Jean Borlin as dancer and choreographer

Abstract

From 1920 to 1925, the company that provided the greatest challenge to the Diaghilev Ballets Russes was another exotic visitor that made Paris its home, Rolf de Mare's Ballets Suedois. Drawing on a heady mix of leading Swedish and Parisian painters, musicians, and writers, its mixture of avant-garde ballets, works using Swedish folk idioms, and others in more conventional modes delighted audiences and often critics. The wealthy de Mare leased the Theatre des Champs-Elysees as a home base until he disbanded the company in 1925 and turned to other interests. After that, it was the music and designs that kept alive the company's memory, above all the Darius Milhaud-Femand Leger La Creation du monde. Increasingly forgotten was Jean Borlin (1893-1930), the Swedish dancer and choreographer for whom de Mare (his lover) had established the company and who created its entire repertoire, but whose fame has long been overshadowed by his illustrious collaborators. To talk of the music or the art of the Ballets Suedois is not difficult-we have scores, recordings, designs, curtains, and photographs. Borlin himself commented