On stage.

{And so it would seem, not all the best hiding places were taken.}

Of particular luxury, we have only unpacked one of two suitcases, preferring to leave the other as some sacred artefact to later open when holiday feels too far away from day-to-day experience. In green case, there are clothes and shoes (mostly unworn) and souvenirs many. Today, we unzipped said case with the intention of retrieving one thing sandwiched in the middle of a nest of cardigans and jumpers. We retrieved the catalogue Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes 1909–1929 from its middle and found only one corner mysteriously dinted. We promptly sealed the case, held shut by strained zipper and elastic girdle-style belt, and agreed to sift through contents another day. Why rush something so pleasurable?
 
Leafing through the beautiful Ballet Russes catalogue, I am reminded of the delights I saw the day I wandered through the exhibition in slow shuffle transfixed. There before me once more I can see the costumes of wool, leather and metal for the Maidens from The Rite of Spring; and over there rests Diaghilev’s final complete hotel bill from the Grand Hotel des Bains (Venice, 1929). There in a case, a plaster mould of Vaslav Nijinsky as the Faun from L’Après-midi d’un faune from 1912; and there on the wall the various costume designs illustrated by Léon Bakst; over there a poster featuring a drawing by Jean Cocteau of Tamara Karsavina in Le Spectre de la Rose (created originally for the 1911 Monte Carlo season). I close my eyes and I can see it still, an exhibition little short of breathtaking, all of it.
 
We had gone on its first day at 10am and stayed five hours (if not more; I wore no watch whilst on holiday). We poured over it all. We thought ourselves lucky. Correction: we knew ourselves lucky. We imagined wearing costumes so heavy, delighted at the colours used and patterns, employed, and gasped at the sight of Natalia Goncharova’s giant painted canvas back cloth for The Firebird, a sea of gold onion domes against an inky blue night. Amazed, floored, we had tumbled out into the courtyard and sat watching, until giddiness subsided, a timid plump-breasted red robin flit about beneath the hydrangea bushes with their heavy dried heads.






{Random scenes gathered one Friday evening at the V&A. We paid it many a visit.}
 
+ The exhibition is on at the V&A until the 9th of January 2011

+ Inside the museum