pianists, for example. These pianists are, in many cases, considerably
more than competent. But to find the great personality in these five to
six hundred talents is something quite different.
The truly great are those who, through something that can only be
described as personality, electrify the public. The public, once
electrified, will come to see them again and again and again. There are,
perhaps, too many good talents. There never can be enough great artists.
Vaslav Nijinsky was one of the great ones--a great artist, a great
personality. There are those who can argue long and in nostalgic detail
about his technique, its virtues and its defects. Artistry and
personality transcend technique; for mere technique, however flawless,
is not enough.
It must be borne in mind that Nijinsky’s public career in the Western
World was hardly more than seven years long. The legend of Nijinsky
commenced with his first appearance in Paris in _Le Spectre de la Rose_,
in 1912. It may have been started, fostered, and developed by
Diaghileff, continued by Nijinsky’s wife. It is quite possible this is
true; but true or not, it does not affect the validity of the legend.
The story of Nijinsky’s peculiarly romantic marriage, his subsequent
madness, his alleged partial recovery, his recent death have all been
set down for posterity by his wife. I am by no means an all-out admirer
of these books; and I am not able to accept or agree with many of the
statements and implications in them. Yet the loyalty and devotion she
exhibited towards him can only be regarded as admirable.
The merit of her ministrations to the sick man, on the one hand, hardly
condones her literary efforts, on the other. Frequently, I detect a
quality in the books that reveals itself more strongly as the predatory
female than as the protective wife-mother. I cannot accept Romola
Nijinsky’s reiterated portraits of Diaghileff as the avenging monster
any more than I can the following statement in her latest book, _The
Last Days of Nijinsky_, published in 1952:
“Undoubtedly, the news that Vaslav was recuperating became more and more
known; therefore it was not surprising that one day he received a cable
with an offer from Mr. Hurok, the theatrical impresario, asking him to
come over to New York and appear. My son-in-law, who had just arrived to
spend the week-end with us, advised me to cable back accepting the
offer, for then we automatically could have escaped from Europe and
would have been able to depart at once. But I felt I could not accept a
contract for Vaslav and commit him. There was no question at the time
that Vaslav should appear in public. Nevertheless, I hoped that the
impresario, who was a Russian himself and who had made his name and
fortune in America managing Russian dancers in the past, would have
vision enough and a humanitarian spirit in helping to get the greatest
Russian dancer out of the European inferno. What I did not know at the
time was that there was quite a group of dancers who had got together
and who worked in silence to keep Nijinsky out of the United States and
from public life. Illness had removed the artist with whom they could
not compete. They dreaded his coming back.”
While the entire paragraph tends to give a distorted picture of the
situation, the last three sentences are as far from the truth as they
possibly can be. The implied charge is almost too stupid to contradict
or refute. Were it not for the stigma it imputes to many fine artists
living in this country, I should ignore it completely. However, the
facts are quite simple. It is by no means an easy matter to bring into
the United States any person in ill health, either physical or mental.
So far as the regulations were concerned, Nijinsky was but another
alien. It was impossible to secure a visa or an entry permit. It was
equally impossible to secure the proper sort of doctors’ certificates
that could have been of material aid in helping secure such papers.
I have a vivid memory of a meeting of dancers at the St. Regis Hotel in
New York to discuss what could be done. Anton Dolin was a prime mover in
the plan to give assistance. There was a genuine enthusiasm on the part
of the dancers present. Unfortunately, the economics of the dance are
such that dancers are quite incapable of undertaking long-term financial
commitments. But a substantial number of pledges were offered.
It certainly was not a question of “quite a group of dancers who had got
together and who worked in silence to keep Nijinsky out of the United
States and from public life.” There was no question or suggestion that
he should appear in public, incidentally. There was only the sheer
inability to get him into the country. If there was any “dread” of “his
coming back,” it could only have been the dread that their former
colleague, ill in mind and body, might be in danger of being exploited
by the romantic author.
Nijinsky, the legend, will endure as long as ballet, because the legend
has its roots in genius. Legend apart, no one from the Maryinsky stable,
no one in the fairly long history of ballet, as a matter of fact, has
given ballet a more complete service. And it should be remembered that
this service was rendered in a career that actually covered less than a
decade.
