Скачать или смотреть Mikhail Mordkin - 'Aziade', Perfumed Exoticism Reminiscent of the First Era Ballets Russes

This is film of Mikhail Mordkin (1880-1944), Bolshoi Theatre and Ballets Russes principle dancer, in a ballet of his own devising called 'Aziade', based upon a tale from the Arabian Nights. The ballerina here is Margarita Froman.

The scenario trades on the huge appeal of the perfumed exoticism of early Ballets Russes ballets like 'Scheherazade' (1910). As such, it gives a perhaps tantalizing idea of what an early production of that company may have looked like, particularly in terms of costumes and jewellery.

The ballet is also obviously influenced by the screen persona of Rudolph Valentino as the erotic exotic 'foreign' lover in silent film.

Mikhail Mordkin was trained at the Bolshoi and joined Serge de Diaghilev's Ballet Russe in 1909.

He founded the All Star Imperial Russian Ballet which toured the USA 1911-12 with luminaries such as Anna Pavlova.

The dancer then returned to the then USSR and the Bolshoi but left again after the Revolution to settle in America in 1924 where he instigated Mordkin Ballet, later to be Ballet Theatre under Lucia Chase.

Does anyone know anything more about this footage?

It seems as though it could have been filmed in Hollywood, given that Mordkin migrated there in the mid 1920s.

Enjoy!