Fernand Léger

Costume design for the ballet Skating Rink

1922

Watercolor, ink, and pencil on paper

Not on view

For the 1922 Ballets Suédois production (premiere Paris). Choreography by Jean Börlin. Music by Arthur Honegger. Based on the poem "Skating Rink à Tabarin/Ballet-aux-Patins/pour la musique" (1920) by Ricciotto Canudo
Skating Rink is the first of Léger's two commissions for the Ballets Suédois, the company founded by Swedish art collector Rolf de Maré on the model of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Léger's sense that the rhythm of industry and the modern city's everyday bustle are the most entrancing of spectacles is captured in this production. The dancers' mechanical actions—reminiscent of the unending rhythm of the assembly line—create a centrifugal sweep around a working-class neighborhood's skating rink.

Gallery label from

Stage Pictures: Drawing for Performance, March 11–August 24, 2009.

Medium Watercolor, ink, and pencil on paper
Dimensions 12 3/8 x 9 1/2" (31.4 x 24.1 cm)
Credit W. Alton Jones Foundation Fund
Object number 270.1954
Department Drawings and Prints

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