Huntly Carter, British Theatre, and the Ballets Russes

In 1911, Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes presented its third Parisian season at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Among the audience was British art and drama critic Huntly Carter, who declared the company's synthesized spectacles ‘the most important’ advance in the period's pursuit of artistic theatre. For the better part of the next two decades, Carter continued to theorize on the theatrical implications of the Diaghilev repertoire, establishing himself as one of the most consistent and perceptive critics writing on the company in Britain. Nevertheless, his body of criticism has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This article traces Carter's engagement with the Ballets Russes across periodicals, books, and archival materials, revealing how the company's evolving repertoire repeatedly reshaped his theatrical ideals. Diaghilev ballets stirred his thoughts on a formal Gesamtkunstwerk aesthetic, ‘impersonal’ modes of acting, and the politicized minimalism of agit-prop performance, fuelling his ongoing appeals for theatrical renewal in Britain.