THE RUSSIAN BALLET
Nationalism of the Russian ballet; pedagogic principles of the
Russian school; French and Russian schools compared--Begutcheff and
Ostrowsky; history of the Russian ballet--Didelot and the Imperial
ballet school; Petipa and his reforms--Tschaikowsky’s ‘Snow-Maiden’
and other ballets; Pavlova and other famous _ballerinas_; Mordkin;
Volinin, Kyasht, Lopokova.
I
The celebrated saying of the German poet, ‘_Und neues Leben blüht aus
den Ruinen_’ applies better than anything else to the Russian ballet,
which has risen out of the West European choreographic ruins. The
Russian ballet marks a new era in the history of the art of dancing.
The Russian ballet is a new word in the dance world. It brings the
smell of trees and flowers, the songs of birds, the leaps of gazelles
and lions and the very soil of nature to the stage. It breathes the
spectral shadows of the trees and mountains; it begins with the
simplest mushroom and ends with the most complicated hot-house plant.
It emanates nature with all its uncouthness and grace. Like the Russian
composers and poets, the Russian dancers strive to echo Nature with all
its majesty and mystery.
Even with the beginning of the nineteenth century the Russian ballet
begins a course entirely different from that which the schools of
Western Europe were preaching and teaching. Though the ballet-masters
and instructors are foreigners, yet they are actuated by outward
circumstances to apply their academic theories to the conditions of
a different school. With the advent of a national school of music
and drama, at the head of which stood Balakireff, Borodine, Seroff,
Moussorgsky, Tschaikowsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff in music, and Ostrowsky,
Turgenieff, Gogol and others in the drama, the Russian ballet is
forced in the same channels. The Russian ballet grows gradually into
a new nationalistic art, and separates itself altogether from the
French-Italian aristocratic academicism. The frequent remarks of the
foreign critics, suggesting that the Russian ballet was and is a
direct offspring and copy of the classic French-Italian schools, are
absolutely wrong. It is true that the Russians borrowed from the French
the skeleton and from the Italians the mechanic contrivances, but they
built up the body themselves and created something entirely different
from what Western Europe knew of the ballet.
A born dancer, the Russian could never stand the prescribed poses,
smiles, tears, steps and gestures, that were and are still practised
outside. He is ready to undergo the most strenuous training, and
follows microscopically the instructions of the teachers, in order to
acquire the necessary technique; but when it comes to a performance,
he will put his spontaneous ideas and impulses above the technique and
act according to his emotions and inspiration. This is a peculiarity of
the Russian. He is and remains an individual. No school can put him on
the same level with his fellow-students. Is not Pavlova quite different
from Fokina or Karsavina?
No other nation cares so much for racial beauty as the Russian. And
in this it is essentially democratic. All Russian art is based on
the peasant, and not on aristocratic ideals. It expresses this by
being simple, direct, spontaneous and rugged. The greatest factor
in separating the Russian ballet from the western, is the Russian
folk-dance. It owes everything to folk-art. No outside influence
has ever been able to change the Russian æsthetic taste. In art,
particularly in the ballet, the peasant ideals force themselves upon
all aristocratic and bureaucratic classes. Already as a youth he sucks
from the atmosphere the innumerable forms of dance expression. In
his blood lives unconsciously the whole choreographic code, as his
ancestors have known and practised it for centuries. The design of a
peasant is the æsthetic scale of a Russian artist, particularly of
a dancer. Aristocratic ideals never amounted to anything in Russia.
The fact is, the nobleman follows in matters of æsthetic taste the
_moujik_, but never _vice versa_. The benefit of this has been that
neither the court nor foreign academicism could influence the Russian
art of dancing.
