Painting of Lubov Tchernicheva as Cleopatra by Flora Lion (1918).

            Russian-born ballerina Tchernicheva (1890-1976) graduated from St Petersburg's Imperial Ballet School and was employed by the Maryinsky Theatre in 1908. Three years later she joined Diaghilev's company, where she became a principal dancer and, in 1926, ballet mistress. Acclaimed for her portrayals of Zobeide (in Scheherazade) and Thamar, she created roles in several ballets, including The Good Humoured Ladies (1917) and La Boutique Fantasque (1919), by Léonide Massine, and in Bronislava Nijinska's Les Noces (1924).  She remained with the Ballets Russes until Diaghilev's death in 1929.  [Short Bio by the National Portrait Gallery, London]

Ballets Russes’ production of Cleopatra premiered at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris on June 2, 1909.  The music was by several composers including Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka and Tcherepnin.  The libretto and choreography were by Michel Fokine.

“The ballet is set during the reign of Cleopatra (51–30 BCE), Queen of Egypt, when two young lovers, Ta-Hor and Amoun, meet on the grounds of a temple.  Their tryst is interrupted by the high priest of the temple announcing the arrival of Cleopatra and her court.  On seeing Cleopatra, Amoun immediately falls in love with her. Ta-Hor attempts to re-engage her lover’s affections but to no avail.  Amoun sends Cleopatra a message to which she responds that he can spend the night with her but in return he must drink poison in the morning.  He agrees to the bargain and Ta-Hor later returns to the temple grounds to find the body of her dead lover.

“Cleopatra was the most extraordinary production in the Ballets Russes’ 1909 season and signalled Léon Bakst’s mastery of sumptuous and exotic design. Against his powerful stage imagery of desert scenery and ancient Egyptian temple architecture and interior design, the dancers’ loose and abbreviated costumes glittered like jewels, animated by the physicality of their wearers.  Bakst’s colour orchestration of gold, lapis blue, malachite green, pink, orange and violet was expressed in imagined Egyptian design motifs on the characters’ costumes, jewelry and weaponry.  Dancer Ida Rubinstein’s dark, angular and unconventional beauty invested her role of Cleopatra with a mesmerising sensuality and, through Fokine’s choreographic innovations and Bakst’s revealing costumes, she and the other dancers showed that the whole body could be used for expressive effect. While the apparently bare sections of their bodies caused a sensation, the dancers were in fact wearing ‘fleshings’, flesh-toned silk or jersey inserts that simulated skin (and reduce the necessity and time for body make-up), a costumier’s technique used until 1912.  These inserts seldom survive, nor are they evident in retouched contemporary stage photography.”  [Synopsis by the National Gallery of Australia]

Taken on: January 1, 2014

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