The print depicts the finale of Leonide Massine's ballet Parade, with a libretto by Jean Cocteau, designs by Pablo Picasso and music by Erik Satie, produced by Diaghilev Ballets Russes in 1917. The full company of three managers and four performers form a line as the Managers try to explain to an indifferent public that the scenes they have witnessed are not the actual performance but only a glimpse of what can be seen in the theatre.

By 1919, when Parade had its London premiere, there was an increasing interest in the Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and material relating to dance in general. Beaumont was already producing a series of booklets on individual Diaghilev Ballets under the series title Impressions of the Russian Ballet and a number of plywood Diaghilev dancers in their famous roles. He now added a series of hand coloured prints of typical scenes from the Diaghilev Ballet repertory. He kept no records of when he began publishing the prints nor how many were produced, although 22 are listed in his catalogues, the work of Adrian Allinson, Ethelbert White, Randolf Schwabe and Eileen Mayo who also worked on Impressions of the Russian Ballet booklets and the plywood figures.
In all these works, Beaumont strove to capture the exact moments of the ballet as well as artists' interpretations. Possibly the design of each print followed the painstaking search for accuracy that had characterised the creation of the illustrations for Impressions of the Russian Ballet series, described in Bookseller at the Ballet - choosing the significant moment, watching the ballet night after night to check details of the poses and grouping (not easy when the stage was full of individual dancers and movement), going backstage to sketch scenery and borrow costumes - although some prints appear to be 'composite' rather than specific tableaux.
Most of the hand-colouring for Impressions of the Russian Ballet booklets was the work of Beaumont and his wife, Alice, and it is possible that both were also involved in colouring the prints, although eventually other artists were employed on both projects.

Historical significance: Parade is a milestone in ballet and art. It is regarded as the first 'Cubist' ballet, mostly because of the 'constructions' devised for the two Managers, who became symbols of showmen against the 'real' performers and almost mobile scenery, and was instrumental in bringing Cubism to a wider audience, through those who saw the work and through the controversy it aroused. It was Picasso's first experience of designing for the theatre and his bold use of colour allied to a sense of clarity and line showed an immediate affinity with the genre. Parade also showed Diaghilev turning away from Russia and Russian subjects and embracing avant garde European art, becoming an integral part of the European scene.