Ida Rubinstein (1885-1960)

Book excerpt: This is a study of the career and achievement of a multi-talented personality. Ida Rubinstein was born in 1885 in tsarist Russia and from an early age she used her immense family fortune to commission original stage works in which she herself invariably appeared. She started out with the intention of making a name for herself as an actress, but her gifts as a mime and dancer attracted Diaghilev and he introduced her to western audiences when his Ballets Russes came to Paris in 1909. Ida Rubinstein was too much of an egoist to remain in his shadow and she subsequently went on to pursue an independent career as an impresario, in many ways Diaghilev’s equal, as a dancer of as high a caliber as Karsavina (but of greater versatility) and as a dramatic actress who came a very close second to Sarah Bernhardt. In the process she worked with some of the greatest creative geniuses of the twentieth century, designers, choreographers, writers and composers. When she finally withdrew into voluntary seclusion after the Second World War, she left behind a remarkable legacy of works as a contribution to that high point of western civilization, the Third French Republic. Her name will continue to be associated with such masterpieces as Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien, Ravel’s La Valse and Bolero, Stravinsky’s Persephone and Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bucher. She will also be long remembered as the epitome of extravagance, high style and good taste, unrivalled even in an era renowned for its panache and hedonism. Most of the illustrations in this book have never been published before.