in a perplexed mood. The de Basil organization, riddled by intrigue and
quite out of focus, was not the answer. Its finances were in a parlous
state. I disengaged my emotions and surveyed both the negligible
artistic accomplishments and the substantial financial losses. I turned
a deaf ear to de Basil’s importunings to have me undertake another
American tour, although I did sponsor engagements in Boston and
Philadelphia, and undertook to send the company to Mexico and South
America.
As matters stood, neither the company nor the repertoire was good
enough. I still had one more season tied to the Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo, and that, for the moment, was enough of trouble. I argued with
myself that the Denham difficulties were sufficient unto one day,
without deliberately and gratuitously adding those of the “Colonel.”
Fresh troubles arose in Philadelphia, from which point the company was
to depart for Mexico City. Tamara Toumanova’s presence with the company
was one of the conditions of the Mexican contract.
It will not be difficult, I think, for the reader to imagine my feelings
when, on my arrival in Philadelphia, I was greeted by Toumanova with the
news that she was leaving the company, that her contract with de Basil
had expired, and that nothing in her life had given her greater
happiness than to be able to quit.
De Basil was not to be found. He had gone into hiding. I went into
action. I approached “Gerry” Sevastianov and his wife, Irina Baronova,
to help out the situation by agreeing to have Baronova go to Mexico in
place of the departing Toumanova. She consented, and this cost me an
additional considerable sum.
Having succeeded in this, de Basil emerged from his hiding place to hold
me up once again by demanding money under duress. He had no money and
had to have cash in advance before he would move the company to Mexico.
Once there, he raised objections to the Baronova arrangements, did not
want her to dance or as a member of the company; and there was a general
air of sabotage, egged on, I have no doubt, by a domestic situation,
wherein his wife wanted to dance leading roles.
Somehow we managed to get through the Mexico City engagement and to get
them to Cuba. There matters came to a head with a vengeance. Because of
de Basil’s inability to pay salaries, he started cutting salaries, with
a strike that has become a part of ballet history ensuing.
Once more I dispatched my trusty right hand, Mae Frohman, to foreign
parts to try to straighten matters out. There was nothing she could do.
The mess was too involved, too complicated, and the only possible course
was for me to drop the whole thing.
De Basil, looking for new worlds to conquer, started for South America.
His adventures in the Southern Hemisphere have no important place in
this book, since the company was not then under my management. They
would, moreover, fill another book. The de Basil South American venture,
however, enters this story chronologically at a later point. Let it be
said that the “Colonel’s” adventures there were as fantastic as the man
himself. They included, among many other things, defection after
defection, sometimes necessitating a recruiting of dancers almost from
the streets; the performances of ballets with girls who had never heard
of the works, much less seen them, having to rehearse them sketchily
while the curtain was waiting to rise; the coincidence of performance
with the outbreak of a local revolution; flying his little company in
shifts, since only one jalopy plane, in a dubious state of repair, was
available. I shall not go into his fantastic financing, this being one
of the few times when, as I suggested at the beginning of this book, the
curtain might be lowered for a few discreet moments, in order to spare
the feelings of others rather than my own.
In the quiet of the small hours of the morning, I would lie awake and
compare the personalities of the two “organizers,” de Basil and Denham,
reviewing their likenesses and their differences. As I dozed off, I came
to the conclusion that most generalizations about personality are wrong.
When you have spent hours, days, months, years in close association and
have been bored and irritated by a flamboyant individual, you are apt to
think that restraint and reticence are the only virtues. Until you meet
a quiet fellow, who is quiet either because he has nothing to say or
nothing to make a noise about, and then discover his stillness is merely
a convenient mask for deceit.
Massine, unable to continue any longer with the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe
management, severed his connection with the company he had made, in
1942. Save for a few undistinguished creations, de Basil was skating
along as best he could on his Diaghileff heritage; classicism was being
neglected in the frantic search for “novelties.” Both companies were
making productions, not on any basis of policy, but simply for
expediency and as cheaply as possible. Existing productions in both
companies were increasingly slipshod. While it is true that a good
ballet is a good ballet, it is something less than good when it receives
niggardly treatment or when it is given one less iota than the strictest
attention to detail.
