The
Ballets Russes (
French for
The Russian Ballets) was an itinerant
ballet company which performed under the directorship of
Sergei Diaghilev between 1909 and 1929. Some of their places of residence included the
Théâtre Mogador and the
Théâtre du Châtelet, as Paris had a large Russian exile population. They performed in many countries, including England, the U.S.A., and Spain. Many of the company's dancers originated from the
Imperial Ballet of
St. Petersburg. Younger dancers were trained in Paris, within the community of exiles after the
Russian Revolution of 1917. The company featured and premiered now-famous (and sometimes notorious) works by the great
choreographers Marius Petipa,
Michel Fokine, as well as new works by
Bronislava Nijinska,
Leonide Massine,
Vaslav Nijinsky, and the young
George Balanchine at the start of his career.
The company's productions, which combined new dance, art and music, created a huge sensation around the world, altering the course of musical history, bringing many significant visual artists into the public eye, and completely reinvigorating the art of performing dance. The Ballets Russes was one of the most influential theatre companies of the twentieth century, in part because of its ground-breaking artistic collaboration among contemporary choreographers, composers, artists, and dancers. Its ballets have been variously intepreted as Classical, Neo-Classical, Romantic, Neo-Romantic, Avant-Garde, Expressionist, Abstract, and Orientalist. The influence of the Ballets Russes lasts to this day in one form or another.
After Diaghilev's early death in 1929, the dancers were scattered, and the company's property was claimed by creditors. Colonel Wassily de Basil and his associate René Blum revived the company under the name Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Balanchine and Massine worked with them as choreographers, and Tamara Toumanova as a principal dancer. De Basil and Blum argued constantly, so Blum founded another company under the name Original Ballet Russe.
After World War II began, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo left Europe and toured extensively in the United States. As dancers retired and left the company, they often founded dance studios in the United States or South America, or taught at other dancers' studios. With Balanchine's founding of the School of American Ballet, and later New York City Ballet, many outstanding former Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dancers went to New York to teach.
