Sergei Sudeikin (1882-1946)

A leading dancer in Serge Diaghilev’s (1872-1929) Ballets Russes, Mikhail Mordkin (1880-1944) left Russia in 1924, settling in the United States where he founded the Mikhail Mordkin Ballet, which began as a high-level dance academy housed in New York’s Carnegie Hall and eventually became the foundation of the current American Ballet Theatre. The company toured performing numerous productions, often with Mordkin dancing the lead roles. A fellow émigré working in New York, Sudeikin collaborated with Mordkin on set and costume designs, including the company’s 1938 production of the comic ballet, La fille mal gardée, as delightfully depicted in the present lot.