Costume & Dance Historian
When I was in LA last month I was able to go and see the wonderful exhibition Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage at LACMA. The exhibition runs until January 7, 2018. It is a wonderful opportunity to see the costume and set designs created by Marc Chagall. Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage showcases 41 costumes and nearly 100 designs… Continue reading Chagall: Fantasies for The Stage
I love autobiographies, I always have. There is something so personal and intriguing about how people choose to write about themselves - especially people in the arts where often a little theatrical sparkle is added! I was approached earlier this year to review Eva Maze’s Memoir, With Ballet in My Soul: Adventures of a Globetrotting Impresario.… Continue reading With Ballet in My Soul, Eva Maze.
So to get to Chicago I decided to take historical research to a new level and in a bid to relive the Ballets Russes tour I got the train. The 18 hour from D.C. to Chicago. While train travel may have been glamorous in 1916 - it is not now. It was however a lot… Continue reading Adventures of a Travelling Historian – Chicago
The Ballets Russes visited Washington D.C. twice in 1916. The first time was in March from the 23rd - 25th when the company performed at the National Theatre. They performed Cleopatra, Le Spectre de la Rose, Midnight Sun, Carnaval, Les Sylphides, L'après-midi d'un faune, Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor, and Scheherazade. The company… Continue reading Finding Nijinsky in Washington D.C.
After a week in New York City I hit the road once more and made my way to Washington D.C. I really like this city and not just because it has a huge amount of museums and the they are pretty much all free - but that is certainly a big factor! Here are a… Continue reading Adventures of a Travelling Historian – Washington D.C.
The surprisingly successful failure Over the next month I am planning on following and researching (in a very small way) the route of the supposedly ill-fated Ballets Russes USA tour of 1916. This tour was led by Nijinsky and has often been deemed a failure, as has the première of his last ballet Till… Continue reading Finding Nijinsky in NYC
So after three months of living at Jacob's Pillow - in the middle of the woods of Massachusetts - I finally packed up my suitcase and hit the road (well train/ bus) once more. For the next months I am travelling across the US visiting museums, libraries and dance companies in what will be the… Continue reading Adventures of a travelling historian – NYC
One week ago the 85th season at Jacob's Pillow, in woods of Massachusetts, came to a close. The last event of the action packed 10 weeks was a film screening of Wendy Whelan: Restless Creature and a Q&A with the great dancer herself - by 7 o'clock it was all over. That evening the production… Continue reading Summer at the Pillow
I recently found out that legendary designer and costume maker Barbara Karinska had a summer cottage in the Berkshires - in fact just down the road from Jacob's Pillow! If that was not cool enough I then found out that it was in this cottage that George Balanchine and Maria Tallchief spent their honeymoon in… Continue reading Karinska’s cottage in the woods
At the New York Historical Society you can now see, on permanent display, what is surely the biggest Picasso in NYC! The canvas was once the front cloth for Le Tricorne, from 1919, designed by Picasso, and shows a traditional corrida scene. In 1928 Diaghilev cut the middle section cut out of the cloth and sold it… Continue reading Finding the Ballets Russes in NYC – Part Two.
