THE ENGLISH BALLET
In a retrospect of the performances of the Russians in London this year,
a correspondent of _The Times_ summed up the effect of their achievement
upon the state of mind of the spectator of the English ballet in these
words: “This summer of 1911 has brought more than an æsthetic revolution
with it: in bringing the Russian ballet to Covent Garden it has brought
a positively new art, it has extended the realm of beauty for us,
discovered a new continent, revealed new faculties and means of
salvation in ourselves. Alas! many pleasant illusions have been
shattered thereby, many idols have tumbled from their pedestals; we have
grown up terribly fast and lost the power of enjoying things that
pleased our callow fancies a year or two ago. Who can go back now with
the old zest to the robust vivacity of X or the amateurish _minauderies_
of Y? Who will put up any longer with the battered themes, the insipid
music, the ingenious setting, and the clumsy grouping to which we were
accustomed once? They will still have their public, those things; they
will serve for entertainment, for stuffing to that pillow on which the
backbone of the British nation leans till bedtime; but they will no
longer do for the ‘seven hundred honest folk’ who seek at that hour for
the means to ‘make their souls.’”
Although I cannot claim to be one of the honest folk who go to the
Empire at that hour “to make their souls,” it was nevertheless somewhat
dismayedly that, with the rhythm of the Russians still marching through
the brain, I once again witnessed a ballet fairly representative of the
modern English type. We were no longer in the atmosphere of art, but in
the atmosphere of commerce. The peculiarity of the atmosphere of
commerce is that it leaves nothing to the imagination, and therefore it
leaves the imagination cold. “The art of the pen,” said Meredith in the
person of one of the characters of his novels, “is to rouse the inward
vision, instead of labouring with a drop-scene brush, as if it were to
the eye.” The English ballet is not content with the primitive
simplicity of a drop-scene brush; it labours with a host of mechanical
devices--with extravagant properties, with photographic scenery, with
the stratagems of electricians, with all the means that the stage
manager can array to dissuade the inward vision from rousing itself. Its
aim apparently is to create a diversion for the eye so that the
imagination may slumber undisturbed. The stage as a rule is so crowded,
that any suggestion of a governing design is lost in a general
bewildering flicker of motion like that of the cinematograph. Frequently
the _corps de ballet_ have no room for any more elaborate step than an
artless hop and a right-about turn, a kind of convalescent pirouette.
Perhaps it is as well--safety may sometimes lie in numbers. “What has
come to us,” asked Professor Selwyn Image a dozen years ago _apropos_ of
the _Butterflies_ ballet, “that we are all gone crazy over crowds and
jumble and properties and frippery?”
A strange circumstance is that the English ballet not infrequently has
the air of being discontented with its enforced silence. At its best the
ballet is not the translation of words into gesture: it is the
translation, or rather the transposition of life into gesture. It is the
presentment to eye and ear by means of rhythmic motion and pictorial
design, of a certain feeling about life, of certain moods and visions
which have never crystallised into words. “It begins and ends,” it has
been well said, “before words have formed themselves, in a deeper
consciousness than that of speech.” To think of ballet merely as dumb
show is the same as to think of painting merely as illustration. It
exists as the supplement rather than as the substitute of words. It does
not merely tell a story; it tells it, or rather it should tell it, in a
way in which words alone could not tell it. It tells it with a beauty
which, we will not say is greater than, but is at any rate different
from, the beauty of words. But the ballet of commerce, aiming at
literalness rather than suggestion,
[Illustration: LYDIA KYASHT
IN _Sylvia_
_Photograph: Bassano, Ltd._]
seems strangely handicapped by its speechlessness. It appears to be
groping for the libretto. It does not tell a story so much as suggest
that it has a story to tell, which it would, if it could, impart to the
spectator. Probably because they never seek to go outside the narrow
circle of conventionalised gestures, which the English ballet has
received as a sacred tradition from the Italian, the performers have the
air of attempting to communicate with one another in the deaf and dumb
language of a mute, or rather of one who wilfully deprives himself of
the use of his tongue. The feeling that they arouse in the spectator is
one almost of impatience, as with the folly of a man who uses a finger
alphabet when he might just as well talk rationally.