Besides the racial motives, the question of scientific education has
been a hobby with the Russian art pedagogues since the early part of
the last century. The Russians are almost fanatic in this respect
and have specialized their educational institutions to such a degree
that they stand unique. The method of training the dancers in other
countries was centred mainly in training the step technique and was, so
to speak, purely choreographic. The Russians took into consideration
all the arts that are related to dancing, and made a rule that all
pupils in the dancing schools should have at least an elementary
training in human anatomy, in sculpture, drama, architecture, painting,
music and in general educational subjects. To know every branch of art
correspondingly well--this made it necessary that children be educated
in an institute from their childhood on. Thus the education for the
Russian ballet is given in the two Imperial Ballet Schools, one in
Petrograd, the other in Moscow, both being connected with the dramatic
departments in which children are trained for the stage. The course
in the school lasts eight years, with an extra one or two years’
post-graduate practice at some opera stage, after which a graduate
receives his ‘Free Artist’ degree which places him on an equal rank
with the graduates of a college, university or musical conservatory.
Marius Petipa, the director and leading spirit of the Petrograd ballet
school, has, upon one occasion, said to the writer: ‘We employ the
French, the Italian, the Danish and the Russian instructors in order
to give the best of every school and style to our pupils. We teach
things that no other school would teach. For instance, our pupils must
know psychology, which is supposed to be unnecessary for a dancer. But
I say, no. How can a girl personify the Snow Maiden when she does not
know the psychology of a fairy? It’s ridiculous, you might think, as
fairies are only legendary figures. But the very fact that they are
imaginary makes it necessary for a girl to know how to avoid showing
any human characteristics.
‘The foreign schools do not care in what steps a dancer should express
such subtle emotions as jealousy, longing, bliss and sorrow. Abroad
they prescribe pirouettes for joy and happiness. They prescribe acting
in this, dancing in that phrase. It is not so with us. We teach the
pupil to see the various human emotions in historic sculpture and
painting. We show them the attitudes of various celebrated actresses in
this or that emotion. Then, we go back to psychology and leave it to
the artist to formulate the position that he would occupy in various
emotions. So you see psychology is very important to a dancer.
‘Dancing is the cream of architecture and sculpture. We teach our
future dancers to know the difference between architecture and
sculpture and then between a dance and a dramatic pose, which are
just as different as opera singing and concert singing. All our
graduates must be accomplished dancers, actors, acrobats, architects
and designers. We teach the difference between a Gothic and Byzantine
line, a Moorish and Romanesque design. We have to analyze music and
sculpture to their elementary parts in order to be able to show the
manifold manifestations of the human soul, and the manifold forms of
beauty. It is in this way that a dancer comes to know which step or
gesture corresponds to the emotions of a Romanesque Italian, Gothic
German or Byzantine Russian.
‘I have been assailed by our critics and composers as being too
strict in demanding technique from our dancers. But tell me, please,
can any talent make a man an artist without technical ability, where
mathematical laws are required as in dancing and in music? Can there
ever be a Rubinstein, Paderewski or Kubelik without the acquired
harmonic and melodic skill on the instrument which I call technique?
Just as little chance has a man of being a great dancer if he does not
possess the ability to control his body, though he be the greatest
choreographic genius in the world. Art is technique plus talent. No
great artist in dancing was ever produced without technique.
‘Do you know what Lubke said in his immortal History of Sculpture, that
applies also to a dancer? I am telling all my pupils when they leave
the institution that, like sculptor in the clay, a dancer in himself
must seek the “Image of God,” the spark of divine life. When he fails
to find this in separate lines, poses, gestures, attitudes and mimic
expressions, he must search for it in the whole, and, by thoughtful
study and thinking, he will certainly attain the reflex of immortal
beauty--the image of deity. This I call artistic creation. In sculpture
as in dancing the divine and heroic are the aims of the artistic
achievements. Without this striving after the divine spark nothing is
produced but lifeless figures and dead forms. A dancer, like any other
artist, should aspire after spirit-breathing beauty.’
