THE ROMANTIC REVOLUTION
There are few people who are complete in any one direction. The
statesman hesitates at a measure that will wreck his political
organisation, unless he is a complete statesman. The yachtsman will lose
a race to pick up a man overboard, unless he is an unscrupulous or
complete racing fiend. A corporation manager who disregards every
consideration except his end may be a law-breaker, but before that he is
a complete business man. Cromwell and Luther were complete reformers.
Most people in the arts are incomplete artists, because they hesitate to
depart from accepted means of expression. They cripple impulse with
logic, and accommodate their course more or less to other people’s
opinions. Noverre was a complete stage director. Isadora Duncan is a
complete disciple of beauty.
Beauty in all its natural manifestations is her religion. Waves and
clouds and running water, the nude body and its natural movements are
the tokens by which it is revealed to her. Its high priests, by her
creed, were the Greeks of old. And, conversely, all other priests are
false. In the soul afire with a cause there is no room for adjustment of
points of view; such adjustments bear the form of compromise. That which
is not right is wrong--not even partly right, but hopelessly, damnably
wrong. A state of mind exactly as it should be in a person with an
idea, and exactly as it must be if he is going to carry the idea to
fruition.
Miss Duncan is not in attunement with the ballet, and never was. She is
a worshipper of nature; not as translated into abstract terms, but as
nature is, as revealed in the waves and clouds and running water. If she
were a leader in a logical controversy instead of one of taste, it would
be in order to question how she tolerates modern music, instead of
insisting on a reversion to the music of the winds in the trees; for
certainly the piano is no less a man-made convention than the dancer’s
position _sur la pointe_, and orchestration is far from the sounds of
nature. But the controversy is not an affair of logic, and it follows
that any question prompted by logical considerations becomes illogical,
automatically. The point at issue is that Miss Duncan, complete disciple
of beauty, is a complete opponent of beauty expressed otherwise than in
the way revealed to her. Again, lest this analysis bear any resemblance
to criticism, let it be affirmed that her attitude is exactly as it
should be in relation to her destiny.
At an early age she was fascinated by the representations of dancing to
be found on Greek ceramics, and in Tanagra and other figures. A work of
art means many things to many people. What Miss Duncan saw in the early
representations was a direct and perfect expression of nature. Among
other elements, she noted in them a full acknowledgment of the law of
gravity, which is an obviously natural quality. Now, Miss Duncan’s essay
_The Dance_ shows in her mind not the first stirrings of a question as
to whether gravity may not be an unfortunate mortal limitation. On the
contrary, it is natural, therefore right. Therefore the ballet, in
[Illustration: ISADORA DUNCAN
To face page 242]
[Illustration: _Photograph by Claude Harris_
GREEK INTERPRETATIVE DANCE
Mme. Pavlowa
To face page 243
]
denying gravity, is wrong. The Greeks usually danced without shoes; bare
went the feet of Miss Duncan.
Let it not be supposed that her ideal contemplated an imitation of
natural actions, or had any relation to realism. _Natural qualities, not
actions_, she proposed to _interpret, not imitate, by means of natural
movements_. That is at least the inference pointed by the essay referred
to, confirmed by her work. “Natural movements” would be defined, if the
same process of inference may be followed, as movements whose execution
are possible by a normal body without special training. From this it
does not follow that uncultivated movements would be acceptable by the
terms of the proposition. To raise an arm is a natural movement, hence
acceptable to this code. To learn to raise it gracefully, a Duncanite
would need to put in just as much time and thought as a ballet student,
standards of grace being equal. It does, however, follow that any
gravity-defying step would be unacceptable by the terms of the
proposition. Without special training it cannot be executed, badly, or
at all; which, from the Duncan point of view, would throw it into the
class of unnatural movements.
To fix the meaning of the idea of interpreting natural qualities,
nothing better can be done than to quote a paragraph of Miss Duncan’s
own words: “These flowers before me contain the dream of a dance; it
could be named: ‘The light falling on white flowers.’ A dance that would
be a subtle translation of the light and the whiteness--so pure, so
strong, that people would say, ‘It is a soul we see moving, a soul that
has reached the light and found the whiteness. We are glad it should
move so.’ Through its human medium we have a satisfying sense of the
movement of light and glad things. Through this human medium, the
movement of all nature runs also through us, is transmitted to us from
the dancer. We feel the movement of light intermingled with the thought
of whiteness. It is a prayer, this dance, each movement reaches in long
undulations to the heavens and becomes a part of the eternal rhythm of
the spheres.”
