Partners in Art TEAMWORK CULMINATES IN TRIBUTE TO BALLET, HISTORIC LINKS TO CITY.

Two years in the making, the collaboration between the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cincinnati Ballet that celebrates the colorful history and cultural significance of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo brings together lifelong passions and remarkable talents.

It all began with a generous donation and a few well-placed phone calls. Four years ago, Kristin Spangenberg, the museum's curator of prints, drawings and photographs, began the complex process of cataloging the 300-some costume and set design drawings from the collection of arts patron Julius Fleischmann. The Fleischmann Foundation donated the collection to the museum in memory of Fleischmann. She didn't know where to begin since she knew little—at the time—about Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the legendary company that helped introduce Americans to ballet beginning in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Faced with scores of drawings, she had no idea what drawings represented, what ballet. Since they were working sketches that were used as a source of communication between the director, choreographer and costume or set designer, the drawings weren't considered "art" and weren't labeled as such. A designer/artist might have signed the drawing or it may have been labeled with the name of the character or the performer. Still, most information was incomplete or absent.

She turned to Victoria Morgan, the ballet's artistic director, who went straight to the source.

Morgan consulted New Yorker Frederic Franklin, artistic director emeritus of Cincinnati Ballet, who was a premier dancer and ballet master with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo for nearly a quarter century, beginning in 1938. Franklin, 88, has a photographic memory, not only for the choreography of his roles and others but costumes, sets, dates and places. He spent several days during three visits in Cincinnati to identify the drawings, one at a time.

"I was, thank goodness, able to identify ballets, who wore the costumes, identify the people in the drawings,' says Franklin, who has recorded an oral history about the Ballet Russe in a project sponsored by the George Balanchine Foundation and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. "Being in the position that I was—going from premier dancer and staging the works to running the performance end of the Ballet Russe—I knew the dancers and the ballets. My memory—and I must thank God for it—helped."

"It was incredible,' explains Morgan. "I watched him go through one after the other. He would look at a drawing and say, 'This is the set for such and such, act 3, scene 2, choreography by [Léonide] Massine, composed by so-and-so.' There were hundreds of them. I was flabbergasted."

As the drawings were being prepared for the museum's October exhibition, Morgan and her staff were absorbed in planning their important piece of the collaborative puzzle—an onstage Ballet Russe tribute. The ballet launches its 40th anniversary season October 18-19—a week later than the CAM exhibition, which opens October 10—with a three-part program that includes excerpts from major Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo ballets—Devil's Holiday, Gaîté Parisienne and The Seventh Symphony. The excerpts will be staged by Franklin, assisted by Cincinnati Ballet's Johanna B. Wilt. In between performances, Franklin will be featured in film clips produced by a San Francisco Emmy award-winning documentary production company. In addition, he will assist in staging George Balanchine's La Sonnambula (also referred to as Night Shadow)—another Ballet Russe production that Franklin himself danced in 1946. "It's great to have someone [reconstruct a ballet] who was actually there, who actually danced the role:' says Morgan.

Janet Light, a dance writer, critic and project consultant, immersed herself in research in New York and Cincinnati libraries. She discovered, among other facts, correspondence between Fleischmann, the ballet's principal backer, and Serge! J. Denham, the director. She interviewed dancers who were with the company during the later years and examined dance films, journals, newspaper stories and other materials. "it really opened up this world to me," says Light, who comes from a family of enthusiastic, knowledgeable ballet-goers.

Light worked closely with Judy Inwood, manager of the Art and Music Department at The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton Count who discovered that many original Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo playbills and souvenir programs from Cincinnati were tucked into the stacks. As a result, the library joined the art museum and ballet to offer a display of archival materials in its downtown branch, from September 3 to November 30.

In the course of Spangenberg's and Light's research, they attended a four-day symposium two years ago in New Orleans that honored the Ballets Russes (there were several companies with similar names, starting with the original Russian troupe launched in Paris in 1909) where, on this rare occasion, nearly 75 original company alumni gathered to reminisce. "At that time, [some dancers] told me that, unfortunately, the costume sketches had disappeared.' says Spangenberg, smiling. "I told them,'They haven't disappeared. They're in Cincinnati."'

By Mary Beth Crocker

The collaboration between the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cincinnati Ballet is presented by the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation with support from Joan Fleischmann Tobin.