_A QUARTET OF IMPERIALISTS_
There is left for consideration a Russian male quartet, three of them
still living, who, in one degree or another, have made contributions to
ballet in our time, either in the United States or Europe. Their
contributions vary in quality and degree, exactly as the four gentlemen
differ in temperament and approach. I shall first deal briefly with the
three living members of the quartet, two of whom are American citizens
of long standing.
_THEODORE KOSLOFF_
I commence with one whose contributions to ballet have been the least. I
mention him at all only because, historically speaking, he has been
identified with dance in America a long time. With perhaps a single
notable exception, Theodore Kosloff’s contributions in all forms have
been slight.
The best has been through teaching, for it is as a teacher that he is
likely to be remembered longest. Spectacular in his teaching methods as
he is in person, it has been from his school that has come a substantial
number of artists of the dance who have made a distinctive place for
themselves in the dance world of America.
Outstanding among these are Agnes de Mille, who has made an ineradicable
mark with her highly personal choreographic style, and Nana Gollner,
American _ballerina_ of fine if somewhat uncontrolled talents, the
latter having received almost all her training at Kosloff’s hands and
cane.
Theodore Kosloff was born in 1883. A pupil of the Moscow rather than the
Petersburg school, he eventually became a minor soloist at the Bolshoi
Theatre in Moscow, appearing in, among others, _The Sleeping Beauty_ and
_Daughter of Pharaoh_. When Diaghileff recruited his company, Kosloff
and his wife, Maria Baldina, were among the Muscovites engaged. Kosloff
was little more than a _corps de ballet_ member with Diaghileff, with an
occasional small solo. But he had a roving and retentive eye.
When Gertrude Hoffman and Morris Gest decided to jump the Russian Ballet
gun on Broadway, and to present their _Saison de Ballets Russes_ at the
Winter Garden in advance of Diaghileff’s first American visit, it was
Theodore Kosloff who restaged the Fokine works for Hoffman, without so
much as tilt of the hat or a by-your-leave either to the creator or the
owner.
Remaining in the States after the demise of the venture, Kosloff for a
time appeared in vaudeville with his wife, Baldina, and his younger
brother, Alexis, also a product of the Moscow School. One of these tours
took them to California, where Theodore settled in Hollywood. Here,
almost simultaneously, he opened his school and associated himself with
Cecil B. de Mille as an actor in silent film “epics.” He was equally
successful at both.
Kosloff’s purely balletic activities thereafter included numerous
movie-house “presentations”--the unlamented spectacles that preceded the
feature film in the silent picture days, in palaces like Grauman’s
Egyptian and Grauman’s Chinese; a brief term as ballet-master of the San
Francisco Opera Ballet; and colossal and pepped-up versions of
_Petroushka_ and _Schéhérazade_, the former in Los Angeles, the latter
at the Hollywood Bowl.
Today, at seventy, Kosloff pounds his long staff at classes in the
shadow of the Hollywood hills, directing all his activity at perspiring
and aspiring young Americans, who in increasing numbers are looking
towards the future through the medium of ballet.
_LAURENT NOVIKOFF_
The three living members of this male quartet were all Muscovites, which
is to say, products of the Imperial School of Moscow and dancers of the
Bolshoi Theatre, rather than products of the Maryinsky. In Russian
ballet this was a sharp distinction and a fine one, with the
Maryinskians inclined to glance down the nose a bit at their Moscow
colleagues. And possibly with reason.
Laurent Novikoff was born five years later than Theodore Kosloff; he
graduated from the Moscow School an equal number of years later. He
remained at the Bolshoi Theatre for only a year before joining the
Diaghileff Ballet in Paris for an equal length of time. On his return to
Moscow at the close of the Diaghileff season, he became a first dancer
at the Bolshoi, only to leave to become Anna Pavlova’s partner the next
year. As a matter of fact, the three remaining members of the quartet
were all, at one time or another, partners of Pavlova.
With Pavlova, Novikoff toured the United States in 1913 and in 1914.