[Illustration: Pavlowa
_a painting by John Lavery_]
This briefly expresses the fundamental traditions of the Russian
ballet school. To a certain extent it is academic, but it has never
interfered with the racial and the individual tendencies of the
artists. Though there are only three large independent ballet corps in
Russia, those of Petrograd, Moscow, and Warsaw, yet nearly every one of
the sixty or more provincial opera houses keeps its local ballet corps
in connection with the operatic and dramatic staff. While in foreign
countries ballet has been appreciated mainly as an accessory to the
opera for its spectacular effects, its æsthetic appeal being regarded
as not possessing a high order of merit, in Russia it is considered a
great and independent art of the stage, standing on a plane with opera,
both musically and dramatically. When a few years ago the Russian
dancers made their appearance abroad the public was startled, as no one
could imagine that any good thing could come out of Czardom. It is a
great mistake to suppose that the Russian ballet is an aristocratic or
autocratic institution. By no means. Like Russian drama and music the
Russian ballet is a national institution and a national achievement.
In how far the Russian ballet differs from her sister institutions
outside is best to be seen in such old-fashioned ballets as _Les
Sylphides_, which was danced by Taglioni, and is danced by the artists
of the French-Italian schools and figures in the repertoires of the
Russian ballet. Another work of similar nature is the _Coppélia_.
Not only are these two time-worn ballets wholly changed in their
thematic and musical sense but in the very form of conception. The
Russian _Sylphides_ and _Coppélia_ are old scenes in modern light,
the French-Italian _Sylphides_ and _Coppélia_ are pitiable museum
shows. Where a French-Italian _ballerina_ would leap and whirl, a
Russian acts and poses. Like the art of an actress that of a Russian
_ballerina_ is in the first place a personification of the character
in whose rôle she is dancing. Pavlova as she depicts the incomparable
fury of Glazounoff’s _L’Autômne Bacchanale_, could not by any means
be a Cleopatra as personified by Astafieva. Karsavina with all her
dramatic thrill and _arabesques_ is a mediocrity in the rôles in which
Pavlova excels. The dramatic issue is the foremost question in the
Russian ballet, often to such an extent that it minimizes the musical
significance. The most talented of the foreign ballet dancers do not
begin to go into the dramatic details of a dance as the Russians do.
To get an idea of the Russian ballet with all its true atmosphere one
must go to Russia. The performances of the Diaghileff company which
foreign audiences have seen, belong to the revolutionary school, but
not to the typical classic dance of Russia, which we shall discuss
later. The Russian ballet dancer is free from all the stiffness,
decadent artificiality, preconceived emotions, and fossilized
formalities of the French-Italian ballet dancers. This freedom he owes,
in the first place, to the thorough training in the school; second,
to the distinctly racial traditions of the Russian drama and art; and
third, to the serious critical attitude of the audiences. To say that
the Russian ballet has not travelled in ideals far from those of Milan
in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, as a foreign dance
critic has said, is untrue. The difference between these two schools is
just as real as that between the Catholic and the Protestant church:
the one believes in the form, the other in the spirit.
II
How much the Russian ballet has influenced drama, opera, painting and
music can be judged from the fact that almost without an exception all
the Russian operas require dancing; thus there are several dramas and
orchestra works interwoven with the ballet. On the other hand the
dancer has made use of themes and compositions that had been created
for other purposes; for all such ballets as the _Scheherezade_,
_Prince Igor_, _Baba Yaga_ and many others, were written as orchestral
suites, symphonic poems or parts of operas. But the choric imagination
discovered in them latent music dramas adapted for dancing. We are
inclined to think that the Moscow ballet, but not that of Petrograd,
is a thoroughly Russian institution, since Begutcheff, who was a
director of the Moscow Opera and Ballet at the time of Tschaikowsky and
Ostrowsky, banished all foreign influence from that stage, more so than
has ever happened in Petrograd.
