Diaghilev

“I am not a ballerina,” she once told Diaghilev.

Or is he more of an impresario — a figure like the failed artist and Ballet Russe founder Sergei Diaghilev, whose special genius was to convene other talents and to bring forth his vision through them?

All eyes were on the stars of the evening, Stravinsky and Diaghilev.

This engendered suspicion among some critics that they were not “pure” artists, notwithstanding the fact that Picasso had worked with dance impresario Serge Diaghilev.

The Waugh brothers toiled away at the Hôtel Welcome in Villefranche, along with Igor Stravinsky, Serge Diaghilev and Jean Cocteau, who was hooked on opium.