ABSTRACT
Shortly before the Ballets Russes opened its 1917 Paris season, Serge Diaghilev told Alexandre Mavroudis of L’Opinion that the company was dedicated to all things new; consequently, its forthcoming season would concern itself with futurism and cubism, two of the major vanguard artistic movements of the day (Mavroudis 1917). This was a far cry from the Russian inflected naturalism and exoticism on which the company had built its reputation. The ballet that would come to epitomize this aesthetic shift was Parade, which the Ballets Russes premiered at the Châtelet Theatre, Paris, on May 18, 1917. 1
