Fashion guru turns to tutus

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Published: 04 May, 2009, 20:00

Karl Lagerfeld (AFP Photo DDP / Roland Magunia Germany out)

TAGS: Celebrity, Fashion, Theater, Anniversary, Russia, UK

Legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel, has turned his talents to ballet. He’s designed costumes for performances in honor of Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes 100th anniversary.

The English National Ballet will perform ballets from their original repertoire at London’s Sadler’s Wells theatre in June.

Among the ballets being staged for the "Russian seasons" event are “Sylphide”, “Specter of the rose”, “Scheherazade” and “The Dying swan”, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports.

The English National Ballet was founded by two British dancers from Diaghilev’s troupe – Alicia Markova (born Lilian Alicia Marks) and Anton Dolin (born Sydney Francis Patrick Healey-Kay).

During his career, Diaghilev worked and mixed with artists from a range of disciplines, such as Leon Bakst and Alexander Benua, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Pablo Picasso, Henry Matisse and Coco Channel.

Ballets Russes (French for The Russian Ballets) was a peripatetic ballet project which performed under the directorship of Sergei Diaghilev between 1909 and 1929. The troupe worked in many countries, including England, the US, and Spain.

It was one of the most influential theatre projects of the twentieth century partly due to artistic collaborations among contemporary choreographers, composers, artists, and dancers. Its ballets have been variously interpreted in many genres from classical to avant-garde and abstract.

After Diaghilev’s early death in 1929, the dance troupe quickly fell apart.