Mikhail Fokine Believe Th Meaning Ofwork of Art Is Responsibility of Beholder Not the Creator

The 20th-Century Ballet Revolution

Diaghilev Ballet souvenir programme, 1912

20th century ballet was born in St Petersburg, from a group of artists who were disenchanted with the arts scene in Russian federation. They included the painters Leon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, Serge Diaghilev, who had won fame for organising exhibitions of Russian paintings in Paris, and the choreographer Michael Fokine, who had get disaffected with the conservative, traditional ballets of Petipa.

The new ballet

By 1905 a new generation of dancers was in revolt against the conservatism of the Majestic Ballet. Their new ballet combined movement, music and blueprint in a fusion that was to distinguish 20th century ballet. The subject area thing of each ballet dictated the way of the choreography, music and design.

A trip the light fantastic programme was now of iii or iv short assorted works rather than a full evening'due south performance. Choreography became more expressive without formal mime movements and the corps de ballet became an integral part of the ballet instead of just a decorative background.

Michael Fokinev

Michel Fokine, mid 20th century

Overnight European ideas nearly ballet were overturned and ballet became an important fine art form. The success of Vaslav Nijinsky and Adolph Bolm restored the male dancer to popularity, the dancers became household names, and the designers the rage of Paris.

In 1912 Michael Fokine's Ballet Scheherazade, designed by Leon Bakst, inspired a way for harem pants, turbans and floor cushions.

Although Michel Fokine was a famous dancer and teacher with the Maryinsky ballet in St Petersburg from 1898, his real vocation was for choreography.

He rejected formal classical ballets like The Sleeping Dazzler and Swan Lake. He felt that dancing should be a truly expressive medium and non mere gymnastics, and that the type of movement, music and blueprint should reverberate the time and place of the discipline.

To the conservative Russian theatres of his mean solar day, such ideas were dangerously revolutionary. So, in 1909, Diaghilev arranged for Fokine's ballets to be seen in Paris. Overnight ballet in Europe changed for ever.

Fokine was a demanding taskmaster. His dancers became used to his sudden rages, to chairs being thrown virtually the studio. But equally ane dancer said, 'He gets the best out of everyone. Anyone who has anything to give he enhances and makes still finer'.

Serge Diaghilev gathered dancers from the Imperial Russian theatres and in May 1909 they appeared in Paris. No i had seen ballet or dancers like this before and they were a great success.

Bronze of Adolphe Bolm, about 1910. Museum no. S.874-1981

Les Sylphides was Michael Fokine's tribute to the Romantic ballet. Information technology used the corps de ballet in a new and expressive way. The rhythms of the Polovtsian Dances and Fokine's uninhibited choreography, performed past Adolph Bolm, had the audience in a frenzy. It was Fokine who developed heady new choreography for men and rekindled an involvement in the male person dancer.

The sensation of the starting time dark of the Diaghilev Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 was The Polovtsian Dances.

The wild savagery of Fokine's choreography, the pounding rhythms of the music and the chanting chorus whipped the audition into a frenzy. In Europe, the male dancer had become a figure of ridicule. No ane could accept imagined men dancing with such virile power and assail. Almost overnight the male dancer was restored to his place at the centre of trip the light fantastic toe.

Much of that credit must become to Bolm, whose functioning equally the Warrior Main was at the eye of Fokine'due south highly choreographed chaos.

Dancing as if possessed, his performance evoked all the passion and proud freedom of the nomadic tribes. As i critic wrote: 'he is the Germ of destruction, the Spirit of Unrest … terrible merely magnificent'.

Michel Fokine'south 1910 ballet The Firebird was based on Russian fairy tales. The music was the first score commissioned past Diaghilev from the brilliant young composer Igor Stravinsky. The Firebird has magical powers. In lodge to escape capture past the immature Prince Ivan, she gives him an enchanted plumage that volition summon her if he is in trouble. She later frees him from an assault past the magician Kostchei and his monstrous followers. Ivan then marries the enchanted Princess who has been Kostchei'southward prisoner.

In this photograph of the Royal Ballet's production, taken in 1959, Margot Fonteyn is the Firebird. It shows the scene where she forces Kostchei's followers into a frenzied trip the light fantastic and and so into an enchanted slumber. The ballet was one of the finest of The Regal Ballet's revivals from the Diaghilev Ballet repertory. Fonteyn was taught the role by Tamara Karsavina, who had been the original Firebird in 1910.

Margot Fonteyn equally the Firebird, The Royal Ballet, 1959

Colour photo of Les Sylphides, a performance by the Royal Ballet Touring Company, 1963

Illustration from Michel Fokine'south ballet Schéhérazade, 1913. Museum no. S.xv-2001

Michel Fokine'due south ballet Schéhérazade, designed by Leon Bakst, created a sensation when it was first produced by the Diaghilev Ballets Russes in 1910. This was partly due to the lush decadence and bold utilise of colour in the blueprint but also considering of its orgy scene of the Shah's wives with the Negro slaves.

