Today We note the 1880 birthday of M. Michel Fokine. He was the first dance director of the Russian Ballet Russe, working under Serge Diaghilev with composers like Igor Stravinsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Much landmark collaborative artistic output from one and all.

He created the piece PETRUSHKA, 1911, about a clown puppet who suffers for love. As with much “high art”, the story ends unhappily.

M. Fokine’s work made strides in adding natural physical expression to ballet’s more formal technical tradition. Rhinos call that Progress.