Le Train Bleu: a mythic dance masterpiece is reborn
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In a large, airy studio inside English National Ballet’s headquarters, a white Rubik’s Cube of a building on London City Island, nine dancers are gliding across the floor, their lithe bodies moving through the air as though swimming underwater. Upstairs in the atelier, among rows of plastic boxes stacked with sequins, beads and shimmering braid, costumiers are busily sewing the dancers’ looks: bolts of pink, cream and electric-blue Lycra are being fashioned into 1920s-era pleated tennis dresses, striped bathing costumes and matching caps.
They are preparing for a production of Le Train Bleu, a whimsical one-act ballet about the Riviera’s party set first staged in 1924 by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and being revived for a one-off day of three performances at the V&A East Storehouse in June. That first legendary performance brought together some of the most exciting names of the era, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, a scenario by Jean Cocteau, costumes by Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel and a stage curtain by Pablo Picasso. “It’s a real ‘who’s who’ of ’20s art,” says V&A curator of dance Jane Pritchard, who co-curated the museum’s Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929 exhibition in 2010.
With its title a nod to the fashionable first-class-only train that whisked well-heeled Parisians to the Côte d’Azur, Le Train Bleu was a balletic form of satire on the idle classes. Set on a beach, it paid light-hearted tribute to some of the biggest crazes of the Jazz Age, poking fun at posturing sun-worshippers and gigolos and their amorous dalliances. “You had imaginary planes flying overhead,” continues Pritchard, “people taking photographs with box cameras, getting locked in bathing huts and jolly tunes by Darius Milhaud, so it was a really fun piece.”
Audiences were enthralled. As one report in a glossy weekly put it at the time of its London opening, “it is as difficult to get a seat for The Blue Train as it is to get a seat for the thing itself”. Despite its popularity, however, the ballet had a short run, fading into oblivion after Anton Dolin, the principal dancer for whom the ballet was created, left the company in 1925.
Yet it proved to be enormously significant for Gabrielle Chanel, who would go on to become a patron of the Ballets Russes, designing costumes for other productions including Balanchine’s 1928 ballet Apollon Musagète; it laid the groundwork for the French luxury house’s relationship with dance. “She helped to fund the company in difficult times and was somebody who was always on hand to give advice or to make some adjustments with the costumes,” says Pritchard.
All of which makes the reimagined ballet – which marks the centenary of Chanel’s presence in the UK, as well as celebrating its long-term patronage of ENB – something of a full-circle moment. “Our founder, Alicia Markova, was a little baby ballerina in Ballets Russes when Chanel did the designs and then she went on, with Anton Dolin, to found ENB, so it’s been a great, long-standing relationship,” says Aaron S Watkin, artistic director of ENB, which itself celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. For Chanel, the Anglophile connections, which date back to its founder’s love of the English countryside and textiles, are a way of “activating our heritage”, says Elizabeth Anglès d’Auriac, president of the UK region, “to inspire creativity, craftsmanship and culture in the UK for the next 100 years”.
When the performances take place at V&A East Storehouse on 19 June, there will be another starry attraction: a colossal 10m-tall, 11m-wide stage cloth copy of Picasso’s painting The Two Women Running along the Beach, forming the backdrop to the work. Dubbed “the largest Picasso in the world”, it was originally designed “as a visual overture”, says Pritchard of the cloth, which was reproduced by stage designer Prince Alexander Shervashidze in less than 24 hours and signed by Picasso himself. (The painter was so impressed he decided to dedicate it to Diaghilev ahead of the 1924 performance.) “It was there at the beginning of the production to establish a mood and excite the audience before anything had even happened on stage.”
The cloth, which would go on to inspire artists such as Henry Moore, was acquired by the V&A in 1976, although it has largely remained in storage due to its size, having last been exhibited at the museum’s Ballets Russes show more than a decade ago. “The biggest problem is in erecting it,” says Pritchard. “Just the rolling and unrolling of these things… you have great lines of people trying to get exactly the same tension. It’s quite a performance in itself.” Following conservation work by 10 technicians and conservators, which has been funded by Chanel, the 350kg curtain will be one of six large-scale objects displayed in the V&A’s East Storehouse, the new Diller Scofidio+Renfro-designed space in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a treasure trove featuring some 250,000 objects arranged across shelves that appear to float like clouds.
Its involvement in the ballet will imbue it with even more significance. “Staging a dance performance in front of the cloth isn’t how it was intended to be used, so essentially we’re being a little bit naughty,” smiles Brendan Cormier, chief curator at V&A East, where the cloth will remain on display in The David and Molly Lowell Borthwick Gallery. “It’s a room where we get to juxtapose objects with scenarios. That’s the whole ethos of Storehouse,” he continues. “It’s a huge eclectic mixture of objects, and you get to make these very strange associations between things that might have never been in conversation with each other.” Pritchard adds: “Just to see a Picasso of that size is extraordinary. And what is lovely is that new people are able to discover it each time it goes on display.”
The show’s intimate venue – the stage measures 10m by 5m and the auditorium seats 100 people – will allow for a uniquely immersive experience of both the cloth and the choreography. “It’s so unusual for a general public to experience ballet close up like that,” says ENB’s associate choreographer Stina Quagebeur, who is reimagining the ballet for the performance. “You don’t get many opportunities to see dancers doing these lifts and jumps and move at that speed so close, so I think to witness that is going to be really special.”
For ENB’s Watkin, the performance also feeds into the company’s broader aims of diversifying ballet. “We’re looking to create unexpected experiences for people, to open up the possibilities of ballet and engage with a different group of people who might not normally come to see us,” he says.
But what will the locals make of Le Train Bleu – a danced operetta written for popular audiences more than a century ago? “If you think about the cult of the body in the age of Instagram and the pressure to look great, some of those turning points of the 1920s, in terms of style and fashion, still resonate with us now,” says Cormier. (The original ballet starred bathing beauties and puffed-up weightlifters.) “But also, you think of the success of series such as The White Lotus and our obsession with the leisure classes – that kind of class tension still rings true today.”
“When I listen to the music, I just feel so uplifted,” says Quagebeur, who hopes to reconstruct the playful mood of Nijinska’s choreography while bringing it into the 21st century. “It’s so happy. It just captures the spirit of that era, and I want people to be mesmerised and impressed by the physicality but also feel this lightness and to just be absorbed into it.”
Still, the dancers will have to control the gaiety. “I will have to not over-exaggerate the movements because most of the time, when I perform, the audience is far away,” says lead principal Shiori Kase, the Japanese ballerina whose character will be modelled on La Perlouse, the role originally danced by Lydia Sokolova. She is looking forward to wearing the costumes that Chanel has allowed ENB’s Costume Atelier to reinterpret, which include bubblegum-pink and grey mélange Lycra bathing suits, their digitally printed knitted patterns reminiscent of the original woollen stockinette styles. “I need to do subtle movements. But still in an elegant, chic way,” she says. A pause. “Just like Chanel!”
Le Train Bleu by English National Ballet is showing at V&A East Storehouse on 19 June. For more details on its three performances, follow @vam_east and @englishnationalballet on Instagram. V&A East Storehouse opens on 31 May 2025, vam.ac.uk/east
Throughout, make-up by Marco Antonio using Chanel Les Beiges Golden Hour Collection and No 1 de Chanel Body Serum-In-Mist
Film: Director and photographer, Vivek Vadoliya. Director of photography, Sam Finney. Post-production, Wild Island Films. Music composition, OPM Studios. Production, Art Production
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