The Ballets Russes is the subject of a newly opened exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York that has parallels with the current state of a fashion industry in flux. My reading of “Crafting the Ballets Russes: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection” surely strays from the curator’s intent, yet some of the issues the show addresses—including performance, collaboration, the status of women, and the preservation of the transitory—echo those we are discussing in the Vogue offices.
But first a bit of background. The electrifying debut of the Ballet Russes in Paris in 1909 undoubtedly changed the course of culture and fashion; the fairy-tale and far-away fantasies on the stage seeped into the styles of the day, with ripple effects. It was evident at the time in Paul Poiret’s bold palette (though he denied being so influenced) and his 1911 Thousand and Second Night party, as well as, decades later, in Yves Saint Laurent’s lushly romantic 1976 Opéras—Ballets Russes couture collection.
Gesamtkunstwerk
The genius of impresario founder Serge Diaghilev was that this became a two-way exchange between fashion and the arts. Coco Chanel created costumes for 1924’s Le Train Bleu that still look modern. Igor Stravinsky created scores that have become part of the modernist canon, and Pablo Picasso painted sets. “Like much of the Western European avant-garde,” reads one of the wall captions at the Morgan, Diaghilev and company “were fervent devotees of Richard Wagner, fascinated by the German composer’s dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a fusion of art forms on stage.” The company was cross-disciplinary—with a difference. The exhibition’s wall text quotes a letter Michel Fokine wrote to The Times of London in 1914, in which the choreographer said, “The new ballet would not be subjugated to the demands of music or design but would hold the arts in a ‘condition of complete equality.’”
Now, a fashion show is a different proposition altogether from a ballet—it’s commerce, not art—but both are ephemeral. The idea of collaborations—which have mushroomed at an astounding rate in fashion, moving beyond the mere transfer of image to fabric or set dressing—is exciting because it would truly enmesh art in fashion rather than rely on the usual adjacency. It could also favor the subject-matter expert (nerd) over the multihyphenate persona (overachiever). It takes a village….
Move Beyond the Boys’ Club
When it came to the Ballet Russes, evenhandedness didn’t always extend beyond the stage; Diaghilev’s company was a boys’ club. The impresario was credited with “the elevation of the male body to a central role in ballet,” writes curator Robinson McClellan. However, the exhibition emphasizes that women in the troupe made important contributions despite being sidelined. Among them are Ida Rubinstein, a dancer who split from Diaghilev and formed her own rival company, and Bronislava Nijinska, sister of Vaslav, a dancer who became the Ballets Russes’ only female choreographer.
Invest in the Future
One of the reasons The Morgan could expand on Nijinska’s story is because she, like her brother Vaslav, preserved elements of choreography using Stepanov dance notation, “a system of precise bodily movements based on music notions,” according to the exhibition text, at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg. In a 1959 piece for Vogue, a Ballets Russes collaborator painted this charming picture: “At the Crillon [Nijinsky] and Diaghilev migrated from hotel to hotel, seized by a nomadic itch to roam. He would don a robe made of toweling, pull the cowl up over his head, and settle himself to note down his dance patterns.” That’s music to the ears of an archivist, indeed. The “Next!” mentality of fashion often overlooks this important aspect of showmanship, preserving the performance for posterity.
Look for Meaning
In 1912 Nijinsky choreographed and danced The Afternoon of a Faun. It was a succès de scandale as the audience was divided as to whether his performance was merely ripe with sexual innuendo or actually sexually explicit. The latter charge is ironic, seeing that the score, by Claude Debussy, was inspired by a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, a Symbolist. This group was anti-realism and pro spirituality, imagination, and dreams and used suggestion, signs, and images to get their message across. Greatly simplifying, you might say the Symbolists were about the vibes. McClellan suggests that Debussy’s approach to this score was similarly “evocative” and that Nijinsky’s innovations in choreography “opened the possibility to express abstract meaning through dance.” This demanded something of the viewer. And maybe fashion shows should too: The Row really shook things up when it banned phones for reasons of privacy and participation.
As dance critic Gennady Smakov, writing for Vogue, observed, “For more than 15 years, Diaghilev led dance in the direction of nonpictorial expressiveness, until it became completely autonomous.” It seems that fashion’s obsession with clicks and viral moments has made the industry less self-sufficient and demoted clothing to a supporting role from the leading one. The theatricality of the Ballets Russes was not just for show but the result of collaboration and physical effort combined to achieve a higher goal. Fashion doesn’t have the same remit, of course, but its reliance on the past and dependency on nostalgia finds it in a repeat-rewind pattern.
I left the Morgan Library wondering if a Gesamtkunstwerk (that idea of coming together as equals to affect change and bring magic into the world) would be possible today. To stretch the mind: That’s what art, and fashion, has the power to do.