In 1873 Begutcheff asked Ostrowsky, one of the foremost Russian
dramatists, to write a fairy ballet for performance at the Imperial
Opera in St. Petersburg, exacting that it should be free from any
satirical or politically undesirable element. Begutcheff asked the
dramatist to submit the scenario to him for approval. Ostrowsky was
noted for his bitter sarcasm anent the Russian bureaucracy and for
his idealization of the peasants. This he was told he should avoid in
the ballet, ‘for such would be not pleasing to the imperial family.’
Ostrowsky smiled, grunting: ‘God be thanked, the imperial family
has no business to interfere with the imagination of an artist.’ He
finished his libretto without consulting Begutcheff and entitled
it _Snegourotchka_--‘Snow Maiden.’ The director of the Petrograd
ballet did not like Ostrowsky’s libretto and refused to consider it.
Begutcheff, however, turned the libretto over to Tschaikowsky to
compose the music and it was performed with great success in Moscow.
One of the special features of the Russian ballet is its _chorovody_
character--that is, the musical accompaniment, on many occasions,
is supplied by the singing of the dancers themselves. This species
of vocal ballets evidently originated in the choral dances of
the peasants. The Russian ballet is, in fact, an outgrowth of the
folk-dance just as Russian music emanates from the folk-song. While
watching the Russian ballet, you see glimpses of the racial traits.
It is not like the music, however, a picture of the gloom of lonely
_moujik_ life, in which only here and there a beam of light breaks
through the melancholy. It is a succession of brilliant pictures of the
mediæval Boyars, the semi-barbaric nobility. Every part of the ballet
is meant to show the rich Byzantine colors, and primitive passions as
set forth in a half-civilized garb.
It is true the Russian ballet is controlled by the court and therefore
is forced to be aristocratic in appearance. The composers and the
ballet-masters have been strictly instructed to avoid all undesirable
themes; but, strange to say, the ballet is just as much a mirror of
the hospitable, good natured, naïve and emotional peasant as it is of
a spoiled Boyar. It is not that all the ballet dancers are children of
peasants, educated for the stage by the court, but because the Russian
dramatists and composers have unconsciously put their own _moujik_
souls in their creations, for, though most of the Russian composers and
dramatists are descendants of the aristocracy, yet in their hearts they
have remained one with the people, whose life they live in thought and
feeling.
In its principles the ballet is the most aristocratic and the oldest of
all Russian arts of the stage. The unwritten history of the enchanting
Russian dance would make a thrilling record of more than two centuries.
The romances, tragedies, mysteries, and intrigues connected with this
sealed drama have often played a decisive rôle in the affairs of the
country. As the result of a romance with pretty Teleshova Griboyedoff,
a famous Russian dramatist was killed in Teheran. For having dedicated
his ‘Eugene Onyegin’ to the fascinating Istomina, prima _ballerina_ of
the Imperial Opera, Poushkin, the poet, lost the love of his wife and
was subsequently shot in a duel. The Czar Paul fell in love with Eugeny
Kolossova and in consequence was strangled at his palace in Petrograd.
Before the present Czar ascended the throne he was said to have been so
much in love with Mathilda Kshesinskaya that he made plans to renounce
his throne and marry her.
The ballet was introduced in Russia as early as 1672. Czar Alexis
Mihailowitch ordered his aid-de-camp, Colonel Van Staden, to have a
troupe of Dutch comedians brought to Moscow. Van Staden made a contract
with a ballet manager in Brussels, but the foreigner was frightened
into giving up the venture because of a rumor that he and his troupe
might eventually land in Siberia. After this a German pastor, the
Rev. Johann Gregory, undertook the management of the troupe, hiring
sixty-four German and Italian dancers and producing in 1673 the first
ballet, ‘Orpheus and Euridice,’ with great success. Peter the Great was
so fascinated with the ballet that he himself took part and for this
purpose received lessons from the ballet-master.
