The dancers are deliberately kept faceless in this delicately conceived poster—rather, we see graceful bodies and swirls of color, as they might well appear in their audience’s imagination. This is the later of two very different posters by Petit (for the earlier, see PAI-XCII, 326) for the famous husband-and-wife dance team of Alexandre and Clotilde Sakharoff. “For almost forty years until retirement in 1953 [they] toured Europe continuously and South America frequently in what Sakharoff called ‘abstract mime.’ Despite the description, the two selected intensely dramatic, emotional themes for their often exotic, richly costumed dances” (Dance Posters, p. 9). This is the smaller format.
Imp. Crété, Paris
literature: Karcher, 309 (var); PAI-XCIII, 336