THE OXFORD BERLIN LECTURE 2025

Bringing together dancers, choreographers, composers, artists and writers to produce some of the most memorable collaborative stage works ever, Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes represent one of the best-known monuments to modern Russian culture worldwide. Yet asks how ‘Russian’ were the Ballets Russes? After all, many members of the troupe were even not Russian at all, representing instead the crucial contribution of Balts, Poles, Ukrainians and other ethnic groupings within the Russian Empire to the development of what is often reductively, simplistically and inaccurately referred to as ‘Russian’ culture. By way of example, my talk will focus on Prokofiev’s "Sur le Borysthène", commissioned by the Paris Opera immediately after Diaghilev’s death in 1929. Removed from the stage after just six performances, "Sur le Borysthène" is Prokofiev’s least studied ballet score, yet its theme is urgently topical. The Borysthenes – mentioned in Heroditus – is the classical name of the Dnipro River, and three of the ballet’s four co-creators had Ukrainian roots. How did these artists – all with hybrid identities and varied relationships to the Russian imperial centre – relate to a ballet on a Ukrainian theme that was premiered in 1932 and which deals with the return of a local soldier to his homeland after the end of World War One?

How do contemporary calls to promote a more diverse, less Russo-centric history of the multi-ethnic make-up of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union fit with the historical context of the ballet’s conception, realisation and reception?

Philip Ross Bullock is Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on aspects of Russian culture from the eighteenth century to the present day, and his books included Pyotr Tchaikovsky (2016) and - as editor - Rachmaninoff and His World.

Please register at: events.gbz@hu-berlin.de. When registering please state if you wish to attend in person or via Zoom.