Diaghilev’s heirs

Sergei Diaghilev’s direct influence on contemporary dance is undeniable – but there are also echoes of Diaghilev’s style, ambition, influences, and ego in some of today’s most intriguing artists.

Andy Warhol
Diaghilev refused to be constrained to the world of ballet, just as Andy Warhol’s career began in advertising, moved into painting, and soon involved almost every art practice imaginable. Both men acted as large-scale creative masterminds, though Diaghilev was known by the classier ‘impresario’ instead; it’s easy to see Diaghilev’s choreographer, Mikhail Fokine, as occupying the same difficult position as Paul Morrissey, the director who actually directed films labelled with titles like Andy Warhol’s Blood for Dracula. There’s a reason Warhol’s space was nicknamed ‘The Factory’, after all, and while Warhol and Diaghilev possessed a powerful vision, it was other artists who often fulfilled it.

Madonna
During rehearsals for Daphnis and Chloë in 1927, Ballets Russes dancers reportedly sang “Ser-ge-dia-ghi-lev” in order to keep rhythm. It’s easy to imagine the notoriously controlling Madonna demanding the same of her dancers. Both Diaghilev and Madonna borrow liberally from other cultures and subcultures. Madonna has drawn on Catholicism, New York’s underground gay scene, and the Golden Age of Hollywood and Indian mysticism, while the ‘Russia’ created by Diaghilev on stage was an amalgam of dozens of artistic traditions. Madonna was also the first modern pop star to embrace a similar logic to Diaghilev’s productions by melding her music with specific, ever-shifting visuals – ensuring that you can’t recall one without the other.

Jim Henson
It’s hard to think of a more beloved cultural figure than Jim Henson, father of The Muppet Show. Henson used the Muppet’s tatty vaudeville theatre to bring unexpected high-art emissaries to mainstream audiences – such as the Swiss pantomime troupe Mummenschanz, or legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. (Nureyev said he wanted to dance with Miss Piggy, but her lack of legs meant they sang a duet instead.) The widespread artistic influence of both Diaghilev and Henson is a result of their playful engagement with wider cultural spheres: not just for the ballet faithful, or for predictable kids’ TV, but for everyone.

Richard Branson
In 1895, Diaghilev wrote that his “true vocation” was to be a patron of the arts, and that he had “all that is necessary except the money.” If Diaghilev had financial success to match his artistic triumph, however, he may have been an inspiration for tycoon and entrepreneur Richard Branson. Branson’s business interests encompass music, travel, communications, philanthropy, even comic books. While Diaghilev possessed similarly broad interests in multiple artforms, he focused on ballet because he felt that it contained all art within it. Of course, Branson and Diaghilev also share infamously large egos – and both pretend to be joking when they talk about conquering the world.

John Woo
It’s now a cliché to describe the slow-motion gunplay sequences of Chinese-born director John Woo as “balletic”. Bullets and bodies, violence and death: Woo treats them as purely compositional elements for his bloody choreography. Just as Diaghilev borrowed liberally from varied traditions for the Ballets Russes, Woo’s idiosyncratic style is a Hong Kong fusion of Hollywood musicals, the French New Wave, and the gory aesthetics of Sam Peckinpah. Woo also travelled to the West, but without the success of Diaghilev’s celebrated exports. However, his signature style became so influential that it’s difficult to imagine Hollywood without it – just as every contemporary ballet contains an afterimage of the Ballets Russes.