That is exactly what happened when the companies split, and split again:
the works suffered; this, together with the recurring internal crises,
boded ill for the future of ballet. There was the ever-present need for
money for new productions. Diaghileff had one Maecenas after another. By
the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century, a Maecenas
was becoming a rare bird indeed. Today he is as dead as the proverbial
Dodo.
I had certain definite convictions about ballet, I still have them. One
of them is that the sound cornerstone of any ballet company must be
formed of genuine classics. But these must never take the form of
“modern” versions, nor additionally suffer from anything less than
painstaking productions, top-drawer performances, and an infinite
respect for the works themselves. Ballet may depart from the classical
base as far as it wishes to experiment, but the base should always be
kept in sight; and psychological excursions, explorations into the
subconscious, should never be permitted to obscure the fact that the
basic function of ballet is to entertain. By that I do not mean to
suggest ballet should stand still, should chain itself to reaction and
the conservatism of a dead past. It should look forward, move forward;
but it must take its bearings from those virtues of a living past, which
is its heritage: all of which can be summed up in one brief phrase--the
classical tradition.
There are increasingly frequent attempts to create ballets crammed with
symbols dealing with various aspects of sex, perversion, physical and
psychological tensions. In one of the world’s great ballet centers there
have been attempts to use ballet as a means to promulgate and
propagandize political ideologies. I am glad to say the latter have been
completely unsuccessful and they have returned to the classics.
I should be the last person to wish to limit the choreographer’s choice
of subject material. That is ready to his hand and mind. The fact
remains that, in my opinion, ballet cannot (and will not) be tied down
to any one style, aesthetic, religion, ideology, or philosophy.
Therefore, it seems to me, the function of the choreographer is to
express balletic ideas, thought, and emotion in a way that first and
foremost pleases him. But, at the same time, I should like to remind
every choreographer of a distinguished authority, when he said,
“Pleasure, and pleasure alone, is the purpose of art.” But pleasure
differs in kind according to the way that individuals and groups of
individuals differ in mental and emotional make-up. Thus ballet provides
pleasure for the intellectual and the sensualist, the idealist and the
realist, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Atheist. And it will remain
the function of the choreographer to provide this infinite variety of
pleasure until such time that all men think, feel, and act alike.
Ballet was at a cross-road. I was at a cross-road in my career in
ballet. It was at this indecisive point there emerged a new light on the
balletic horizon. It called itself Ballet Theatre. It interested me very
much.
10. The Best of Plans ...
Ballet Theatre
During the very late ’thirties, Mikhail Mordkin had had a ballet
company, giving sporadic performances on Sunday nights, occasionally on
week-day evenings, and, now and then, some out-of-town performances. It
was a small company, largely made up of Mordkin’s pupils, of which one,
Lucia Chase, was _prima ballerina_. Miss Chase was seen in, among other
parts, the title role of _Giselle_, in which she was later replaced by
Patricia Bowman.
This little company is credited with having given the first performance
on this continent of the full-length Tchaikowsky _Sleeping Beauty_. In
order that the record may be quite clear on this point, the production
was not that of the Petipa masterpiece, but rather Mordkin’s own
version. It was presented at Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1937. Waterbury
is the home town of Lucia Chase. Lucia Chase was the Princess Aurora of
the production. So far as the records reveal, there was a single
performance.
The season of 1938-1939 was the Mordkin company’s last. It was, as a
company, foredoomed to failure from the very start, in my opinion. Its
repertoire was meagre, unbalanced; it had no dancers who were known; it
lacked someone of _ballerina_ stature.
Towards the end of the company’s existence, Mordkin had an associate,
Richard Pleasant, whose interest in ballet had, in earlier days, caused
him to act as a supernumerary in de Basil company productions, and who
had an idea: an idea that has lurked in the minds of a number of young
men I know, to wit: to form a ballet company. It is one thing to want to
form a ballet company, another to do it. In addition to having the idea,
one must have money--and a great deal of it.
