If napkins could talk: women’s action sketching at the Ballets Russes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Action sketches hold vast communicative potential as windows into the historical details of dance events. This article foregrounds sketchbook images depicting ballet dancers created in the 1910s by British artist Laura Knight (1877-1970) and French artist Valentine Hugo (1887-1968) to show how the quick line drawings inscribed during live performances translate nuances of spectator-performer dynamics. Analyzing various instances of women’s action sketching serves to elevate the activity as an independent form of artistic expression alongside established visual cultural practices such as painting. Knight’s and Hugo’s geographically distinct yet thematically coinciding works prove that action sketching does more than draft silhouettes: it forms a network of microcosms which enhance perceptions of the time, place, and atmosphere of dances and their surroundings. By advocating for a deep reading of the sketch as a major dance reception method, I highlight the ways ballet audiences saw their emotional and material conditions reflected onstage in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, I argue that a serious consideration of the woman spectator as an active participant in theatrical dance performance, through her own artistic practice, is indispensable to building a more holistic view of ballet’s role in reinventing the modernist subject-object relationship.