Prospect recommends: In The Spirit of Diaghilev

One hundred years ago the great Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev founded his itinerant company, Les Ballets Russes.  Based in Paris, but largely composed of Russian dancers fleeing political turmoil at home, Les Ballets Russes brought a wild creative energy to ballet at a time when, in Europe at least, it had nearly died of boredom. Charismatic and inspired, Diaghilev persuaded leading artists, composers, dancers and choreographers to collaborate on works that changed modern ballet for good.

All this year, different institutions have been honouring his achievement, reviving ballets where records remain. Alistair Spalding at Sadler’s Wells has taken a different tack. Emulating Diaghilev’s own generative genius, he has commissioned four of the world’s leading contemporary choreographers to create four new ballets. Each of the four—Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Javier De Frutos, Russell Maliphant and Wayne McGregor—has been matched with contemporary composers, costume, theatre and lighting designers, and, in the case of McGregor, artists Jane and Louise Wilson, to come up with four very different takes on Diaghilev’s legacy.

Cherkaoui has the brief to reinvent l’après-midi d’un faune, Vaslav Nijinsky’s legendary tour de force; De Frutos has imagined how Jean Cocteau might have used Ravel’s music, La Valse, which was commissioned but then rejected as “undanceable” by Diaghilev; Russel Maliphant’s AfterLight is inspired by Nijinsky’s own geometric drawings and paintings as well as photos of him dancing, while Wayne McGregor has taken Ernest Shackleton’s epic Nimrod expedition to the South Pole in 1909 as the starting point for Dyad. Together they will give us a perspective on what Diaghilev unleashed and where it might yet take us.

In The Spirit of Diaghilev Sadler’s Wells, 13th-17th October, Tel: 0844 412 4300, www.sadlerswells.com