suppers, this one at the Savoy-Plaza. It was very gala. The Sponsors’
Committee turned up _en masse_. White-gloved waiters served, among other
things, super hot dogs, as a native gesture to the visitors from
overseas. The “baby ballerinas” looked as if they should have been in
bed. That is, two of them did. One of them was missing, and there was
some concern as to what could have happened to Tamara Toumanova.
However, there was no necessity for concern for Tamara, since she, with
her sense of the theatre, the theatrical, and the main chance, made a
late and quite theatrical entry, with Paul D. Cravath on one arm and
Otto H. Kahn on the other. The new era in ballet was inaugurated by
these two distinguished gentlemen and patrons of the arts sipping
champagne from a ballet slipper especially made for the occasion by a
leading Fifth Avenue bootmaker.
The opening a matter of history, the publicity department went into
action at double the record-breaking pace at which they had been
functioning for weeks. The resulting press coverage was overwhelming and
national.
But, however gratifying all this may have been, I had my troubles, and
they increased daily. The publicity simply could not please all the
people all the time. I mean the ballet people, of course. There was
always the eternally dissatisfied de Basil. In addition, there were
three fathers, nineteen mothers, and one sister-in-law to be satisfied.
Then there were daily casting problems. The publicity department was
giving the press what it wanted: feature stories on ballet, on artists,
on the daily life of the dancer. It was then de Basil determined that
all publicity must be centered on his own august person. He had a point
of view, I must admit. Dancers were here today, gone tomorrow. De Basil
and his ballet remained. But no newspaper is interested in running
repeated photographs of a dour, bespectacled male. They wanted “leg
art.” When de Basil insisted that he be photographed, the camera men
would “shoot” him with a filmless or plateless camera.
In addition to having to contend with what threatened to become a
chronic and incurable case of Basildiaghileffitis, I was losing a potful
of money. The St. James Theatre is no better than any other Broadway
house as a home for ballet. The stage is far too small either to display
the décor or to permit dancers to move freely. The auditorium, even if
filled to capacity, cannot meet ballet expenses. We were not playing to
anything like capacity. There was a tour booked; but, thanks to a “stop
clause” in the theatre contract--a figure above which the attraction
must continue at the theatre--we could not leave. We had made the “stop
clause” too low. There was only one thing to do in order to protect the
tour. I decided to divide the company into two companies.
Forced to fulfil two sets of obligations at the end of the first month
at the St. James Theatre, I opened a tour in Reading, Pennsylvania, with
Massine, Danilova, Toumanova, the larger part of the _corps de ballet_,
Efrem Kurtz conducting the orchestra, and all of the ballets in the
repertoire except three.
The company remaining at the St. James had Baronova, Riabouchinska,
Lichine, and Woizikovsky, with the corps augmented by New York dancers,
and Antal Dorati as conductor. This company gave eight performances
weekly of the Fokine masterpieces, _Les Sylphides_, _Petroushka_, and
_Prince Igor_. The steadily increasing public did not seem to mind.
The response on the road and in New York was surprisingly good. When we
finally left New York, the two groups merged, and we played a second
Chicago engagement, at the marvellous old Auditorium Theatre. All were
there, save for Grigorieff, Alexandra Danilova, and Dorati, who returned
to Monte Carlo to fulfil de Basil’s contract with Blum for a spring
season in Monaco.
There was a brief spring season in New York, preceded by a week at the
Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia, where Massine’s first “American” ballet
had its dress rehearsals and first performances. This was _Union
Pacific_, a four-scened work in which Massine had the collaboration of
the distinguished American poet, Archibald MacLeish, on the story;
Albert Johnson, on the settings; Irene Sharaff, with costumes; and a
score, based on American folk-tunes, by Nicholas Nabokoff. It was the
first Russian ballet attempt to deal with the native American scene and
material, treating the theme of the building of the first
transcontinental railway.
We gave its first performance on the night of April 6, 1934, and the
cast included Massine himself, his wife Eugenia Delarova, Irina
Baronova, Sono Osato, David Lichine, and André Eglevsky, in the central
roles.
It was Massine’s prodigious Barman’s dance that proved to be the
highlight of the work.
