Although loosely based on the Andersen story, it was also said to have been inspired by the real-life meeting of Sergei Diaghilev with the British ballerina Diana Gould.

The diary also contains bitter and conflicted thoughts regarding his relationship with Diaghilev.

He was also given the opportunity by Serge Diaghilev to write music to The Firebird after Lyadov had failed to do so.

* It was the first collaboration between Satie and Picasso, and also the first time either of them had worked on a ballet, thus making it the first time either collaborated with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

However, its authorized premiere on that continent, by Diaghilev Ballets Russes, was at the Century Theater, New York City, 20 January 1916, with Lopokova ( who also featured in the unauthorized production five years earlier ).

The ballet has historic significance not only as Stravinsky's breakthrough piece — " Mark him well ", said Sergei Diaghilev to Tamara Karsavina, who was dancing the title role: " He is a man on the eve of celebrity ..." — but also as the beginning of the collaboration between Diaghilev and Stravinsky that would also produce Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.

Alexandre Benois wrote in 1910 that he had two years earlier suggested to Diaghilev the production of a Russian nationalist ballet, an idea all the more attractive given both the newly awakened French passion for Russian dance and also the ruinously expensive costs of staging opera.

Danilova also toured for years with the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev, then with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo after Diaghilev's death.

In the first years of the Ballets Russes Pavlova worked briefly for Sergei Diaghilev.

He then worked for the Diaghilev company from 1925 until the impresario's death, conducting the premieres of Barabau by Vittorio Rieti, The Prodigal Son and Le pas d ' acier by Sergei Prokofiev, and La Chatte by Henri Sauguet.

Although his first reaction to the music was to tell Diaghilev, " I will never conduct music like that ", he worked with Stravinsky, giving practical advice to help the composer to achieve the orchestral balance and effects he sought.

His brother Alexandre Benois was a stage designer who worked with Stravinsky and Diaghilev.

Beginning in 1909, Bakst worked mostly as a stage-designer, designing sets for Greek tragedies, and, in 1908, he made a name for himself as a scene-painter for Diaghilev with the Ballets Russes.

She worked with Marius Petipa, Sergei Diaghilev, and Reinhold Glière.

In 1915 he left Russia and worked with the ballet owner Sergei Diaghilev in Paris on the productions of the Ballets Russes.

In addition to Cecchetti and the dancers, many other artists worked with the Diaghilev Ballets Russes: painters, set and costume designers Léon Bakst, Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Henri Matisse ; composers Claude Debussy, Manuel De Falla, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky.

It was produced by Diaghilev, with sets by Picasso, the libretto by Apollinaire and the music by Erik Satie.

Opponents of that interpretation point out that he did not attend the funeral ( he generally did not attend funerals ) and immediately left Paris with Diaghilev for a performance of Les noces ( The Wedding ) by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo.

Prokofiev's first major success breaking out of the composer-pianist mould was with his purely orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes ; Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev – Chout, Le pas d ' acier and The Prodigal Son – which at the time of their original production were all highly successful.

Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

During 1928 – 29 Prokofiev composed what was to be the last ballet for Diaghilev, The Prodigal Son, which was staged on 21 May 1929 in Paris with Serge Lifar in the title role.

Portrait of Serge Diaghilev with His Nanny, by Léon Bakst ( 1906 ).

In 1900 – 1901 Volkonsky entrusted Diaghilev with the staging of Léo Delibes ' ballet Sylvia, a favorite of Benois.

He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird ( 1910 ), Petrushka ( 1911 ) and The Rite of Spring ( 1913 ).

Stravinsky's first period ( which excludes some of his early minor works ) began with Feu d ' artifice ( Fireworks ) and included the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev.

Other notable premieres were given in Prague in 1899, and in Paris in 1909, with a Sergei Diaghilev production featuring Feodor Chaliapin as Galitsky and Maria Kuznetsova as Yaroslavna.

Ravel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.

In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

It led Diaghilev to create his famous company the Ballets Russes with choreographer Michel Fokine and designer Léon Bakst.