In this case, idea and money came together simultaneously, for the
Mordkin school and company had Lucia Chase, with ambitions and interest
as well. Lucia Chase had money--a great deal of it--and she wanted to
dance. She had substantially financed the Mordkin company. Pleasant went
ahead with his plan for a grandiose organization--with his ideas and
Chase’s money. The Mordkin company was closed up; and a new company, on
a magnificent scale, calling itself Ballet Theatre, was formed.
The Mordkin venture had been too small, too limited in its scope, too
reactionary in thought, so Mordkin himself was pushed into the
background, soon to be ousted altogether, and the tremendous undertaking
went forward on a scale the like of which this country had never seen.
In a Utopia such a pretentious scheme would have a permanent place in
the cultural pattern, for the company’s avowed policy, at the outset,
was to act as a repository for genuine masterpieces of all periods and
styles of the dance; it would be to the dance what a great museum is to
the arts of sculpture and painting. The classical, the romantic, the
modern, all would find a home in the new organization. The company was
to be so organized that it could compete with the world’s best. It
should be large. It should have ample backing.
The company’s debut at the Center Theatre, in New York’s Rockefeller
Center, on 11th January, 1940, was preceded by a ballyhoo of circus
proportions. The rehearsal period preceding this date was long and
arduous. The company’s slogans included one announcing that the works
were “staged by the greatest collaboration in ballet history.” It was a
“super” organization--imposing, diverse and diffuse. But it was a big
idea, albeit an impractical one. Its impracticability, however, did not
lessen the impact of its initial impression. More than thirteen years
have elapsed since Ballet Theatre made its bow, and one can hardly
regard its initial roster of contributors even now without an astonished
blink of the eyes. There were twenty principal dancers, fifteen
soloists, a _corps de ballet_ of fifty-six. In addition, there was a
Negro group numbering fourteen. There was an additional Spanish group of
nineteen. The choreographers numbered eleven; an equal number of scene
and costume designers; three orchestra conductors. Eighteen composers,
living and dead, contributed to the initial repertoire of as many works.
Although the founders were American, as was the backing, there was no
slavish chauvinism in its repertoire, which was cosmopolitan and
catholic. Only two of its eleven choreographers were natives: Eugene
Loring and Agnes de Mille. The company was international. Three of the
choreographers were English: Anton Dolin, Andrée Howard, and Antony
Tudor. Four were Russian: Michel Fokine, Adolph Bolm, Mikhail Mordkin,
Bronislava Nijinska.
Only five of the eighteen works that made up the repertoire of the
introductory season of Ballet Theatre remain in existence: _Giselle_,
originally staged, after the traditional production, by Anton Dolin, who
had joined the venture after an Australian stint with de Basil’s
Original Ballet Russe; _Swan Lake_, in the one-act version, also staged
by Dolin; Fokine’s masterpiece, _Les Sylphides_; the oldest ballet
extant, _La Fille Mal Gardée_, staged by Bronislava Nijinska; and Adolph
Bolm’s production of the children’s fairy tale, _Peter and the Wolf_, to
the popular Prokofieff orchestral work, with narrator.
It was significant to me that the outstanding successes of that first
season were the classics. First, there was _Les Sylphides_, restored by
the master himself. This, coupled with Dolin’s _Swan Lake_, and
_Giselle_, constituted the backbone of the standard repertoire.
The first four weeks’ season was, perhaps, as expensive a balletic
venture as New York has known, with the possible exception of the Ballet
International of the Marquis de Cuevas, some four years later.
Following Ballet Theatre’s introductory burst of activity, there was a
hiatus, during which the company gave sporadic performances in
Philadelphia, some appearances at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, and
appeared in Chicago in conjunction with the Chicago Opera Company.
