‘The Most Celebrated Homosexual Since Oscar Wilde’ and How He Changed Ballet

“[This] gay Pygmalion was most galvanized when he could turn these male Galateas” – Nijinsky, Massine, Lifar – “into artists the world would worship. Ballet had hitherto been essentially a heterosexual art glorifying femininity, but now a long series of Diaghilev ballets cast more luster on hero than heroine.”