The Australian Ballet’s 2009 tribute to Sergei Diaghilev, Firebird and Other Legends, included Mikhail Fokine’s Petrouchka which premiered in Paris on 13 June 1911 with Nijinsky in the role of the fairground puppet who loses his heart to the empty-headed ballerina doll and is killed by the jealous blackamoor.
With Igor Stravinksy’s astonishing music and Alexandre Benois’ designs – the setting is Admiralty Square in St Petersburg during the Butter Week, a riotous holiday time before the strict 40 days of Lent – the ballet quickly established itself as a masterpiece. Colonel de Basil’s companies brought Petrouchka to Australia in 1936, 1938 and 1940 with such brilliant stars as Igor Yousskevitch and Yurek Shabelevsky in the title role and Helene Kirsova and Irina Baronova as the doll. Edouard Borovansky, who had stayed in Australia after the 1938-39 tour and formed the Borovansky Ballet, produced it in 1951 with designs by William Constable and Miro Zloch and Peggy Sager as the puppet and the doll.
Among the other characters are two street dancers who entertain the boisterous fairground crowd, and Constable’s colourful costume design for one of them is especially interesting because it still has samples of the dress material pinned to it, and the name of the dancer of the part, the beautiful (and blonde) Eve King written on it.
The design, one of several by Constable in the University of Adelaide’s Barr Smith Library, is among the illustrations in Australia Dances: Creating Australian Dance 1945-1965 by Alan Brissenden and Keith Glennon (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2010).
Australia Dances is out now and available at www.wakefieldpress.com.au
This is just the kind of ballet That I like. I dug deeper into the story of this ballet, and I found that it is a truly very sad ballet. I love posting about ballet on my website, and I post a new one every Wednesday. I am definitely featuring Petrouchka this week. And of course, I am going to add that I heard about it from one of my favorite ballet sites, Behind Ballet.