Jardin Public [The Public Gardens]

• Producer: Monte Carlo Ballet Russe
• Premiere: 8 March 1935
• Venue: Auditorium Theatre, Chicago
• Costume design: Jean Lurçat, with Alice Halicka re-design in 1936
• Costumier: Helen Pons
• Scenery design: Jean Lurçat
• Music: Vladimir Dukelsky
• Choreography: Léonide Massine
• Libretto: Vladimir Dukelsky and Léonide Massine, from a fragment of
  The counterfeiters by André Gide
• Main characters: The Statue, the Old Roué, the Poet, the Suicidal Man, the Old Couple, the Poor Couple, the Rich Couple, the Chair Vendor,
  the Vision, sweepers, nurses, schoolboys, workmen

The ballet, set in a public park, opens in the early morning as the park is opened for the day by the sweeper. The ballet traces the interaction of the people who frequent the park over the course of the day. Several nurses with small children enter, pursued by an elderly rake. A large group of schoolboys precede a poet who is analysing the park surroundings in search of inspiration. Workers also gather to eat their lunch. A suicidal man enters along with two pairs of lovers, one rich and one poor. The rich lovers dance with the poet and the suicidal man, ending with the latter shooting himself in the head. Before dusk an elderly couple enter to reminisce on their love affair. The poor lovers snatch the elderly woman’s purse. A military band heralds the park’s evening festivities. The characters continue to interact—the rich and the poor couples fight and the workers join with the poor couple. In the finale the poor couple return the stolen purse and all are reconciled.

This ballet is based on a fragment of the novel, The counterfeiters, by André Gide, giving dancers the roles of alienated park visitors. Jean Lurçat’s surrealist scenery for this ballet presented the park as sombre and dark, with the silhouettes of deep purple trees and human figures providing a desolate but unifying backdrop for the parade of disconnected and contrasting characters as they play out both dark and frivolous emotions in the course of a day. His costumes were based on everyday dress, from military uniforms and formal town fashions, to the overalls of street sweepers, giving the audience a spectacle of movement and fragile human interaction against the grim unchanging architecture of his urban park setting. Its attenuated graphics prefigured Lurçat’s design style for the later modern tapestries that provided his most enduring artistic impact.