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Lesson Plans—Activities
The Ballet: Bringing Music, Literature and Art Together

Introduction

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the revolutionary modernization of art was accompanied by similar changes in literature and music. The practitioners of these disciplines did not lead separate lives. They lived together and socialized in the same cafes. Picasso stayed with poet Max Jacob when he was too poor to afford canvas. Artists and composers were inspired by the writings of authors like Stéphane Mallarmé and Guillaume Apollinaire.

Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe, a Russian ballet troupe that traveled throughout Europe and held performances in Paris each year from 1909 to 1929, brought these creative men together. The Russian ballet was considered exotic and more innovative than the Paris Opera Ballet of Degas’s Little Dancer. In 1912 impressionist composer Claude Debussy created music for the ballet inspired by Mallarmé’s symbolist poem “L’après-midi d’un faune” (“Afternoon of a Faun”). Igor Stravinsky’s music for Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring) attracted the catcalls of dismayed audience members. In 1917 Picasso designed the sets and costumes for the ballet Parade, based on a plot by Jean Cocteau and set to the music of Erik Satie. Audiences were scandalized by the ballet and especially confounded by Picasso’s “cubist” costumes.

Activity

As a class, listen to a recording of the music to one of the following ballets:

• L’après-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun) by Claude Debussy
• Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky
• Parade by Erik Satie

Discuss impressions of the music together. Try to determine why the music may have been considered controversial (Stravinsky and Satie) or have been compared to a style of art (Debussy and Satie).

Assign students to design a set and costumes inspired by the music. (Look at art with a distinct style or decorative elements, like Matisse’s Seated Odalisque); choreograph dance movements to accompany the music; perform your ballet, and invite other students and parents to attend.