Sergei Diaghilev

It's paints these amazing pictures.

And I remember going back to, back to school after I'd heard that, essentially as a r- basically someone who was learning rock and roll and jazz drums, and wanting to know more about this music, and being given some of the other, uh, Diaghilev, um, ballets, The Rite of Spring ob- obviously.

And it kind of led me quite quickly into Zappa and Varèse and those things.

And, uh, funny enough, the Yellow Shark, um, I have the, I have one of the original, um, tour posters from Ensemble Modern, uh, hung up in my studio on the way in.

And in this film, it is Anton Walbrook, who plays Boris Lermontov.

And it's understood that his character is modeled after Sergei Diaghilev, if I said that correctly.

He

was the real impresario, which, by the way, impresario was a new word for me in the last few weeks.

And he does reflect a certain kind of single-minded personality.

So he's Powell, he's Pressburger, he's Korda, he's all kinds of people.

He is obviously very closely related to Sergei Diaghilev.

A phenomenal force in ballet culture.

Its working title was Wien, or Vienna.

The opportunity to see it through finally came in 1919, when the impresario Sergei Diaghilev offered to produce the planned work as a ballet.

Ravel set to work that winter and wrote to a friend, "'It's going great guns.

I was able to take off at last, and in high gear.

Yes.

And her wildest dream is to be discovered by the great dance master Fokine or the impresario Diaghilev and just run away to the Mariinsky Theater.

What's fascinating here is how the text uses Zoya's passion for ballet to highlight the rigid social structures of Imperial Russia.

To understand this, we really have to look at the cultural weight of the Russian arts during this specific era.

The Mariinsky Theater wasn't just the stage.

It was the crown jewel of Russian culture.

And Diaghilev's Ballet Russes was revolutionizing art across all of Europe.

Right.

You can look at ballet.

You can look at... genuinely i used to guys this is funny genuinely i used to look at praying mats i love the color combinations and i literally used to take so many pictures and use the color combo and create something with my art whatever it was people were slowly trying to look at other stuff for inspiration so now we go to art we have favism there's this group called the favs in 1905 they exhibited their work with their paintings had a lot of intense colors if you want to paint a tree green they would paint it green but then they would add purple and orange and blue and they would add like different colors that are not in a tree um just to express something so that's like that opened the eyes for a lot of people and okay interesting it wasn't realism so fashion designers took that and they were like okay color doesn't have to behave realistically in 1906 we have Serge Diaghilev sorry if I'm butchering names anywho so he basically created this Russian art exhibition in Paris and they become really interested in Russian art so keep that in mind we go back to the perfumes they were interested in Indian flowers as perfume and now they were interested in greek flowing clothes in ancient greece now they're interested with russian art so you can see that people were becoming more interested in other cultures and not just their culture not just paris also serge in 1909 he created his own ballet company called ballet rose this is so huge in the fashion industry so famous um if you go back to it there's so much inspiration taken from uh ballet rose they performed uh cleopatra the costume sets were designed by leon baxt the colors were very vivid again taking from the faves how they use color taking from russian art taking from theater taking from dance a lot of things now it's creating a different visual environment in 1910 belarus performed shahrazad and this is one of the major major moments in history for orientalism and western fashion let's talk about orientalism for a second okay orientalism is basically western designers and artists they were taking imagery that is associated with what they considered the east so north africa middle east central asia india persia they were taking eastern ideas that they thought were eastern ideas and turning it into this western fantasy okay so again i want to say i genuinely of course i don't agree with this i'm middle eastern and their ideas of us is too much everything was very sensual very exotic that's why i like the the word exotic is so funny to me especially how they use it for us because they always think like the arabs or like the middle east or the east in general is very exotic and different when in reality it's just we have a different culture so they took that and they were obsessed with their idea of orientalism is taking inspiration from the east but the issue is they didn't take or actually study what we actually are and try to understand they created this fake fantasy in their brain and they were like okay this is the east so that's orientalism okay so obviously i don't agree with this me being from the middle east especially but that's what happened it's giving aladdin you know how jasmine dresses like the belly the whole belly is out and she's wearing a bra the whole time that's orientalism west felt like they were obsessed with it they were like oh my god this is insane this is so new this is so fresh this is so cool and now we talk about paul perry the man of the hour okay so paul perry really did a lot in fashion a lot a lot a lot a lot but we have to say he's not the one who created this whole thing okay he took he came in the perfect time and he saw a new theater is doing this people are interested in different cultures there's the greek there's the russian there's the uh eastern like orientalism um there's so many things and he was like the creative director he was like okay let me take everything combine it into one and create this whole new fashion movement he went completely the opposite direction from the edwardian silhouette he wanted the body to look long and narrow and very columnar he wasn't just a designer he created this whole world around his designs so he understood and no clothes are just part of the fantasy he created gardens and parties perfumes he created mannequins and events theatrical events and very exaggerated social occasions to create this whole Peret world.

He also had a muse, which was his wife, Denise Bollet.

And a lot of designers nowadays have the same vibe or formula that Peret began, which is not only creating a fashion brand, but creating a whole world.

But for me, I'd have to be looking at bigger prices.

And where do we go then? Because we got news afternoon on Thursday that Sergei Diaghilev, the Aidan O'Brien runner, has been taken out.

So the horse with the best form has gone.

Who are we going to look to be with? Because I've got a bit of a view on a horse I'm quite negative about in this field as well.

He might just be a very smart horse, but equally you might find conditions tough if they do worsen.

Yeah, and I'd be inclined to agree with that.

I mean, obviously the race with Sergei Diaghilev not running is sort of taking a slightly different shape to what it potentially had done in that one of the standard setters is out.

But I would be lukewarm on the two horses we've mentioned.

By no means.

Diaghilev would have hired most of them for the Ballet Russe on first sight without even asking them whether they could keep time to music.

End of chapter one.

Chapter two of The Big Time by Fritz Leiber.

[laughs]

You know, he mentions Diaghilev, and of course, the Anton Walbrook, Lermontov is, is based on Diaghilev.

And I don't know, you know, the grand impresario idea.

But it's a noble thing, you know, and it's a beautiful dream.

And it was taken from all of these diaries of Nijinsky's and the sort of really complex relationship.

I think Diaghilev, the ballet ruse master, was involved in some way, but it was this stunning theatrical exploration of this inner life of this guy.

And Robert Wilson's, all the really slow-moving lights that he does was at play.

And just Baryshnikov's physical...

He began producing mythological decorations, a brilliant series that drew on everything he had absorbed over 30 years in Europe.

Classical Greek art, the mural painter Pouvis de Chavannes, the sinuous line of Art Nouveau, the bold colour of Fauvism, the theatrical spectacle of Diaghilev's Bali's Rus'.

These new works reach their fullest expression in the 1920s and are, by his biographer's assessment, among his finest achievements.

He also returned to landscape, lyrical views of the south of France, the light and colour of Provence, and the Côte d'Azur, painted with the ease of a man who has been looking at French light for decades and has finally learned how to hold it on canvas.