Introduction

Hymn to Apollo: The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes

What can we know about ancient dance? Why did European avant-garde artists look to the past at the beginning of the twentieth century? This exhibition presents images of dance from antiquity in art and culture, as well as the influence of this history on modernist reinventions of the Ballets Russes (1909–1929). A Paris-based company led by Sergei Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes revolutionized ballet by bringing together some of the generation’s most exciting choreographers, dancers, artists, and composers. Presenting a new, modern vision of dance that frequently drew inspiration from the ancient world, they influenced a generation of contemporaries across the arts.

A wide range of writings and images from antiquity provides us with our knowledge about the history of dance in the ancient world. There are, for example, a surviving monograph on dance attributed to the second-century writer Lucian, many important passages and anecdotes by authors including Plato and Plutarch, as well as numerous descriptions from poetry and plays—textual sources that offer insight into the role of dance in ancient life. However, no technical treatises or dance notations appear to have survived, if they were ever created. Dance is an art passed down through lived, embodied traditions, and despite the richness of our sources and all that we can learn from them, from a purely formal perspective ancient dance is a lost art.

Mythology frequently provided stories and characters for ballet productions, and artists found visual inspiration in ancient art for their choreography, costumes, and set designs

While we can never fully know how the ancients danced, images of dancing from the ancient world in art—especially vase painting, statuary, and relief—together with an understanding of dancing’s role in theater and religious ritual, provide a rich account of dance culture. Such images, along with surviving texts, became the basis of a vision for dance in the early twentieth century. Ballets Russes collaborators drew on the histories of Greece, Rome, and Egypt in different ways. Mythology frequently provided stories and characters for ballet productions, and artists found visual inspiration in ancient art for their choreography, costumes, and set designs. The ancient ideal of dance as a medium reflective of life and as an art form integrated with religious ritual kindled the creativity of modern artists as well.

This exhibition reveals a dialogue between the ancient and the modern. More than a simple story of the reception of antiquity by artists in the twentieth century, Hymn to Apollo shows how artists returned to the past not as benighted traditionalists but as radical revolutionaries, intent on creating something new.

This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue were made possible by generous support from the Selz Foundation, The New York Community Trust–LuEsther T. Mertz Advised Fund, Anne H. Bass, the Evelyn Sharp Foundation, and the Leon Levy Foundation. Additional funding provided by Mr. and Mrs. Frederick W. Beinecke, and Stuart H. Coleman and Meryl Rosofsky.