The balance of the company eventually returned to Europe for their
summer seasons in London and Paris, and to stage new productions. Back
they came in the autumn for another tour. The problem of a proper
theatre for ballet in New York had not been solved; so I took the
company from Europe to Mexico City for an engagement at the newly
remodeled Palacio des Bellas Artes. There were problems galore. Once
again I fell back on my right-hand-bower, Mae Frohman, rushed her to
Mexico to clear them. Back from Mexico by boat to New York, with a
hurried transfer for trains to Toronto, and a long coast-to-coast tour.
The New York engagement that season was brief: five performances only.
The only theatre available was the Majestic, whose stage is no less
cramped, and whose auditorium provides no illusion. During this brief
season a new work by Massine was presented: _Jardin Public_ (_Public
Garden_). It was based on a fragment from André Gide’s _The
Counterfeiters_, in a scenario by Massine and Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon
Duke) who supplied the music. It was not one of Massine’s most
successful works by any means. But the _première_ did provide an amusing
incident. Danilova was cast as a wealthy woman; Massine and Toumanova as
The Poor Couple. On the opening night, Danilova, who showed her wealthy
status by dancing a particularly lively rhumba, lost her underpants
while dancing in the center of the stage. The contretemps she carried
off with great aplomb. But, on her exit, she did not carry off the
underwear, which remained in the center of the stage as a large colored
blob. Danilova’s exit was followed by the entrance of Toumanova and
Massine, clad in rags as befitted The Poor Couple. Toumanova, fixing her
eyes on the offending lingerie, picked it up, examined it critically,
and then, as if it were something from the nether world and quite
unspeakable, dramatically hurled it off-stage in an attitude of utter
disgust, as if it were a symbol of the thing she most detested: wealth.
Although the five performances were sold out, we could not cover our
expenses. In the autumn of 1935, when the company returned for its third
season, we were able to bring Ballet to the Metropolitan Opera House
and, for the first time since its rebirth in America, the public really
saw it at its best.
During this time we had made substantial additions to the repertoire:
Massine’s second and third symphonic ballets, the Brahms _Choreartium_,
and the Berlioz _Symphonie Fantastique_; Nijinska’s _The Hundred
Kisses_. In addition to Fokine’s new non-operatic version of _Le Coq
d’Or_, which I have mentioned, there were added Fokine’s _Schéhérazade_,
_The Afternoon of a Faun_, and Nijinsky’s _Le Spectre de la Rose_.
The gross takings of the fourth American season of the de Basil company
reached round a million dollars.
By this time matters were coming to a head. All was not, by any means,
well in ballet. Massine, by this time, was at swords’ points with de
Basil. I was irritated, bored, fatigued, worn out with him and his
entourage. Since de Basil had lost his Monte Carlo connection, he had
also lost touch with the artistic thought that had served as a stimulus
to creation.
It is necessary for me to make another digression at this point. The
opening chapter of the New Testament is, as the reader will remember, a
geneological one, with a formidable list of “begats.” It seems to me the
course of wisdom to try to clear up, if I can, the “begats” of Russian
Ballet since the day on which I first allied myself with it. I shall try
to disentangle them for the sake of the reader’s better understanding.
There were so many similar names, artists moving from one company to
another, ballets appearing in the repertoires of more than one
organization.
In this saga, I have called this chapter “W. de Basil and his Ballets
Russes de Monte Carlo.” It is a convenient handle. The confusion that
was so characteristic of the man de Basil, was intensified by the fact
that the “Colonel” changed the name of the company at least a half-dozen
times during our association. To attempt to go into all the involved
reasons for these chameleon-like changes would simply add to the
confusion, and would, I feel, be boring. Let me, for the sake of
conciseness and, I hope, the reader’s illumination, list the six
changes:
In 1932, it was _Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo_.
From 1933 to 1936, it was _Monte Carlo Ballet Russe_.
In 1937, it was _Colonel W. de Basil’s Ballet Russe_.
In 1938, it was _Covent Garden Ballet Russe_.
In 1939, it was _Educational Ballets_, Ltd.
From 1940 until its demise, it was _Original Ballet Russe_.
I have said earlier that the alliance between René Blum and de Basil was
foredoomed to failure. The split between them came in 1936, both as a
result of incompatibility and of de Basil’s preoccupation with the
United States to the exclusion of any Monte Carlo interest. Blum had a
greater interest in Monte Carlo, with which, to be sure, he had a
contract. So it was not surprising that René Blum organized a new Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo, with Michel Fokine as choreographer.
