Costumes that might earn a place for themselves at an exhibition of peasant art and handicrafts, if they were not too busy being danced in, can be seen at the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe, now current at the St. James Theatre.
The costumes in question are those worn in “Prince Igor”, an exhibition of the spirited dancing of half-bar-baric tribes on the steppes of southern Russia, which comes from Borodin’s opera of that name. It is not accurate to call them costumes, for they are not stage coustumes in the usual sense of the word. They are actual clothes, made by artisans in the villages of the Caucasus, some of them of hand-woven cloths which would make even Rodier of Paris raise an eyebrow, and others lavishly embroidered by the Caucasian women.
In the “Prince Igor” wardrobe there is, also, a special treasure, a collection of some dozen pairs of boots. They were made in the same region, and they are triumphs of handiwork, with many-colored small bits of leather cunningly stiched together to form bizarre designs in the native style.
This collection of costumes and boots has an interesting history. When SergeDiaghilev, the great figure of the Russian ballet world, was planning his first invasion of the Western world, he commissioned Nicholas Roerich, who is now the head of the Roerich Museum in New York, to supply him with setting and costumes for the “Prince Igor” ballet.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
