This is amazing: home-movie footage of the Ballet Russes playfully dancing on a beach in Australia in 1938.

After Diaghilev’s death in 1929, a number of Ballet Russes companies formed out of the dissolution of the original Ballet Russe. Between 1936 and 1940, three of these companies visited Australia, in tours orchestrated by the entrepreneur Colonel Wassily de Basil. According to the website Australia Dancing:

The first, a company assembled in London by de Basil and billed as (Colonel W. de Basil’s) Monte Carlo Russian Ballet, toured for nine months between 1936 and 1937. Its sixty-two dancers were drawn largely from the Ballets de Leon Woizikowsky, augmented by artists from de Basil’s own company, and from Rene Blum’s Ballets de Monte Carlo.

The second tour, which took place over seven months between 1938 and 1939, was by the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, presented by Educational Ballets Ltd. In essence, this was the de Basil company of the time. The use of the title Educational Ballets Ltd. related to the need for de Basil to formally distance himself from company management during a legal dispute with the Ballets de Monte Carlo, the company that had been founded by Rene Blum following his split with de Basil in 1935.

By 1938, the Ballets de Monte Carlo was based in America under the direction of Sergei Denham with the financial backing of Universal Art. An attempted merger between this company and that of de Basil early in 1938 ended acrimoniously, with ensuing legal challenges by Universal Art over the copyright of particular works. Prior to this, legal challenges to de Basil over copyright had also been instigated by Leonide Massine during his 1937 move from the de Basil to the rival company as artistic director. Michel Fokine, originally ballet master and choreographer for Blum had, also in 1937, moved in the other direction, joining de Basil. A feature of this second Australian tour was the presence of Fokine, supervising the production of his own ballets.

For the third tour, Colonel de Basil assembled a company that, in addition to his English-based dancers, included a number who were stranded in America on the outbreak of war. These two groups were united in Australia, forming the company that was most commonly referred to as The Original Ballet Russe, although it was also billed as Colonel W. de Basil’s Covent Garden Ballet and Colonel W. de Basil’s Ballet Company. De Basil himself accompanied this tour, which began in December 1939 and, although originally planned to be of ten weeks duration, was, due to the complexities of the war, extended until September 1940.

The Ballets Russes companies brought with them a panorama of choreography, music and design of a kind not previously seen in Australia. Works such as Scheherazade and Le Spectre de la Rose linked directly back to the Diaghilev repertoire, with some, such as Aurora’s Wedding, extending that link back to the Tsarist Russian period. Ballets such as Les Presages and Cotillon introduced Australian audiences to works that post-dated the Diaghilev era. Five ballets, including David Lichine’s Graduation Ball, received world premieres in Australia. In all, a stunning range of forty-four works, most of them Australian premieres, was presented over the three tours.

 
With thanks to Henri Podin