De Basil and his methods became increasingly aggravating. His chicanery,
his eternal battling, above all, his overweening obsession about the
size of his name in the display advertising, were sometimes almost
unbearable. He carried a pocket-rule with him and would go about cities
measuring the words “Col. W. de Basil.” Now electric light letters vary
in size in the various cities, and there is no way of changing them
without having new letters made or purchased at considerable expense and
trouble. I remember a scene in Detroit, where de Basil became so
obnoxious that the company manager and I climbed to the roof of the
theatre and took down the sign with our own hands, in order to save us
from further annoyance that day.
All of this accumulated irritation added up to an increasing conviction
that life was too short to continue this sort of thing indefinitely,
despite my love for and my interest and faith in ballet both as an art
and as a popular form of entertainment.
As I have said, Leonide Massine’s difficulties and relations with de
Basil were becoming so strained that each performance became an ordeal.
I never knew when an explosion might occur. There were many points of
difference between Massine and de Basil. The chief bone of contention
was the matter of artistic direction. Massine’s contract with de Basil
was approaching its expiration date. De Basil was badgering him to sign
a new one. Massine steadfastly refused to negotiate unless de Basil
would assure him, in the contract, the title and powers of Artistic
Director. De Basil as steadfastly refused, and insisted on retaining the
powers of artistic direction for himself.
There was, as is always the case in Russian Ballet, a good deal of
side-taking. Granted that, for his purposes, de Basil’s insistence on
keeping all controls over his company in his own hands, had a point. But
let us also regard the issue from the point of view of ability and
knowledge, the prime qualifications for the post. From the portrait I
have given, the reader will gather the extent of the “Colonel’s”
qualifications. This would seem to be the time and place for a sketch of
Leonide Massine, as I know him.
* * * * *
One day there must be a book written about Massine. Not that there is
not already a considerable literature dealing with him; but there is yet
to appear a work that has done him anything like justice. For me to
attempt more than a line drawing would be presumptuous and manifestly
unjust; but a sketch is demanded.
Leonide Massine was born in Moscow in 1894. He graduated from the Moscow
Imperial School in 1912. It was a year later that Diaghileff, visiting
Moscow, was taken by Poliakov, the famous Moscow dramatic critic, to see
a play at the Ostrovsky Theatre. It happened that Massine was appearing
in the play in the role of a servant. There is no record as to what
Diaghileff thought of the play or the performance. The one fact that
emerges from this chance evening Diaghileff spent at a theatre is that
he was impressed by the manner in which the unknown boy, Massine,
carried a tray. Diaghileff asked Poliakov to take him back-stage and
introduce him to the talented young mime.
Artistically, Diaghileff was in the process of moving onward from the
exclusively Russian tradition that was represented by Benois, Bakst,
Stravinsky, and Fokine. He was moving towards a greater
internationalism, a broader cosmopolitanism. He was in need of a
creative personality who would carry forward this wider concept.
Diaghileff’s intuition told him this seventeen-year-old boy with the
enormous brown eyes was the person. Diaghileff took Massine from Moscow
into his company and fashioned him into a present-day Pygmalion.
Diaghileff took over the boy’s artistic education. As part of a
deliberate plan, Diaghileff pushed a willing pupil into close contact
with the world of modern painting and music, with the finest minds of
the period. Picasso, Larionov, Stravinsky, and de Falla became his
mentors; libraries, museums, concert halls, his classrooms. The result
was a great cosmopolitan choreographer, perhaps the greatest living
today.
An American citizen, he will always have strong Russian roots. Some of
his best works are Russian ballets; but he is no slavish nationalist. He
is as much at home in the cultures of Italy, Scotland, or Spain. His was
a precocious genius, discovered by Diaghileff’s intuition. Massine began
at the top, and has remained there.
Massine is difficult to know, for he is shy, and he has a great wall of
natural reserve that takes a long time to penetrate. Once penetrated, it
is possible to experience one of life’s greater satisfactions in the
conversation, the intelligence, the knowledge of the mature Massine.
Massine’s poise and sense of order never leave him. There is a
meticulousness about him and a neatness that indicate the possession of
an orderly mind. Everything he reads which he feels may be of even the
slightest value to him at some future time, he preserves in large
clipping-books. About him is a calm that is exceptional in a Russian--a
calm that is exceptional in any one associated with the dance, where the
habit is to shout as loudly as possible at the slightest provocation, or
no provocation at all, and to become violently excited and agitated over
the most unimportant things. There is about him none of the superficial
“temperament” too often assumed to be the prerogative of artists. He has
a sharp sense of humor; but it is a sense of humor that is keen and dry.
