Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor dance extravaganza The Red Shoes has doubtless prompted countless young girls to don tutus and toe-shoes since its first release in 1948

Yet before classical ballet became widely accessible via the cinema and television, the legendary Ballets Russes companies, through their whistle-stop tours of Australia and North and South America, inspired several generations of prima ballerinas and virtually established the dance on three continents. Proof positive that it is through early exposure to the arts that new generations of artists are born, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s meticulously researched and insightful documentary Ballets Russes charts the history of the company founded by Serge Diaghilev in Paris in 1909 through spirited interviews with various of its surviving alumni, vintage photographs, and, most interestingly, archival footage of the original performances of such well-loved ballets as Leonid Massine’s "Gaietés Parisiennes," Agnes de Mille’s "Rodeo," and Mikhail Fokine’s "Petrushka." While the dancers’ biographies vary–some went on to establish pioneering companies in Australia, some worked to establish accredited dance departments in American state colleges, and some left to try their luck in Hollywood–many explain that it was their first encounter with the ballet, as members of the audience, that gave them the desire to become performers.

Though ballet superstars like Maria Tallchief, who got her start with the company in 1942, recall being dazzled by the evident glamour of a life in the theatre when they first saw a Ballets Russes performance, Geller and Goldfine’s documentary is honest both about the fabulous successes the Ballets Russes enjoyed and the many hardships that members of the company faced.

Yvonne Chouteau, for example, who, along with Tallchief was one of the first American Indian ballerinas, recalls her mixed feelings at having to leave her home and parents behind at the age of 14 to go on tour. Moreover, the story of the Ballets Russes is not without its intrigues. Theatrical impresario Colonel Wassily de Basil, responsible for reviving the company shortly after Diaghilev’s death in 1929, was, by all accounts, a difficult man whose artistic meddling prompted Massine, perhaps best known to cinema audiences as the ebullient dance director of the Lermontov troupe in The Red Shoes, to form his own break-away company, the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, which performed opposite de Basil’s Original Ballets Russes in the legendary "ballet wars" which consumed pre-war London society.

What may have seemed like distant history is now brought fully and elegantly to life again in the old films in which legendary Ballets Russes dancers like Alicia Markova, George Zoritch, Frederic Franklin, Irina Baronova, Tamara Tchinerova, and Nathalie Krassovska display both their technical precision, and their incomparable artistry. While the legacy of the Ballets Russes lives on through their teaching and choreography, in an era in which attendance at live ballet performance is plummeting, perhaps Geller and Goldfine’s film will inspire the next generation of great dancers.