Costume designs for the dancer-choreographer Ruth Page. Some of the designs include the notations "not used" or "never done." The collection has been arranged in three groups: designs labeled with the titles of dance works, designs for unidentified dance works, and letters.
Biographical/historical: The artist and stage designer Nicolas Remisoff, 1884-1975, began his career in his native St. Petersburg. Fleeing the Bolsheviks, he lived and worked for a time in Paris, then moved to Chicago, where he resided from 1925 to 1935. During that time he frequently collaborated with Ruth Page, designing sets and costumes for many of her ballets.
Biographical/historical: La vida breve (music, Manuel de Falla) and the opera Marouf appear to be the earliest works represented in this collection; both were performed by the Ravinia Opera, respectively in 1926 and 1928. Page danced the role of the princess in a version of L'histoire du soldat (music, Igor Stravinsky) presented by the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1931. The collection includes designs for several of her solo dances of the early 1930s: Garconette (music, Francis Poulenc), Cuban night (music, Ernesto Lecuona y Casado), Lament (music, Aleksandr Tcherepnine), and Morning in spring (music, Vaughan Williams). Page is said to have danced the solo Phoenix in a studio performance ca. 1932; however, the two drawings in this collection are marked "never done," and one is additionally marked "not used." American pattern (choreography, Page and Bentley Stone; music, Jerome Moross) was first performed by Chicago City Opera Company in 1937; the design in this collection is marked "not used."
Physical Description
Extent: 19 drawings (18 sheets) : gouache, watercolor, graphite, crayon, color or black and white; 40 x 29 cm. or smaller
Extent: 1 drawing on tracing paper : gouache, crayon, graphite, color ; 37 x 26 cm
Extent: 3 items : manuscript ; 31 x 23 cm. or smaller
