Long central to European culture, ballet has in the last two decades become a vibrant and expanding area of academic research. This seminar will focus on what is arguably the most influential ballet company of all times, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Between 1909 and 1929, Diaghilev brought together many of the era's greatest modern artists — among them composers Stravinsky, Poulenc, Debussy, Ravel, Satie, de Falla, Prokofiev, and Strauss; choreographers Fokine, Nijinsky, Nijinska, and Balanchine; and artists and writers Bakst, Picasso, Matisse, Goncharova, and Cocteau — to produce such ground-breaking ballets as Jeux, Daphnis et Chloé, Firebird, and The Rite of Spring. Drawing on the vast multidisciplinary literature about the Ballets Russes and their world, we will examine seminal works, their reception, and their relationship to French culture and cultural politics. Topics will include music, choreography, and staging, as well as nationalism, exoticism, gender/sexuality, and cultural hierarchies, whether in the works themselves, in Ballets Russes historiography, or in past and present-day performance practices.