In speaking of the English ballet, Mr Max Beerbohm has gaily admitted
his inability to master the meaning of formalised gesture: “When a
ballerina lays the palms of her hands against her left cheek, and then
snatching them away, regards them with an air of mild astonishment, and
then swaying slightly backwards, touches her forehead with her
finger-tips, and then suddenly extends both arms above her head, I ought
of course to be privy to her inmost meaning. I ought to have a thorough
grasp of her exact state of mind. Friends have often explained to me,
with careful demonstrations, the significance of the various gestures
that are used in the ballet--and these gestures are not very many--and I
have more than once committed them to memory, hoping that though I could
never be illuded, I might at least be not bemused. But, after all this
trouble, the next ballet that I have seen has teased and puzzled me as
unkindly as ever. Is it that gestures were given to the ballerina to
conceal her thoughts? Or is it merely that the quickness of the hand
deceives the eye?”
One of the criteria of the ballet is the quality of its silence. In the
perfect ballet the silence is never apprehended as a negation or a
deficiency, any more than it is in a painting or a statue. The
interpolation of words would indeed be felt to be an impertinence. Where
the rhythm is entirely satisfying, the mind is content. Not the least of
the merits of the Russian ballet is this quality of completeness in its
silence. There are some exceptions: at times the action of _Le Pavillon
d’Armide_ stumbles and seems to cry for speech; but in _Le Spectre de la
Rose_ would not a single spoken word break the spell? The gestures of
the dancers are never drawn from that limited stock of conventions which
Mr Beerbohm tried in vain to memorise, which are in fact a kind of
stock-in-trade, and can be borne in mind and applied at will like the
commonplaces of the newspaper leader-writers; they are fluid and
variable and flow naturally out of the emotion. They are in fact
gestures, and not, as they usually are in the English ballet,
gesticulations.
But there is good reason to believe that the English ballet is on the
eve of a renaissance. The success of the Russians must have taught the
managers that a gorgeous spectacle is not really necessary for the
delight of the public,--in the Russian repertory probably the simplest
ballets were the most appreciated. Already in the _Dance Dream_ the
Alhambra has produced a ballet which, if the theme was insipid, at any
rate had the crowning virtue of breadth and simplicity of treatment. A
sense of space was created; the tumult of action was varied by passages
of sobriety; an effect of beauty was produced, larger and serener than
any that has been seen in the English ballet during recent years. The
principals of course were Russians--Mademoiselle Balashova succeeded
Mademoiselle Geltzer as _première danseuse_--but the performance of the
English dancers showed that under proper handling they are capable of
better things than the pantomime displays to which they have been used
to be restricted. The English ballet still awaits the coming of the
great English dancer--it is too early yet to know whether Miss Phyllis
Bedells will be she--but now that public interest is at last wide awake
the primary condition of the creation of a native school of ballet is
satisfied.
But there is one dancer of genius, whom, if the English stage has not
produced, it at any rate monopolises. It has become difficult to think
of Madame Adeline Genée as belonging to any other country than England,
nevertheless the conscientious annalist must record, however
unwillingly, the fact that she was born at Aarhus, in Denmark. If she
was not born dancing, she danced almost from her cradle. At the age of
eight she began that
[Illustration: ALEXANDRA BALASHOVA
_Photograph: Dover Street Studios, Ltd._]
arduous course of training which forms the solid groundwork of her art.
She was instructed by her uncle, Alexander Genée. She also profited
greatly by the strict supervision of her aunt, who, it is interesting to
note, was a Hungarian. If, indeed, there be any natural magic in the
dancing of the natives of Eastern Europe, it must have passed into
Genée’s style long before the Russian dancers were heard of in this
country. Her aunt was her most vigorous and helpful critic; when she
pleased her audiences she was glad, but when she pleased this exacting
connoisseur she was content. Madame Genée made her first appearance at
the Opera House at Copenhagen; at the age of sixteen she was dancing at
the Royal Theatre in Berlin, from whence she proceeded to Munich. It was
there that she received that telegram which may be said to have
determined her subsequent career--the invitation to take the position of
_première danseuse_ for six weeks at the Empire Theatre, London.
