I made a point of searching this museum out as I had read that it had a fine collection of early 20th century Ballet Russes costumes designed by some of the century's greatest artists. Even though I was looking out for the place, I managed to walk right past it! The entrance is not large and does not easily catch the eye being rather overshadowed by a cafe; you enter into a hallway with the paydesk and shop off to the right, the young man behind the counter was very friendly and there seemed to be no-one else in the place! Excellent selection of books by the way!
The collection highlights are traditional dance masks from Africa, India and Tibet, Chinese and Japanese theatre puppets and so on, and they are found on the ground floor. Down the stairs to the basement where there is a superb collection of the costumes from the ballets that the impresario Diaghilev brought to the west from Russia. The main exhibit was from the ballet "The Sleeping Princess" which premiered in London in 1921 and there were various exhibits which took you through the story, lighting up the displays as you approached them; unfortunately the glorious music of Tchaikovsky was not allowed to disturb the peace and quiet of the displays which was rather a pity! (And it was quiet; for most of my visit I was the only person there!) There are several display cases of the most wonderful costumes (they appear to be very heavy and one wonders how they managed to dance in them at all!) designed by the likes of Picasso, Bakst, Matisse and so on together with displays of programmes, costume designs, photographs of the dancers, etc., a whole wealth of material. There is also a bank of TV screens showing productions of "The Sleeping Beauty" (as we now know the ballet) from all over the world from the very earliest days right up to Matthew Bourne's latest production and here you can listen to the music through headphones. The only other place that the music was allowed to be heard was in the locker room where a TV screen was showing excerpts from musical films - the two I saw were Grease and an Elvis film!
If you are at all interested in the dance, then this is certainly worth a visit but it is a great pity that the museum managemnt have seen fit to exclude music from the displays except in one or two instances; apart from the ballet, it would have been interesting to hear, say, the music that accompanies the Chinese and Japanese puppets!