Returning once again to Moscow, he staged ballets for opera, and
remained there until the revolution, when he went to London and rejoined
the Diaghileff Company, only to leave and join forces once again with
Pavlova, remaining with her this time for seven years, and eventually
opening a ballet school in London. In 1929, Novikoff accepted an
invitation from the Chicago Civic Opera Company to become its
ballet-master; and later, for a period of five years, he was
ballet-master of the Metropolitan Opera Company.
As a dancer, Novikoff had a number of distinguished qualities, including
a fine virility, a genuinely romantic manner, imagination and authority.
As a choreographer, he can hardly be classified as a progressive. While
he staged a number of works for Pavlova, including, among others,
_Russian Folk Lore_ and _Don Quixote_, most of his choreographic work
was with one opera company or another. In nearly all cases, ballet was,
as it still is, merely a poor step-sister in the opera houses and with
the opera companies, often regarded by opera directors merely as a
necessary nuisance, and only on rare occasions is an opera choreographer
ever given his head.
A charming, cultured, and quite delightful gentleman, Laurent Novikoff
now lives quietly with his wife Elizabeth in the American middle west.
_ALEXANDRE VOLININE_
Alexandre Volinine was Anna Pavlova’s partner for a longer time than any
of the others. Born in 1883, he was a member of the same Moscow Imperial
class as Theodore Kosloff, attained the rank of first dancer at the
Bolshoi Theatre, and remained there for nine years.
In 1910, he left Russia to become Pavlova’s partner, a position he held
intermittently for many years. Apart from being Pavlova’s chief support,
he made numerous American appearances. He was a member of Gertrude
Hoffman’s _Saison Russe_, at the Winter Garden, in 1911; and in the same
year supported the great Danish _ballerina_, Adeline Genée, at the
Metropolitan Opera House, in _La Danse_, “an authentic record by Mlle.
Genée of Dancing and Dancers between the years 1710 and 1845.”
Volinine returned to the United States in 1912-1913, when, after the
historical break between Pavlova and Mordkin, the latter formed his
“All-Star Imperial Russian Ballet,” with Ekaterina Geltzer, Julia
Sedova, Lydia Lopokova, and Volinine. This was an ill-starred venture
from the start for no sooner had they opened at the Metropolitan Opera
House than Mordkin and Sedova quarrelled with Geltzer and, so
characteristic of Russian Ballet, the factions, in this case Polish and
English _versus_ Russian, took violent sides. Volinine was on the side
of the former. As a result of the company split, the English-Polish
section went off on a tour across the country with Volinine, who
augmented their tiny salaries by five dollars weekly from his private
purse. After they had worked their way through the Deep South and
arrived at Creole New Orleans, the manager decamped for a time, and a
tremulous curtain descended on the first act of _Coppélia_, not to rise.
By one means or another, and with some help from the British Consul in
New Orleans, they managed to return to New York by way of a stuffy
journey in a vile-smelling freighter plying along the coast. By quick
thinking, and even quicker acting, including mass-sitting on the
manager’s doorstep, they forced that individual to arrange for the
passage back to England, which was accomplished with its share of
excitement; once back in England, Volinine returned to his place as
Pavlova’s first dancer.
Volinine was the featured dancer with Pavlova in 1916, when I first met
her at the Hippodrome, and often accompanied us to supper. As the years
wore on, I learned to know and admire him.
As a dancer, Volinine was a supreme technician, and, I believe, one of
the most perfect romantic dancers of his time. In his Paris school today
he is passing on his rare knowledge to the men of today’s generation of
_premières danseurs_. His teaching, combined with his quite superb
understanding of the scientific principles involved, are of great
service to ballet. Michael Somes, the first dancer of the Sadler’s Wells
Ballet, is among those who go to Volinine’s Paris studio for those
refining corrections obtainable only from a great teacher who has been a
great dancer.
“Sasha” Volinine has, perhaps, spent as much or more of his professional
life in England, Australia, and other English-speaking countries, as any
Russian dancer. On the other hand, he speaks and understands less
English, perhaps, than any of the others.
