Authors
Jordan Lian1; 1 University of Cambridge, UK Discussion
In 1909, Diaghilev produced Borodin’s Prince Igor for the Ballets Russes’s programme. The impresario requested Michel Fokine to reinvent the opera’s ballet act. In his exploration of the imaginary combat zone—where Prince Igor battled, and was captured by, the Polovtsy—Fokine created an Oriental fantasy where the Russian imagination of the Steppes unfolded onstage. Yet, Fokine lacked sufficient knowledge for recreating Borodin’s Tartar tribes; as a result, 'The Polovtsian Dances' was choreographed largely from the balletmaster’s imagination. Complementary to the choreography, was costuming by Nicholas Roerich, the artist-archeologist who designed the costumes and set of Rite of Spring. The combined creativity of Fokine and Roerich meant Diaghilev's 'Polovtsian Dances' was founded more in fiction, rather than fact. This paper first attempts to answer, as it regards the Ballets Russes, where was the Orient? I locate the Ballets Russes as an interlocutor not only between Western European audiences and Russia and its imperial peripheries, but also between ethnographic science and creative imagination. In doing so, I assess the layered Orientalisation applied by Fokine and Roerich in Diaghilev’s production of 'The Polovtsian Dances'. Revival of 'The Polovtsian Dances' is used to consider not only exoticising visual practices in twentieth-century ballet, but also the social ramifications of presenting the imperial gaze onstage. 
