GATES Evening talk - Where is the Borysthenes? On Rewriting the History of "Russian" Ballet in Paris

In this talk, Philip Bullock will present the early results of the research he has been carrying out here at Grenoble during his GATES fellowship. Broadly speaking, he is interested in the history of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, arguing that their "Russianness" masks a vastly more complicated set of national identities. His talk will address that general disciplinary line of enquiry. More specifically, he will present a case study of Sur le Borysthène, a ballet with choreography by Serge Lifar and music by Serge Prokofieff that opened at the Paris Opera in December 1932. Although not technically one of Diaghilev's ballets (he died in 1929), it incarnates the key aspect of his legacy. Most intriguingly, it is also a Ukrainian ballet – the title refers to an Ancient Greek name for the river Dnipro. Drawing on the extensive and often contradictory reviews in the French press at the time, the talk will ask why this aspect of the ballet has attracted so little attention, and how bringing it to light now might contribute to debates around the meaning of what is inaccurately, reductively, and misleadingly referred to as "Russian" culture"