Tag Archive: Vaslav Nijinsky

Spoiled

January 24, 2024

“Timekeepers” (“For Hedy”/”Rhapsodies”/”Les Noces”)
Ballet Zurich
Opernhaus Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland
January 20, 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

The Ballet Zurich’s new triple bill Timekeepers is a testament to a wind of change that has swept through the company since Cathy Marston took the reins as artistic director last August. Twenty new faces joined the company, and many others left to follow the previous artistic director, Christian Spuck, to the State Ballet Berlin. I was told that, despite initial hesitation, the Ballet attracts large audiences to its performances. The premiere of Timekeepers was indeed very well attended. Its program combined two world premieres – Meryl Tankard’s For Hedy and Mthuthuzeli November’s Rhapsodies – with Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1923). Each of the three pieces comprises music that premiered almost exactly one-hundred years ago.

The Australian Tankard took on the challenge to choreograph George Antheil’s composition Ballet Mécanique, a medley of noises made by mechanical instruments, such as electric bells, propellers, a siren, and sixteen self-playing pianos (or pianolas). It couldn’t be realized in 1926, as synchronizing so many pianolas turned out to be impossible back then. (more…)

The Messenger

November 22, 2023 0 Comments

“Nicholas Roerich”
New Tretyakov Gallery
Moscow, Russia
November 2023

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

“Have you ever crossed a rapidly flowing river in a boat? It is always necessary to steer higher than the spot towards which you are headed, otherwise you will be taken downstream. So, too, in the sphere of moral demands it is always necessary to steer higher – life takes everything downstream. Let your messenger hold the helm high, then he’ll reach his destination.”

Such was Tolstoy’s comment regarding the painting The Messenger: Tribe Has Risen Against Tribe (1897), a graduation work at St. Petersburg’s Imperial Academy of Arts submitted by twenty-three-year-old Nicholas Roerich (1874 – 1947). It depicts an old messenger sitting in a wooden boat next to an oarsman. The messenger’s stooped shoulders and downcast gaze suggest that he’s delivering bad news. In the distance, a Slavic settlement is outlined against the night sky. Sergei Diaghilev, in his review of the graduation works for the newspaper Novosti, called The Messenger one of the most interesting works in the exhibition, and it was one of three in total the collector Pavel Tretyakov chose for his Moscow gallery. The Messenger is one of the highlights of the Tretyakov Gallery’s current “Nicholas Roerich” exhibition, which celebrates the artist’s 150^th anniversary. (more…)

A Teaser

January 8, 2023

“Diaghilev. The Dress Rehearsal”
New Tretyakov Gallery
Moscow, Russia
December 2022

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

Sergei Diaghilev’s name is nearly synonymous with the art of ballet. Well-versed in both arts and business, he succeeded not only as a writer and curator, but indelibly as the founder and cunning impresario of the Ballets Russes.
From 1906 onwards, foreseeing political and cultural paralysis at home in Russia, Diaghilev shifted his activities from St. Petersburg to Paris (and later to other European metropolises). Though his first venture (an exhibition of Russian paintings at Paris’s new Salon d’Automne) earned him laurels, he soon turned away from museums towards the ballet stage. The Ballets Russes became the core focus of his life – and it’s because of them that the western art of ballet was reinvigorated. As Stravinsky stated, “it is to [Diaghilev], that we owe the recent development of choreographic art in the entire world.” (more…)

An Appreciation

January 23, 2018

Frank-Manuel Peter:
“The Painter Ernst Oppler – The Berlin Secession & The Russian Ballet”
176 pages, 220 colored and 7 b/w photos
Published by Wienand, September 2017
ISBN: 978-3-86832-391-7
January 2018

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2018 by Ilona Landgraf

The Ballets Russes caused an earthquake upon arriving in Paris in 1909. It’s much less well known, however, that Russian dancers – primarily Anna Pavlova – created a stir in Germany (then a ballet diaspora) just days before. Although the first tour of the Imperial Russian Ballet to Berlin in 1908 had been cut short due to limited public interest, Pavlova and her colleagues were enthusiastically celebrated by critics and audience alike one year later. Tickets for their first performance at Berlin’s Royal Opera (today’s Oper unter den Linden) were reserved for those in the cultural elite: authors, critics, actors, and members of the Berlin Secession, a group of artists that opposed the academic art politics of the Wilhelmine era. For painter Ernst Oppler, the performance on May 5th, 1909 was a turning point in his career – a career that would become the focus of “The Painter Ernst Oppler – The Berlin Secession & The Russian Ballet” by Frank-Manuel Peter, head of the German Dance Archive Cologne. (more…)

Toer van Schayk – One Pillar of Dutch National Ballet

March 7, 2017

Dutch National Ballet
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
February, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

Dutch National Ballet has been shaped by a troika of “van”: Rudi van Dantzig, Hans van Manen and Toer van Schayk, three fellow countrymen of roughly the same generation. Van Dantzig (1933 – 2012) became the company’s resident choreographer shortly after it emerged out of the Amsterdam Ballet and Nederlands Ballet fusion in 1961. He later co-directed the troupe for two decades before holding the director’s post. Since then, Hans van Manen, the Dutch doyen of choreographers, has created work for the company for more than forty years. Eighty-four-years old and still choreographing, he is internationally renowned. (more…)

Léon Bakst’s Flights of Fancy

February 5, 2017

“Bakst – Des Ballets Russes à la Haute Couture”
Bibliothèque-musée de l’Opéra Palais Garnier
Paris, France
January, 2017

A waving bright orange veil waves around the bacchanal who boisterously dashes across the poster indicating the entry of the current exhibition at the Palais Garnier. Engrossed in sensual thoughts, she strides out so vigorously that her long black hair wafts behind her. This bacchanal sprang from the painter’s easel of Léon Bakst. A costume design for Michel Fokine’s “Narcisse”, it decorated the official program of the 1911 Ballets Russes season in Paris.

Bakst (1866 – 1924), born as Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich (later: Samoylovich) Rosenberg, a Russian painter, set and costume designer, became famous as a member of the illustrious circle around Sergey Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. He worked for theaters all over the world and in all types of theater genres. In 2016 Bakst would have celebrated his 150th birthday. On this occasion the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Opéra national de Paris have been paying tribute to him in an exhibition at the Palais Garnier, which opened last November. 130 objects – paintings, drawings, sketches, photos, costumes, letters either by Bakst or by related artists and a video – are shown in a side wing of around 300 square meters. They are loans from various museums in Paris and Marseille, the Paris Opera, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and private collectors. (more…)

More, Please!

June 5, 2014

“Les Ballets Russes”
Bavarian State Ballet
National Theater
Munich, Germany
May 30, 2014

Thumbs up for Bavarian State Ballet! Known for their ambitious programs, the troika of artistic director Ivan Liška and his assistant directors Bettina Wagner-Bergelt and Wolfgang Oberender offer their audiences a varied diet, ranging from the classics to brand-new pieces. While Cunningham, Limón and Massine were already part of this season’s menu, some days ago the Munich trio served up a formidable evening of Ballets Russes. If the remaining two premieres – Oskar Schlemmer’s “Triadic Ballet” and Mary Wigman’s “Le Sacre du Printemps” – are danced with the same verve the prospects for ballet aficionados are happy ones. (more…)