BOOKS
533
throughout the Ballets Russes' history, financial exigencIes and the
changing character of its audience had an impact on the company's artis–
tic identity. These circumstances effected "shifts in repertory and in col–
laborative styles, changes in status of dancers and choreographers, the
various strategies by which Diaghilev secured and maintained a position
in the Western theatrical world." That art does not exist in a vacuum is
obvious, but Garafola gives meaning to this generalization. She exhibits
an unobstrusive mastery of a wide range of material with style and con–
viction.
Diaghilcv, struggling to establish his company in the West, could not
have mounted the initial seasons in Paris without substantial subsidies
from the imperial government. When the Ballets Russes lost this support
it was able to survive only because Diaghilev had succeeded in integrating
the company into the operatic marketplace. He had found an audience
in an emergent section of the haute bourgeoisie, which included many
great merchant and banking families. For this audience Diaghilev paid a
price. The success of Michael Fokine's oriental fantasies, their Baskt and
Benois designs rooted in the symbolist aesthetic of the 1890s, while
insuring the company's survival, helped to develop an audience which in
turn narrowed, "by virtue of its taste, the field of artistic possibilities."
In the seasons that followed, compelled in part by a Paris audience
that had become accustomed to being dazzled and astonished, the Ballets
Russes underwent a series of transformations. By 1913 it emerged with a
radically different artistic personality. With the advent ofVaslav Nijinsky
as principal choreographer and the extraordinary choreographic depar–
tures presented in
L'Apres-Midi D'UI1 Fa/me
and
Le Saae
DII
Printel1lps,
the company was thrust into the ranks of the avant-garde. Of particular
importance to its modernist aesthetic was the influence of the Futurist
movement, whose ideas provided its "aesthetic scaffolding." Its impact on
Diaghilcv, Garafola emphasizes, "cannot be overestimated. The postwar
trend toward caricature, parody and alogical structure that, along with
popular entertainment material, first appears in the war years, stemmed
directly from Futurist theory and practice."
The problems in keeping a performing arts company afloat without
an institutional subsidy became especially acute in the years after the war,
when traditional sources of patronage had vanished and the support of
those friends of the ballet on whom Diaghilcv had customarily depended
was no longer sufficient. This was particularly the case after the disastrous
failure in London of
The Sleeping Prillcess
,
which placed the company's
continuing survival in jeopardy.
Diaghilcv's frantic efforts to secure the company's future eventually
