Set in the early 1910s at a time of passionate artistic experimentalism, and based on biographical fact, this is the story of Vaslav , the young and brilliant, but headstrong premier ballet dancer and aspiring choreographer of the Ballets Russes. The company is managed by the famous Sergei Diaghilev, a controlling and fiercely possessive impresario. The increasing tension between these powerful egos, exacerbated by homosexual desire and jealousy, becomes triangular when the young ballerina Romola de Pulsky determinedly attempts to draw the increasingly mentally unstable away from Diaghilev.