The ballet of this time was, of course, Italian-French in conception
and music. But the early foreign masters soon produced a school of
native instructors who gradually made use of the peculiarities of
national dances. Many Russian ballets were already at this time of
national color, one of them, _Baba Yaga_, having been written by the
Czar himself. _Baba Yaga_ is a Russian fairy tale. Like the English
‘Witch on a Broomstick,’ _Baba Yaga_ rides through the sky on a huge
mortar, propelling herself with a pestle, while her great tongue licks
up the clouds as she passes. The dancers were trained in various
military or municipal schools and the teaching was unsystematic in
every respect.
The first impetus to a national dancing academy was given by Empress
Anna Ivanovna, the sister of Peter the Great, who felt that the
education of the dancers was not systematic enough, and regretted
that the best dancers had to be hired from abroad. In 1735, she asked
Christian Wellmann, a teacher of gymnastics in the Cadet Corps, to
found a dramatic dancing school in which girls and boys could be
educated for the ballet. The Italian composer Francesca Areja was
employed to take care of the music, while Lande, a pupil of Noverre,
was to act as ballet director. As the newly formed school could not
get children of the nobility to learn dancing, Lande trained a number
of poor city boys and girls free of any charge, and with them gave
a performance at the palace. The Empress was so pleased with their
dance that she instructed that the pupils be educated in the Imperial
Dramatic Dancing School free of charge.
III
The most conspicuous figures in the development of the early Russian
ballet were Locatelli, Hilferding and Lessogoroff. To the latter’s
efforts are due the reforms that made the Russian school independent
from French-Italian influences. But to Charles Louis Didelot is due
the thorough and many sided system of training that makes the School a
unique institution in Europe. He may be considered the real father of
all the pedagogic technical perfection, for it was he who emphasized
the importance of a systematic training in a true dramatic spirit,
contending that a good ballet dancer should also be a good actress and
an artist and a poet at heart. Up to his time lessons had consisted
mostly of physical training, fencing and gymnastics, but he insisted
that the ballet be put on the same basis as drama. Whereas the dance
had been merely a spectacular part of opera he intended that it should
become an independent production. This brought upon him a storm of
indignation on the part of the clergy and their supporters, the quarrel
becoming so intense that in 1801, as one of its effects, the Czar Paul
was acclaimed a heretic and was combatted by the ecclesiastic powers
until he was strangled in his palace and his son, Alexander I, ascended
the throne. The young Czar was religious, but so much an admirer of the
ballet that he did not interfere with the plans of Didelot and gave him
a still greater authority.
It is strange how Didelot, a rather small, insignificant, pock-marked
and deformed Frenchman, who had been for some time a ballet teacher
in Stockholm, could play a dominating rôle during the twenty-five
years that he was director of the Imperial Ballet School. The best
known dancers of his school were Istomina, Teleshova and the uncle of
Taglioni, who later undertook the training of Maria Taglioni. Miss
Novitzkaya was a celebrated pupil of Didelot, but her career was soon
destroyed by an affair of the heart. Gedeonoff, the director who
followed Didelot, fell madly in love with Novitzkaya and proposed
to her, but the dancer, having given her heart to a poor composer,
remained true to him and became his wife. This was the end of her art,
though critics claimed her superior to Taglioni and Elssler.