She made her début in England in _Monte Cristo_, in November 1897. She
has remained the popular favourite of the English public ever since, and
perhaps not of the English public only, but of the American also. Amid
the crowd of dancers of all nationalities she has maintained her pride
of place. In _Vineland_ her dancing first seemed to attain its full
brilliance. Then followed the _Milliner Duchess_ and _High Jinks_, the
latter notable for the famous hunting scene in which the verve and
spirit of her dancing won all hearts. Finally came Delibes’ _Coppelia_,
an example of the classic ballet at its best. _Coppelia_ was to Genée
what _La Sylphide_ was to Taglioni, _Giselle_ to Grisi, and _Eoline_ to
Lucille Grahn. Naturally it is, as she told me, her favourite ballet.
But perhaps her triumph in the _Dryad_ was even greater. It gave her an
opportunity for displaying not only her marvellous technique, but also a
perhaps half-unsuspected power of raising and expressing emotion. It
afforded scope for the range of her feeling and revealed the actress
beneath the dancer. In the first scene she comes out of the tree trunk
in which the jealousy of Aphrodite has imprisoned her. Once a year she
is allowed to roam abroad and delight in the sunlight and the flowers
and the breeze. Her heart is on fire with joy at all the sights and
sounds about her; but a still greater joy is in store for her--she meets
a shepherd who falls in love with her. She relates her story to him in
gestures which are as explicit as speech, and tells him he must go away
and return at the end of ten years--she delightfully counts out the tale
of years on the flowers she has gathered. If throughout the ten years he
is faithful to her she will be released. The ten years pass, and on an
autumn evening she comes out of her tree prison once again. Will he
come? She is sure of it and dances for joy. Will he come? She searches
for him eagerly through the meadows and down the glades. Will he come?
Troubling doubts assail her, and her eyes begin to fill with despair.
Will he come? Of course he will. She is still rippling and glowing with
joy. She hears his voice. He is singing the old familiar love song. He
is there, and on his arm is a human shepherdess to whom he is singing
the song that once was only hers. The faithless lover and his new-found
love pass through the meadow and down the glade, and then the Dryad,
forsaken and forlorn, turns to the sheltering trunk in which she can
hide herself and her despair.
The fable is slender as a fairy tale, yet it gave Genée the chance of
showing that she could pass from one emotion to another with the same
rapidity, ease and expressiveness that mark her steps. She was by turns
elfish, tender, sad, merry, passionate or despairing. In the first
moments after escaping from the imprisoning tree, her dancing was full
of that quality which so often inspires it--the spirit of the eternal
child.
But the first and foremost quality of Madame Genée’s dancing is its
technical perfection. If there is such a thing as a physical genius for
the dance, independent of the qualities of the spirit, that genius is
hers. She reveals it in the mere act of walking across the room. There
is a brilliance in her movement, a resiliency in her tread, that
distinguishes her from all other women. If the ancients were right in
attributing four elements to the composition of the body, one would say
that hers was compounded solely of air and fire. But whereas many
dancers might have relied almost entirely on this natural genius, which
is hers by right of birth, Genée has added to it a training which in
severity, conscientiousness
[Illustration: ADELINE GENÉE
FROM AN INSTANTANEOUS NEGATIVE TAKEN IN NATURAL COLOUR
_Photograph: The Dover Street Studios, Ltd._]
and thoroughness perhaps few dancers have equalled. For years she has
spent four hours a day in front of her huge mirror practising her steps,
usually under the careful supervision of her uncle. “I have given my
life and myself to my dancing,” she says, and the words are true in a
very special and literal sense. She has served her art with almost the
rigour of asceticism. She avoids wine. She eats sparely. She shuns a
supper-party. When her work is over her day is done, and she drives from
the theatre home to bed. She has fulfilled to the letter Ruskin’s
affirmation that an artist must submit to a law which it was painful to
obey, in order that she may bestow a delight which it is gracious to
bestow.
In proficiency in the strict, classical school of ballet-dancing, it is
possible that Madame Genée has never been surpassed and perhaps not even
equalled. Within these limits her work is faultless. Every detail is
sedulously studied, and is executed with accuracy and ease. The position
of the fingers, the lines of the arabesque, the resumption of the exact
attitude at the end of no matter how many and how rapid
pirouettes--everything is as exact as if it had been drawn by an artist
with infinite leisure for correction, instead of executed in the heat of
the moment without an instant’s pause between one movement and the next.
