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'Diaghilev’s Empire' by Rupert Christiansen
Diaghilev wasn’t a dancer or a choreographer, but he revolutionized ballet. His Ballet Russes caused a sensation in Paris with the 1913 debut of The Rite of Spring, its savage rhythms executed to the music of Igor Stravinsky. The ripples continued throughout the world, upending conventions, pointing to modern dance. Diaghilev couldn’t dance but had a genius for meeting the right people, finding money, bringing artists together in a collaborative vision. His genius was in thinking big and getting things done.
Although the new Diaghilev biography never mentions the term, Russia’s “Silver Age,” the fluorescence of culture in the final decades of tsardom, was the backdrop for the impresario’s triumphs. In his lusciously delightful account, biographer Rupert Christiansen does take stock of the cultural elements fusing and sparking in Russia at the turn of the 20th century. Symbolism and other influences from Western Europe merged with the Russian iconography and folklore that were foundational to the Ballet Russes.
The scion of rural gentry, Diaghilev was dismissed as something of a bumpkin when he first arrived in St. Petersburg’s artistic circles. He proved a fast learner as a well as an able networker, applying the Wagnerian ideal of an all-encompassing performance art to ballet. His Ballet Russes would not be a kinetic circus but a stage for dramatic unity and integrity. Much of his financial support in early years came from the nobility—and even the tsar.
Backstage, Diaghilev inhabited a carefully cushioned demi mode of wealthy gay men. His fraught relationship with the spectacular dancer Vaslav Nijinsky occupies several pages of his biography. According to the author, Nijinsky “was not homosexual and perhaps only politely compliant in the bedroom.” On stage, he was a dynamo of expressive energy, making leaps that astonished audiences. Without denying Nijinsky’s athleticism, Christiansen points to tricks of the eye in staging that enhanced his breathtaking performances.
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With Diaghilev at the helm, ballet assumed new vigor in the 20th century. Because of their physical training, many of his dancers “born before the invention of the combustion engine survived to witness men on the moon, the Bee Gees at no. 1, and Margaret Thatcher leading the Conservative Party.” Although their stage careers may have been relatively short, many of Diaghilev’s dancers taught ballet through the end of their lives, spreading the Ballet Russes’ aesthetic to younger generations. Some, like dancer George Balanchine, carved their own niches in the pantheon of modern dance.
However, Nijinsky’s mental health imploded. Before his death in 1952, he appeared “apathetically vacant” even as his wife, the dancer Romola, spun a mythology around him that Christiansen is eager to disentangle from the truth.