By 1847 the Russian ballet had taken a leading place in Europe, but
in a purely artistic sense it was still foreign in character, the
librettos being built mainly on foreign themes or constructed to
foreign music. With the advent of the composers Glinka, Dargomijsky,
Seroff, Balakireff and Moussorgsky, it was evident that ballet faced a
reform similar to that which music had undergone. The ballets of the
old school had usually been divided into several acts and figures,
each of which had _entrées_ and strictly prescribed rules for using
various gestures, steps, etc., in certain places. They, however,
failed to define the relation of emotion and acting to the plot and
made dancing a complicated artificial salon-plant. An uninitiated logic
could hardly grasp the hieroglyphic meaning of all the queer gymnastic
tricks. With the engagement of Marius Petipa, in 1849, there came a
change. Although a Frenchman by birth Petipa was just such a reformer
in the ballet as Michelangelo was in sculpture. More powerful than any
other master, he entered the sphere of choreographic art, transforming
it completely, and assigning it new limits. Petipa was the master
of a new ballet, an idealist in the strictest sense of the word. He
sought for a universally available expression, and often even ignored
questions of racial beauty. He gave himself up for many years to an
anatomical study of the dance and the human body. By him the human form
in all its majesty was valued for its own sake. To exhibit it in all
conceivable attitudes and poses, to display it freely and grandly after
the principles of classic beauty, was the aim of his endeavor. The weak
decadent movements and the forced forms of the Paris and Milan schools
were irritable to his broad views of the art of dancing. Unfettered
subjectivity prevailed in his efforts, which admitted no objective
realism in their absolute sway. All his method betrays an eternal
struggle to introduce into dancing the most sublime ideas, the sway
of idea over form. Whether a figure was natural or not interested him
little, if it only expressed what was floating before his mind. Petipa
infused a new life into Russian ballet. Nevertheless he could not
wholly free himself from the mannerism of the time, nor could he yet
find the path to perfect purity and naïveté of conception.
Petipa surrounded himself with the best dance authorities of the
time. Felix Kshesinsky, Leggatt, Schirjajeff and Bekeffy became his
associates in the task he had undertaken. Coöperating in harmony and
inspired by the new tendency of nationalism in music and drama, they
made the ballet typically national by introducing a long repertoire
of national themes in the dance. With pretty Kshesinskaya, Bogdanova,
Breobrashenskaya, Sokolova, Pavlova, Karsavina, Lopokova and Fokina
as the _prima ballerinas_ many new ballets became thrilling novelties
to the Russian audiences. The ballet in the eyes of the Petipa school
became a mute drama with music, and at once took a high position
artistically and poetically. People grew to find the ballet far more
alluring than the pessimistic drama.
What Petipa did pedagogically for the uplifting of the Russian ballet,
Vsevoloshky did scenically and industrially. Vsevoloshky made himself
the spirit of the nationalistic movement by combining with the purely
choreographic part the creations of the new school of painters and
composers in a highly artistic manner. Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky,
Rimsky-Korsakoff, Arensky and Glazounoff in music, Bilibin, Benois and
Bakst in painting, contributed their best works to the ballet. On the
other hand, while the West European ballets cared little for training
the male dancers, the Russians laid a special stress on training an
equal number of boys with the girls in all their ballet schools. The
training of a boy is different from that of a girl in that it teaches
chiefly those traits that lend virility and strength to expression. A
weak masculine element deprives the ballet of its natural effect. A
Pavlova, Karsavina or Fokina without a Nijinsky, Mordkin or Volinin,
would be like an orchestra without the bass. How repulsive it is to see
the ‘boy’ dancer of the English stage, who is always a girl!
IV
The most typical of the early purely Russian native ballets was the
_Snegourotchka_--‘The Snow Maiden’--which was first performed in
1876 in Moscow. Tschaikowsky took for his musical themes half a dozen
folk-songs from Brokunin’s collection, and a few from the lips of the
village people near Kieff. This ballet has been of the greatest success
on the Russian stage thus far. This is musically and choreographically
a dramatized fairy tale. The Snow Maiden is the issue of the union of
the gladsome fairy, Spring, with the grim old geni, Winter. The father
jealously guards her from the courting Sun-God, who is eager to pour
upon her his scorching and destructive rays. Winter would like to
keep her in the forest, but the mother, proud of her child’s beauty,
wants to send her into the busy world to charm its inhabitants. After
a serious conflict of the parents the father yields. The girl feels
the strange emotions of love and trembles, singing a thrilling melody.
She wanders from village to village in search of a lover, but her
numerous admirers are unable to stir her heart, because snow circulates
through her veins. She realizes that she is void of real passion.
