6. Tristan and Isolde: Michel and Vera Fokine

IF ever there were two people who seemingly were inseparable, they were Michel and Vera Fokine. Theirs was a modern love story that could rank with those of Abélard and Heloïse, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde. The romance of the Fokines continued, unabated, till death did them part.

The story of Michel Fokine’s revolution in modern ballet has become an important part of ballet’s history. The casual ballet-goer, to whom one name sounds very much like another, recognizes the name of Fokine. He may not realize the full importance of the man, but he has been unable to escape the knowledge that some of the ballets he knows and loves best are Fokine works.

The literature that has grown up around Michel Fokine and his work is fairly voluminous, as was his due. Yet, for those of today’s generation, who are prone to forget too easily, it cannot be repeated too often that had it not been for Michel Fokine, there might not have been any such thing as modern ballet. For ballet, wherein he worked his necessary and epoch-making revolution, was in grave danger of becoming moribund and static, and might well, by this time, have become extinct.

He was a profound admirer of Isadora Duncan, although he denied he had been influenced by her ideas. Fokine felt Duncan, in her concern for movement, had brought dancing back to its beginnings. He was filled with a divine disgust for the routine and the artificial practices of ballet at the turn of the century. He was termed a heretic when he insisted that each ballet demands a new technique appropriate to its style, because he fought against the eternal stereotype.

Fokine threw in his lot with Diaghileff and his group. With Diaghileff his greatest masterpieces were created. Both Fokine and Diaghileff were complicated human beings; both were artists. Problems were never simple with either of them. There is no reason here to go into the causes for the rupture between them. That there was a rupture and that it was never completely healed is regrettable. It was tantamount to a divorce between the parents of modern ballet. It was, as is so often the case in divorce, the child that suffered.

For a time following the break, the Fokines returned to Russia; and then, in 1918, together with their son Vitale, spent some time in and out of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Conditions were not ideal for creation, and nothing was added to the impressive list of Fokine masterpieces.

In 1919, Morris Gest was immersed in the production of a gargantuan musical show destined for the Century Theatre: Aphrodite, based on an English translation of Pierre Louys’ novel. Gest made Fokine an offer to come to America to stage a Bacchanal for the work. Fokine accepted. Aphrodite was not a very good musical, nor was it, as I remember it, a very exciting Bacchanal; but it was a great success. Fokine himself was far from happy with it.

For a number of reasons, the Fokines decided to make New York their home. They eventually bought a large house, where Riverside Drive joins Seventy-second Street; converted part of the house into a dancing studio, and lived in the rest of the house in an atmosphere of nostalgic gloom, a sort of Chopinesque twilight. Ballet in America was at a very low ebb when Fokine settled here. There was a magnificent opportunity to hand for the father of modern ballet, had he but taken it. For some reason he muffed the big chance. Perhaps he was embittered by a series of unhappy experiences, not the least of which was the changed political scene in his beloved Russia, to which he was never, during the rest of his life, able to make adjustment. He was content, as an artist, for the most part to rest on his considerable laurels. There was always Schéhérazade. More importantly, there was always Sylphides.

Fokine’s creative life, in the true sense, was something he left behind in Europe. He never seemed to sense or to try to understand the American impulse, rhythm, or those things which lie at the root of our native culture. In the bleak Riverside Drive mansion, he taught rather half-heartedly at classes, but gave much of his time and energy in well-paid private lessons to the untalented daughters of the rich.

From the choreographic point of view, he was satisfied, for the most part, to reproduce his early masterpieces with inferior organizations, or to stage lesser pieces for the Hippodrome or the Ziegfeld Follies. One of the latter will suffice as an example. It was called Frolicking Gods, a whimsy about a couple of statues of Greek Gods who came to life, became frightened at a noise, and returned to their marble immobility. And it may be of interest to note that these goings-on were all accomplished to, of all things, Tchaikowsky’s Nutcracker Suite. There was also a pseudo-Aztec affair, devised, so far as tale was concerned, by Vera Fokine, and called The Thunder Bird. The Aztec quality was emphasized by the use of a pastiche of music culled from the assorted works of Tchaikowsky, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Balakirev, and Borodine.

It was during the winter of 1920, not long after the Fokines, with their son Vitale, had arrived here, that we came together professionally. I arranged to present them jointly in a series of programmes at the Metropolitan Opera House, with Arnold Volpe and his Symphony Orchestra.

Fokine came with me to see the Metropolitan stage. He arrived at what might have been a ticklish moment. Fokine was extremely sensitive to what he called “pirated” versions of his works. There was, of course, no copyright protection for them, since choreography had no protection under American copyright law. Fokine was equally certain that he, Fokine, was the only person who could possibly reproduce his works. As we entered the Metropolitan, Adolph Bolm was appearing in an opera-ballet version of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Le Coq d’Or. The performance had commenced.

