ABSTRACT
In this prefatory remark to his review of the repetition generate of Le Dieu bleu, one of the Ballets Russes’ new creations for the 1912 Paris season, Albert Flament thus posits what he perceives as the defining characteristic of the Russians* spectacles: they tellingly excite the gaze and the gazer. The spectators’ eyes, however, are not the only organs stimulated, if we follow the poetic prose of Jean Cocteau, the Russians* frequent collaborator: “The eyes prime the ears ... [;] eyes and ears give to the human machine that chance for [this] art to enter the system like waves on the skin.”2 With all these organs excited, others begin to open, as Flament’s article goes on to suggest:
We hear in the corridors talk only of yellow splash, green note, suggestion of red; the ear is struck with words of complementary color and it overhears dialogues in which there is only the thought of making the orange sing with the Prussian blue or the dark green with a touch of turquoise blue. It’s a mania; it’s a fashion, (op. cit, my underlining)
Talking invariably accompanied the seeing, for Ballets-Russes-mania had hit Paris. The appearance of Serge de Diaghilev’s Russian troupe in the Paris of 1909 did indeed shock a public not accustomed to seeing the Ballets Russes* trademark splashes of bright colors in the decor or their multihued, multiformed costumes;3 the spectators who famously had found pleasure in scanning/scoping their confreres in attendance suddenly found increased visual interest in what was offered by the stage. Le tout-Paris was suddenly not watching (only) itself. The sight of whatever was revealed by the rising curtain of the Theatre du Chatelet, the Russians’ habitual Parisian stage, was enough to leave the spectators only metaphorically breathless: they left the theater saying much. Newspapers, for example,
which had earlier devoted little space to theater performances, began to be filled with increasingly lengthy reviews; specialized theatrical revues such as the Comoedia illustre started incorporating multi-page special dossiers on the Russian season. This increased “talk” seems the result of an intensified gaze: never in modern Parisian theatrical history had the public’s eye been so attracted, stimulated, excited. What did it see? What did it mean?
