Possessed with dance: mystery plots in Russian modernist ballet

Abstract

In 1910 in Russia, two ideas were simultaneously conceived and developed: one of the «Rite of Spring» and the other, less known, of the ballet, «Alaley and Leyla». The former was staged in Sergey Diaghilev’s enterprise in Paris, 1913, whereas the idea for the latter came from the theatre director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, supported by the director of the Imperial theatres in Petersburg and a wealthy patron, Mikhail Tereshchenko. The scripts for both ballet were compiled with participation of the writer Aleksey Remizov, a connoisseur of the ancient Russian mythology. Diaghilev’s group started working on the «Rite of Spring» almost simultaneously with Meyerhold’s team, in the spring of 1910 and, until 1912, the two groups worked in parallel. While writing the script for Meyerhold, Remizov consulted Diaghilev about ancient Slavic mythology, and Michel Fokine was choreographer for both of them. In the circumstances, it was impossible for both groups to keep their work secret and mutual influences were unavoidable. The genre of ballet-mystery contributed towards the ‘sacred mystery theatre’ which was in part conceived as neo-rituals for the revival of Christianity at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.