Serguei Diaghilev: the creator of Les Ballets Russes and promoter of Stravinsky and Ravel was born 150 years ago

This year marks a very significant anniversary in the history of stage dance, even if the figure you remember was neither a dancer nor a choreographer and even more: he had no kind of artistic dedication, if not his keen intuition to discover and encourage young geniuses and also to think of unheard-of projects.

One of them was to create, practically from scratch, the most revolutionary and celebrated ballet company of its time and which he kept for twenty years.

Let’s talk about Sergei Diaghilevone of the most influential personalities of stage dance of the 20th century and of whom they now meet 150 years since its birth.

It was he who created Les Ballets Russes (1909-1929), the most avant-garde company of the time and which brought together the talents of exceptional dancers, choreographers with new languages, advanced composers such as Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Erik Satie and Prokofiev.

And painters who would become famous but were in the early stages of their careers: Picasso, Dalí, Derain, Matisse, Joan Miró and Maurice Utrilloamong many others, she enthusiastically accepted the assignment to design costumes and sets for Les Ballets Russes.

new life

On the occasion of this 150th anniversary, The Spanish researcher Antonio Hernández public Thirty castanets for Londona fictional book based, he says, on real events: the tragedy of Félix García, a Madrid artist hired by Diaghilev as a dancer and also as a teacher of flamenco and folklore.

Felix would have been declared insane by Diaghilev and sentenced to a long life burial, that is, to a psychiatric hospital in London that lasted until his death. Some critics, starting with this publication and with a certain lightness, Diaghilev is now described as the Putin of dance.

Putin’s shadow

It is true that Sergei Diaghilev was a despotic man, arbitrary and sometimes cruel to those who depended on him. It is worth remembering Vaslav Nijinsky, the authentic dance legend of the twentieth century, had been Diaghilev’s mistress.

But in 1913, during a tour of Les Ballets Russes in South America, Vaslav unexpectedly married a young Hungarian baroness in Buenos Aires that he had met during the trip. Diaghilev, very superstitious, did not accompany the tour; a gypsy predicted she would die at sea.

Having heard the news of the wedding, Diaghilev fired Nijinsky from the company with the certainty that Vaslav would not have been able to pursue an independent career on his own: the symptoms of the dancer’s psychic imbalance – which would then have seriously deepened – had already begun to manifest.

There are other stories that speak of Diaghilev’s dictatorial temperament. But from there to the confrontation with Putin … Anyway, let’s leave this assessment quietly aside.

Anything but composing …

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev was born in 1872 in a Novgorod military barrackswhere his father was stationed. The family had noble origins but not many economic resources. Sergei began studying law in St. Petersburg and then turned his interest to musical composition.

But when he made Rimsky-Korsakov, who was his teacher, listen to his first work, the famous composer begged him: “Promise me, promise me, Sergei Pavlovich, who will only devote himself to composition! “. Sergei then devoted himself to painting, trained as an expert connoisseur and organized large exhibitions in St. Petersburg.

self portrait

In 1895 he wrote to his stepmother (his father’s second wife, who had raised him and whom he adored):

“I am, first of all, a charlatan, albeit quite brilliant. Second, a great seducer. Third, I’m not afraid of anyone. Fourth, I have a great sense of logic and very few qualms. Fifth, I don’t think I have a real talent. However, I know I have found my true calling: patronage. I own everything except money; but this will come ”.

However, it is difficult to call Diaghilev a patron because he never had enough personal funds to support the Ballets Russes, a company that in its twenty years of life he was often on the verge of bankruptcy. But even less would it fall within the definition of “entrepreneur” because their interests and their projects have marched on the opposite path to that of the “benefit-investment” calculation.

Vaslav’s wife, Romola Nijinsky, who had reason to hate Diaghilev, wrote: “Sergei Pavlovich perfectly possessed the difficult art of pressing all the springs at the right moment and always got what he set out to do. Fortunately, his artistic integrity was so absolute that no ambition and no personal interest ever tempted him. That was his “greatest virtue than him.”

From 1929 – when Les Ballets Russes broke up due to the death of its director – and until today, publications on this unrepeatable phenomenon of twentieth century art have not stopped appearing: essays, biographies, newspaper articles, autobiographies and fiction they dealt with and address their story.

theatrical scandals

But to carve out a portion of this rich universe, we can limit ourselves to citing three examples of theatrical scandals, for which Diaghilev was perfectly equipped.

1912: It opens The nap of a faunon music by Debussy and choreography by Nijinsky. An amazing work (the dancers are always in profile with their feet parallel and move with slippery steps), seen even today, culminating in the masturbation of the faun on the shawl abandoned by a nymph!

The piece lasted twelve minutes and after the scandal that occurred in the audience, Diaghilev – in a stroke of genius – ordered that it be immediately danced again. The turbulent effect lasted the following months with intense debates among the conservative newspaper The Figaro and the sculptor Auguste Rodin.

1913: Before Spring consecrationoriginal music by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by Vaslav Nijinsy. As soon as the first bars were played, a real battle broke out between the spectators, divided into two parts: who attacked the work and who defended it, all equally violent. Such strange sounds and movements had never been heard or seen in a theater.

The whistles and hisses increased in intensity, punches and duel challenges were exchanged. A man yelled at Maurice Ravel, who was howling asking them to let the work continue, “Shut up dirty jew!”. Ravel was not Jewish. Diaghilev asked alternately to turn the light in the room on and off to calm things down.

Nijinsky shouted to the dancers the backstage beat countThey couldn’t hear anything. The only one who remained unmoved was the conductor, who had worked in the cabarets of Montmartre and was used to this kind of hustle and bustle.

1926: Before Romeo and Juliet: choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and George Balanchine on an original score by Constant Lambert. The show was based very loosely on the tragedy of the lovers of Verona and when the curtain opened a classical dance lesson was seen on the stage with the dancers doing their exercises at the barre.

There were Romeo and Juliet, who in the end did not die but fled on a stage plane wearing aviator suits, helmets and goggles. Whistle of the audience. heated discussions. An aristocratic lady sees her dress torn due to her hustle and bustle. And in the midst of all this, an incessant rain of brochures falls from the high galleries.

They are launched by artists of the surrealist movement who accuse Joan Miró and Max Ernst – they had designed the costumes and the scenography – if they had sold themselves to a bourgeois capitalist like Diaghilev. They end up calling the police.

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev died in Venice in 1929. Not exactly in the sea as that gypsy had prophesied, but very, very close to it. She was 57 and had many plans ahead of her.

CJL