Crafting the Ballets Russes: Music, Dance, Design; The Robert Owen Lehman Collection

This catalog accompanying an exhibition at New York City’s Morgan Library features music manuscripts from the Lehman Collection as well as drawings, theater programs, and photographs that bring the works of the Ballets Russes to life. Dance historian Lynn Garafola begins with an overview of the history of the ballet company, explaining that by involving innovative composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy, choreographers such as Michel Fokine and Vaslav Nijinsky, and designers Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, impresario Serge Diaghilev created groundbreaking modern ballets that united music, dance, and design in a total work of art, or “Gesamtkunstwerk.” McClellan, the Morgan Library’s assistant curator of music, focuses on five ballets associated with the aforementioned manuscripts in the museum’s collection. While better-known ballets such as the Firebird (1910), Petrouchka (1911), and L’Après-midi d’un Faune (1912) are featured, there is also discussion of lesser-known ballets such as Les Noces (1923) and Bolero (1928), both of which were choreographed by women: Bronislava Nijinska (Nijinsky’s sister) and Ida Rubinstein, who created Bolero under the aegis of her own ballet company. The authors also note that although modern in form and style, racist stereotypes permeated the ballets Schéhérazade and Petrouchka.