Review: The Joffrey Ballet’s “The Rite of Spring” at the Music Center 5
We did not hoot, we did not holler, but we let rip with a bracing “bravo!” for Vaslav Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du Printemps) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Friday night. First, because the Joffrey Ballet’s 100th anniversary reconstruction of the historic Ballets Russes production was great. But mainly because … to ...
René Blum and his Ballets Russes get another go-round in new book 1
Jun
21
2011
Blum’s female universe, bountiful & beautiful, en route to New York, 1938 (photo courtesy of the author, click for detail) “In October 1938, the company sailed to the United States with the new Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo under the artistic direction of [Léonide] Massine and [René] Blum, who was billed as founder … for a ...
Rare 1928 Ballets Russes film footage found
From Corriere della Serra, via arts•meme‘s good friend Stefano Tomassini, a dance historian at University CaFoscari in Venice: the only film to date of the Ballets Russes. The footage portrays Michel Fokine’s Chopin ballet ”Les Sylphides,” and features principal dancer, Serge Lifar. It seems to have been filmed in 1928 at the Fête des Narcisses in ...
Early Balanchine/de Chirico collaboration feted in Aussie costume exhibit 1
Ballets Russes expert Dr. Robert Bell, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the National Gallery of Australia, shares these images of Giorgio de Chirico’s original costumes for “Le Bal,” an early Balanchine work based on a Boris Kochno libretto. The “Le Bal” costumes are part of an exhibit now on in Canberra of ...
Diaghilev’s five great choreographers
May
24
2009
We celebrate the exquisite legacy of the Ballets Russes, a phenomenal ballet troupe that debuted in Paris one hundred years ago. Theodore Kosloff, my subject in the Los Angeles Times and on arts•meme, was a first-generation member of Ballets Russes. Kosloff’s story piqued my interest (a polite way of saying “I’m obsessed!”) to attend the “Spirit of ...