Parade is itself a multimedia spectacle, and not just multimedia in the sense that ballet already is multiple media, combining music, dance, narrative, and scenery, but also because its all-star creative team—Jean Cocteau on story, Erik Satie on music, and Pablo Picasso on scene and set design—worked to incorporate into the ballet a variety of “modern” innovations, such as the clacking of typewriter keys, the clinking of milk bottles, and even a foghorn as part of the music, and then boxy costumes resembling skyscrapers as part of the visual design. Musically and visually alone, Parade crosses borders of high and low, venerable arts and newfangled technologies. Such crossings are also at the heart of the ballet thematically:

 

At Country Fairs it is usual for a dancer or acrobat to give a performance in front of the booth in order to attract people to the turnstiles. The same idea, brought up-to-date and treated with accentuated realism, underlies the Ballet “Parade.”

 

The scene represents a Sunday Fair in Paris. There is a traveling Theatre, and three Music Hall turns are employed . . . [a] Chinese conjuror, an American girl, and a pair of Acrobats.

 

Three Managers are occupied in advertising the show. They tell each other that the crowd in front is confusing the outside performance with the show which is about to take place within, and they try, in the crudest fashion, to induce the public to come and see the entertainment within, but the crowd remains unconvinced. After the last performance the Managers make another effort, but the Theatre remains empty. The Chinaman, the Acrobats, and the American girl, seeing that the Managers have failed, make a last appeal on their own account. But it's too late. (Steegmuller 161)

 

The opening night of the ballet was a scandal, resulting in a small riot. Perhaps one too many borders were crossed, and even Satie and Cocteau fought during the creation of Parade, the latter wanting even more extra-musical effects than the composer was comfortable with.