2022-10-07 00:04:33
“Russian Seasons” fell on the decline of the Russian Empire, accompanied by a cultural boom of unprecedented proportions. The very logic of its emergence and development required going beyond the borders of Russia. All that was needed was a person who would create the conditions for this. It was Sergei Diaghilev, who showed the world the miracle of Russian art of the early 20th century.
Diaghilev not only brought from Russia the best of what the ballet, art and music schools could produce, but was also able to attract the best European creative forces to the creation of ballet performances. His enterprise has become an international platform and laboratory for the creation of modern art. Exhibition “Diaghilev. Dress rehearsal” allows you to peer into the details of the myth of the “Russian Seasons”. The performances presented at it are striking in variety. The seasons are Russian in origin and only partly in content. Diaghilev, immersed in the European cultural environment, drew inspiration from everywhere and was able to pass it on to his authors – a rare talent.
At the exhibition, painting is not in itself, but in its applied meaning. Here it only precedes the performance – and at the same time it is its integral part. In the paintings of Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Golovin – the characters of the performances and the picturesque space of scenery in which they should dance. But performances remained forever in the first half of the 20th century. No attempts to reconstruct them will allow modern viewers to experience the emotions that they evoked in the public a hundred years ago. While the painting remained unchanged. A hundred years later, she comes to the fore.
/State Tretyakov Gallery
Even the costumes survived only if the performance did not become popular. Otherwise, from frequent and intensive use, they were hopelessly worn out. At the exhibition you can see stage attire from Mikhail Fokine’s ballet “The Blue God” to the libretto by Jean Cocteau. The main parties in it were danced by the superstars of the seasons of the tenth years of the last century – Tamara Karsavina and Vatslav Nijinsky. But even they failed to captivate the public. The “blue god” left her indifferent. Diaghilev could have miscalculated, but miscalculations did not stop him and did not force him to betray his own taste.
The collection of surviving stage costumes purchased by the Tretyakov Gallery from collectors Olga and Ivor Mazur is the highlight of the exhibition. Among the acquisitions are black pointe shoes by Karsavina. They are exhibited under glass separately from everyone else as a sacred object – a mute witness to the era. The costumes are further proof of how flamboyant and free of prejudice she was in everything.
/State Tretyakov Gallery
From the most successful performance of the seasons – “Polovtsian Dances” by Mikhail Fokin to the music of Alexander Borodin – there were only boots in which the artists danced, a sketch of the scenery by Nicholas Roerich and photographs. Costumes for the performance (according to the memoirs of Alexander Benois) were searched by Diaghilev himself in the Moscow oriental shops, accurately guessing the effect that they were supposed to produce on the Parisian public. As a result, the Russian style in world fashion is counted from the Polovtsian Dances.
“General rehearsal” is also an image of Russian ballet as it could have been over the past century. He survived the avant-garde post-revolutionary decade. At the same time, he was disturbed by the advent of the ancestor of contemporary dance, Isadora Duncan. Then it was renamed into Soviet and preferred to return to the conservative forms worked out during the existence of the Directorate of the Imperial Theaters. Soviet ballet took the path of endless reproduction of what was once created and recognized as perfect.
“Russian Seasons” in the form in which they are presented at the “General Rehearsal” is an alternative to the Soviet and almost ideal model for the development of art. For her, there are no boundaries and prejudices. She attracts the best and the best. Now Hollywood is working on this model. But before Hollywood there were “Russian Seasons” by Sergei Diaghilev.
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