Often in America and London we have gone out to dine, to sup, often with
a group. “Sasha” invariably would be the first to ask the headwaiter or
_maître d’hôtel_ for a copy of the menu. Immediately he would
concentrate on it, poring over it, giving it seemingly careful scrutiny
and study.
All the others in the party would have ordered, and then, after long
cogitation, “Sasha” would summon the waiter and, pointing to something
in the menu utterly irrelevant, would solemnly demand: “Ham and eggs.”
I am happy to count “Sasha” Volinine among my old friends, and it is
always a pleasure to foregather with him when I am in Paris.
_ADOLPH BOLM_
If my old friend, Adolph Bolm, were here to read this, he probably would
be the first to object to being classified with this quartet of
“Imperialists.” He would have pointed out to me in his emphatic manner
that by far the greater part of his career had been spent in the United
States, working for ballet in America. He would have insisted that he
neither thought nor acted like an “Imperialist”: that he was a
progressive, not a reactionary; and he would, at considerable length,
have advanced his theory that all “Imperialists” were reactionaries. He
would have repeated to me that even when he was at the Maryinsky, he was
a rebel and a leader in the revolt against what he felt were the
stultifying influences of its inbred conservatism. This would have gone
on for some time, for Bolm was intelligent, literate, articulate, and
ready to make a speech at the drop of a ballet shoe, or no shoe at all.
I have placed Bolm in this book among the “Imperialists” because he had
his roots in the Imperial Russian Ballet, where he was conditioned as
child and youth; he was a product of the School in Theatre Street and a
Maryinsky soloist for seven years; he was a contemporary and one-time
colleague of the three other members of this quartet, either in Russia
or with the Diaghileff Ballet Russe.
Born in St. Petersburg in 1884, the son of the concert-master and
associate conductor of the French operatic theatre, the Mikhailovsky,
Bolm entered the School at ten, was a first-prize graduate in 1904. He
was never a great classical dancer; but he had a first-rate sense of the
theatre, was a brilliant character dancer, a superlative mime.
Bolm was the first to take Anna Pavlova out of Russia, as manager and
first dancer of a Scandinavian and Central European tour that made
ballet history. He was, I happen to know, largely responsible in
influencing Pavlova temporarily to postpone the idea of a company of her
own and to abandon their own tour, because he believed the future of
Russian Ballet lay with Diaghileff. Although the Nijinsky legend
commences when Nijinsky first leapt through the window of the virginal
bedroom of _Le Spectre de la Rose_, in Paris in 1911, it was _Prince
Igor_ and Bolm’s virile, barbaric warrior chieftain that provided the
greater impact and produced the outstanding revelation of male dancing
such as the Western World had not hitherto known.
Bolm was intimately associated with the Diaghileff invasion of the
United States, when Diaghileff, a displaced and dispirited person
sitting out the war in Switzerland, was invited to bring his company to
America by Otto H. Kahn. But, owing to the war and the disbanding of his
company, it was impossible for Diaghileff to reassemble the original
personnel. It was a grave problem. Neither Nijinsky, Fokine, nor
Karsavina was available. It was then that Bolm took on the tremendous
dual role of first dancer and choreographer, engaging and rehearsing
what was to all intents and purposes a new company in a repertoire of
twenty-odd ballets. The Diaghileff American tours were due in no small
degree to Bolm’s efforts in achieving what seemed to be the impossible.
After the second Diaghileff American tour, during which Bolm was
injured, he remained in New York. Unlike many of his colleagues, his
quick intelligence grasped American ideas and points of view. This was
evidenced throughout his career by his interest in our native subjects,
composers, painters.
With his own Ballet Intime, his motion picture theatre presentations of
ballet, his Chicago Allied Arts, his tenure with the Chicago Opera
Company, the San Francisco Opera Ballet, his production of _Le Coq d’Or_
and two productions of _Petroushka_ at the Metropolitan Opera House, he
helped sow the seeds of real ballet appreciation across the country.
