THE DECLINE OF THE BALLET
The history of every art-form is a record of growth, maturity, decay and
rebirth. The life of art appears to be subject to cycles, the recurrence
of which is as certain and as inexplicable as those of nature. When
perfect facility of execution has been attained, the period of decline
is at hand. Nothing is left to the artist but to attempt to elaborate
forms that are already perfect. The mode of art which has reached its
zenith has expressed everything which the age had to say through that
particular medium. Executive skill may still remain but the creative
spirit is no longer present to inform it. The result almost necessarily
is a barren accomplishment which has ceased to have any significance.
The artist seeks to conceal his lack of inspiration by purely mechanical
dexterity. He produces that over-elaboration of detail which is the sure
mark of decadent art. An art which is full-blown can never begin to bud
again until it has drawn up the sap of a new emotion and again has
something significant to express to the age.
The history of the ballet has shown no exception to this general law.
After its brilliant efflorescence in the second quarter of the last
century it passed into a season of decay. The first cause naturally was
the disappearance of the dancers of genius whose careers have been
briefly sketched in the last chapter. When she danced in the famous _Pas
de Quatre_ in 1845 Marie Taglioni had already passed her fortieth year;
Fanny Elssler never danced after 1851; Carlotta Grisi and Cerito quitted
the stage shortly afterwards. More than any other art, dancing lives by
the genius of its exponents. Unlike painting, sculpture and literature,
it leaves no permanent record behind it--only a name and a reputation.
If there is a gap in the sequence of great dancers, there ceases to be
any living art to serve as a source of inspiration for the next
generation. The traditional methods may be carried on, but without the
living exponent they rapidly become lifeless.
The great dancers had no successors of equal genius. The French and
Italian schools, which in a single generation had produced so many of
the world’s most famous dancers, suddenly became sterile. All the great
dancers of the nineteenth century were grounded upon the Italian method.
In Milan they mastered the technique; in Paris, where the ballet was
closely connected with the best artistic life of the day, they seem to
have found the inspiration of art. Now, the teaching genius of both
schools appeared to have deserted them. Dancers still flooded the
theatres of Europe; most of them had been through the finishing school
of the French capital; they modelled their style upon the great Taglioni
and Elssler traditions; but their achievement was stale and unbeautiful.
The attitudes with which Taglioni had enraptured the whole world were
copied with a marvellous fidelity; but the inspiration was lacking, the
effect was unmoving.
Virtuosity had always been the danger of the Italian school. The rapid
degeneration of the ballet was due to the insistence upon a merely
technical accomplishment at the expense of grace and spontaneity.
Admiration was centred exclusively in the difficulty of the execution of
the steps. The most elaborate gestures and evolutions of the old school
were laboured and exaggerated. In particular the _pointes_ or dance upon
the tips of the toes came to be regarded as the highest form of
accomplishment. This step when it is abused becomes the curse of
ballet-dancing. There are moments when it completes an attitude, giving
a suggestion of ethereal lightness, the poise of a winged god alighting
for an instant upon the earth. In one brief passage across the stage,
the tips of the toes scarcely brushing the dust off the boards, the
dancer may capture something of the grace of a bird’s flight. But the
step in itself is unnatural, and naturalness is above all things
essential in the dance. When the part which it plays in the ballet is no
longer incidental--the emphasis given to a moment’s pose or the
suggestion of intriguing daintiness added to a brief passage--but
becomes the basis of all the dancer’s movements, it results in producing
a sense of utter weariness on the part of the spectator. The effect of
fairy lightness for which it was originally introduced is lost in the
ugliness of the effort. In the music-hall it is not infrequently
applauded as though it were the climax of the performance, but the
dancer should remember that the same applause has probably a few minutes
before been given to a dog walking on its hind-legs. In all arts, and in
none more than in dancing, it is always the _tour de force_ rather than
the nuance of beauty that creates the delight of the crowd.
It was this step which began to take a disproportionate place in the
ballet when it entered upon its period of decline. It was a feat which
Taglioni could do extremely well, but she never once sacrificed
gracefulness to obtain her effect. Her followers on the other hand threw
all gracefulness to the winds. They pirouetted, they walked, they
tottered on one toe until the shape of their legs became positively
disfigured. The popular caricature of the ballet-dancer of the day
represented her with her calves standing out like the biceps of a
blacksmith. It was a performance which had nothing to recommend it but
its painfulness. Little wonder that the public wearied of this
meaningless dexterity and came to regard the ballet as but a little
above the display of the contortionist.