The role of the Favourite Slave was created past Vaslav Nijinsky, and the Shah's favourite wife, Zobeide, by Ida Rubinstein. Barbier's print evokes the corrupt sensuality of their performances.

In its draughtsmanship and erotic overtones, information technology recalls the manner of the English artist Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley had also been a dandy influence on Bakst.

Costume design for a Temple Servant reproduced in the book The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst, London: The Fine Art Club, 1913. Museum no. ND699. B169

This shows one of Leon Bakst's superb designs for Michel Fokine's ballet Le Dieu Bleu in 1912. While the ballet itself was non a success, it was a magnificent example of Bakst design. He provided dozens of costumes, many of which were simply seen for a few minutes – priests, princes, merchants, temple servants, temple dancers, girls conveying peacocks on their shoulders, whirling dervishes – all arrayed in sumptuous costumes.

A theatrical costume pattern is not a work of art. It is a working drawing for the costumiers, who translate the two-dimensional line and color into fabric and texture.

This costume was made in the well-nigh vibrant imperial and carmine silk, all encrusted with silver braid, sequins and pearls. All the costumes were as richly patterned. It is a tribute to Bakst's heart that they formed a harmonious stage effect.

I of the ironies of theatre is that the costumes which survive are frequently from unsuccessful productions. Success means that the costumes soon deteriorate due to the rut of the lights, and the abiding sweating and cleaning. The failure of Le Dieu Bleu meant that many costumes still exist to demonstrate Bakst's theatrical vision.

Diaghilev Ballet

Diaghilev separate with the Majestic theatres in 1911 and formed his own company, which toured extensively in Europe.

Photograph of Diaghilev and Lifar, 1928, London Archives of the Dance Associated

Until 1911 all the ballets were choreographed by Michael Fokine. In 1911 Nijinsky was dismissed from the Maryinsky Theatre for a breach of subject field, which many believe Diaghilev (who was Nijinsky'south lover and mentor) deliberately engineered.

Diaghilev formed the Diaghilev Ballet from dancers trained in Russian Royal theatres, with Nijinsky as his star. They never returned to Russian federation and for the adjacent 20 years the visitor was an itinerant group touring throughout Europe and, occasionally, America.

The company first visited London in June 1911 when they performed Fokine's Le Pavilion d'Armide at Covent Garden.

Aware of the need to sustain public involvement, and the need for constant change, Diaghilev dispensed with Fokine and began to railroad train Nijinsky as a choreographer.

On the first night of The Rite of Jump in Paris, there was a total-scale riot past the audition. In 1914, whilst on bout in South America, Nijinsky married fellow dancer Romola de Pulsky. In a jealous rage, Diaghilev dismissed him from the company.

Within months he had found a replacement for Nijinsky, the 16 yr old student Leonide Massine, and turned him into a major choreographer and charismatic performer.

Design afterwards 1918

Costume design for The Queen & Her Pages in the ballet The Sleeping Princess by Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910) at The Alhambra Theatre, London, designed by Leon Bakst for Diaghilev Ballet Russes, Paris, France, 1921

Cutting off from Russia by World State of war I and the 1917 Russian Revolution, Diaghilev turned to European artists and subjects. He commissioned major European painters and composers from the countries in which they performed.

Picasso designed The Iii Cornered Lid and Parade, a surreal ballet. For the design of Parade, Picasso mixed popular art and Cubism. The musical score was written by Erik Satie and included the sounds of typewriters, aeroplanes and hooters.

Impressed by the financial success of the long-running British musical Chu-Chin-Chow. Diaghilev looked for a similar spectacular that might requite his visitor financial stability. He turned dorsum to Petipa's The Sleeping Dazzler, and mounted a production at the Alhambra Theatre in London, designed by Leon Bakst. He lost a fortune.

Le Railroad train Bleu Costume, pinkish knitted wool swimsuit, 1924

Ballets Russes in the 1920s

The company survived and throughout the 1920s kept the involvement of its audiences with a succession of new and topical works. Nijinsky's sister Bronislava Nijinska created Les Biches and Le Train Bleu, about the smart social set and the stylish Riviera. After Nijinska came George Balanchine.

Diaghilev commissioned composers Igor Stravinsky and Serge Prokofiev, designers Marie Laurencin and Georges Braque, and couturiers similar Coco Chanel to design costumes. Throughout the 1920s the visitor was still at the forefront of everything new in trip the light fantastic and theatre.

Diaghilev died in 1929. His company broke up but his dancers and choreographers connected to influence the world of trip the light fantastic toe. In England Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois established companies of international importance. George Balanchine founded the outset major classical dance company in America.

In the 1930s Fokine and Massine worked with the De Basil Ballet, reviving many of the works created for Diaghilev too as creating new masterpieces.

Diaghilev's legacy is the explosion of world trip the light fantastic in the 20th century.

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Source: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/0-9/20th-century-ballet-revolution/

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