The Business of Ballet

The Business of Ballet: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes between Profit and the Avant-garde explores how a remarkable, internationally recognized ballet company, the Ballets Russes, was able to survive for twenty years without stable funding. Focusing on Ballets Russes's founder, Serge Diaghilev, and his talent for discovering monies through an uncanny ability to secure funds from aristocrats, industrialists, artists, and swindlers, Ira Nadel offers new insight into the financial life of modern ballet. Throughout [his] analysis, Nadel reveals that Diaghilev was able to attract not only financial support but also the most innovative artistic and musical talents and choreographers of the period, who collectively changed the nature of ballet from the conventional to the contemporary. Through it all, Diaghilev never sacrificed the essential Russianness of his enterprise, transforming Russian traditions by incorporating new and original musical and choreographic stagings. In doing so, Nadel argues, Diaghilev's Ballet Russes revised the idea of ballet as an art form, causing audiences throughout Europe and North America to riot and artists to create revolutionary compositions in art and music.

Ira Nadel is a UBC Distinguished University Scholar and professor of English emeritus at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Table of Contents
Preface: The Blue Shadow
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Magic and Money or "Étonnez-moi!"
Chapter 1: Diaghilev: A Russian in Paris
Chapter 2: Imperial Steps or Movement and Money
Chapter 3: Paper Numbers: The Business of Ballet
Chapter 4: How much does a Ballet Cost?
Chapter 5: The Ballets: Riot and Revolution
Conclusion: Dancing for Diaghilev
Bibliography
About the Author