Polovtsian Dances
herd of cattle‘. Nevertheless, in 1909 the very first ballet Saison Russe took place and its success overwhelmed even the artists themselves. The first season included Le Pavillon d'Armide, Polovtsian Dances, Nuit d’Egypte, Les Sylphides, and operas Boris Godunov, The Maid of Pskov and the first part of the Ruslan and Lyudmila. The ballets followed the operas and were performed after the second intermission. Leading dancers Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Ida Rubinstein, Mikhail Mordkin immediately became world-known stars. Diaghilev’s innovation was to synthetize dance, music and visual arts with set decorations and costumes into a single performance.