Every step has its name; every gesture belongs to its code; there is one
way and no other of executing them rightly, and that way is Madame
Genée’s. But the dance is too rapid and too flowing to be dissected into
its constituent parts. The connoisseur recognises them and knows that
the apparent spontaneity is obtained only by the mastery of a science as
strict as mathematics; the spectator uneducated in the dance remarks the
general effect of beauty, and is instinctively aware that the
performance has something of the qualities of a masterpiece of art. But
this extreme physical sureness and dexterity is not without its dangers.
The dancer is tempted to exhibit mere _tours de force_ which a less
proficient performer would be saved by her very incompetence from
attempting, and the temptation is the greater through the knowledge that
these are the accomplishments which call forth the most tempestuous
applause from a public that cares less for the beautiful than for the
marvellous. In a recent divertissement, _A Dream of Butterflies and
Roses_, no movement, not even the magnificent circles made backwards
with wide flying steps, excited the audience to such a pitch of
enthusiasm as one particularly trying piece of gymnastic--a slow rising
from the ground on one pointed toe. But Genée’s mastery of technique is
so complete that the least hint of strain is eliminated and even this
somewhat acrobatic feat was almost transformed into a delightful flow of
grace. The ease with which she overcomes technical difficulties creates
a delight of its own, cheating one’s fears, and compelling an admission
of beauty where one had dreaded to see only athletic prowess.
To this technical perfection Genée adds certain spiritual qualities
which are all her own. As I have said, the _Dryad_ revealed a dramatic
ability which had been perhaps overlooked in the admiration of her pure
dancing. This capacity for pantomime would probably have been earlier
appreciated if the ballets at the Empire had allowed it more scope. But
the peculiar note of her spirit is an abounding gaiety, as clear and
elemental as that of a child, affecting the heart like vital and
exhilarating laughter. There is a kind of arch-merriment in her dancing
which seems to flow out of the pure exultation of movement, at times
almost threatening to break through the restraints of technique and
convert the dance into a romp. But the elasticity of the dance is always
great enough to meet the freest ebullience of spirits; there is, as it
were, no leakage of vitality; every atom of force is spent in steps and
movements that never lose their precision and exactitude. Genée’s
dancing refutes those detractors who assert that the academic style of
the ballet is a fatal limitation to the artist’s freedom of expression.
She shows that, when it is brought to the perfection to which she has
developed it, it is fluent and elastic enough to express the extremes
of, at any rate, the more volatile emotions. The hunting dance in _High
Jinks_ carries the dance as far in the direction of high spirits, of
exhilaration unmixed with passion, of sheer delight in the physical fact
of life, as it can possibly go. The spirited little horsewoman in the
black riding-habit, that clings closely to the lines of her gay and
lithe
[Illustration: ADELINE GENÉE
_Photograph: Dover Street Studios, Ltd._]
figure, has an air at once of fragility and vigour; she is borne through
the air on her dashing leaps, she curvets, she caracoles, the slender
steely limbs make nothing of the weighty burden of the skirt and
boots--and yet it is all done with such a whirl and wind of enthusiasm
that the motive force appears to be not muscular activity but merely a
fever of the blood. All the jollity, all the glorious high spirits, all
the high-heartedness, all the intoxication of delight, in all the
hunting mornings that ever were, are concentrated in that swaying,
swirling, leaping, laughing figure.
There is something essentially of the North in Genée’s dancing, a
freshness and energy like that of the north wind, a hint of the athlete
in the vigorous clean-limbed movements, an absence of passion, a purity,
shall we say a coldness? Her spirit seems to belong to the heights
rather than to the depths. It is bright rather than subtle. It is full
of high lights but lacking in half-tones.
Although “finish” in a technical sense is the peculiar characteristic of
Genée’s art, it is not marked by those almost indefinable nuances which
give the dance, no less than the painting or the poem, a quality with
which not even the finest workmanship can endow it. These refinements
belong to the region not of the intelligence but of the spirit, and
cannot be laid hold of by analysis. They depend upon a very delicate
perception, upon a subtle responsiveness to the rhythm of life.