Diaghilev with the help of King Alfonso XIII of Spain succeeded in getting him out for a North American tour in 1916.

The subject matter included his work, his sickness, and his relationships with Diaghilev as well as his wife.

* A verse of the song " Prospettiva Nevskj " from the album Patriots ( 1980 ) by Franco Battiato quotes Nijinsky, his peculiar dancing style, and hints to his relation with Diaghilev " poi guardavamo con le facce assenti la grazia innaturale di Nijinsky.

Diaghilev planned a production with his Ballets Russes but the production did not take place ; the company's choreographer Fokine staged L ' apprenti sorcier as a ballet in 1916.

Having helped put her husband's principality on a sound financial footing, she would devote her energies to making Monaco one of Europe's great cultural centers with its opera, theater, and the ballet under the direction of the famed Russian impresario, Serge Diaghilev.

However, two weeks later he made lewd jokes about a male ballet dancer to Sergei Diaghilev at the rehearsals of Les Biches.

To present these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Eventually, after aborting some other plans ( and some more intrigue ), Sergei Diaghilev's support was won, and the choreography was entrusted to Léonide Massine, who had recently become the first dancer of the Ballets Russes and lover of Diaghilev, replacing Vaslav Nijinsky who had left Paris shortly before the outbreak of the war.

To present these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Astafieva was a retired dancer of the Ballets Russes, a renowned ballet company founded by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

After the death of Diaghilev in 1929 and the disbanding of his company, Massine became the choreographer and male lead dancer of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, one of the companies that succeeded the original Ballets Russes.

Russian choreographer Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet, which resulted in Parade, in 1917.

In 1924, he designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes.

In 1913 — the year of Edmund Husserl's Ideas, Niels Bohr's quantized atom, Ezra Pound's founding of imagism, the Armory Show in New York, and, in Saint Petersburg, the " first futurist opera ," Victory Over the Sun — another Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, working in Paris for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed The Rite of Spring for a ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, that depicted human sacrifice.

* 1872 – Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario, founder of the Ballets Russes ( d. 1929 )

Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, Ala and Lolli, but rejected the work in progress when Prokofiev brought it to him in Italy in 1915.

Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet Chout ( The Fool, the original Russian-language full title was Сказка про шута, семерых шутов перешутившего ( Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivshavo ), meaning " The Tale of the Buffoon who Outwits Seven Other Buffoons ").

Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev ; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario.

However the Symphony appeared to prompt Diaghilev to commission Le pas d ' acier ( The Steel Step ), a ' modernist ' ballet score intended to portray the industrialisation of the Soviet Union.

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (;, Sergei Pavlovich Dyagilev, ; 19 August 1929 ), usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.

Diaghilev commissioned ballet music from composers such as Nikolai Tcherepnin ( Narcisse et Echo, 1911 ), Claude Debussy ( Jeux, 1913 ), Maurice Ravel ( Daphnis et Chloé, 1912 ), Erik Satie ( Parade, 1917 ), Manuel de Falla ( El Sombrero de Tres Picos, 1917 ), Richard Strauss ( Josephslegende, 1914 ), Sergei Prokofiev ( Ala and Lolly, rejected by Diaghilev and turned into the Scythian Suite ; Chout, 1915 revised 1920 ; Le pas d ' acier, 1926 ; and The Prodigal Son, 1929 ), Ottorino Respighi ( La Boutique fantasque, 1918 ), Francis Poulenc ( Les biches, 1923 ) and others.

Diaghilev insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping Princess.

Diaghilev was a pioneer in adapting these new musical styles to modern ballet.

* August 19 – Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario ( b. 1872 )

In February 1909, two orchestral works, the and ( Fireworks ) were performed at a concert in Saint Petersburg, where they were heard by Sergei Diaghilev, who was at that time involved in planning to present Russian opera and ballet in Paris.

Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed by Fireworks to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations and then to compose a full-length ballet score, The Firebird.