Before Ballet Theatre embarked on its second season, trouble was
cooking. There were indications Lucia Chase and Pleasant were not seeing
exactly eye to eye. The second New York season was announced to open at
the Majestic Theatre, on 11th February, 1941. Now the Majestic Theatre
is a far cry from the wide open spaces of the Center Theatre. It is the
house where I had given a brief and costly season with de Basil’s
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the early days, on a stage so small that
no justice can be done to dance or dancers, and where the capacity does
not admit of meeting expenses even when sold out.
Pleasant’s newest idea, announced before the season opened, was to
present a “company.” There were to be no distinctions or classifications
of dancers. One of the time-honored institutions of ballet was also
abolished; there was no general stage director, or _régisseur-general_,
as he is known in the French terminology of ballet. Instead, the company
was divided, like all Gaul, into three parts, to be known as “Wings,”
with Anton Dolin in charge of the “Classic Wing”; Antony Tudor, of the
“English Wing”; Eugene Loring, of the “American Wing.” Five new works
were added to the repertoire, of which only two remain: Eugene Loring’s
_Billy the Kid_, to one of Aaron Copland’s finest scores, and Agnes de
Mille’s _Three Virgins and a Devil_, to Ottorino Respighi’s _Antiche
Danze ed Arie_. Dolin’s _Pas de Quatre_, produced at this time, has been
replaced in the company’s repertoire by another version.
The differences between Pleasant and Chase came to a head, and the
former was forced to resign at the end of the four weeks’ season, which
resulted in more substantial losses.
It was at this time that I was approached on behalf of the organization
by Charles Payne, seeking advice as to how to proceed. We lunched
together in Rockefeller Plaza, and while I am unable to state that the
final decision was wholly mine or that the terminal action was taken
exclusively on my advice, I counselled Payne that, in my opinion, the
only course for them to follow would be to close down the company
completely, place everything they owned into storage, and start afresh
after reorganization. Receipts at the box-office having fallen as low as
$319 a performance, there was no other choice. In any event, my advice
was followed.
Reorganization was under way. In an organization of this magnitude and
complexity, reorganization was something that took a great deal of both
thought and time. It was by no means a simple matter. While the
reorganization was in its early, indecisive stages, with protracted
debates going on within the circle as to whether it should continue in
any form or fold its wings in the sleep everlasting, Anton Dolin came to
me to ask me to take over the management of the venture.
This was not a thing to be regarded lightly. The situation in ballet in
general, and with the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe in particular, being as I
have described it, I was interested in and attracted by the potential
value of the company, if the proper sort of reorganization could be
effected. Their Chicago season had been a complete fiasco at the
box-office. There is a legend to the effect that, in an effort to
attract a few people into the Chicago Opera House, members of the
company stood outside the building as the office-workers from the
surrounding buildings wended their way homeward to the suburban trains,
passing out free tickets. The legend also has it that they managed to
get some of these free tickets into the hands of a local critic who was
one of the crowd.
I do not wish to bore the reader with the details of all the debates
that highlighted those days. Sufficient is it to say that they were
crowded and that the nights were often sleepless.
Anton Dolin was responsible for having German (“Gerry”) Sevastianov, no
longer associated with de Basil, appointed as managing director, in
succession to the resigned Pleasant.
The negotiations commenced and were both long and involved between all
parties concerned which included discussion with Lucia Chase and her
attorney, Harry M. Zuckert. Matters were reaching a point where I felt a
glimmer of light could be detected, when a honeymoon intervened, due to
the marriage of Zuckert. Ballet waited for romance. Throughout the long
drawn-out discussions and negotiations, Zuckert was always pleasant,
cooperative, diplomatic, and evidenced a sincere desire to avoid any
friction.
Among the first acts of Sevastianov, after taking over the directorship,
was to engage his wife, Irina Baronova, as a leading ballerina, together
with Antal Dorati, former musical director of the de Basil company, and
today the musical director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, to
direct and supervise the music of Ballet Theatre. Later, through the
good offices of Anton Dolin, Alicia Markova, whose contract with the
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo had terminated, became one of the two
_ballerine_ of the company.
