A great artist in 3-D: 'Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage' at LACMA

When you think of artist Marc Chagall, you think of paintings of snowy Byelorussian villages with mystic lovers in the sky and fiddlers on the roof. Now, as KPCC's arts correspondent Marc Haefele tells us, we get a totally different Chagall -- costume and production designer -- in "Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage," at LACMA into early January.

"Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage," at LACMA's Resnick Pavilion, is a surprise and delight. It's Chagall in 3-D, showing his ability to partner with music and dance’s greats in forging a creativity that sometimes  succeeds in being even more than its glittering parts.

Tchaikovsky's “Aleko” was a Ballet Theatre of New York production that, due to a labor dispute, premiered in Mexico City in 1942. Chagall was so dazzled by Mexican culture that Pushkin's story of tormented love on the Russian steppes wound up being compiled by Mexican artisans, evoking ancient and modern Mexican images.

Artist Marc Chagall in 1920

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Pierre Choumoff, Public Domain

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Even more eye-wobbling is Chagall's setting, two years later, for Stravinsky’s “Firebird” ballet. Chagall (1887-1985) used new synthetic fabrics and colors the world had never seen, and scattered his inventions through a huge cast of dancing creatures of his own devising, many of whom are vividly bisexual. 

Their bird and animal heads and tropical forest colors suggest Chagall’s earlier paintings, and blow way past Kitsch, emphasizing the fable’s timely theme of liberation from slavery for all creatures. Then there is the overpowering curtain image of the Firebird herself, with her flutter of wings and inverted face, one of the most propulsive of all Chagall’s images.

“Firebird” was to me the most affecting and accomplished of Chagall’s four production designs, and is still in the repertoire of New York’s American Ballet Theater.

Chagall's stage productions for Ravel's ballet "Daphnis & Chloe" and Mozart's "The Magic Flute" are as gorgeous as their predecessors, but lack their spontaneous verve. Daphnis is almost chic, while the "Magic Flute's" central characters lack personalities - Prince Tamino looks like a Montevidean tango dancer - particularly compared to the rest of the superbly imagined Mozartean cast of fantastical extras, dancers, and choristers.

See them anyway. Chagall’s stage work is a singular combination of great artistry and just plain fun. You don't need to like classical music or ballet to enjoy it ... and be sure to take the kids.