Chout [The Buffoon]

Russian legend in six scenes

• Producer: Les Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev
• Premiere: 17 May 1921, Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique, Paris
• Costume design: Mikhail Larionov
• Costumier: Germaine Bongard (Maison Jove)
• Scenery design: Mikhail Larionov
• Music: Serge Prokofiev
• Choreography: Mikhail Larionov and Thadée Slavinsky
• Libretto: Serge Diaghilev
• Main characters: The Buffoon, the Old Buffoons, the Merchant, the Buffoon’s Wife, bridesmaids

Wielding a ‘magic’ whip, a young village buffoon tricks his elders into believing that he has killed his wife and then brought her back to life. Convinced by the stunt, seven old buffoons each buys a ‘magic’ whip and kills his wife, only to find that they cannot be brought back to life as promised. In order to escape the wrath of the older men, the young buffoon disguises himself as a cook. Meanwhile, a merchant who has been invited to select his bride from one of the seven old buffoons’ daughters mistakenly chooses the ‘cook’, who escapes but leaves in his place a goat, which the merchant kills. The young buffoon returns, dressed as himself and accompanied by soldiers, to request that the non-existent cook be brought forward or that he be compensated by the merchant. The ballet ends with the young buffoon and his wife celebrating their extorted prosperity as the soldiers woo the seven old buffoons’ daughters.

Chout was based on an old Russian folk tale and as a ballet had a particularly long artistic gestation, having been originally conceived by Diaghilev in 1915, when he commissioned Prokofiev to write the score. The same year, Larionov (with his partner, Natalia Goncharova) joined Diaghilev’s circle in Lausanne and began work on the stage and costume design for Chout, as well as taking a leading role in developing its choreography with Diaghilev’s new and inexperienced Polish choreographer, Thadée Slavinsky. The result, finally presented in 1921, was a particularly vivid expression of the Cubo-Futurism that came to be associated with Larionov and Goncharova. Echoing the vividly coloured Cubist scenery graphics, the costumes’ abstracted angular shapes and patterns and flattened, almost deconstructed, forms made the dancers a moveable part of an overall scenario. Although based on the conventions of peasant clothing, some of the costumes were visually extended with stiffened buckram, felt, rubberised cloth and heavy cane structures, hindering movement to the extent that the dancers feared that they could not carry out the planned choreography, and causing Diaghilev to enforce their contracts in the face of a strike.