"It Must Be Preserved": Adolph Bolm's Revival of Le Coq d'Or

Abstract

Upon the death of the impresario Serge Diaghilev in 1929, the Russian dancerchoreographer Adolph Bolm (1884–1951) penned a retrospective for an American publication, The Dance Magazine. Drawing from his tenure as premier danseur with the Ballets Russes from 1909 to 1917, he wrote of the late impresario’s character, accomplishments, and influence on the art world at large. The nowfamiliar tropes were rehearsed: Diaghilev was an autocratic “genius of the theater,” whose persistence and unfailing taste reinvigorated ballet in the West; Diaghilev mobilized Europe’s leading artistic figures for ballet, revolutionizing music and the scenic arts along the way; Diaghilev shone the spotlight on the male dancer and fostered the careers of the era’s leading Russian choreographers. Bolm ended his tribute with a simple, but imperative, appeal to his readers: “Diaghileff left a great legacy to the world of art, and it must be preserved.”1 How does one preserve a legacy? More crucially for Bolm, how does one preserve the legacy of a figure celebrated for his monumental impact on ballet, an artform notorious for its ephemerality? This question has long troubled dancemakers, old and new, from the fields of concert dance to folk dance.2 Diaghilev himself set up obstacles to these efforts by refusing to allow Ballets Russes productions to be filmed and failing to have the company’s choreographic works routinely notated. Nevertheless, the impresario’s trace remains in the vast array of musical scores, artworks, and photographs he commissioned during his career. The