Diaghilev

A detailed Summary of Diaghilev

"He fancied a career in music, but was a terrible composer. He wanted to be a painter, but lacked vision and aptitude. He wanted to change the face of dance, but had no dance training whatsoever. By his own admission, this poor, misguided soul had " no real gifts." He went on to become one of the most influential artistic figures of the twentieth century. Despite his claim to the contrary, Serge Diaghilev, founder of the famous Diaghilev Ballets Russes, had many gifts most notably as a talent scout, an impressario, and a visionary who encouraged collaboration in the arts."

Born March 31, 1872, in Gruzine, Novgorod Province, Diaghilev showed no talent in his early years, there was never a thought that he would set out on a dance or theatrical career, although, he really wanted to become a composer, as mentioned in the quote above. In 1890, Serge's family moved to St. Petersburg where he studied law, while continuing to pursue a career as a composer. After many failures, he was successfully dissuaded from his dream by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, who was a famous Russian composer, and one of Diaghilev's idols, at the time. In another failure to succeed, Diaghilev reluctantly joined a circle of famour writers and

The Diaghilev Ballets turned in to a great organization which was glamorous, exciting, and extremely different. Though a great risk was taken, many times, the audiences could not get enough, however, when Diaghilev presented a ballet, it was because it was what he envisioned, and had nothing to do with what the public wanted. Diaghilev's dancers respected him so much, that they danced for him and not for the audience.

(4) http://www.bravo.ca/footnotes/episodes/episode10.html

Just after the peak of the Ballets Russes success, Diaghilev took sick and tragically died in 1929. His company fell apart and it's former members took to different routes. With this, however, came many great new dance companies. Former student George Balanchine emigrated to the United States and founded the New York City Ballet, Ninette de Valois, Anton Dolin, and Alicia Markova went on to dance in London and Serge Lifar became director of the Paris Opera Ballet, to name a few. Serge Diaghilev's enlightened many in his day, and still do now. He created his own form of dance, that was pleasing to the audience in many more ways that one, and expanded the dance world and brought it to new hights, which some say it has still not exceeded.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 caused Diaghilev to cut his links with Russia, and the company continued, even though they were greatly in debt. Foreign dancers with aliases as names started to dance for the company. Diaghilev hired a new choreographer ( Russian Leonide Massine), and he produced many popular ballets that relied on strong character work, including ballets such as "La Boutique Fantasque" in 1919. Finally, in 1921, Diaghilev returned to a true classic ballet in "Sleeping Beauty", but reanmed it "The Sleeping Princess". The company toured across Europe and North and South America, finally settling in Monte

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Approximate Word count = 1248
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People