Spring appears to her and endows her with the tenderness of a lily, the
languor of a poppy and the desire of a rose. The Snow Maiden’s heart
is touched at last, but in the moment when she wishes to fall on her
lover’s neck a brilliant sun ray pours its Summer heat on her. She
dissolves in vapor and floats into the skies.
The score is wholly Russian in mood and color. The dramatic treatment
of the subject is the best that Tschaikowsky has ever done. The
Snow Maiden’s theme is very sad and beautiful in the last movement.
The pantomime and steps are excellent, and seem to melt into one
magic whole. Tschaikowsky, with his peculiar genius for evolving
floating, curving dance rhythms and his remarkable gift for lyrical
characterization, made ‘The Snow Maiden’ a great success.
Of less success was Tschaikowsky’s second ballet, ‘Swan Lake,’ though
it has been in recent years a favorite ballet with the Petrograd
audiences. Like the first, it was built on a fairy tale and an old
folk legend theme. It was performed in 1876. Another ballet full of
imaginary episodes and pretty music is ‘The Sleeping Beauty.’ The
finest pages of this score are found in the _Adagio misterioso_,
describing the sleep of the princess. But choreographically the best
part is the _Pas d’action_, in which the _prima ballerina_ seems to
melt into one audio-visible beauty that thrills the utmost depths of
the soul. The ‘Nut Cracker’ has had less success than the others,
yet it is a magnificent work of art. It probably lacks the feminine
sentimentality that is always sure of a stage success.
To our knowledge none of Tschaikowsky’s ballets has been given in
America. Whether the Diaghileff company ever gave any of them in
Paris and London, we have been unable to learn. The Russian ballets
that the foreign audiences have thus far seen abroad, are nearly
without exception musical patch-works. Neither the Rimsky-Korsakoff
_Scheherezade_ nor _Prince Igor_ nor _Cleopatra_ was ever written for
dancing. The _Scheherezade_, for instance, is an orchestral suite of
Rimsky-Korsakoff. He never meant it for a ballet. Of all the real
ballets that the Diaghileff troupe has given only those composed by
Stravinsky and a few by Tcherepnin are meant to be danced.
Among the best Russian ballet dancers of the strictly classic or, as we
should say, of the Petipa school, are Kshesinskaya, Breobrashenskaya,
Geltzer, Pavlova, Mordkin, Novikoff, Volinin, Kyasht and Lopokova,
most of whom are known abroad. But there are quite a number of Russian
_prima ballerinas_, who, for some reason or other, have not been able
to display their art abroad, yet who rival the best we know. As with
other artists, dancers all have their individual traits of superiority
and weakness. In some dances we have seen Kshesinskaya superior to all
the rest, in other rôles she is just a mediocrity. We can imagine
nothing more inspiring and beautiful than Pavlova and Mordkin in
Glazounoff’s _L’Autômne Bacchanale_. No Russian ballet dancers have
surpassed them in this. In the same way we consider Pavlova a goddess
of grace and beauty in Drigo’s _Papillon_ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan.’
We measure her one of the most lyric artists of the Russian classic
ballet.
Mme. Pavlova is a graduate of the Petrograd Ballet School and was for
years a _prima ballerina_ at the Mariensky Theatre in that city before
she made a tour to Riga, Warsaw and Helsingfors. Having been received
with greatest enthusiasm on her provincial tour she decided to try her
luck abroad and made her London début in 1910, where she immediately
had the city at her feet. It is only in recent years that Pavlova
has danced in her own regular ballet, whereas before she appeared
exclusively in solo dances, either with Mordkin, Novikoff or Volinin.
In our judgment she has not added anything to her reputation or success
by her patchy ballet, particularly in America, where the public is
least impressed by pantomimic art of the kind they can see with more
advantage in the moving-picture show. It is Pavlova’s art that the
people admire, not the ballets that are concocted for her. It must be
said that the ballets recently produced by her possess little dramatic
or choreographic appeal.