His wit can be sharp and extremely cutting. He has not always been
loved by his associates; but very few of them have ever really known
him.
Filled with fire, energy, enthusiasm, his constant desire is to build
something better.
As a dancer, he still dances, as no one else, the Miller in _The
Three-Cornered Hat_ and the Can Can Dancer in _La Boutique Fantasque_.
Personally, I prefer only Massine in the roles he has created for
himself. No other dancer can approach him in these.
I have mentioned his long sojourn at the Roxy Theatre, in New York.
Under the conditions imposed--a new work to be staged weekly, to dance
four times a day--masterpieces were obviously impossible; but the work
he did was of vast importance in building a dance public in New York.
There are those today who chide Massine for his all too frequent
re-creations of his old pieces, and lay it to Massine’s obsession with
money. It is true, Massine does have a concern for money. But, after
all, he has a wife, two growing children, and other responsibilities.
However, I do not believe finance is the sole reason, and I, for one,
wish he would not be eternally reproducing his old works. _Le Beau
Danube_ will live forever as one of the finest _genre_ works of all
time. But it must be properly done. I remember, to my sorrow, seeing a
recent production of the _Danube_ Massine staged in Paris, with Roland
Petit--with a company of only fourteen dancers. Further comment is not
required.
I have a deep and abiding affection for Leonide Massine as a person--an
affection that is very deep and real. As an artist, I believe he is
still the greatest individual personality in ballet today--a
choreographer of deep knowledge, imagination, and ability.
The composer of some sixty-odd ballets, it is the most imposing record
in modern ballet’s history, perfectly amazing productivity. No one but
himself is capable of restoring them. When produced or restaged without
his fine hand, they are a shambles.
I should like to offer my friend, Leonide Massine, a hope that springs
from my heart. I can only urge him, for his own good and for the good of
ballet which needs him, to rest for a time on his beautiful island in
the Mediterranean and to spend the time there in study and reflection,
crystallizing his ideas. Then he will bring to us new and striking
creations that will come like a refreshing breeze clearing the murky
atmosphere of much of our contemporary ballet scene. If Massine would
only relax his constant drive and follow my suggestion, the real Massine
would emerge.
After a summer on his island, he gave us one of his most recent
creations (1952), an Umbrian Passion Play, _Laudes Evangelli_, to
religious music of the Middle Ages. An interesting side-light on it is
that the very first ballet he had in mind at the beginning of the
Diaghileff association was based on the same idea.
At the height of his maturity, there is no indication of age in Massine.
Age, after all, is merely a question of how old one feels. I remember,
in the later days of his ballet, shortly before his death, Diaghileff
was planning a special gala performance. At a conference of his staff,
he suggested inviting Pavlova to appear. Some of his advisers countered
the proposal with the suggestion that Pavlova was too old. My reply was
brief and to the point.
“Pavlova will never age,” I said. “Some people are old at twenty. But
Pavlova, never; for genius never looks at the calendar.”
What was true of Pavlova, is equally true of Leonide Massine.
* * * * *
The growth, the development, and the appreciation of ballet in America
are the result of a number of things, both individually and in
combination. There may exist a variety of opinions on the subject, but
one thing, I know, is certain: the present state of ballet in America is
not the result of chance. In 1933 I had signed a contract with de Basil
to bring ballet to America; yet there was an element of chance involved
in that my publicity director, vacationing in Europe, saw a performance
of the de Basil company, and spontaneously cabled me an expression of
his enthusiasm. Since this employee was not a balletomane in any sense
of the word, his message served to intensify my conviction that then was
the time to go forward with my determination to follow my intuition.
Here ends any element of chance.
The basic repertoire of the first years was an extension of the
Diaghileff artistic policies. The repertoire included not only revivals
from the Diaghileff repertoire, but also new, forward-looking creations.
I was certain that a sound and orthodox repertoire was an essential for
establishing a genuine ballet audience in this country.