Fifteen years ago a creed of interpreting qualities in the manner above
indicated, by means of dancing, was quite as alien to the United States
as was the Greek costume that left the legs uncovered and the feet
unshod. The costume probably was as surprising on the stage then as it
would be in a ballroom now. And right there comes in the complete
artist. Miss Duncan knew she was right, and she went ahead. Perhaps she
anticipated the snickers with which a new idea is usually greeted; more
likely she was sublimely heedless of immediate effects.
[Illustration: IMPRESSIONS OF ISADORA DUNCAN.]
It was in 1899, or thereabout, that she gave a recital in the little
theatre of a dramatic school in Chicago, before an audience principally
of dramatic students, painters and sculptors. After the performance,
which took place in the morning, the painters and sculptors
unconsciously grouped themselves into informal committees to exchange
verdicts. The general conclusion--arrived at after hours of acrimonious
argument, in most cases--was that the young woman had an idea, but that
clairvoyancy was required to understand it. At that time, it should be
added, Miss Duncan was far from mature in grace, surety or any other of
the technical qualities; and her art, naïve though it be, has its
technical requirements just as surely as any other art.
It is now necessary to transfer attention to certain people whose path
and Miss Duncan’s were beginning to converge.
In Russia the ballet is as definitely a ward of the government as the
army is. No more carefully are candidates for a national military
academy selected than are applicants for admission to the Imperial
Ballet Academy.
Those admitted are cared for as though each were an heir to the throne,
given an all-round art education that could not be duplicated anywhere
else in the world, and rigourously drilled in dancing six days a week
for seven or eight years. As they qualify for it, they appear on
occasion in the _corps de ballet_ of the Imperial Opera, dear to the
hearts of nobility and a theatre-going public. By the terms of agreement
with the government, they are assured employment at specified pay for a
specified number of years in the ballet, after which they retire on a
pension. The pay is not high, but with it is an assured career and an
honourable one, and a likelihood of considerable emolument through
instruction, imperial gifts and government favours. Withal a thing not
lightly to be thrown away.
Like their contemporaries in Paris and Vienna, the people of St.
Petersburg and Moscow (homes of the two Imperial Opera Houses and of the
two arms of the Academy) were dissatisfied with their ballet. Beyond the
vague charge of lack of interest they could not analyse their complaint.
They were puzzled. Training more careful than that given in their
Academy could not be. Nor was any school of the dance superior to the
composite French-Italian on which the Russian ballet was based. Each
detailed objection was answered; yet a decided majority agreed that
something was wrong.
Miss Duncan, rightly believing that Europe was more attentive than
America to a new idea, had left her native land after a period of
neither success nor failure in any pronounced degree. She had interested
Paris, startled Berlin, and set Vienna into a turmoil of wrangling. St.
Petersburg waited, with interest aroused by echoes from Vienna.
Before the end of the St. Petersburg performance, M. Mikail Fokine, a
director in the Academy, had not only declared Miss Duncan a goddess, as
he had a perfect right to; he, with others, had invited her to give a
special performance in the Academy, and that was against the rules.
The special performance was given; the Romantic Rebellion dates from
that hour. In no time at all the secessionists were a body including
some of the ablest of both masters and pupils.
With Miss Duncan’s technical limitations or virtuosity they were not
concerned. What she brought
[Illustration:
MLLE. LOPOUKOWA
MLLE. NIJINSKA
MLLE. PAVLOWA
With the famous instructor, Sr. E. Ceccetti. From an amateur photograph
taken in their student period.
To face page 246]
[Illustration: MLLE. LYDIA KYASHT AND M. LYTAZKIN
“Harlequin and Blue-bird”
To face page 247
]
them was the vision of the ballet now known to the world as Russian. To
lost pensions and the certain displeasure of a firm-handed government
they gave no heed. They were complete idealists, bent on a big purpose.
Of the stories of that secession that we have had from various
participants, not one shows the faintest reflection that any of the band
thought of the possible sacrifice of his career. They were not
estimating material prospects. They simply saw the vision of something
that looked better to them than the art they had known; into the path
indicated by that vision they turned without vacillation, and without
emotion save enthusiasm.
