Tamara Karsavina – Landgraf on Dance

27. July 20255. August 2025

Something Is Going On

“Twilight”/“Bronia”
Les Ballets de Monte Carlo
Salle Garnier Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Monte Carlo, Monaco
July 18, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo closed the season with two new creations: Twilight by Lukáš Timulak and Bronia by Mattia Russo and Antonio de Rosa. So far, all productions I’ve seen in Monaco have been performed at the Grimaldi Forum, a modern glass and steel complex whose Salle des Princes lies below sea level. The new double bill was, however, presented at the Salle Garnier at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, which is next door to the famous casino. A miniature replica of the Paris Opera, the Salle Garnier is a red and gold Italian theater built in the Second Empire style. It was here that Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes took up residence in 1911. Until the First World War, Diaghilev’s company rehearsed, prepared new productions, and stored sets and props in Monte-Carlo. On April 9, 1911, the Ballets Russes gave its first performance, which featured Scheherazade and Giselle. On April 19th, Nijinsky and Karsavina gave their debut in Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose. This history was significant in the context of the recent premiere. Continue reading “Something Is Going On”

22. July 202527. July 2025

“We Need Him”

“Diaghilev”
Dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre (New Stage)
Moscow, Russia
June 24, 2025 (video)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

The man in need whom Sergei Lifar wrote about in 1939 was Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929), impresario of the Ballets Russes and a revolutionist of ballet. Diaghilev’s burning passion to discover and promote creative beauty is unequaled. He shaped the perception of Russian culture in the West and, like a virus, changed the DNA of twentieth-century art. Without him, Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Ida Rubinstein, Feodor Chaliapin, and Igor Stravinsky wouldn’t have become known to the world, and the careers of choreographers, such as Michel Fokine, Bronislava Nijinska, Léonide Massine, and George Balanchine, might have taken another path. Ten years after Diaghilev’s death, no one had filled the void he had left behind.

Ninety-six years later, a new Diaghilev has yet to be found, but—as Russia and the West separated again—the need for a bridge-building spirit and culture that unites people across borders is more pressing than ever. That’s why Russia launched the cultural search festival We Need Diaghilev last year, which features various expositions, lectures, and performances at Russian and foreign venues. Continue reading ““We Need Him””

23. January 201820. April 2020

An Appreciation

Frank-Manuel Peter:
“The Painter Ernst Oppler – The Berlin Secession & The Russian Ballet”
176 pages, 220 colored and 7 b/w photos
Published by Wienand, September 2017
ISBN: 978-3-86832-391-7
January 2018

The Ballets Russes caused an earthquake upon arriving in Paris in 1909. It’s much less well known, however, that Russian dancers – primarily Anna Pavlova – created a stir in Germany (then a ballet diaspora) just days before. Although the first tour of the Imperial Russian Ballet to Berlin in 1908 had been cut short due to limited public interest, Pavlova and her colleagues were enthusiastically celebrated by critics and audience alike one year later. Tickets for their first performance at Berlin’s Royal Opera (today’s Oper unter den Linden) were reserved for those in the cultural elite: authors, critics, actors, and members of the Berlin Secession, a group of artists that opposed the academic art politics of the Wilhelmine era. For painter Ernst Oppler, the performance on May 5th, 1909 was a turning point in his career – a career that would become the focus of “The Painter Ernst Oppler – The Berlin Secession & The Russian Ballet” by Frank-Manuel Peter, head of the German Dance Archive Cologne. Continue reading “An Appreciation”