
In the final scenes from Léonide Massine’s symphonic ballet Les Presages, dancers from the Ballets Russes du Monte Carlo move frenetically across the stage, performing a series of strange gestures and jutting arm movements as they go. The final curtain drops at the end of the performance.
Danced to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and designed by André Masson, Les Presages was – according to the Australia Dancing project – ‘one of the most popular and enduring works during the three tours by the Ballets Russes companies’.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.