Underlying the precision of her work is a kind of crudity. There is no
mood of creative beauty. The outline is firm rather than tender. The
emotional qualities of the dance are explicit, simple and wholesome, but
they are never subtle, nor do they appear to be nourished by a great
depth of spirit. We miss the suggestion of those moods that are
elemental and incalculable. There is a gladness that cannot show itself
in frolicsomeness, and there is an ecstasy too near to tears to have any
likeness to high spirits. Perfect within its own domain, we feel that
beyond the frontiers of her art lie tracts of the spirit unexplored.
To Adeline Genée England in particular owes a debt greater than to any
other dancer. It was she who continued, or rather restored, the
tradition of the great dancing of the earlier half of the last century.
She aroused enthusiasm for the ballet in an age when that enthusiasm had
grown cold. She helped to put an end to a perverted form of dancing. Her
example shone out with a clear light in that thick darkness just before
the dawn, and for more than a decade she remained true to her ideals
through good report and ill. It is safe to say that when the devotees of
many other deities of the dance have ceased to kindle their tapers, her
own shrine will always be brightly illuminated.
Mr Max Beerbohm has paid her a notable tribute, which has all the more
value seeing that he confesses that for him the ballet has no meaning.
“No monstrous automaton is that young lady,” he said, writing of her
performance in _Coppelia_ in 1906. “Perfect though she be in the ‘haute
école,’ she has by some miracle preserved her own self. She was born a
comedian and a comedian she remains, light and liberal as foam. A
mermaid were not a more surprising creature than she--she of whom one
half is as that of an authentic ballerina, whilst the other is that of a
most intelligent, most delightfully human actress. A mermaid were,
indeed, less marvellous in our eyes. She would not be able to diffuse
any semblance of humanity into her tail. Madame Genée’s intelligence
seems to vibrate in her very toes. Her dancing, strictliest classical
though it is, is a part of her acting. And her acting, moreover, is of
so fine a quality that she makes the old ineloquent conventions of
gesture tell their meanings to me, and tell them so exquisitely that I
quite forget my craving for words.... Taglioni in _Les Arabesques_? I
suspect, in my heart of hearts, she was no better than a doll. Grisi in
_Giselle_? She may, or may not, have been passable. Genée! It is a name
our grandchildren will cherish, even as we cherish now the names of
those bygone dancers. And alas! our grandchildren will never believe,
will never be able to imagine, what Genée was.”
Is there a young English dancer of promise who will one day vindicate
the honour of England and succeed to the place which Genée now
triumphantly holds in the popular favour? Miss Phyllis Bedells is a
possible candidate for fame. She has recently taken the principal rôle
in _Sylvia_ at the Empire in the absence of Madame
[Illustration: ADELINE GENÉE
IN _A Dream of Butterflies and Roses_
_Photograph: Dover Street Studios, Ltd._]
Kyasht, but she danced more happily in her original subordinate part.
Her dancing has a charm which in some measure is enhanced by its very
faultiness. It is the charm of immaturity, the suggestion of the
delightful gambolling of a young animal at play. Her training, so far as
it goes, has been painstaking, but what chiefly distinguishes her
performance from the routine work of the average English dancer is an
unaffected zest, almost a vividness of delight, which the obvious
troublesomeness of the technique is unable to depress. The main
difference between the would-be dancer and the born dancer is that the
dance of the former is always the repetition of a lesson, whereas every
dance of the latter is like a new creation. So far as it is already
possible to judge, Miss Bedells belongs to the latter class.
If the English ballet has yet produced no native ballerina worthy to
rank with the great Continental dancers, the absence of a male dancer of
any distinction is still more remarkable. An exception can scarcely be
made in favour of Mr Fred Farren, who fills the dual rôle of _premier
danseur_ and _maître de ballet_ at the Empire. Neither as a composer of
dances nor as an executant has he created anything that calls for
special notice. His most successful achievement has been an adaptation
of the French Apache dance. _La Valse Chaloupée_ was originated, or
rather popularised, by Max Dearly and Mademoiselle Mistinguette, a
dancer who has brought into the dance all the nervous excitement of
modernity. In introducing the Apache dance into _A Day in Paris_ at the
Empire, Mr Farren modified its more _outré_ characteristics and at the
same time gave it a more deeply passionate and dramatic significance.
