Modernity kept seeping into ballet, a genre that had traditionally looked to a distant, mythical or magical past. First, the tutu gave way to an everyday tennis costume in Jeux by Debussy/Nijinsky, then ragtime rang out in Parade by Satie/Picasso, and in the 1920s Diaghilev decided staged a series of ballets drawn from contemporary life, and in particular, the French high society in which Diaghilev moved.
Milhaud and Poulenc provided the sparkling scores, while Coco Chanel added her sparkling costumes.
Marina Frolova-Walker is Gresham Professor of Music. She is a Russian-born British musicologist and music historian. She is Professor of Music History and Director of Studies in Music at Clare College, Cambridge.
Professor Marina Frolova-Walker is a specialist in the Russian music of the 19th and 20th centuries. She has published extensively on Russian music and is a well-known lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. Among her many awards and appointments, she is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded the Edward Dent Medal in 2015 by the Royal Musical Association for her achievements in musicology.
She was appointed as Visiting Gresham Professor of Russian Music in 2018-19.
You can find more information on Marina and her research interests here: https://www.marinafrolova-walker.com/
Professor Frolova-Walker's lecture series are as follows:
2020/21 Russian Piano Masterpieces
2019/20 Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes
2018/19 Russian Opera and the State
All lectures by the Gresham Professors of Music can be accessed here.
