NATALIA GONCHAROVA (1881-1962)

In 1933 Goncharova worked with Nikita Baliev (1877-1936), the creator of the Theatre de la Chauve-Souris, a touring company that was based in New York. She made designs for Voyage d’une danseuse and La vie Parisienne, in which Tatiana Riabouchinska was involved. Voyage d'une Danseuse was a ballet staged to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and choreography by Boris Romanov (1891-1957) for which the present costume was created. Another costume that Goncharova designed for the dancer Alice Nikitina in Voyage d'une Danseuse is now in the collection of the McNay Art Museum, in San Antonio, Texas.

Ifan Kyrle Fletcher (1905-1968) was an established London rare book dealer and a writer on theatre history. In 1948, Fletcher co-founded The Society for Theatre Research which remains active today. The Society developed out of an amateur love for theatre into an initiative for the preservation and scholarly study of the developments within theatre art. In the spirit of his passion for theatre, it is not surprising that Fletcher corresponded regularly with Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and owned works by both Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.