Word: ballets
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Spring, 1917. World War I ground grimly on. All the same, the famed impresario of the Ballet Russe, Sergei Diaghilev, commissioned a young poet, Jean Cocteau, to conceive a new ballet. At the time Cocteau was obsessed by visual images, especially the Harlequins, Pierrots and musical instruments in Picasso's paintings. As Cocteau recalled later, "My dream was to hear the music of Picasso's guitars," and he set about building his ballet around them, hoping to cajole the Spanish painter into designing sets and costumes. Picasso, a friend of Cocteau's, was cajoled...
...months later an audience of war-strained Parisians, prepared to be outraged by the horrors of "modern art," sighed with relief when Picasso's great curtain for the ballet Parade rolled down portraying a delightful procession of circus folk. But when 10-ft. figures decked out in wild cubist costumes strolled onstage, oranges started flying into the orchestra. At the ballet's conclusion, Composer Erik Satie was slapped in the face; next day the press cried "Scandal!" Diaghilev dropped Parade...
...Picasso, the taste of theater was seductive. He stayed on with the Ballet Russe for eight years. He married Diaghilev Ballerina Olga Koklova, sketched the troupe as it rehearsed, painted dancers' portraits, and designed theater curtains, scenery and costumes for five more ballets-often appearing in the wings on opening night with paint and brushes to add his final touch...
...merry Spanish folk tale replete with flamenco dancers. For the Toulouse Festival, the Paris Opéra reproduced the 1919 costumes, including a coquettish gown that the original first ballerina, Karsavina, deemed "a supreme masterpiece in pink silk and black lace," and a Spanish troupe danced the ballet...
...nine months to begin painting again; in the meantime, he helped his daughter translate Bella's own memoirs of Russia, Burning Lights. Then, in 1945, he had recovered enough to begin work on the sets and costumes for Stravinsky's The Firebird. The curtain for the ballet lofts a bare-breasted Bella in the embrace of a giant bird, her head upside down and holding a bouquet. It was probably his greatest theatrical production, disturbing, profound and an ultimate memorial from the bereaved painter...