The company Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo (with a plural name) was formed in 1932 after the death of Sergei Diaghilev and the demise of Ballets Russes. Its director was Wassily de Basil (usually referred to as Colonel W. de Basil), and its artistic director was René Blum. They fell out in 1936 and the company split. The part which de Basil retained went through two name changes before becoming the Original Ballet Russe. Blum founded Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, which changed its name to Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (note the singular) when Léonide Massine became artistic director in 1938. It operated under this name until it disbanded some 20 years later.[1]
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo toured chiefly in the United States and Canada after World War II began. The company introduced audiences to ballet in cities and towns across the country, in many places where people had never seen classical dance. The company's principal dancers performed with other companies, and founded dance schools and companies of their own across the United States and Europe. They taught the Russian ballet traditions to generations of Americans and Europeans.
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo initially began because Léonide Massine, the choreographer of Colonel Wassily de Basil's Ballets Russes, desired to be more than just Colonel Wassily de Basil's right-hand man. De Basil was the artistic director of his Ballet Russes, and Massine desired that position, so he broke off to start his own company.[5]
Blum and de Basil fell out in 1934, and their Ballets Russes partnership dissolved.[6] After working desperately to keep ballet alive in Monte Carlo, in 1937 Blum and former Ballets Russes choreographer Léonide Massine acquired financing from Julius Fleischmann Jr.'s World Art, Inc. to create a new ballet company.[7]
At the start of Blum and Massine's company, Massine ran into trouble with Col. de Basil: the ballets which Massine choreographed while under contract with Col. de Basil were owned by his company. Massine sued Col. de Basil in London to regain the intellectual property rights to his own works. He also sued to claim the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo name.[8] The jury decided that Col. de Basil owned Massine's ballets created between 1932 and 1937, but not those created before 1932.[9] It also ruled that both successor companies could use the name Ballet Russe — but only Massine & Blum's company could be called Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. Col. de Basil finally settled on the Original Ballet Russe.[8]
The new Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo gave its first performance in 1938. Costumes were designed by British dancers Frederic Franklin and Jo Savino were also among those who joined the new company. Franklin danced with the company from 1938 to 1952, assuming the role of ballet master in 1944. With the company, Franklin and Alexandra Danilova created one of the legendary ballet partnerships of the twentieth century.
Sol Hurok, manager of de Basil's company since 1934, ended up managing Blum's company as well. He hoped to reunite the two ballet companies, but he was unsuccessful.
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Original Ballet Russe often performed near each other. In 1938, both the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Original Ballet Russe performed in London within blocks of each other.[8] Hurok continued to have the companies perform near each other. After London, Hurok booked both of the companies to perform seasons in New York, for a total of fifteen weeks, making it the longest ballet season of New York. Along with management, the two companies also shared dancers.
Co-founder René Blum was arrested on December 12, 1941, in his Paris home, among the first Jews to be arrested in Paris by the French police after France was defeated and occupied by the GermanNazis during World War II. He was held in the Beaune-la-Rolande camp, then in the Drancy deportation camp. On September 23, 1942, he was shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp,[10][11] where he was later killed by the Nazis.[6]
With Blum gone, Serge Denham, one of the co-founders of World Art, took over as company director.[12]
Massine left the company in 1943.
Based in New York from 1944 to 1948, the company's regular home was New York City Center.
In 1968, the company went bankrupt. Before then, many of its dancers had moved on to other careers; a number started their own studios and many taught ballet in larger studios, especially in New York and other major cities.
Many of the company's principal dancers and corps de ballet founded dance schools and companies of their own across the United States and Europe, teaching the Russian ballet traditions to generations of Americans and Europeans.
Roya Curie — protégé of David Lichine and premier dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo International, she established a school in upstate New York in 1950.
Robert Lindgren and Sonja Tyven (who danced in the Ballet Russe under the name Sonja Taanila) — opened the Lindgren-Tyven School of Ballet in Phoenix, Arizona (1959–1965). Lindgren also served as the founding dean of the influential dance school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where Tyven taught ballet (1965–1987). Lindgren left NCSA when Lincoln Kirstein invited him to be his successor as director and president of the School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s affiliate school in New York (1987–1991).[26][27]
George Verdak — taught for 25 years at Butler University and founded the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre.
Marian and Illaria Ladre — in the late 1940s, they set up the Ballet Academy in Seattle, where they taught students who went on to dance and teach in their turn. Students of theirs who had professional dance careers included James De Bolt of the Joffrey Ballet, Cyd Charisse, Marc Platt, Harold Lang, and Ann Reinking. In 1994 Illaria Ladre was among the first American dancers, choreographers and writers honored by receiving the newly established Vaslav Nijinsky Medal, sponsored by the Polish Artists Agency in Warsaw, for work carrying on the tradition of Nijinsky.[28]
Lubov Roudenko — Former soloist for the Ballets Russes in the 1930s, she left in the 1940s and, as Luba Marks, became a successful Coty Award winning fashion designer.[29]
Elissa Minet — danced for one season with the Ballets Russes in 1937 before joining the ballet company at the Metropolitan Opera.[30]
^Jack Anderson, The One and Only: The Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo (New York: Dance Horizons, 1981), p. 281.
^Frederic Franklin, interviewed by John Mueller, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 2004; bonus material on Gaîté Parisienne, a film (1954) by Victor Jessen on DVD (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Video Artists International, 2006).
^Balanchine and Mason, 101 Stories of the Great Ballets (1989), p. 183.