With the fact that they were the advance guard of a movement that was
about to assume a significance equal to that of the Barbizon School in
painting and of Victor Hugo in literature, these Russians--boys and
girls in age, most of them--were as supremely unconcerned as were Adam
and Eve with the destiny of the race of which they were founders. To a
group of incomplete artists the epic romance of the thing would have
appealed, and there would have resulted columns and reams of print to
tell about the inspiration, and all the rest of it. In the consciousness
of these Russians--and make no mistake, most of them are alert,
intellectually vigourous people--there was no concern about their own
value as figures in a romance. They were filled with the excitement
accompanying the possibility of radically improving their work.
Spontaneously the pieces of the new structure came together. To M.
Fokine the group looked as head. In him they had a choreographer of the
highest order, with the imagination of an epic poet. Nijinski and Bolm
were prominent men of the group; heading the list of women were Miles.
Pavlowa, Lopoukowa, and Karsavina. As a matter of exact history, Mr.
Joseph Mandelkern points out to us that the enlistment of Mordkin,
Volinine and other important recruits occurred somewhat later; being in
the Moscow arm of the school, their first receipt of the romantic
impulse was connected with Miss Duncan’s appearance in Moscow, which
occurred after the St. Petersburg engagement. The secession at Moscow
was largely a repetition of the occurrences at St. Petersburg.
The new cause gained, without delay, the alliance of the musical
composers, Glazounov, Rimski-Korsakov. Tcherepnin, and others of stature
little less.
Among the forces most important in contribution to the new-born art,
moreover, was Léon Bakst, the decorator. M. Bakst, for a number of
years, had enjoyed a high and steadily improving position in his craft;
he had been variously honoured, he had executed responsible commissions
to the satisfaction of every one--with the possible exception of
himself. In a comparatively recent interview he is quoted as saying--in
effect--that he believed that the function of a painter was to express
emotion rather than to record fact. Taking as an instance an
architectural sketch before him, he said that if a change of certain
classic architectural proportions would add impressiveness, he would not
hesitate to make the necessary changes. In other words, he regarded fact
as material and not as an object to be recorded for its own sake. So it
may be inferred that his success in rather conservative decoration,
notwithstanding that it did not lack the note of individuality, was not
satisfying to him.
[Illustration: _Photograph by Schnieder, Berlin_
MLLE. PAVLOWA IN AN “ARABESQUE”
To face page 248]
[Illustration: M. MIKAIL MORDKIN IN AN “ARROW DANCE”
To face page 249
]
For material for new compositions in which the new creed could be
exploited, ballet-master, musician and painter turned unanimously to the
legendary lore of Russia and Persia, the intervening land of the
Caucasus, and the near-by realm of Egypt. Strange new plots they found;
plots of savagery, passion, and mystery. While dancers translated lofty
motives into choral and solo steps, musicians worked with mad zeal to
render them into tone and tempo. New music was composed, old was seized
with avid hand and pounded into its appointed place in the new romantic
structure. Bakst--and other painters allied with him--revelled, now in a
deep and ominous palette that should spell mystery, again in ardent and
seemingly impossible harmonies that sang wild opulence.
In short, the secessionists had attained to a point that marked nothing
less, and something more, than a re-creation of the mimetic drama of the
best days of Athens. They had achieved that at which the early patrons
of opera had consciously but unsuccessfully aimed. The Russian
achievement is not to be measured except by a glance back into history.
In the great spaces of the Greek outdoor theatres, actors found their
voices inadequate. In consequence, we must accept as essentially true
the belief that dramatic representation underwent a more or less
definite division into two forms. One body, complying with the world-old
demand for explanatory statement to accompany dramatic action, adopted a
device to magnify the voice; that device was a small megaphone,
concealed by means of a mask. To the unimaginative audience, the
resulting falsification of the voice was not objectionable. That species
of audience, to this day, is deaf and blind to the message of quality
or to delight in it. Its interest centres on narrative and it welcomes
diagrammatic aid to its understanding of that narrative. The mask,
therefore, was rather satisfying than otherwise to the patrons of the
drama that it typified. In labelling character, it was a boon to the
intellectually toothless; to whom, moreover, its immobility of
expression would not be offensive. That the spoken drama was the popular
form, the mimo-drama the aristocrat, seems an unavoidable inference.
