Bal olympique organisé par l’Union des Artistes Russes
Print run unspecified, small, on vélin Normandy paper.
Wrappers illustrated with a drawing by Victor Barthe, engraved by Serge Fotinsky.
Large full-page compositions by Chatzman, after Manet — a reproduction of L'Olympia —, Picasso, Marie Vassilieff, Fotinsky and Ganovsky.
A rare program for the Bal olympique organized by the Union des Artistes Russes in Paris, on Friday, 11 July 1924, from midnight to six in the morning, at the Taverne de l’Olympia, 28 boulevard des Capucines.
The event took place in the midst of the Paris Olympiad, only days after the opening of the Games. While the official competitions unfolded at Colombes, the avant-garde staged its own “true costumed sports ball”: organized to benefit the relief fund for Russian artists, the event brought together émigrés of the École de Paris, French painters, musicians, dancers, Dadaist poets and figures from the Ballets russes and Ballets suédois.
The program reads like a Surrealist inventory: Olga Khokhlova and the Ballets suédois took part in the dances; Marie Vassilieff and Fernand Léger designed the costumes for the “lobster, crab and crocodile dances”; the Petrograd Puppet Theater presented dolls and costumes by Natalia Goncharova, to music by Bohuslav Martinů and Vernon Duke; Iliazd and David Kakabadzé offered “poems in relief”; Thamara Svirskaïa danced to Satie’s Gymnopédies; Foujita organized “Japanese sports”; Tristan Tzara gave his mysterious Spectacle sur l’échelle; Larionov presented a “new system of fantastic projections”; and Fotinsky and Bogoutsky finally led a “general Foot-Ball” played with multicolored balls while Futurist verses were declaimed!