The Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo was one of the most respected international ballet companies of the 1930s and 1940s. Its dancers endured brutal schedules — hours of training, long rehearsals, and physically demanding performances — while touring constantly across the United States and beyond. What the stage never showed was what happened in between.
A remarkable set of snapshots from 1932 shows company members on the beaches of Monte Carlo — laughing, posing, and simply unwinding. Dancers Yurek Lazowsky and Narcisse Matouchevsky appear together in two of these candid shots, their offstage ease a sharp contrast to the discipline demanded of them in the studio.
Irina Baronova, one of the company’s celebrated “baby ballerinas,” also appears in the Monte Carlo beach photos. She was a teenage star by 1932, already performing lead roles at an age when most dancers are still in training.
Fellow dancer Tania Riabouchinska and choreographer David Lichine — who later married — are captured together on the same beach. By the summer of 1937, the group had gathered at a villa in Florence, where the informal snapshots continued.
Poolside in Florence, dancer Borislav Runanine goofed around with Baronova’s knitting — a small, vivid detail that grounds these world-class performers in everyday life. Lichine and Baronova also appear relaxed on the villa’s lawn that same summer.
In 1938–1939, the company boarded the Maloja for a six-week voyage to Australia. Photographs taken on deck show the dancers making the most of the long journey, their camaraderie visible even far from any stage.
By the early 1940s, Baronova had joined the New York-based Ballet Theatre. A final snapshot places an unidentified group of dancers at Jacob’s Pillow, the Massachusetts dance compound where she worked during that period.
