#diaghilev

Costumes for brigands in Fokine’s ballet Daphnis and Chloé, designed by Léon Bakst, 1912, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

Valentine Gross-Hugo’s sketches of Nijinsky’s choreography for the Sacrificial DancefromThe Rite of Spring, 1913.

Valentine Gross (1887 – 1968), a.k.a Valentine Hugo, was a French art student in Paris in the 1910s. She became a ballet enthusiast, illustrator, researcher and painter. She witnessed annual seasons of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris and made preliminary sketches during performances and rehearsals between 1909 and 1919. Later, she worked the penciled drawings to various degrees of finish including colored illustrations and paintings. Photo by Man Ray, 1935.

Pastel drawing by Valentine Gross-Hugo showing a moment from the end of the first scene of Le Sacre du Printemps, 1913.

Photo of a group of supporters and members of the Ballets Russes taken by one of its founders, Nicolas Besobrasov. From left to right, ? Botkine, Pavel Koribut-Kubitovitch, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, Igor Stravinsky, Alexandre Benois, Sergei Diaghilev, ? Botkine. Front, Alexandra Vassilieva. Beausoleil, c. 1912.

Kiss The Earth - Nicholas Roerich, 1912. Set design for the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps.

Nijinsky’s “knock-kneed Lolitas” of Le Sacre. Costume and set design by Nicholas Roerich. 1913.

Serge Diaghilev in Ouchy - Mikhail Fiodorovich Larionov, 1915

Russian artist Mikhail Larionov sketched several spontaneous moments of Diaghilev and his circle, both at work and at leisure. This one struck me as somewhat amusing for its candidness. The young man in the background is more than likely dancer Léonide Massine, who frequently travelled with Diaghilev and choreographed Soleil de nuit for the Ballets Russes, which premiered in Geneva in December of 1915.

Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Cocteau and Erik Satie in Paris - Mikhail Fiodorovich Larionov, 1917

Gabriel Astruc, French journalist, agent, promoter, theatre manager, theatrical impresario and founder of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was staged in 1913.

Ballets Russes conductor, Pierre Monteux, posing with crabs. (I really wish I knew the story behind this photo.)

Sheet showing preliminary sketches of the Danse SacralefromLe Sacre du Printemps, by Valentine Gross, 1913.

A page from the original manuscript of The Rite of Spring—showing a few bars from The Sacrificial Dance—in Stravinsky’s own hand, with corrections, annotations and scribbles.