In questions pertaining to her dancing Pavlova has been broad and
tolerant, and has listened quietly to every eulogistic or critical
remark. She has not remained indifferent to the latest choreographic
movements but has adapted herself to many suggestions, particularly to
those of the movement of the naturalistic school of Isadora Duncan. In
spite of the growing influence of the revolutionary new ballet of the
Fokine-Diaghileff group, and while keeping in view the changing taste
and requirements of the public, Pavlova should, we believe, guard
against too great a compromise. She surpasses in her magic swiftness,
delicacy, bird-like agility, floating grace and lyric pirouettes all
her living rivals. One can see that she has tuned her body to the most
delicate _pianissimi_ and the most powerful _forti_. But when she
attempts to use her arms too conspicuously, or produce Greek poses,
she is a disappointing failure. We must admit with an English critic
that ‘in Pavlova’s dancing we are no longer aware of the conscious and
painful obedience of the body to the dictates of a governing mind. It
is as though the spirit itself had left its central citadel and, by
some unwonted alchemy becoming dissolved in the blood and fibres of her
being, had penetrated to the extremities of the limbs. Soul from body
is no longer distinguishable, and which is servant to the other none
can tell.’
Mordkin and Volinin stand by no means beyond the dynamic beauty of
Pavlova. In their virilly graceful gestures and poses lies something
heroic and strong, something beast-like in its beauty. Mordkin perhaps
more than Volinin is endowed with a robust, massive and splendid
physique, qualities which leave some of his less critical admirers
blind to the deficiencies of his art. Both dancers have acquired most
of their pliancy and manliness by a course of systematic and rigorous
training which gives to their dance an unusual _abandon_ and loftiness.
Their dancing has a tendency to give a semblance of repose to their
quickest motions. They seem to avoid the conventional whirls and pivots
with intention, and to prefer the lion-like leaps and _chassées_. Their
reckless swing in _L’Autômne Bacchanale_ is just as much an expression
of manly vigor as Pavlova’s _pirouette_ and _rond de jambe_ is one of
feminine grace.
The ranks of the Russian ballet dancers are of a peculiar bureaucratic
order, beginning with the simple _danseuse_ and ending with the _prima
ballerina_, which is a rank similar in the hierarchy to that of a full
general. Lydia Kyasht, for instance, is a lieutenant in her rank of
_première sujet_. Pavlova and Karsavina are _ballerinas_, while only
Kshesinskaya and Breobrashenskaya are _prima ballerinas_. Among the
Russian dancers known abroad, Lydia Kyasht and Lydia Lopokova are next
to Pavlova brilliant exponents of the Russian classic or so called ‘Old
Ballet.’ They have both impressed us as sincere and eloquent artists
of their school, the one romantic, the other extremely poetic. The
ethereal twists and glides of Lopokova surpass by far those of Pavlova
in their peculiar fairy-like lines and poses. Kyasht appeals to us
immensely on account of her absolutely classic plastic and enchanting
poses, which add an exotic air to her enchanting expressions.
In introducing Pavlova, Mordkin and other more or less prominent
exponents of the Russian classic ballet to America and England Max
Rabinoff has been the practical spirit behind the scenes. An authority
on the dance, Mr. Rabinoff had the conviction, even when the Russian
dancers were yet unknown in America, that they would ultimately triumph
as they did. To his persistent efforts the Russian ballet owes its
success in America.
The classic Russian ballet is a pure Byzantine piece of stage art.
It mirrors the bizarre glow and colors of the cathedrals, the mystic
romanticism of the Kremlin walls and cupolas, the Tartar minarets, the
vaulted _teremas_ (Boyar houses), the lonely steppes, the gloomy penal
colonies, the luxurious palaces and twisted towers of a semi-Oriental
country. Strongly replete with the character of the passing Boyar life,
it is an era in itself.