The final blow to the waning popularity of the operatic ballet was given
by the music-dramas of Wagner and Berlioz. Before their advent, a visit
to the opera meant primarily a visit to the ballet. Madame Malibran was
perhaps the only singer who was able to draw the attention of the
amusement-loving world from the fascination of the dance. She alone used
to fill the old King’s Theatre in London to its utmost capacity on those
nights when the ballet was billed as the principal attraction. During
the years when Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Fanny Cerito, Carlotta
Grisi, Lucille Grahn, and one or two other of the great _premières
danseuses_, were the popular enchantresses, the public turned a deaf ear
to the singer. During the vocal and dramatic portions of the opera, the
spectators were wont to pass the time in chatting with their friends or
promenading in the foyer, until the moment arrived when the _corps de
ballet_ appeared and riveted their attention upon the stage.
With the début of Jenny Lind the glory of the singing voice once more
came into its own. The ballet, which for so long had held the principal
place upon the programme, was gradually relegated to an inferior
position. At Her Majesty’s Theatre it was eventually omitted altogether.
At Covent Garden, where the Italian opera found a home in London, it no
longer formed a part of the current repertory. Dancers with a certain
Continental reputation used to visit England from time to time, but they
disappeared almost as silently as they came. The _corps de ballet_,
which had been accustomed to give itself amazing airs and to look upon
the vocalists, however proficient, as merely interludes in the major
attraction of the ballet, was suddenly dispersed. With its proverbial
fickleness, the public forgot its old favourites and turned its back
upon the dancers over whom it once used to shout itself hoarse. Nobody
talked any more about dancing--it was no longer the vogue. Jenny Lind,
Titiens, Patti, took the place of Taglioni, Elssler, Grisi, in the
popular affection. In Paris, in Milan, and in most of the Continental
opera houses, the _corps de ballet_ still retained a prominent place
upon the programme, but none of the schools succeeded in producing a
dancer of the very first order. The dance suffered eclipse. As Taglioni
herself remarked, “La danse est comme la Turquie--bien malade.”
It is interesting to observe that Wagner in his early days attached no
little importance to the ballet in opera. He was disappointed at not
being able to carry out his original intention of introducing into
_Rienzi_ the story of the rape of Lucrece and the expulsion of the
Tarquins from Rome in the form of a ballet. He intended the ballet in
the Venusberg scene in _Tannhaüser_ to be something more that a mere
interlude and to have a serious interest of its own. “I have in my
mind,” he wrote, “an epitome of everything the highest dancing and mimic
art can offer, a wild yet seductive chaos of movement and grouping.”
The argument of this wild scene was set forth at considerable length in
the score, but it failed of realisation on the stage on account of the
exigencies of the production. When Wagner explained to the _maître de
ballet_ of the Paris Opera House that the conventional ballet steps
would not be in accord with his music, and asked him to supply something
“bold and savagely sublime,” the ballet-master replied: “I see what you
want, but it would need a corps of first dancers.” It was in some
measure owing to his determination to make the ballet an integral part
of the opera that he wrecked his chances of success in Paris. At that
period it was customary for the ballet to be performed at an hour
sufficiently late in the evening to allow time for the latest patrons of
the opera to get to their places. Its inclusion in the first act aroused
the wrath of Parisian society, and of the influential members of the
French Jockey Club in particular. In later days Wagner wrote of the
“fripperies of opera and ballet.” Perhaps he would have allowed the
ballet a more serious importance if he could have seen the Russian
dancers in _Prince Igor_, a performance which must have realised his
ideal of a dance “bold and savagely sublime.”
_Le Corsair_ may be considered as the last of the cycle of the grand
ballets. Rosati, the last of the great _danseuses_, took the part of
Medora. An immense sum was expended upon it, but in spite of the
splendour of the production it was a failure. The tide had already
turned. Only twice after the fifties did London see anything like a
revival of the former splendours of the ballet. The dancing of Madame
Dore in _Babil and Bijou_ at Covent Garden in 1872 achieved the
distinction of calling forth an enthusiastic article in _The Spectator_,
but the unusualness of such a notice only served to show how completely
the ballet had ceased to be regarded as a serious art-form. Shortly
afterwards, Marenco, the Italian _maître de ballet_, produced
_Excelsior_. After having been played with enormous success in Italy, it
was seen in Paris and New York, and finally appeared in England at Her
Majesty’s in 1885. It had an allegorical meaning agreeable to the spirit
of the time, representing the conflict between progress and
superstition, invention and reaction. It took a place apart from all
contemporary ballets, not so much because of the dancing of
individuals--Adelina Rossi was the _prima ballerina_--as on account of
the artistry of its design, the beauty of the general movement, the
ingenious handling of crowds.
In the seventies the ballet entered into a new phase of life, or, as
some would say, decline. Ejected from the opera house, it found a refuge
in the theatres of varieties that were then coming into existence.
