[Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo]
1937 Account Book and Customs Statement with Multiple Signatures
Two original documents from the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, signed in 1937 by all members of the company. The first item is a book of salary receipts documenting payments to the members of the company, signed multiple times by each performer. The book also contains a typewritten list of each member's monthly salary, dated Berlin, September 9, 1937. Also included is a typed document dated Hamburg, October 31, 1937, declaring that the members of the company are not taking any German currency out of Germany, signed by every member. Signatures include dancers Leon, Helene and Sonia Woizikowsky, Tamara and Anna Tchinarova, Ruth Chanova, Olga Valevska and Mona Dimidova, conductor Ivan Clayton, as well as the company's costume and set designers. Book with toning and edge wear, 6.5 x 8.25 inches (16.7 x 21 cm). Signed document with some edge tears and soiling, 8.25 x 11.5 inches (21 x 29.5 cm). Overall very good.A remarkably complete set of autographs from the Ballet Russe company formed in the wake of the dissolution of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes after his death in 1929. Orchestrated by the entrepreneur Colonel Wassily de Basil and billed as "Ballets Russes du Colonel W. de Basill ( De Monte Carlo)," the company's dancers were drawn largely from the Ballets de Leon Woizikowsky, augmented by artists from de Basil's own company, from Rene Blum's Ballets de Monte Carlo, and from Diaghilev's troupe. The large-scale professional ballet company toured extensively in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the United States, and Central and South America until 1947. (15959)
Signed Document/Item Dance