The great Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev was a man who knew exactly what he wanted from his Ballet company and his collaborators. He was ruthless, a self-confessed charlatan and by current standards somewhat exploitative, to say the least. But he knew what his was doing and was nearly always right, from an artistic point of view, changing the world of ballet forever. Exhibitions about Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes are not that common but always worth seeing, so when a friend of mine, Richard Edmonds told me he had finally secured a gallery space for the Diaghilev exhibition he had been trying to put together for years I was delighted for him and keen to learn more about his plans. The exhibition was to be in the Worcester Museum and Art Gallery for three months Richard is a noted dance and theatre critic who was also a close friend of John Blundall and they shared a great passion for the Ballet Russes. He is a great fount of knowledge regarding the period so when he asked me to be involved with the exhibition I was more than happy to be part of it. He pulled together original costumes, designs, drawings, signed books and programmes as well as a number of commissioned pieces for the exhibition including paintings, an incredible blown glass vase illustrating the ballet Scheherazade and the two puppets I made. Richard’s brief to me was to create two puppets that represented some of the incredible costume designs produced for the Ballet Russes. Other than that I could do what I wanted. I eventually decided that the Firebird from the ballet of the same name and the sorcerer Kaschei would make sense together in the same case. Diaghilev had the Firebird ballet designed by Aleksandr Golovin in 1910, but was not happy with his design for the Firebird herself so he brought in Leon Bakst to re-design it, one can only imagine what Golovin thought about that. It was revived in 1926 with designs by Natalia Goncharova, and it was her design of Kaschei that I based the puppet on. The only images of Goncharova’s Kaschei I was able to obtain were very small, leaving some questions regarding some of the costume details. The design gave scope for a puppet Kaschei to be more extreme in body shape and posture than a real dancer. Lack of designs to work from was not a problem when dealing with the Firebird, in fact I had too much. Bakst produced three different designs for the character. I decided to base the puppet on the earliest version. There are a number of studio photographs taken by E O Hoppe of the dancer Tamara Karsavina in costume which show how the costume was simplified from the design to make it more practical for performing in and at different angles which were a great help. With how the puppets were to look pinned down it was now time to work out the technical side of things. The museum in Worcester had sent me the dimension for the display case that would be available so I knew the sizes I would be aiming for. I did start to design the Kaschei as a rod puppet, I thought that the cloak he wore would conceal any rods and allow for some interesting arm movements. The Firebird would have nowhere to disguise the rods though. The size of the case also meant that the rods would all have to be quite short, add to that that I would not be there to install them in the case and position them in appropriate attitudes it became clear that rod puppets would not be the best option. These were puppets that were being made specifically for an exhibition, not performance, a cluster of rods would just get in the way. I decided to change direction and make two marionettes. That way I could pose them the way I wanted and hang them from controls that would allow the museum staff to lift them out of the box and hang them up in a predetermined attitude. Both puppets were carved from jelutong which is easy to work and light. I did spend a bit of time experimenting with different jointing ideas but I nothing I was happy with came from it, so reverted to tried and tested methods. I do wish I had had more time to work on the elbow joints. With the character having bare arm I was not happy with the method I used. Some more experimenting and research will need to be done in that area in the future. The puppets were painted with a gesso base and sanded down to achieve as smooth a finish as possible. Once all were undercoated I decided to turn my attention to costumes, the main point of the whole exercise. Finding fabric of the right weight, colour and pattern has always been a bit hit or miss for me. I do enjoy having a rout around the local fabric stores when I’m in the right mood but there are not many where I live and this time I was struggling to find a light soft material that I would be able to apply my own design to. I needed this for the cloak of Kaschei which is mainly black but with large sections of pattern in white, yellow and reddish pink and a grey interior. This was going to be my biggest challenge for the costume. I eventually found a soft and flexible stretch fabric from Funkifabrics, an off shoot of Freidmans that deals with low volume orders. I found that Friedmans also offer a digital print service for fabrics. It was something that was worth looking into, however I have never really got into digital painting and figured the time it would take for me to produce a digital version of the cloak design I could have painted it on the fabric by hand. The digital print might not turn out the way I expect, it may also stiffen the fabric more than the paint would. All these unknowns convinced me not to try digital just yet. I will however have a go in the future. The cloak fabric was taped to a board and I applied masking film to the areas which were to remain white. I then airbrushed several light coats of Golden Fluid Acrylic mixed with their fabric and airbrush medium. Once that had dried the masks were removed and the other colours could be applied with a mixture of airbrush and brush. The finished item was then lightly spattered just to break down the sharp edges of the masked areas. With the original design showing a grey interior for the cloak I was forced to add a lining. I would much rather not have had to do this but there was no other option, had I painted both sides of the fabric it would have stiffened up too much and the grey underside would ruin the white areas of the top side. With all the painting finished on the fabric I then painted the puppets themselves. The design for Kaschei again suggest a majority black body with skeletal hands and feet. I once more used an airbrush to spray a number of light coats of black over the body. The black I used had a slight sheen to it so not to be to flat. The ribs of the character were highlighted with white and then the whole body was sprayed with a very light top coat of Golden’s Interference Violet. This added a little bit of life to the black paint giving the effect of mostly black but with iridescent purple on the highlights, a bit like a beetle. The hands, feet and face were painted with a brush, though I now wish I had used the airbrush for them as well. The face was finished with some brass eyes a mohair wig and a hat made from card and leather. The Firebirds skin tone was a little bit of trial and error to get a colour I that seemed right. The layers of multiple different tones actually helped I feel. The biggest question with the Firebird costume was which colours to use? Although Bakst’s design is in full colour, the colours shown in the E O Hoppe photographs are different. Now these are hand tinted photos and they might not have been tinted at the time so they could be taken with a degree of caution. But contemporary paintings of Karsavina in costume show different colours again. I chose to base the colours on the original design and the tinted photos. The basic costume was put together and then embellished with a mixture of small beads and sequins. The long pigtails were made to look as fake as the original costume, using platted embroidery thread rather than a finer thread or mohair. With the puppets finished I made the stands and controls to hang them from. As I mentioned the controls are not fully functioning. They were made so I could string the puppets in one fixed attitude that could be hung straight up on the stands by the museum staff. With everything done they were packed in a box and shipped to Worcester Museum where they went on display alongside some incredible items. To have work I made on display in the same room as the likes of Leon Bakst and Dame Laura Knight was a true honour. The exhibition proved to be very popular with over 8000 visitors during its three month run, the museum shop even had to reprint the postcards it had produced.

Recreating the Firebird