Naturally it changed its character not a little when it left Covent
Garden and entered Leicester Square. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, if
one went to the Empire or the Alhambra, the Oxford or the Pavilion, one
did not choose to have it known. The music-hall was not a proper subject
of conversation at the dinner-table or the tea-party. No respectable
British matron would have dreamed of being seen within its walls, much
less of taking her daughters there. The most expensive seats in the
Alhambra in those days, it should be remembered, were three shillings.
It was largely owing to the ballet, however, that these houses were
lifted into another atmosphere and began to attract a class of audience
that would never have entered Leicester Square to see a variety show.
The ballet at the theatre of varieties was a _divertissement_ rather
than a _ballet d’action_, but nevertheless it was not without
considerable merits. The ballets were arranged by mistresses and masters
of the dance, like Katti Lanner, Carlo Coppi, Bertrand and Dewinne, who
possessed a correct if not a liberal notion of their science; the music
was often by distinguished composers, such as Hervé, Sullivan, Jacobi
and Wenzel; and at the Alhambra there was an orchestra trained to
understand and interpret ballet music. If the _corps de ballet_ was
lacking in finish, the dancing of the _prime ballerine_, almost all of
whom were foreign, left little to be desired. The names of Pertoldi,
Gellert, Palladino, Cerali, Giuri, Legnano and Lydia Nelidova are
nowadays doubtless well-nigh forgotten, but although they rank below the
great names of the preceding generation they were all dancers of
distinction.
Indeed the decline of the ballet during this period was due less to the
quality of the dancing than to the fact that it was no longer regarded
as a serious art-form. The ballet is in effect the combination of a
number of arts, co-operating in the production of a single whole. It
achieves distinction only when it attracts to itself the best artistic
talent of the day. The ballet-master is powerless unless he is assisted
by the artist and the musician. The dancing, the music, and the _décor_
should be informed by a single spirit. There had been a time when the
foremost men of letters and composers had shared in the production of
the ballet. Now its direction was left to the music-hall manager. The
result was necessarily a vulgarisation of the ballet. It ceased to have
any relation to contemporary culture. It became an affair of pretty
faces, banal attitudes, waving drapery, tawdry brocades, limelight
effects and romping music. It tended to become of the same order as the
Christmas pantomime.
But the first reform that was needed was a more serious study of the
dancing itself, for the ballet, however interesting the music and the
scenery, is essentially an exhibition of the dance. The ballet in
England has always suffered from the absence of any official school of
dancing. In France, in Italy, in Russia, in Denmark, the academies are
maintained by the State; the dancers are in a manner civil servants,
holding a permanent appointment and receiving a pension on retirement.
An adequate training is therefore possible, a continuous tradition is
maintained and a high average, at all events in the technique of the
dance, is ensured. In England, however, it has been rather the custom
for the _danseuse_ to go to this or that teacher to learn a single dance
necessary for a certain performance, but not to learn dancing. Indeed it
is impossible as a general rule for the dancer out of her slender salary
to pay one or two guineas an hour, or whatever the fee may be, in order
to attain a proficiency which even when acquired is rarely appreciated.
The managers, rightly or wrongly, believed that the public did not care
to see good dancing, but only good looks and a dazzling show. The
sounder view was probably that taken by the Rev. Stewart Headlam, who
always held that the ballet was worthy of serious criticism. Writing in
the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1886 he said: “If either of those houses
[the Alhambra and the Empire] want a really new sensation, to take the
town, let them have a small ballet, not only with the best principals
who can be got--these indeed they have often now--but with the whole
ballet composed solely of dancers, picked dancers, who have been
regularly and constantly at practice under a really good master.” Time
has justified his words, for it is in no small degree to this minute and
general excellence that the success of the Russian ballet is due.
The ballet, at the time of which we are speaking, had indeed become
involved in a vicious circle. Because of its vulgarisation it had fallen
into disrepute, and because of its disrepute it was considered demeaning
for any serious person to undertake that criticism which was a necessary
condition of its reform. In those days it required a certain amount of
courage to treat the ballet as worthy of serious consideration and
encouragement. The Rev. Stewart Headlam was almost alone in maintaining
that the ballet should rank as art and stage-dancing as an honourable
profession, and that the religious world had done grievous harm by
adopting a policy of isolation towards it. His praise of the ballet of
_Yolande_, probably the most beautiful that ever appeared upon the
Alhambra stage, drew down the Episcopal censure. It is almost impossible
to believe in these days that the Bishop of London should have “prayed
that he might not have to meet before the Judgment-seat those whom his
encouragement first led to places where they lost the blush of shame and
took the first downward step to vice and misery.” Mr Headlam’s reply was
to recommend the Bishop to go to see the _Swans_ at the Alhambra or
_Excelsior_ at Her Majesty’s--on the principle that only by the patient
study of any form of art can even a bishop understand its laws and
intention.