To artists and audience versed in the language of symbol, as opposed to
imitation; of suggestion, as opposed to diagram; of abstraction, as
opposed to material fact--to such performers and connoisseurs the
vastness of stage and auditorium presented no inconvenience whatever. To
both performer and auditor, the eloquence of pose, step and gesture was
sufficient. Indeed, we may suppose that they regarded the spoken word as
limiting, rather than amplifying, the meaning of the action it
accompanied. The high-heeled _cothurnus_ the pantomimist avoided, for
the sake of perfect freedom of foot. To him was open the full resource
of facial expression, posture and dance. All of these means, in whole or
in part, were denied the wearer of mask and _cothurnus_.
Rome, consistent with its own level of artistic mentality, chose the
less imaginative of the Greek forms. It follows that Greek popular drama
is identical with the so-called classic Roman drama.
When the originators of opera set themselves, in the seventeenth
century, to the task of recreating a classic form, it is a matter of
record that they turned to Rome for their model.
Thus, in availing themselves of advances in the arts of music, scenery
and costume, both opera and ballet have strayed from pure classic
tradition. And there is no harm in that, _per se_. But a point to be
most strongly emphasised is this: that the Russian ballet has
re-created, in its essence, the best of classic drama.
Employment of the full eloquence of step, pose and facial expression,
without the restriction that the spoken word imposes upon meaning--that
is the paramount distinction of the Russian ballet’s dramatic form.
Hardly second in importance is its independence of elaborate stage
mechanism as a means to effects. The first opera busied itself with
mechanical contrivances to an extent that was commented upon--with
amusement--by writers in its time. How far its originators were
justified in believing that they had re-created a great classic form
needs no further comment. That the Russians, searching for the great
fundamentals of art, devised a form practically coincidental with that
accepted by the best intelligence of the best period of Athens, is a
chapter of dramatic history whose importance is not likely to be
exaggerated.
We left the secessionists, on an earlier page, in the position of having
defied a strong-handed government. In this crisis, M. Sergius Diagilew
enters the narrative, not as an artist, but as one of art’s
indispensable allies. He it was who, some years before, had arranged the
exhibitions that first acquainted western Europe and America with modern
Russian painting. When the rift occurred in the Ballet Academy, M.
Diagilew, by virtue of experience and sympathies, was the one man to
perform certain needed diplomatic services in the interest of the
rebels. Their situation lacked little of being politically serious. M.
Diagilew performed the felicitous miracle of turning a fault into a
virtue.
To proper government authorities he outlined a plan which in itself
deserves a place in diplomatic history. “Contract-breakers these people
are,” he admitted, “and on a par with deserters from the army. But
instead of punishing them, I have another suggestion.
“They have created a new and great art. Their combined work represents a
greater expression than any living man has seen, perhaps the finest
thing of its kind that ever has existed in the world.
“Europe respects Russia for her force, not for her thought. Its common
belief is that Russia is a nation of savages, because it has seen no
purely Russian art that it would call great.
“My proposal is that these people be reinstated in the Opera and the
Academy, that they be granted a long leave of absence, and that I be
commissioned to arrange for them a season in Paris, as an exhibition of
representative Russian art, sanctioned by the Russian government.”
The capital necessary for a full equipment of costumes and scenery was
provided by Baron Ginsberg. And there followed the first season of _le
Ballet Russe_ at the Châtelet Théâtre, in 1905. Paris, like every other
progressive city in the world, was surfeited with plays that would
better have been enclosed between the covers of books on law, sociology
or medicine. Its ballet, though fighting valiantly against the effect
that time works on old governments, old religions, old institutions, had
settled into the ways of habit, and could no longer fire the mind or the
imagination. As to all that miscellany of “musical comedies” that, with
their
[Illustration: MLLE. LYDIA LOPOUKOWA, M. MIKAIL MORDKIN, IN A BACCHANAL
To face page 252]
[Illustration: MLLE. LYDIA LOPOUKOWA
To face page 253
]
concomitant novelties, were wallowing in a gaudy slough of despond ten
years ago, Parisians had come to regard them as a highly improbable
means even of amusement, leaving edification quite out of account.
The success of the Russians was assured from the first curtain. Here was
something that conveyed a message of noble beauty, executed with the
skill of the craftsman possessed of all that education can give, fired
with enthusiastic genius. Above all, it was a thing that released
thought from earth-bound conditions and, with the persuasion of its
multiple beauty, invited it to roam the unlimited domain of poetry and
magic.
Full appreciation required time, naturally. Here was a creation new in
freedom of movement and pantomimic vocabulary: dressed in costumes never
seen before; backed by scenery in colours never dreamed of, with a
species of line-composition like an alien language; and accompanied by
music of a type unfamiliar, to many individuals unknown. Wagnerian music
to the unaccustomed ear is confusing as well as overpowering. The
Russian ballet presented its equivalent in three different forms acting
simultaneously.
The Russian ballet season is now one of the institutions of the French
capital. The Russian government annually grants several months’ leave of
absence to the necessary number of artists, and Paris for several months
crowds their performances. The annual increase in quantity and depth of
thought bestowed upon them, as measured in magazine writings, indicates
that public satisfaction with the organisation and its work has not yet
found its limits.
The seasons of 1909-10 and 1910-11 found a small but admirable Russian
ballet in the Metropolitan Opera of New York. Pavlowa, Lopoukowa,
Mordkin, Volinine and Geltzer were of the number. They presented many
_divertissements_ in opera performances as well as a number of ballet
pantomimes. As to their impression on the public, it is most briefly to
be expressed by calling attention to the fact that the dancing
enthusiasm now strongly rooted in America dates directly back to these
Russian ballet seasons in the Metropolitan Opera. Naturally, the
public’s lack of knowledge of the language of pantomime and choreography
stood in the way of such an immediate “hit” as the same company had made
in Paris. But in spite of incomplete understanding, New York was charmed
from the first, and appreciation grew rapidly through the two seasons.
The contract was not renewed, nor has the Metropolitan Opera undertaken
anything great in choreography since that time, in which it is probably
right. Notwithstanding the popularity of the Russians, they did not
increase box-office receipts commensurately with the heavy cost of
salaries, transportation and incidental expenses.
It is natural, when service is needed, to turn to those whose fitness
for such service has been proven. But the opera company, by its service
to music, has earned exemption from added responsibilities to art. Since
its organisation, the stockholders’ dividends have had the form of
deficit statements every year until two years ago. Every year the
stockholders wrote their checks to aggregate a quarter of a million
dollars or more that opera cost in excess of its receipts. The past two
years have turned the balance into the other column. If they chose to,
the same set of gentlemen could, in a few years, put the ballet-drama
on the same footing; but the sacrifice of money and effort is more than
the public has a right to ask. Against appalling odds, the Metropolitan
took up the cause of popularising opera. That the task proves other than
a labour of love is due neither to skimping nor to lowering of
standards, but to quite the contrary policy. The undertaking has
succeeded; those connected with it are entitled to a period of enjoyment
of their rewards. The American Academy of Dancing, when it is organised,
is not morally their responsibility. For its own good, moreover, it had
best be an independent organisation, with music definitely relegated to
the secondary importance. As an auxiliary to music, the dance has not
progressed as it should; only as the sole occupant of one of the
pedestals to which the great arts are entitled will it receive the
attentive care that it deserves and needs. But this is anticipation of
the matter of another chapter.
Since the Metropolitan engagement, Russian ballets have seldom been seen
in America except under misrepresentative conditions. Not through
intentions to misrepresent, but through tactical errors easily
understood in the light of subsequent knowledge, they have been too
often advertised in such terms as to prepare their audiences for
sensationalism rather than art.
A company including some of the best dancers that Russia has produced
was headed by a vaudeville performer whose prominence proceeded from
genius in imitations, and whose choreographic aspirations were based on
two years (the programme confessed the period) of ballet study. It was
believed that her name would be of service to the box-office; it was
demonstrated that, by the standards of the supporting company, she was
not a dancer. So she did not dance. Obviously, the function of
subordinates is to be subordinate; so, perforce, they did not dance,
either. People who came expecting to see great things inevitably felt
that the Russian ballet was, to say the least, an overrated institution.
A consequence even more unfortunate is that many managers draw, from
this hapless alliance and its consequences, the deduction that Americans
do not like high-class dancing.
[Illustration: MME. PAVLOWA IN A BACCHANAL
To face page 257
]