His able partner, Miss Beatrice Collier, imported into it a note of
human tragedy that was more moving than the mere devilry of
Mistinguette.
Probably the real reason why England has failed to produce a great
school of ballet is principally owing to the absence of a _maître de
ballet_ of genius. The late Madame Katti Lanner and Madame Cavalazzi
both possessed a thorough knowledge of technique, and were capable of
designing dances that were suited to the capacities of their pupils; but
their ideas were limited and their imagination feeble. There is no
reason in the nature of things why English dancers should not rise to
the same level of excellence as those of St Petersburg or Moscow.
Probably the material is there, but the artist who can mould it into a
design of the highest plastic beauty is lacking.
The dancer, after all, is very much in the position of a pawn in the
game. She can provide an individual note of fine quality and tone, but
it requires the genius of a master to provide the orchestration. The
ballet is perhaps more responsive to the attitude of the public than any
other branch of art, and the absence of a public seriously and
critically interested in the dance has doubtless been responsible for
the fact that the ballet has failed to attract the energies of men of
talent. The priority of Russia in the art of the ballet is due above all
else to that atmosphere which England lacks, an atmosphere of keen and
enlightened criticism, of understanding sympathy and serious interest,
among the public at large no less than among the artists themselves.
That this is a condition absolutely essential to the success of the
ballet is clearly shown in an instructive passage by the writer whom I
have quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
Speaking of the excellence of the Russians he says:
“This sort of perfection in an art is the result of a long process. The
artists are not only trained to it; they are born to it. The same names
occur again and again in the history of the ballet; sons and daughters
follow the calling of their parents, and find themselves wives and
husbands among their fellow-dancers. Their limbs exist only for grace
and suppleness, and are never stiffened by any other use. All their
lives are devoted to dancing; and it is the constant occupation of their
minds. A ballet-master is not an accident or sport of nature, but one
who is acknowledged by his comrades to excel them in the sort of
imagination in which they all share. A certain Russian, living in St
Petersburg, was frequently puzzled by the strange behaviour of the
guests in a flat across the street. An aged lady lived there, and once
or twice a week she held receptions, and the strangest leapings and
gyrations could be dimly seen through the curtains. In the end the aged
lady
[Illustration: PHYLLIS BEDELLS
IN _Sylvia_
_Photograph: Ellis & Walery_]
proved to be Mademoiselle P., the once famous dancer and daughter of
another famous dancer, and these were her friends from the Corps de
Ballet who came to take tea with her; they were merely talking ‘shop,’
and incidentally illustrating their ideas by showing each other various
steps. Monsieur K., the ballet-master, composes ballets as he walks, and
is watched by suspicious policemen swaying and waving his arms, while he
goes absent-mindedly along the streets. When the Russian ballet was in
Vienna, the guests in a certain hotel were roused more than once in the
middle of the night by a heavy bumping and clatter from the room above.
‘It is all right,’ one of the dancers explained to a nervous stranger,
‘it is evidently K. composing a ballet.’ An idea had occurred to him in
bed; and as Strauss, the waltz-maker, in those circumstances used to
jump out to note a tune on his tablets, so Monsieur K. had to jump out
and dance it. Undistracted by other things, a ballet-master goes about
the world gathering all the scattered beautiful gestures, the nice
correlations of innumerable details (and how the tilt of the chin or the
pathos of a smile just crowns the perfection of an attitude of Pavlova’s
or Karsavina’s!), and keeps them ready to issue, in organic order, from
his mind at the inspiration of the appropriate musical phrase.”
It is to be feared that the English ballet-dancer does not take herself
sufficiently seriously. It may even be that she is a little ashamed of
herself. One has the uneasy feeling that she regards dancing as merely a
stepping-stone to higher things--to musical comedy for instance! It is
her profession, not her art. Not until English dancers begin to realise
the significance of the dance as art and to create that choregraphic
atmosphere which at present appears to exist only in Russia, shall we
have a true renaissance of the Ballet in England.
[Illustration: BEATRICE COLLIER AND FRED FARREN
IN _La Danse des Apaches_
_Photographs: Ellis & Walery_]