DIAGHILEV'S EMPIRE:

Serge Diaghilev was the Russian impresario who is often said to have invented the modern art form of ballet, defined by artistic integrity, creative freedom, and an all-encompassing experience of art, movement and music. The explosive colour combinations, sensual and androgynous choreography and experimental sounds were called "barbaric" by the Parisian press, but its radical style usurped the entrenched mores of traditional ballet and transformed the European cultural sphere at large - and all by a man with no training in dance or choreography. Diaghilev had a dream of bringing Russian art, music and design and expression to the West and was on a mission to drive a cultural and artistic revolution. Commissioning such legendary names as Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Fokine, Stravinsky, and Picasso and Matisse, this intriguingly complex genius produced a series of radically original art works that had a revolutionary impact throughout the western world. Off stage and in its wake came scandal and sensation, as the great artists and mercurial performers involved variously collaborated, clashed, competed while falling in and out of love with each other on a wild carousel of sexual intrigue and temperamental mayhem. The Ballets Russes not only left a matchless artistic legacy, they changed style and glamour, they changed taste, and social behaviour. The Ballets Russes came to an official end after many vicissitudes with Diaghilev's abrupt death in 1929, but the achievements of its heroic prime had established a paradigm that would continue to define the terms and set the standards for the next. Christiansen - leading critic and self-confessed 'incurable balletomane' - presents this freshly researched and challenging reassessment of a unique phenomenon, exploring passionate conflicts and outsize personalities in a story embracing triumph and disaster. Archive photos, 384 pages.