Anniversary exhibition: May 15, 2009 – January 10, 2010
On 15 May 2009 one hundred years have passed since Serge Diaghilev presented a season of Russian opera and ballet in Paris which later became the legendary Ballets Russes and which for twenty years came to delight the world and turn ballet into high fashion.
The Russian Ballet inventiveness in the field of dance, theatre, stage design, music and visual art, inspired and electrified. Every performance in Paris, London, Monte-Carlo, Berlin or Rome, created excitement and rapture and the jetset of that time swarmed around the ballet and its artists. Diaghilev´s stars as Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky reached a cult status which can only be compared to the rock icons of our time. The Russian Ballet created fashion already after its first seasons. Oriental ballets like Schéhérazade inspired fashion houses as well as designers of hotels, restaurants and other public spaces but also of private homes. Ballets Russes became a style and a concept which was marketed to a large and wide audience and which still serves as an inspirational source for the fashion designers of our era like Yves Saint-Laurent and Jean-Paul Gaultier or the British house of Mulberry.
These Russian costumes compose a firework of colour and form which still today has an astonishing freshness, beauty and effect.
BALLETS RUSSES IN PARIS 1909 – 2009
Museum of Dance (Dansmuseet)
May 15, 2009 – January 10, 2010
Costume for a chamberlain – Le Chant du Rossignol, 1920 by – Henri Matisse
Photo: Jonas Melin
Costumes from Shéhérazade by Léon Bakst. Golden slave, Zobeide and King Shariar
Photo Nikolaj Alsterdal
en Danza Ballet
Le Paris des Ballets russes 1909-1929
Celebrating the Ballets Russes – Danza Ballet
From Russia with Love: Costumes for the Ballets Russes 1909-1933
© 2006 – 2009 Danza Ballet
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