As late as twenty years ago Leicester Square produced some ballets of
real excellence. Two in particular, _The Swans_ and _The Seasons_ at the
Alhambra, were exquisite things of their kind. In the latter the dancers
were all dressed as birds. The colours were harmonious and restrained
and the stage was never overcrowded. But the tendency of the period was
to elaborate the staging of the ballet at the expense of the quality of
the dancing. The dictatorship of the late Sir Augustus Harris, skilful
impresario as he was, led to the overcrowding of the stage, to the
accumulation of mere monstrosities of scenery, of costume and of
properties. The ballet became a spectacle. It was buried beneath a mass
of unmeaning accessories. The stage was encumbered with gorgeous
properties and with the crowd of those who did not dance but merely took
their place in the pageant. The effect may have been magnificent, but it
was not art. At the same time the ballet-dancers, whose business was to
dance, were transformed into members of a chorus, whose chief function
was to look pretty. They marched and counter-marched across the stage,
performing a number of evolutions with a kind of military precision.
Little more skill was demanded of them than of the banner-bearers at a
Christmas pantomime. The ballet of the period has been described as
chiefly a procession of “rank after rank and file after file of honest
bread-winners from Camberwell and Peckham Rye, performing mechanical
manœuvres with the dogged perseverance of a company of Boy Scouts.” It
was, in fact, the honest British bread-winners of the _corps de ballet_,
willing but unskilled, that persuaded the British public that ballet was
a bore. The result was that popular enthusiasm was directed towards
skirt-dancing, and the art of the ballerina fell into undeserved
contempt.
Although practically extinct in England the ballet continued to maintain
a healthy, if not a flourishing, existence on the Continent. This was
due not only to the fact, of which I have already spoken, that the
Continental schools of ballet were attached to the great opera houses
and usually subsidised by the Government, but also to a high level of
criticism and technical knowledge of the ballet on the part of the
general public. The indifference of the British public was at once the
cause and the excuse of the indifferent performance of the British
ballet. This aspect of the decline of the ballet has been well stated by
Mr S. L. Bensusan, whose authority on all that concerns the art of
theatrical dancing is supreme.
“Not only are many of the steps that must be studied exceedingly
difficult,” he says, speaking of the work of the Continental ballerina,
“but the dancer who has learnt her work in the schools of Vienna, Milan,
Moscow, or Paris knows well enough that should she falter in their
execution, she will have no chance at all with the public. In Italy, for
example, the audience understands the technical side of a dancer’s art
just as well as it understands the quality of a singer’s voice, or just
as well as the patrons of a London music-hall understand the chorus of a
comic song.... The dancer who failed in ballet to execute a difficult
step with absolute neatness and precision, would find a decidedly
unpleasant reception awaiting the end of the movement. Her audience have
a standard of judgment and will understand what the movement should have
been like. In London, on the other hand, several great dancers have told
me that it is not worth their while to take trouble about very difficult
steps, because unfortunately they are not understood; while something
that is obvious and childlike in its simplicity, like a _pas de
bourrée_, is safe to meet with a measure of applause at least as great
as that which rewards some movements which can only be acquired at the
end of long years of study by a very few dancers whose natural gifts are
exceptional. If you watch a really distinguished dancer, you are bound
to notice that she never has an ungraceful movement or unhappy pose. It
is not a case of occasional happy moments, but of one long succession of
movements whose rhythm has the beauty of fine verse. The results that
make the great dancers so much admired by those who are at any pains to
study their work, are quite within the reach of English girls; but it is
an unfortunate fact, for which every great ballet-mistress will vouch,
that English girls as a class do not take the trouble to work hard
enough to acquire the perfect control over limbs and movement that is
the reward of their Continental sisters. It is on this account that what
is sometimes called English dancing cannot be taken seriously. Of course
one cannot blame the English dancers altogether: it is of very little
use to prepare a delicate dish for the delectation of the sturdy animal
whose favourite food is thistles; and
[Illustration: DANSEUSES EN SCÈNE
FROM A PAINTING BY DÉGAS]
while the public remain content with a pretty face, a pleasing figure, a
dainty dress, and an air for which barrel-organs cry aloud, English
girls may regard it as a labour lost to give them anything better. And
yet the successes in years past of dancers like Katti Lanner and Malvina
Cavallazzi, and the triumph that has fallen to Adeline Genée to-day,
must prove that there is an English audience for better things. Perhaps,
if we had more dancers who could and would take their work seriously,
the tone of what so many people are generously pleased to call their
taste might cease to be contemptible.”