ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to clarify British perceptions of modernism during the period and identify the ways in which Diaghilev shaped those perceptions. The first ballet that challenged the London critics to capture a sense of 'the new' was Stravinsky's L'Oiseau de feu, not given until Diaghilev's third British season. Hitherto Diaghilev had been unsure of the breadth of his British audiences' tastes but the reaction to L'Oiseau de feu encouraged him to bring Stravinsky's second ballet to London in his next season. The Alhambra and the Empire were the traditional venues for ballet in London before Diaghilev, and the Coliseum dealt mostly with music hall and variety shows. Its British premiere, on 14 June 1926 at His Majesty's Theatre, was a great success with its audience, perhaps for reasons the London Mercury made clear in its description of Diaghilev's recent works as 'the ballets that are ours and express us, with our hesitancies, our swift reflexes and self-consciousness'.
