mentions the career importance of her years in Kiev "fired by the Revolution's brave new art". On one level Les Biches appears to creatively conflate the sexual experimentation of post-war Paris and Kiev. Yet Nijinska herself apparently remained somewhat of a skeptic. Garafola comments that Diaghilev disapproved of the ballet's pessimism, its sour look at gender relations. Portrayed was a femininity "only skin-deep, a subterfuge applied like make-up, a construction elaborated over time by men, not an innate female property." The customary "male bravura dance" is here exposed as pretentious. The ballet "divorces the appearance of love from its reality." Les Biches, surmises Garafola, may be interpreted as disclosing Nijinska's "unease with traditional representations of femininity." Balanchine, Nijinska's successor as choreographer at Ballets Russes, complimented her for Les Biches describing it as a "popular ballet of the Diaghilev era". It was revived several times, he continued, and met with "critical and popular approval". "Monte Carlo and Paris audiences ... loved it." "Les Biches was very much liked." "[W]e all knew long before the curtin went down on the first night that Les Biches was a smash hit." Les Fâcheux [The Mad, or The Bores] (1924) :fr:Les Fâcheux was originally a three-act ballet comedy, written by the French playwright, librettist, and actor, known by his stage name Molière (1622–1673). It opened in 1661, with baroque music by Pierre Beauchamp and Jean-Baptiste Lully. Without a plot, characters appear, do a monologue, then exit never to return. "Molière's hero Éraste [is] continually hindered by well-meaning bores while on his way to visit his lady love." Adopted for Ballets Russes, the music was by Georges Auric, with scenery designed by Georges Braque, libretto by Jean Cocteau after Molière, choreography by Nijinska. Nijinska danced the male role of Lysandre, wearing a wig and clothes of the seventeenth-century. Anton Dolin as L'Elégant danced on point to approximate the baroque era and his performance created a sensation. "Her choreography incorporates mannerisms and poses from the period that she modernized by stylization." Braque's costumes were 'Louis XIV'. The original music, however, had been lost, so that Auric was free to evoke the past with a modern composition. Georges Auric was associated with fellow French composers Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and Arthur Honegger, part of a group called Les Six. French writer Jean Cocteau courted the group as representing a new approach to the arts, including poetry and painting.