EVENT: Ballets Russes 2009

Ballets Russes 2009

The Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership Presents a Weeklong Festival to

Celebrate International Collaboration in the Arts

BOSTON, Massachusetts – April 15, 2009 – This May, Boston will observe the centenary of the first performances of the Ballets Russes, a revolutionary Russian ballet and opera troupe that captivated European and American audiences for twenty years in the early 20th Century. The Ballets Russes 2009 festival, presented by the Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership, will feature performances, an exhibition, an academic conference, and a procession and street fair that will celebrate the impact and enduring legacy of this world-renowned performing company. With this festival the Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership will commence a permanent artistic and intellectual exchange initiative between Boston, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.

About the Ballets Russes

The legendary impresario Serge Diaghilev launched the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris in May 1909. For the next twenty years, this revolutionary performing company electrified Western audiences with a potent fusion of music, choreography, theatrical design and dance, all of equal brilliance. The content was a revelation; it was sensual, innovative, provocative, and yet it drew on artistic traditions. Although it grew out of the Imperial Theaters, this profoundly Russian performing company flowered in Europe, contributing to and joining forces with Western modernism. Painters, composers and choreographers of the avant-garde were central to the achievements of the Ballets Russes.


Vaslav Nijinsky, Leon Bakst, Igor Stravinsky, George Balanchine, Pablo Picasso were among the creative geniuses made famous by the Ballets Russes.

Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership will celebrate Diaghilev’s progressive artistic and cultural legacy, which encouraged international cooperation and established lasting global bonds between Russia and America. The May festival will serve as the kick-off to a renewed cultural partnership between the two countries.

About the Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership

Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership is the only organization of its kind to promote lasting global bonds between Russia and America based on cultural awareness and mutual appreciation for the arts.

This renewed international partnership between the two countries will be anchored by a week-long centennial celebration of Ballets Russes – the legendary dance and opera company created by Serge Diaghilev one hundred years ago. In the spirit of multi-cultural cooperation that Diaghilev pioneered, performers and artists from Russia, Europe, and America will congregate in Boston to honor and commemorate the lasting cultural impact of Ballets Russes.