The negotiations dragged on during the summer. Meanwhile, with the
company and its artists inactive, Markova and Dolin, on their own,
leased Jacob’s Pillow, the Ted Shawn farm and summer theatre in the
Berkshires, and gave a number of performances under the collective title
of International Dance Festival. This was a quite independent venture,
but Markova and Dolin peopled their season and school with the personnel
of Ballet Theatre.
This summer in the Berkshires had a two-fold effect on the company:
first, the members were thus able to work together as a unit; second,
with three choreographers in residence, it was possible for them to lay
out and develop the early groundwork of three works, subsequently to be
added to the Ballet Theatre repertoire: _Slavonika_, by Vania Psota;
_Princess Aurora_, by Anton Dolin; and _Pillar of Fire_, by Antony
Tudor.
Two of these were major contributions; one was pretty hopeless. Dolin’s
_Princess Aurora_ was a reworking of the last act of Tchaikowsky’s _The
Sleeping Beauty_, a sort of _Aurora’s Wedding_, with the addition of the
_Rose Adagio_, giving the company another classic work that remains in
the company’s repertoire today, with some “innovations.” _Pillar of
Fire_, set to Arnold Schönberg’s _Verklärte Nacht_, revealed a new type
of dramatic ballet which, in many respects, may be said to be Tudor’s
masterpiece. _Slavonika_ was set by the Czech Psota to a number of
Dvorak’s _Slavonic Dances_, and was an almost total loss, from every
point of view. The original version, as first produced, ran fifty-five
minutes. I thought it would never end. But, as the tour proceeded, it
was cut, and cut again. The last time I saw it was when I visited the
company in Toronto. Then it was blessedly cut down to six minutes. After
that, no further reduction seemed possible, and it was sent to the limbo
of the storehouse, never to be seen again.
The deal between Ballet Theatre and myself was closed during the time
the company was working at Jacob’s Pillow, and I took over the company
in November, 1941. It might be of interest to note some of the chief
personnel of the company at that time. Among the women were: Alicia
Markova, Irina Baronova, Lucia Chase, Karen Conrad, Rosella Hightower,
Nora Kaye, Maria Karnilova, Jeanette Lauret, Annabelle Lyon, Sono Osato,
Nina Popova, and Roszika Sabo; among the men were: Anton Dolin, Ian
Gibson, Frank Hobi, John Kriza, Hugh Laing, Yurek Lasovsky, Nicolas
Orloff, Richard Reed, Jerome Robbins, Dmitri Romanoff, Borislav Runanin,
Donald Saddler, Simon Semenoff, George Skibine, and Antony Tudor, to
list them alphabetically, for the most part. Later, Alicia Alonso
returned to the organization. A considerable number had been brought as
a strengthening measure by Sevastianov.
One of the company’s weaknesses was in its classical and romantic
departments. While there were Fokine’s _Les Sylphides_ and _Carnaval_, I
felt more Fokine ballets were necessary to a balanced repertoire.
Sevastianov engaged Fokine to re-stage _Le Spectre de la Rose_ and
_Petroushka_, and to create a new work for Anton Dolin and Irina
Baronova. Fokine started work on _Bluebeard_, to an Offenbach score,
arranged and orchestrated by Antal Dorati, with scenery and costumes by
Marcel Vertes.
Meanwhile, I lived up to my contract with the Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo, and presented them, in the autumn of 1941, at the Metropolitan
Opera House, and subsequently on tour.
In order to prepare the new works, Ballet Theatre went to Mexico City,
returning to New York to open at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre, on
12th November, 1941. In addition to the existing Ballet Theatre
repertoire, four works were added and had their first New York
performances: Psota’s _Slavonika_, and Dolin’s re-creation of _Princess
Aurora_, which I have mentioned, together with _Le Spectre de la Rose_,
and Bronislava Nijinska’s _The Beloved One_. The last was a revival of a
work originally done to a Schubert-Liszt score, arranged by Darius
Milhaud, for the Markova-Dolin Ballet in London. In the New York
production it had scenery and costumes by Nicolas de Molas. It was not a
success.