Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Ballet Russes

While I'm not particularly fond of waking up at 4 in the morning, or spending 9 hours on a bus in one day, and I'm not the biggest fan of costume textiles, or Canberra to be perfectly honest, I was quite a fan of the Ballet Russes exhibition at Canberra's National Gallery that i visited two weeks ago with uni. The exhibition was a collection of 150 beautiful costumes and accessories from The Russian Ballet of the early 20th century to mark the 100th anniversary of the Ballet Russes. The costumes were each intricately designed and hand constructed to tell a story and create a character of the dance for which it was created. To give a small taste of such works of art, I have selected three costumes that caught my eye throughout the exhibiton.

The first costume is from the ballet L'Oiseau de Feu (the firebird), and is the 'Dress for a Member of Kostchei's Entourage'. The costume is made up of a mustard coloured skirt and a cream beaded and embroidered blouse. I chose it because I was particularly fond of the beading on the blouse. The jacket was designed by Aleksandr Golovin and Leon Bakst in 1910 and the skirt was designed by Natalia Goncharova in 1926 and was worn by the members of the evil wizard Kostchei's entourage of 'monster guards'. Kostchei resides in an ancient castle, when Prince Ivan falls in love with one of the princesses enslaved by him and tries to follow her into the castle, Kostchei and the entourage attack him. Eventually the Prince is helped by a firebird  he had earlier freed and they destroy the wizard and his brigade. The garment is for "monster" guards and therefore lacks colour, with fairly monotone creams and yellows, the only colour added in the red and blue beading. The cream colours give it a slight peasant look which is fitting as they are merely guards & slave to the evil wizard. It utilises rayon, synthetic fabric, metallic lace, cotton, gelatine sequins, glass beads, plastic jewels and paint, and employs techniques such as embroidery, beading and applique, making it quite intricate and unique.

107276.jpg

The second costume that i chose was the 'costume for a male' from the 1933 ballet Les Présages. It was designed by Andre Masson and is a long dress jacket made of felt and cotton with a zig zagged bloc colour pattern in blue and maroon. I liked this design as it was very different to the rest, quite simple with an edgy, sci fi feel that seems to translate even to today's fashion. The ballet told the story of humanity's struggle with destiny, with themes of 1930's futurism, thus the futuristic sci fi suits. The suits are so so classic that just by looking at them you can identify them with so many references through time such as star trek and the double breasted coat or the trench coat, showing how inspiring these times were and how the basic ideas of aesthetics may have altered through time but can still link quite easily back to each other.

My final, and favourite choice, is the dress for the 'Blue God' from Le Dieu Bleu. This was designed my M. Landoff and Marie Muelle and made from silk and satin with heavy embroidery of a lotus flower in a gold braided thread, studding, beading and applique. This garment is absolutely, elaborately beautiful. The ballet was set in mythical india, the dress is worn by the 'blue god' who plays the important role in the ballet by bringing together the torn apart lovers by subduing the monsters. It has a stiff colonial skirt and pink and white gelatin sequin-like disks  around the hem. The heavy embellishment immitates hindu sculpturism and the stiffness in the skirt maintains a sculptured pose even while dancing. The dancer - Nijinsky - wore blue makeup to complete the image of the blue god and some of this has actually smudged on the costume, which i think is a wonderful piece of first hand history.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)