My acquaintance and friendship with Adolph Bolm extended over a long
time. His experimental mind, his eagerness, his enthusiasm, his deep
culture, his capacity for friendship, his hospitality--all these
qualities endeared him to me. If one did not always agree with him (and
I, for one, did not), one could not fail to appreciate and respect his
honesty and sincerity. During a period when Ballet Theatre was under my
management, I was instrumental in placing him as the _régisseur general_
(general stage director to those unfamiliar with ballet’s term for this
important functionary) of the company, feeling that his discipline,
knowledge, taste, and ability would be helpful to the young company in
maintaining a high performing standard. Unhappily, much of the good he
did and could do was negated by an unfortunate attitude on the part of
some of our younger American dancers, who have little or no respect for
tradition, reputation, or style, and who seem actively to resent
achievement--in an art that has its roots in the past although its
branches stretch out to the future--rather than respect and admire it.
A striking example of this sort of thing took place when I had been
instrumental, later on, in having Bolm stage a new version of
Stravinsky’s _Firebird_, for Ballet Theatre, in 1945, with Alicia
Markova and Anton Dolin.
My last meeting with Bolm took place at the opening performance of the
Sadler’s Wells production of _The Sleeping Beauty_, in Los Angeles. I
shall not soon forget his genuine enthusiasm and how he embraced Ninette
de Valois as he expressed his happiness that the great full-length
ballets in all their splendor had at last been brought to Los Angeles.
In his later years, Bolm lived on a hilltop in Hollywood; in Hollywood,
but not of it, with Igor Stravinsky and Nicholas Remisoff as two of his
closest and most intimate friends. One night, in the spring of 1951,
Bolm went to sleep and did not wake again in this world.
His life had been filled with an intense activity, a remarkable
productivity in his chosen field--thirty-five years of it in the United
States, in the triple role of teacher, dancer, choreographer. As I have
intimated before, Bolm’s understanding of the things that are at the
root of the American character was, in my opinion, deeper and more
profound than that of any of his colleagues. His achievements will live
after him.
My last contacts with Bolm revealed to me a man still vital, still
eager; but a little soured, a shade bitter, because he was conscious the
world was moving on and felt that the ballet was shutting him out.
Before that bitterness could take too deep a root in the heart and soul
of a gentle artist, a Divine Providence closed his eyes in the sleep
everlasting.
6. Tristan and Isolde:
Michel and Vera Fokine
If ever there were two people who seemingly were inseparable, they were
Michel and Vera Fokine. Theirs was a modern love story that could rank
with those of Abélard and Heloïse, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde.
The romance of the Fokines continued, unabated, till death did them
part.
The story of Michel Fokine’s revolution in modern ballet has become an
important part of ballet’s history. The casual ballet-goer, to whom one
name sounds very much like another, recognizes the name of Fokine. He
may not realize the full importance of the man, but he has been unable
to escape the knowledge that some of the ballets he knows and loves best
are Fokine works.
The literature that has grown up around Michel Fokine and his work is
fairly voluminous, as was his due. Yet, for those of today’s generation,
who are prone to forget too easily, it cannot be repeated too often that
had it not been for Michel Fokine, there might not have been any such
thing as modern ballet. For ballet, wherein he worked his necessary and
epoch-making revolution, was in grave danger of becoming moribund and
static, and might well, by this time, have become extinct.
He was a profound admirer of Isadora Duncan, although he denied he had
been influenced by her ideas. Fokine felt Duncan, in her concern for
movement, had brought dancing back to its beginnings. He was filled with
a divine disgust for the routine and the artificial practices of ballet
at the turn of the century. He was termed a heretic when he insisted
that each ballet demands a new technique appropriate to its style,
because he fought against the eternal stereotype.
Fokine threw in his lot with Diaghileff and his group. With Diaghileff
his greatest masterpieces were created. Both Fokine and Diaghileff were
complicated human beings; both were artists. Problems were never simple
with either of them. There is no reason here to go into the causes for
the rupture between them. That there was a rupture and that it was never
completely healed is regrettable. It was tantamount to a divorce between
the parents of modern ballet. It was, as is so often the case in
divorce, the child that suffered.
For a time following the break, the Fokines returned to Russia; and
then, in 1918, together with their son Vitale, spent some time in and
out of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Conditions were not ideal
for creation, and nothing was added to the impressive list of Fokine
masterpieces.