Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Abstract

In December 1916, as Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company was crossing the United States to make its West Coast premiere in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Musical Bureau attempted to generate additional publicity and sustain excitement by publishing the first (and only) issue of the Diaghilef Ballet Russe Courier. Squarely in the center of the front page, under the headline “Ballet Too Expensive for Filming,” was a letter from American film director and producer Thomas H. Ince, purportedly responding to impresario and publicist Robert Grau’s recommendation that Ince invite the ballet troupe to make a film: