Costumes play key role in 'Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes' exhibition

Some think the bassoon set them off. Others note the turned-in feet of the dancers. Whatever the spark, "The Rite of Spring" lore tells us that patrons became rioters at the Stravinsky ballet's 1913 premiere in Paris. But the myth of that night rarely includes details about what the dancers wore, how they sweated through Nicholas Roerich's wool shifts, bunched at their bellies with leather straps as belts, or how geometrical patterns on blood-orange fabric played tricks on anxious eyes in the au...