Cocteau-Nijinska Ballet to Be Replaced at UCI by ‘Les Biches’

“Le Train Bleu,” a 1924 ballet choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska with a libretto by Jean Cocteau, to have been performed Feb. 17 at UC Irvine by the Oakland Ballet in a newly reconstructed version, will be replaced by another Cocteau-Nijinska collaboration of 1924, “Les Biches.”

The change in the program, part of the Jean Cocteau Centenary Festival being sponsored Feb. 10 to 19 by UCI and the Severin Wunderman Museum in Irvine, resulted from complaints by Nijinska’s daughter, Irina Nijinska, that despite her claim to the copyrights on her mother’s work, she was not consulted in the reconstruction.

“Le Train Blue” was re-created under the direction of Frank Ries, associate professor of dance at UC Santa Barbara, from a score annotated by former Ballets Russes dancer Anton Dolin. Impresario Serge Diaghilev commissioned Bronislava Nijinska to create the work as a tour de force for Dolin.

Controversy stalked the ballet at the time of its creation, and Nijinska’s conflicts with Cocteau over the light-hearted ballet eventually caused her to leave the Ballets Russes.

With music by Darius Milhaud, a curtain designed by Pablo Picasso and costumes by couturiere Coco Chanel, “Le Train Bleu” was the first of a genre of ballets based on modern people pursuing leisure-time activities.

The title refers to the express train between Paris and the Cote d’Azur, and the action of the ballet takes place on a Mediterranean beach.

Irina Nijinska did oversee the Oakland Ballet’s revival of “Les Biches,” a one-act ballet about a soignee house party with music by Francis Poulenc and scenery and costumes by Marie Laurencin.

Irina Nijinska has also set her mother’s ballet, “Les Noces” on the Oakland company, and is currently working with Dance Theatre of Harlem on an evening-long program of Nijinska ballets.

An agreement reached Wednesday between Irina Nijinska and Ronn Guidi, artistic director of the Oakland Ballet, specifies that she will finish the reconstruction of “Le Train Bleu,” which will be presented in Oakland in September.

“I’m glad our festival is so enormous that this has very little effect on the festival itself,” Tony Clark, executive director of the Wunderman museum said Wednesday. “And I’m glad that the ballet that is going to be performed is one in which Cocteau was involved. . . . It’s more important that the work be performed during the Cocteau (centenary) and be reconstructed as an authentic work.”

The Oakland Ballet programs Feb. 17 and 18 at UCI’s Village Theatre will also include ballets by Mikhail Folkine, Leonide ) Massine, George Balanchine and Guidi. Other festival events will include performances of Cocteau’s tragedy “Orphee”; showings of his films “Beauty and the Beast,” “Blood of a Poet” and “Orpheus”; an exhibit of his visual art; lectures by Cocteau authorities, and a weekend symposium on Cocteau’s role as a pan-artistic innovator.