Two different articles posted yesterday looked at ballet costumes. Let's continue the thread today starting from two costumes, or rather masks, by French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism (with Henri Matisse) André Derain, preserved at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.
The costumes - a Genie mask and Lupercalian priest mask - were employed for the ballet "Fastes" performed by avant-garde dance company Les Ballets in 1933.
Evolving from the Russian ballet tradition, the short lived company (it premiered six new ballets in June 1933, but was disbanded by September of the same year...) broke new ground thanks to choreographer George Balanchine, artistic director Boris Kochno, and art patron Edward James who funded the performances.
Crowds in Paris were astonished by the diversity of the choreographies presented, but in London reviews were mixed. Dancer Tamara Toumanova stated "It came at the right time...It erupted like a volcano of art. Derain, Berard, Milhaud, Tchelitchew, Kochno, Weill, Lotte Lenya. It was not to be believed. It was musically, theatrically, the most superb production."
Derain started creating for the theatre in 1919, when he was commissioned by Diaghilev to design the costumes, sets and stage curtains for the ballet "La boutique fantastique". He continued creating sets and costumes for opera and ballet productions, throughout his life, working for the Ballets Russes, the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, Balanchine's Les Ballets and the Sadler's Wells Ballet.
Performed in June 1933 and featuring music by Henri Sauguet, "Fastes" was inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture. The ballet was set in Etruscan Italy during a feast and revolved around two genii attending pagan rites performed by matrons, buffoons, acrobats.
Balanchine choreographed an animated frieze for the ballet, sculpting movements and shapes through the strength of the dancers' bodies. Derain designed the set and costumes taking inspiration from books about mythology and rites, and moving from the details of an Etruscan tomb decoration and from his passion for collecting ancient terracotta pieces. This derivation is clear in both Derain's masks: the mask for the Genii covered the entire body of dancers Serge Ismailoff and Ludovic Matlinsky, while the Lupercalian priest mask had three faces and gave the wearer (dancer Roman Jasinsky) the chance to come up with three different roles and dancing styles, the three-faced mask represented indeed the parable of youth, maturity, and old age (you can clearly see two faces from the Brighton Museum display, the third is unfortunately partially hidden behind a screen...).
For something completely different, yet linked with art and with costumes inspired by art, check out "Pictures at an Exhibition" by the New York City Ballet, returning (on 29th and 30th April 2016) after kicking off the 2014 Fall season.
Choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, "Pictures at an Exhibition" is set to Modest Mussorgsky's eponymous suite inspired by the paintings of Viktor Hartmann. The curtain rises on a group of figures gazing at colourful projections as if they were walking around a museum and looking at paintings.
In a way the dancers are a bit like visitors in a museum: the projections - designed by Wendall K. Harrington - are indeed inspired by Kandinsky's "Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles" and show swirls, squares and lines, abstract shapes that mutate, morph, and transform as the music and the movements change.
In this performance the NYC Ballet dancers wear costumes by fashion designer Adeline André, who translated the projections onto multicoloured outfits - short tunics for the women and loose trousers and tops for the men. The abstract modern art shapes featured in the projections are therefore evoked by the light costumes dipped and dyed in the same colours of the artworks.
The ballet is linked with Kandinsky's synaesthesia and will definitely call to mind in his fans the artist's life-changing experience that occurred to him during a performance of Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Bolshoi Theatre when he proclaimed "I saw all my colors in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me".
Though triggered by different art practices (sculpture/painting), the visual response provoked by André Derain and Adeline André's costumes is equally intense and introduces costume and ballet fans to two diverse approaches to design, materials and choreographies.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments