THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY AND ITS WORKINGS
A student in the Russian Academy does not risk discovering, after some
years of study, that he cannot stand the physical training, nor does he
learn, when it is too late to turn back, that his road to high places is
blocked by defect of health, structure, or proportion. As a candidate
for admission he undergoes an examination by a board of physicians,
painters and sculptors. If he enters, it is after their approval, the
examiners measuring the candidate by the standards of their respective
arts. He knows, and his parents know, that he is starting, free from
handicap, on the road to an at least respectable position in a
respectable profession, with which he will be associated and by which he
will be supported through life. His studies will be guided by the best
instruction that can be secured; if he has genius it will receive the
most favourable of cultivation. At all times his life will be surrounded
by conditions as favourable to physical health as they can be made by
science and free expenditure.
His payment for these advantages is complete renunciation of every
interest apart from those of the Academy’s curriculum. To one not
passionately fond of his art, the enforced devotion to work would spell
loss of liberty. As a matter of fact, however, this does not often seem
to be felt as a privation. The interests of the school are so varied,
and the dance is possessed of such endless allurement, that life within
the academic walls is generally felt to be complete in itself. In other
words, the contract binding the pupil is not usually felt as a tether,
notwithstanding that its operation covers the most restless years in a
boy’s or girl’s life.
Seven or eight is the age for entrance, and the contract binds the pupil
for nine years of training--which may be reduced to eight if proficiency
warrants. At the expiration of this time the government has all rights
to the dancer’s services, at a moderate salary, varying according to the
rank for which he qualifies in the ballet organisation. From the
graduates of the Academy are recruited the ballets of the two Imperial
Opera Houses: the Marianski Theatre in St. Petersburg, and the Opera
House in Moscow. In both houses, ballet pantomimes are presented twice a
week, approximately.
Graduates with an aptitude for teaching are so employed. All of which
must cost the government a great deal less than would the alternative of
hiring _corps de ballet_, _premiers_ and _premières_, and ballet-masters
from Paris and Milan. In fact, until half a century ago, foreign talent
was depended on for the important work. From its continued use, it may
be inferred that the present system is the more satisfactory.
Naturally, a member of the Imperial ballet must have government consent
to leave his country; departing without such consent, he automatically
forfeits his pension. A few individuals have chosen the high salaries to
which their work entitles them in other parts of the world, and
deliberately stayed away at the expiration of a leave of absence. To the
great majority, however, the pension and artistic conditions attaching
to their home organisation have been the greater inducement.
[Illustration: MLLE. LYDIA LOPOUKOWA
An aid to secure footing, the toes of ballet slippers are usually darned
To face page 258]
[Illustration: MLLE. LYDIA LOPOUKOWA
To face page 259
]
Between performances and their preparation, and teaching, it will be
seen that the members of the ballet never need pass an unoccupied hour.
They are insured against such deterioration as might result from lack of
constant work. On the other hand, they are protected against the danger
of overwork. Think of the difference between such conditions and those
created by competition! Between engagements, the generality of ballet
people under the latter conditions study and train, if at all, at their
own expense; and competent coaching costs money. During engagements, the
number of supreme efforts of which they are capable each week is
considered only by those in whom are combined good fortune and
conscience; others arrange their work to economise strength, or else
break down.
Of the curriculum of the school we have been told in some detail by Miss
Lydia Lopoukowa. During the first year, which is a period of probation,
pupils are allowed to visit their parents on Sundays. After that they
remain in the direct charge of instructors, in the school, in the
opera-houses, and in carriages going and coming; visiting with parents
or others is confined to stated times, and is done in the school. If
this arrangement seems severe, the answers are to be found in results:
if any students of any art attain to full artistic development and
perfection of artistry in an equal length of time without similar
concentration, enforced either by self or by regulation, then the
detachment effected by the Russian Academy is carried to an unnecessary
degree.
The curriculum may, for convenience, be divided into two departments,
pertaining respectively to technical and general education. The latter
is the equivalent of the Continental European _gymnasium_, which
carries the student to a point somewhat more advanced than that which he
reaches in the American public high school.
On the technical side, the training begins with the breadth of a general
conservatory’s course in the arts. As the pupil’s aptitude and tastes
begin to crystallise, his instruction becomes increasingly specialised.
The first year’s work covers, besides dancing, a beginning in music,
acting, and a certain amount of drawing. The music includes theory and
piano. Acting embraces the beginnings of pantomime, along with
enunciation, expression and the rest of it.
The dancing tuition is based absolutely on the French-Italian ballet.
The undisputed success of the romantic movement, and the prevailing
sympathy with its motive, have not shaken faith in the classic as a
necessary framework for the support of expression and adornment. An
orthodox and unreconstructed Italian ballet-master remains in charge of
this department; his influence is not modified until after the pupil has
acquired the equilibrium, in short the discipline that is a tradition of
the classic school alone. Parallel with this training, however, is
instruction and drill in plastic gymnastics, which concerns itself with
training the body in grace and expression. The separation of the two
courses naturally enables the pupil to keep classic precision clear in
his mind; while, having at the same time mastered the more fluid
treatment of the plastic gymnastics, he is ready to unite the two
understandingly when the proper time arrives, and to combine with their
graces the eloquence of pantomime.
Music has sometimes been found to be the natural _métier_ of students
whose original intention was dancing. In other instances the embryonic
dancer has revealed a genius for acting. In such cases the pupil is
encouraged to follow the line of natural aptitude. The ranks of both
opera and drama in Russia include women whose ultimate vocations were
discovered after they had become proficient dancers. While such cases
are not common, neither are they rare; which is rather illuminating as
to the quality of the musical instruction.
An acquaintance with musical theory is insisted upon as a part of the
dancer’s equipment, though there be no probability of his ever applying
his knowledge in any of the usual ways. Music and dancing are so
interwoven that the latter’s full meaning can hardly be expressed, or
understood, without musical knowledge as an aid. Moreover, of every
class of youngsters a certain number are destined to be choreographic
composers; to these a knowledge of orchestral possibilities and
limitations is indispensable. Indeed it is an asset of the utmost
practical utility to any dancer; any rehearsal demonstrates its value.
In respect to this department and its lifelong value to those who have
had its training, graduates of other academies unite in approval of the
Russian.
The course in drawing and painting seems to aim at critical appreciation
of beauty, as expressed in the abstract qualities of grace in line and
harmony in colour; this in distinction to the regulation art school
discipline in proportion and anatomy of the figure. The practical value
of such training, in sharpening the power of constructive criticism of
dancing, is obvious.
To the accomplishment of all this work--and more that need not be
detailed--the pupils are not driven; they are led. Everything is fun.
Play is made contributory to the general purpose of training artists.
As an escape from realities into that world of make-believe that
children crave, pantomimes are practiced evenings after dinner;
self-expression is encouraged on these occasions, criticism no more than
hinted. As a playground for the girls, a large garden is provided. But
the boys, to relax from the restraint of a daily two-hour lesson in
French ballet, delight in class fencing lessons. The health of all is
under unobtrusive but constant supervision. In each of the girls’
dormitories a nurse is on watch every night, alert for the first
unfavourable symptom--and ready, too, we may be sure, with sympathy for
any little attack of loneliness. Miss Lopoukowa’s remembrances are not
of any rigours of work, but rather of a protecting gentleness.
Diet is studied; the children are trained into hygienic positions in
sleep! Hair, teeth, skin, heart, lungs, digestion and nerves are cared
for by the most capable of specialists. By no means last in importance
to a dancer are his feet; the Academy has its chiropodist always in
attendance not only to rectify trouble, but to prevent it.
As the academic years draw toward their close, the pupil receives
instruction in supplementary branches necessary to the finished artist.
Character dances are not only performed; they are studied in relation to
the temperaments of their respective nations. Make-up receives its due
attention; with paint and false hair young Russians practice
transforming themselves into Japanese, Egyptians, Italians. When they
leave the Academy, they know their trade.
Somehow such an institution seems too good to last; yet its excellence
is far from being the product of any momentary enthusiasm. Its beginning
was made in the first half of the eighteenth century. Ballets had been
[Illustration: MLLE. LYDIA LOPOUKOWA IN “LE LAC DES CYGNES”
To face page 262]
[Illustration: M. ALEXANDER VOLININE
To face page 263]
presented before the Imperial Court as early as 1675. Peter the Great
had insisted on Western dancing as one of the means to his end of
bringing Russia abreast of the times. Indeed he is supposed to have
learned it and taught it himself, as he did shipbuilding. In 1735 the
Empress Anne engaged a Neapolitan composer and musical director and a
French ballet-master, and bade them present a ballet every week. Cadets
from the military academy were at first impressed into service; which
may be contributory to the military exactness of the organisation of the
Ballet Academy.
As ballet material, the cadets were gradually (according to Flitch)
replaced by boys and girls of the poorer classes, whom the ballet-master
trained free of charge. The assignment of quarters to them in the
palace, the appointment of a coachman’s widow to take care of them, an
appropriation of extra pay to the ballet-master for teaching, may be
said to mark the beginnings of the Academy. Its existence has been
uninterrupted, and, under the almost idolatrous Russian love of ballet
representations, its growth has been steady. A composite French-Italian
technique was adopted, as before stated, and kept unmodified until the
recent romantic movement had proven its worth. Italian principal dancers
were employed until, a generation ago, the need of them was ended by the
Imperial Academy’s arrival at a condition of adequacy.
The difference between the romantic ballet and the classic could not be
described in an infinity of words, but it can be summarised in a few,
and its character suggested in a few sketches. Briefly, the difference
consists in liberty to depart from classic restriction of pose and
movement, wherever such emancipation will contribute to expression.
This freedom inevitably clashes with ballet tenets that have been
unquestioned for a hundred and fifty years. The classic keeps the
shoulders down; the romantic does not hesitate to raise them, one or
both, to portray fear, disdain, or what-not. In the eyes of the
classicists, straightness of body (its detractors call it rigidity) is
of absolute importance; romanticists, in their Oriental representations,
for instance, do not hesitate to exploit the body’s sinuosity to the
utmost. Yet, in their apparent disregard of choreographic law, they have
preserved rigourously the underlying truth of choreographic structure.
Than their brilliant steps those of no dancer are cleaner or more
perfect; in equilibrium, in exactness, in all that makes for style and
finish, they have no superiors. Nevertheless some of the classic ballet
people, especially the Milan element, still protest that the romantic
idea, with all its appurtenances, is a heresy. M. Legatt, of the St.
Petersburg Academy, is said to group all the new elements into one
category: Duncanism!
As the painter Bakst (and with him may be mentioned Boris Anisfeldt and
others of the same artistic creed), while preserving recognisable
national character in his scenes and costumes, does not scruple to
subordinate historical facts to his motives, so does the romantic
ballet-master disregard the natural limitations of folk-dances that he
may choose to employ in his composition. If it suited the dramatic
intention of M. Fokine to bring an Arabian dancer on to the point, or to
introduce into her work a pure _pirouette_, it is fairly safe to assume
that he would do so, despite the fact that Arabic dancing itself knows
no such devices. It is to be added that although he should make such
amendment to an
[Illustration: REPRESENTATIVE RUSSIAN BALLET POSES AND GROUPS.
Two groups at top from _Thamar_, M. Bolm and Mme. Karsavina, Mlle.
Nijinska; MM. Govriloff and Kotchetovski; M. Seilig and Mlle.
Stachko, all in _Thamar_. Figure with peacock, Mme. Astafieva in
_Le Dieu Bleu_.
(Courtesy of _Comoedia Illustré_.)]
Arabic dance as known to its own people, his product would express as
forcibly the quality of Orientalism as would any dance to be found in
Bagdad. The essential difference would be that the composition of M.
Fokine would serve the immediate intention of grief, rage, or whatever
might be the desired emotion, as well as emphasising Oriental quality.
It will be seen that the means of expression above indicated relieves
the ballet pantomime of any limits of scope. The classic, generally
speaking, is by its nature confined to fairy fantasies, the play of
elves and spirits, Pierrot and Columbine. All that is dainty it renders
to perfection. The new school, on the contrary, can treat with complete
dramatic impressiveness all the mystic, epic and sometimes terrible
imaginings of the Tartar mind. To its advantage it has among its
disciples a full supply of dancing men; lack of them has crippled the
classic expressions for many years. The woman doing a boy’s part becomes
ridiculous as soon as dramatic action departs from the lyrical mood. For
this reason, perhaps, both opera ballets and academies of Europe outside
of Russia have long lost the custom of staging pantomimes of greater
consequence than operatic _divertissement_. Whereas the Marianski
Theatre and the Moscow Opera dedicate two nights a week to ballet
pantomimes exclusively, and have done so for many years.
The mimetic dramas that have sprung into life with and as part of the
new school draw material from legends dark and savage, lyrical and
dreamlike. _Cleopâtre_ is a story of love and a cruel caprice of an idle
queen of fabled Egypt. _Prince Igor_ presents a background of the
ever-threatening Mongol, a myriad savage horde encamped outside the
eastern gate of Europe.
[Illustration: REPRESENTATIVE RUSSIAN BALLET POSES AND GROUPS.
_Prince Igor_ (M. Bolm).
_Thamar_ (Mlle. Tchernicheva).
_L’Oiseau de Feu_ (Mme. Karsavina).
_Thamar_ (Mlle. Hoklova).
_L’Oiseau de Feu_ (M. Boulgakow, M. Fokine).
_Le Dieu Bleu_ (M. Nijinski).
(Courtesy of _Comoedia Illustré_.)]
_Scheherazade_ is tropic passion marching undeviatingly into tragedy. In
contrast to these are such ethereal creations as _Le Spectre de la
Rose_, _Le Carnaval_, _Les Sylphides_, _Le Lac des Cygnes_, and _Le
Pavillon d’Armide_. _Le Spectre de la Rose_, composed to the melting
music of Weber’s _Invitation à la Valse_, is a fantasy of a girl who
falls asleep in her chair after returning from a ball. In her hand she
holds a rose which, in her dreams, turns into a spirit that dances with
her, kisses her, and departs. _Le Carnaval_ brings to life and unites in
a slight plot a group of such fabled personages as Pierrot, Harlequin,
Columbine, Pantalone and Papillon, animated by Schumann music with
Russian orchestration. _Armide_ is a figure on a tapestry, who, by magic
spell, comes forth in courtly dance with her companion figures and
enchants a traveller sleeping in the apartment. _Le Lac des Cygnes_ and
_Les Sylphides_ are practically plotless reveries in the field of pure
beauty; of tissue as unsubstantial as the rainbow.
Still a third division is exemplified in _L’Oiseau de Feu_ and _Le Dieu
Bleu_. As though to test to the utmost the romantic ballet’s range of
expression, these last deal with occult Eastern religion, calling for a
treatment purely mystic.