Diaghilev's Empire

Diaghilev's Empire: The Visionary Impresario Who Revolutionized Ballet and Transformed European Culture

In this daring and impeccably researched reassessment, renowned dance critic Rupert Christiansen explores the fiery conflicts, outsize personalities, and extraordinary artistic innovations that defined Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev's Empire, published on the 150th anniversary of Diaghilev's birth, unveils the sweeping history of a cultural revolution that transformed the European artistic landscape.

Diaghilev, an art critic and connoisseur with no formal training in dance, dreamed of bringing Russian art, music, and expression to the West. Bringing together legendary talents like Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, Diaghilev created a new form of ballet defined by artistic integrity, creative freedom, and an all-encompassing experience of art, movement, and music.

Called "barbaric" by the Parisian press, the Ballets Russes' explosive color combinations, sensual and androgynous choreography, and experimental sounds usurped traditional ballet's entrenched mores. Christiansen's infectious delight in this complex story of triumph and disaster shines through in a book hailed as a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Telegraph.