Between 1936 and 1940 three ballet companies deriving from Diaghilev's original Ballets Russes toured Australia and New Zealand. They went mainly under the name Colonel W. de Basil's Monte Carlo Russian Ballet or, on the second tour, the Covent Garden Russian Ballet. Whatever the label, their extended sojourns represent one of the most remarkable and best-documented examples of long-term impact in twentieth-century theatre. The volume under review is just one of several outcomes of a series of activities organized between 2006 and 2009 in Australia to mark the centenary of the Paris 1909 debut of the Ballets Russes. This richly illustrated, superbly edited and deeply researched book is the result of a cross-disciplinary research project, which brought together dance and art historians, curators and musicologists in an attempt to review what was termed in an earlier documentary film ‘an avalanche of dancing’ that descended on the Antipodes in the late 1930s. After the death of Diaghilev in 1929, Colonel de Basil and René Blum joined forces to continue the success of the original troupe. They recruited, controversially, teenage girls, often children of Russian émigrés, who became known as the Baby Ballerinas. The repertoire they brought to Australia after tours through the United States and other countries was remarkably broad, encompassing works ranging from imperial ballet (Swan Lake) to cubo-futurism (Jeux d'enfants), from Fokine to Serge Livar.
In the seventeen chapters the authors illuminate an extraordinary range of themes and topics related to the tours, which totalled 773 performances and included 131 dancers from seventeen countries, all of whom were given Russian names. Although Australian audiences had already been prepared for Russian ballet by two acclaimed tours in the 1920s by Anna Pavlova (which, legend has it, led to the invention of the eponymous Antipodean dessert, the pavlova), de Basil's Ballets Russes were on a different scale both organizationally and artistically. Australian and New Zealand audiences received a dose of modernist theatre, at an intensity hitherto unknown. Lynn Garafola's essay on Léonide Massine demonstrates how adventurous the repertoire was. The plotless formalism of the new symphonic ballets he developed during the 1930s, especially, moved the Fokine-style choreography further down the road to high modernism. In a contribution entitled ‘Ballet Straddles the Great Divide’, Mark Carroll discusses the contribution of Arnold Haskell, the ubiquitous critic and propagandist of the troupe, as a broker between artists, press and public. Several articles illuminate the impact on Australia's budding fine-arts scene, especially in terms of direct influence on artists such as Loudon Sainthill (who went on to have a distinguished career as a stage designer) and, most notably, Sidney Nolan, Australia's most acclaimed mid-century painter.
Other articles investigate the social impact of the tours as the dancers were literally welcomed into the homes of Australians. The extended stays in the main Australian cities not only were a series of triumphant performances but also involved an extended round of parties and barbecues, which were in fact an integral part of the promotional strategy of JC Williamson Ltd (‘the Firm’), the undisputed masters of the Australian entertainment circuit. On one trip, returning from such a party in a private bus, we learn that the dancers created a new choreography entitled L'après midi d'un prawn, which was, alas, never performed publicly.
Some dancers stayed on in Australia, married, established schools and even ballet troupes. The book demonstrates a direct genealogy between the 1930s and today. It shows indirectly how the supposed ephemeral nature of theatrical touring could in fact have long-term impact. The book shows, finally and quite spectacularly, how a global theatrical phenomenon such as the Ballets Russes could insert itself in the incipient process of local theatrical nation building.
