We Warred Over Art: Pandemonium at Le Sacre du Printemps (thesis)

Abstract

Diaghilev continued this process of bringing Russian art to France under the auspices of the Ballets Russes. With this company, Diaghilev assembled dozens of innovative artists, choreographers, and composers with the common goal of creating a vast repertoire of avant-garde ballets. W. A. Propert, author of The Russian Ballet in Western Europe 1909-1920, described the company saying, “We saw the ballet for the first time breaking away from all traditions and expressing itself firmly and fully in a language entirely of its own invention.” By infusing the artistic styles Diaghilev admired in French and Russian paintings into his balletic work, he quickly acquired a reputation for producing cutting edge artistic advances with each performance of The Ballets Russes. These individual ballets worked together as a larger cohesive unit to project Diaghilev’s overarching artistic aim of cultivating a distinct Russian identity. [From Introduction]