In 1933, there was no ballet audience. It was something that had to be
created and developed through every medium possible. I had a two-fold
responsibility--because I loved ballet with a love that amounted to a
passion, and because I had a tremendous financial burden which I carried
single-handed, without the aid of any Maecenas; I had to make ballet
successful; in doing so, willy-nilly I had the responsibility of forming
a taste where no aesthetic existed.
For two decades I have had criticism levelled at me from certain places,
criticism directed chiefly at my policies in ballet; I have been
criticized for my insistence on certain types of ballets in the
repertoires of the companies I have managed, and for my belief in
adaptations and varying applications of what is known as the “star”
system. The only possible answer is that I have been proven right. No
other system has succeeded in bringing people to ballet or in bringing
ballet to the people.
It will not be out of place at this time to note the repertoire of the
de Basil company at the time of the breakdown of the relations between
Massine and de Basil, which may be said to be the period of the Massine
artistic direction and influence on the de Basil companies, from 1933 to
1937.
There were, if my computation is correct, and I have checked the matter
with some care, a total of forty works, with thirty-four of them
actively in the repertoire. Of these, there were two sound classics
stemming from the Imperial Russian Ballet, creations by Marius Petipa
and Lev Ivanoff: _Swan Lake_, in the one-act abbreviation; and _Aurora’s
Wedding_, the last _divertissement_ act of _The Sleeping Beauty_ or _The
Sleeping Princess_, both, of course, to the music of Tchaikowsky. There
were three Russian works, i.e., ballets on Russian subjects:
Stravinsky’s _Petroushka_; the _Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor_; and
_Le Coq d’Or_, a purely balletic and entertaining spectacle, with the
Rimsky-Korsakoff music rearranged for ballet by Tcherepnine. All of the
foregoing were by Michel Fokine. Eight other Fokine works were included,
all originally produced by him for Diaghileff: three, which might be
called exotic works--_Cléopâtre_, to the music of Arensky and others;
_Thamar_, to the music of Balakireff; and _Schéhérazade_, to the
Rimsky-Korsakoff tone-poem. Five ballets typifying the Romantic
Revolution: Stravinsky’s _Firebird_; _Carnaval_ and _Papillons_, both by
Robert Schumann; _Le Spectre de la Rose_, to the familiar Weber score;
that greatest of all romantic works, _Les Sylphides_, the Chopin
“romantic reverie.”
There were two works by George Balanchine: _Le Cotillon_ and _La
Concurrence_, the former to music by Chabrier, the latter to music by
Auric. A third Balanchine work, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, was
necessarily dropped from the repertoire because the costumes were
destroyed by fire.
The largest contributor by far to the de Basil repertoire was Massine
himself. No less than seventeen of the thirty-four works regularly
presented, that is, fifty per-cent, were by this prodigious creator.
Eight of these were originally staged by Massine for Diaghileff; two
were revivals of works he produced for Count Etienne de Beaumont, in
Paris, in 1932. Seven were original creations for the de Basil company.
The Diaghileff creations, in revival--in the order of their first
making--were: _The Midnight Sun_, to music from Rimsky-Korsakoff’s _The
Snow Maiden_; _Russian Folk Tales_, music by Liadov; The _Good-Humored
Ladies_, to the Scarlatti-Tommasini score; Manuel de Falla’s _The
Three-Cornered Hat_; _The Fantastic Toyshop_, to Rossini melodies;
George Auric’s _Les Matelots: Cimarosiana_; Vittorio Rieti’s _The Ball_.
The two Beaumont works: _Le Beau Danube_, and the Boccherini _Scuola di
Ballo_.
The creations for the de Basil company: the three symphonic
ballets--_Les Présages_, (Tchaikowsky’s Fifth); _Choreartium_, (Brahms’s
Fourth); _La Symphonie Fantastique_, (Berlioz). Also _Children’s Games_
(Bizet); _Beach_ (Jean Francaix); _Union Pacific_ (Nicholas Nabokoff);
and _Jardin Public_ (Dukelsky).
Two other choreographers round out the list. The young David Lichine
contributed four; Bronislava Nijinska, two. The Lichine works:
Tchaikowsky’s _Francesca da Rimini_ and _La Pavillon_, to Borodin’s
music for strings, arranged by Antal Dorati. The others, produced in
Europe, were so unsuccessful I could not bring them to America:
_Nocturne_, a slight work utilising some of Mendelssohn’s _Midsummer
Night’s Dream_ music, and _Les Imaginaires_, to a score by George Auric.