 19 - May 24, 2009

Wadsworth Atheneum, Museum of Art, 600 Main Street,Hartford, CT06103

info: www.WadsworthAtheneum.org

Events:

Ongoing costume display (I think)

Lectures:

Wednesday April15 ----- 6:00pm

Alastair Macauley = "Diaghilev and Style"

CLASHES WITH HARVARD CONFERENCE, what a shame.

Sunday May 17 --------- 12:00noon

Lynn Garafola = "Serge Diaghilev and the Adventure of Ballet Modernism"

Galley Talks:

Friday March 27 ---------12:00noon

Eric Zafran = "The Ballets Russes: Cellebrating the Centennial"

Friday May 15 -----------12:00noon

Drawing in the Galleries --need to register Is it re: Diaghilev????

Art in Focus:

Thursday March 26 ------12:00noon

Joan Miro, Dream Painting, 1926

Sunday March 29 --------12:00noon

Leon Bakst, Costume fo a Temple Servant, Scheherezade, 1910

Concert:

Sunday May 3 ------------2:00pm

Composers associated with The Ballets Russes --$

Being new, I hope I am doing this correctly.

I have what might be construed as a nit picking question. Why did the Blue Boy (originally Harold Turner) turn into a Green Boy (John Kriza in the photograph) when the ballet crossed the Atlantic? The last time I saw the Royal Ballet do it, their Blue Boy was still blue. Did all the costumes change,

or just his?

marisa

I have lurking around the edges of "ballet talk" for a while now and I have found the forums most interesting. I think that it must be the Diaghilev Celebrations, or absence of such by some oraganizations, which have finally made me take the plunge.

I used to be a professional classical ballet dancer and now teach ballet. I wear the hats of dancer (in my mind - once a dancer, always a dancer), teacher, historian - technique, the Romantic Ballet and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (my teachers were retired Diaghilev dancers), and the apron of devoted servant of felis domesticus. I used to be relatively well aquainted with the other Muses but there seems to be so little time these days.

I am computer illiterate. I will do my very careful best, however, not to destroy this fine site.

Marisa

I attended what must be one of the earlier events in this Diaghilev Ballet Russe centenary celebration year. It was an illustrated talk by Princess Nina Lobanov Rostovsky covering the life and work and Serge Diaghilev and held in Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Square, London organised by the Great Britain Russia Society.

The Princess is a writer and lecturer on Russian decorative arts and Russian stage design, and consults for Christie’s International and Sotheby’s. The Princess and her husband Prince Nikita, have an important private collection of Diaghilev material items from which they have generously loaned material to various important exhibitions over the years. She has co-curated numerous exhibitions of Russian theatrical art – designs for ballet, theatre and opera – in North America, Germany, Japan and Russia, and was a consultant for the Diaghilev Exhibition and Festival in the Netherlands in 2005.

Pushkin House is a building of more than 200 years old was a suitable venue for such an event with its lofty ceilings and chandeliers, mildly evocative of a minor St. Petersburg Mansion of the same period.

The audience included ballet enthusiasts, archivists, Russian speakers and a good number of Russians currently settled in London.

The Princess covered Diaghilev’s early life with an insight into the family status and home activities, in a manner that was evocative of pre-revolutionary Russian domestic life of a certain class in Perm where Diaghilev spent his early life.

She created a very real picture of his father, outlining his character and status. But it was the very detailed information about his step-mother who introduced a rich musical atmosphere into their home life that was especially interesting. Her undoubted influence was such, that when he left Perm to go to the St. Petersburg University to study law, he also studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and singing with the famous baritone Cotogni. Fortunately for us today, he showed no great talent for either of these enthusiasms.

The Princess Nina introduced all the characters from the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) period and the early forays into staging important exhibitions. She related how in 1907 how Diaghilev introduced to Paris the figures of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Glazunov, Alexander Scriabin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov who conducted their compositions, as well as conducting the works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Borodin and Mikhail Glinka.

She went on to remind us of Diaghilev’s introducing to Paris in 1908 the Russian opera with the already legendary Feodor Chaliapin.

From there on, the talk was all about the ballet describing the decors and costumes bringing them to life with vivid slides and numerous photographs of those involved in the productions.

We were told about the tours, the terrible state of the Ballet Russe Company’s finances and the fact that Diaghilev was never to own a home of his own.

Diaghilev has been likened to the Roman patron of the arts Maecenas which considering the number of artistic careers he supportedand encouraged, is a fair comparison. Sadly, he lacked the personal wealth of that earlier patron of the arts and Diaghilev’s great artistic success was matched by a continuous fight against debt and the search for patrons.

This was a fitting start for me to a centenary of a man I never knew but whose work and the history of his work, has been an abiding passion since my teenage.

I was introduced to the Princess and had a short conversation, which confirmed both her knowledge and her attractive and lively personality.

I am new to Ballet Talk and forums in general. Your synopsis of the Princess' talk is very interesting, thank you, and makes me wish for more. I wonder if you know whether her talk was recorded.

Marisa