Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 134 h Firuza Melville Scheherazade and Bakst Obviously, Scheherazade was a master- piece of a multidisciplinary creation by a large group of people. However, it was Léon Bakst who benefited the most, due to his designs of costumes and decora- tions. It was a tremendously overwhel­ ming feast of bright non-conventional combinations of colours, sparkles and transparent materials, representing the super-erotic exoticism of harem life. As a result of such fame, Bakst was immediately offered to share a studio with Matisse and 12,000 francs from Paul Poiret for 12 designs of ladies’ dresses, which helped him to become the founder of the most prominent wave of the Orientalist fashion in Europe, al- though later Poiret consistently denied any influence of the ballet on his work. Nevertheless, the most revealing was his extravagant garden party, which he organised as a series of tableau vivant on 24 June 1911 7 . This so-called ‘Thou- sand and Second Night’ party was hosted to celebrate the birth of his new ‘Oriental’ fashion. He was in fact giving a new twist and animation to the old French static Orientalism of the visual art of the nineteenth century. At this party there were more than 300 guests, all dressed up as harem dwellers. Poiret as Shahriyar opened a golden cage letting out his favourite odalisque, played by his wife Denise. This amateur spectacle was Poiret’s response to Diaghi- lev’s Scheherazade , where Shahriyar’s favourite wife Zobeide was letting her beloved slave out of his cage to start the orgy. Russian national opera and ballet vs Russia’s own Orient, or Russian Orientalist blend Scheherazade was Diaghilev’s thirdOriental production after Cleopatre and Prince Igor . Altogether, the Seasons had the whole gallery of Oriental femmes fatales in their repertoire: Egyptian Cleopatre, Arab Zobeide, Tamar of Georgia, Biblical 7 Scheijen S. Diaghilev, A Life . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. P. 250. Pl. 6. Paul and Denise Poiret at the ‘1002 Night’ party, Paris, 24 June 1911 © Paul Poiret