Ballets Russes
Founded by the Russian impressario Sergei Diaghilev in 1909, the Ballets Russes played a role of fundamental importance in the development of early twentieth-century modernism.…
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Ballets Suédois (1920–25)
Rolf de Maré’s Ballets Suédois was active from 1920 to 1925. It was the chief artistic rival to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and de Maré was…
Chinese Revolutionary Ballet
Introduced to China in the 1920s, Western ballet evolved into a significant performance genre in modern and contemporary China. Its popularity grew in the twentieth…
Dance
Historically, modern dance scholarship has followed the contours of the field as defined by John Martin, the revered dance critic for The New York Times,…
Bauhaus
In 1919 a young architect named Walter Gropius initiated one of the most modern art schools of the twentieth century in the city of Weimar…
Dadaism
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
Futurism
Futurism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a movement that explicitly conceptualized the process of literary and artistic experimentation as part of…
Intellectual Currents
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
Surrealism Overview
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Parade
A one-act ballet on the theme of a fairground sideshow, Parade was produced by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and premiered on May 18, 1917 at…
de Mille, Agnes (1905–1993)
Agnes de Mille performed as a self-producing female dance soloist; she choreographed for Ballets Russes and Ballet Theatre (now the AmericanBallet Theatre) and transformed the…
Börlin, Jean (1893–1930)
As principal choreographer and dancer for the 1920s avant-garde troupe Les Ballets Suédois (Swedish Ballet), Jean Börlin contributed greatly to the modernist cauldron that was…
Fokine, Michel (1880–1942)
Michel Fokine’s seventeen works for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1909–29) revitalized ballet in the early twentieth century. In Fokine’s most successful works, the body became…
Tudor, Antony (1908–1987)
Born into a modest household in London’s East End, Antony Tudor changed the way we look at ballet and what it was thought to express.…
Lifar, Serge (1905–1986)
A crucial figure in the rehabilitation of ballet at the Paris Opéra, Serge Lifar had a glamorous career as a dancer, choreographer, and intellectual in…
Wiesenthal, Grete (1885–1970)
The Austrian dancer and choreographer Grete Wiesenthal was a transitional figure at the crossroads of ballet and modern dance. Initially trained and employed as a…
Goleizovsky (Goleizovskii), Kas’ian Yaroslavich (1892–1970)
A Russo-Soviet choreographer, dancer, and artist, Kas’ian Goleizovsky was exposed to various art forms from early childhood: dance at the Bolshoi ballet school; fine and…
Nijinska, Bronislava (1891–1972)
The premiere female ballet choreographer of the first half of the twentieth century, Bronislava Nijinska experienced the transformative power of the Russian Revolution and discovered…
La Création du Monde
A ballet inspired by a creation fable in Blaise Cendrars’s Anthologie nègre (1921), La Création du monde (The Creation of the World) was produced by…
Antheil George (1900–1959)
George Johann Carl Antheil was an American composer, pianist, author, and inventor. He is best-known for his 1924 composition, Ballet Mechanique, originally scored for sixteen…
Ashton, Frederick William Mallandaine (1904–1988)
Frederick Ashton was a British choreographer and dancer whose work significantly contributed to the development and identity of The Royal Ballet. Along with its founder,…
Levinson, André (Andrei Iakovlevich Levinson) (1887–1933)
A critic and theorist, André Levinson continued the nineteenth-century continental tradition of dance and ballet criticism as part of philosophical and aesthetic inquiry: dance as…
Nijinsky, Vaslav (1889–1950)
Vaslav Nijinsky was a Russian dancer and choreographer of Polish descent. He achieved international renown as the star of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Company between…
Karsavina, Tamara (1885–1978)
Trained at St. Petersburg’s Imperial Ballet School, Tamara Karsavina became, in the course of her long and varied career, the prototypical modern ballerina. A dancer…
Raqs-e melli
Iranian-Armenians Madame Cornelli, Madame Yelena Avakian, and Sarkis Djanbazian, all of whom had learned ballet in Russia or Europe, came to Iran where they opened…