[Ballets Russes]
Original 1916 Tour Prospectus Program
Rare original prospectus program from the 1916 - 1917 US tour of Serge de Diaghileff's Ballet Russe. The present program includes photographs of some of the principle dancers, including Waslav Nijinsky, as well as a magnificent two-page lithograph of Leon Bakst's set for "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune." 28 pp. 6.3 x 9.5 inches.For the first US tour, earlier in 1916, Diaghilev had succeeded in having Nijinsky released from his internment for mental health problems, and though he arrived on that tour later than the rest of the company, he was an enormous sensation on the tour. "When that first American season was over, Otto Kahn, the chairman of the Metropolitan Opera board, engaged the Ballets Russes for a second New York season, to be followed by a cross-country tour (1916-1917), and he unwisely decided that the company should be directed during this period by Nijinsky, not Diaghilev. What followed was probably the most chaotic and demoralized tour the Ballet Russes ever undertook. A four-month journey, stopping in fifty-two cities, with over a hundred dancers and musicians: it was a huge administrative assignment, and Nijinsky had no administrative skills.
By this time, furthermore, he had come under the influence of two members of the company, Dmitri Kostrovsky and Nicholas Zverev, who were followers of the religious philosophy of Leo Tolstoy. Night after night he would remain shut up in his train compartment with these two moujiks, as Romola called them, while Kostrovsky, with shining eyes, called him to the faith. Born a Roman Catholic, Nijinsky had long had a religious turn of mind—Romola records that as a teenager he had dreamed of being a monk—and he had been studying Tolstoy for years. Now he embraced Tolstoy's teachings with a whole heart. He became a vegetarian; he preached nonviolence; he tried to practice "marital chastity." He took to wearing peasant shirts and told Romola that he wanted to give up dancing and return to Russia, to plow the land—an announcement that prompted her to abandon him for the last leg of the tour. He tried to run the company in accordance with his new beliefs. For example, he began to practice democratic casting, giving lesser-known dancers leading roles, including his own roles, often without announcing the cast changes to the public.
After this dreadful tour, on which the Metropolitan Opera lost a quarter of a million dollars, Nijinsky performed with the Ballets Russes for a few months more, in Spain and South America, in 1917." (Joan Acocella, "Secrets of Nijinsky." NY Rev. of Books, Vol. 46, 1999). (14951)
Program, unsigned Dance