emotion through motion

Sight, sound and movement; this is the ballet y'all. I was first introduced to Diaghilev in 2006 when I did an apprenticeship with Ballet Ireland. Dancing like loons during the week Jenny and I would get up at 5.30am on Sunday mornings to get the bus to Dublin for four hours of classes and rehearsals in prep for The Rite of Spring in the National Concert Hall.

Go on, point and laugh, yes yes we are mulleted muppets ha ha

A complete ballet nut at the time I read books and watched videos like there was no tomorrow. Diaghilev reformed more than dancing, he transformed the essence of performance through his collaborations with revolutionary artists of the time. In terms of dance he reinvented ballet with choreographers such as Fokine, Nijinska and Balanchine and composers like Stravinsky, Debussy and Prokoviev. But the Ballet Russes was even more than that. They involved so many areas of the arts in a production, working with the most avant-garde artists of the time, such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Bakst, de’ Chirico, Cocteau, Miró, and Chanel, who produced stage sets and costumes for the company.

Take for example Le Train Bleu, a ballet that saw swimmers together with golf and tennis players in search of adventure. Not exactly the typical fairytale theme you would expect to find in the ballet, but a perfect example of what they fled Russia for. And so then who could be a more perfectly fitting wardrobe mistress than Chanel who herself shunned the traditions of her artistic field? For Le Train Bleu she dressed the dancers not in specially designed costumes but in sports wear garments from her fashion collections.

Although the Ballet Russes reflected the style of 18th century rococo splendor (a style which led to a vogue for purple and crimson in Edwardian couture)they focused on looking forward to an aggressive modernism. Parade is a one-act ballet based on a single scenario of circus performers trying to draw an audience inside to a show, and in the line of modernism Picasso was recruited for set and costume design. Cubist fashion?... I like.

We were dealt an unfortunate hand with our costumes, but it was all in good sport. However, if you want to see some of the Ballet Russes costumes (high couture in comparison) there's an exhibition in the Victoria and Albert running until January, so get on down.