Diaghilev
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 painters, led by the Russian painters L�on Bakst and Alexandre Benois. During this time, Diaghilev did succeed and indeed felt he had finnaly found his place in life. He founded AND edited a progressive art journal – "Mir Iskusstva" ( The World of Art) from 1899 – 1904. In 1899, as a project, Diaghilev became the artistic adviser to the Imperial Theatres in Moscow, where he produced and co-produced several operas and ballets. It was then that he decided what he really wanted to do and after completing his term with the Imperial Theatres and the printing of Mir Iskusstva being canceled, he decided to move and settle in Paris, France, where he successfully produced "Boris Godunov", a famous opera, in 1908.
Diaghilev had seen ballets before, but it wasn’t until he saw "Raymonda" that ballet took any effect on his life. He then decided, that he would try doing more than producing with the art of Ballet. It’s from this time on that we talk of the "Diaghilev Period". In 1909, Diaghilev hit it big with the famous Russian dancer and choreographer in Michel Fokine and a group of russian dancers that included Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova. It was now that Diaghilev established "Les Ballets Russes". This company made possible the realization of Fokine’s ideas of ballet as an art that unified dance, drama, music, and painting.
"What he did is he took the art form way from the imperial courtlike presentational form of dance as we knew it then, and pushed the envelope, used the theatre and the dance as a vehicle to challenge the audience's assumptions."...
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