As I have intimated, after he broke with Diaghileff, Fokine was so depressed that for some time he could not work at all. Then he received an invitation from Anna Pavlova to come to Berlin, where she was about to produce some new ballets. Fokine accepted the invitation, and when Pavlova asked him to suggest a subject, Fokine proposed a ballet based on the opera, Le Coq d’Or. Pavlova, however, considered the plot of the Rimsky-Korsakoff work to be too political, and also felt it unwise of her to offer a subject burlesquing the Tsar.

It was not until after Fokine temporarily returned to the Diaghileff fold that Le Coq d’Or achieved production. Diaghileff agreed with Fokine on the subject, and Fokine was anxious that it should be mounted in as modern a manner as possible. The story of the opera, based on Pushkin’s well-known poem, as adapted to the stage by V. Bielsky, requires no comment. Fokine’s opera-ballet production was, in its way, quite unique. There were two casts, which is to say, singers and dancers. While one character danced and acted, the words in the libretto were spoken or sung by the dancing character’s counterpart.

As a result of the Metropolitan Opera Company’s wartime ban on anything German, in 1917, Pierre Monteux, the former Diaghileff conductor, was imported by the Metropolitan for the expanded French list. One of the results of Monteux’s influence on the Metropolitan repertoire was Le Coq d’Or. Adolph Bolm, by that time resident in New York, having remained here after the last Diaghileff American season, was engaged by Otto H. Kahn to stage the work in the style of the Diaghileff production. Bolm, who had his own ideas, nevertheless based his work on Fokine’s basic plan, and that of the Fokine-Diaghileff production. Bolm was meticulous, however, in insisting that credit be given to Fokine for the original idea, and it was always billed as “after Michel Fokine.” The Metropolitan production, as designed by the Hungarian artist, Willy Pogany, whose sets were among the best the Metropolitan ever has seen, resulted in one of the most attractive and exciting productions the Metropolitan has achieved. Aside from the production itself, the singing of the Spanish coloratura, Maria Barrientos, as the Queen, the conducting of Monteux, and the dancing of Bolm as King Dodon, set a new standard for the Metropolitan.

On the occasion I have mentioned, we entered the front of the house, and Fokine watched a bit of the performance with me, standing in the back of the auditorium. He had no comment, which was unusual for him.

After watching for a time, I asked Fokine if he would care to meet his old colleague. He said he would. Together we felt our way back stage in the dimly lighted passages. The pass-door to back-stage was even darker. I stood aside to let Fokine precede me. Then my heart nearly stopped. Fokine stumbled and nearly fell prostrate on the iron-concrete steps. He picked himself up, brushed himself off. “Mikhail Mikhailovitch,” I said, half frightened to death, “you must be careful.”

“It is nothing,” he replied, “but why in hell isn’t the place properly lighted?”

The meeting with Bolm, who had made Fokine’s favorite ballet even more exciting than it actually was, was cordial enough, cool, and uneventful. Bolm was by far the more demonstrative. Their conversation was general rather than particular. Fokine and I looked over the stage, its size and its equipment. Fokine thanked Bolm, apologized for the interruption, and took his leave. As we felt our way out to the street, Fokine’s only comment on Le Coq d’Or was, “The women’s shawls should be farther back on the head. They are quite impossible when worn like that. And when they weep, they should weep.”

Fokine was a stickler for detail. In conversation about dancing, over and over again he would use two Russian words, “Naslajdaites” and “laska.” Freely translated, those Russian words suggest “do it as though you enjoyed yourself” and “caressingly.”

The programme for the appearances at the Metropolitan had been carefully worked out, balanced with joint performances, solos for each, with symphony orchestra interludes while Michel and Vera were changing costumes. For the opening performance it was decided that Michel and Vera would jointly do the lovely waltz from Les Sylphides; a group of Caucasian dances to music arranged by Asafieff; the Mazurka from Delibes’ Coppélia; and a group of five Russian dances by Liadov. Fokine himself would do the male solo, the Mazurka from Les Sylphides, and a Liadov Berceuse; while Vera’s solo contributions would be The Dying Swan, and the arrangement Fokine made for her of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”

The advertising campaign was under full steam ahead, and rehearsals were well under way. So well were things going, in fact, that I relaxed my habitual pre-opening tension for a moment at my home, which was, in those days, in Brooklyn. I even missed a rehearsal, since Fokine was at his very best, keen and interested, and the music was in the able hands of Arnold Volpe, a musician who worked passionately for the highest artistic aims, a Russian-born American

pioneer in music. Volpe devoted his entire life, from the time of his arrival in this country until his death, to the cause of young American musicians. He was an ideal collaborator for the Fokines. There was a fine understanding between Fokine and Volpe, and the performances, therefore, were splendid. I felt content.

But not for long. My peace of mind was shattered by a telephone call. It was Mrs. Volpe. The news was bad. Fokine had suffered an injury during rehearsal. He had pulled a leg tendon. The pain was severe. The rehearsal had been abandoned.

I rushed to Manhattan and up to the old Marie Antoinette Hotel, famous as the long-time home of that wizard of the American theatre, David Belasco. Here the Fokines had made their temporary home, while searching for a house. Michel was in bed, with Vera in solicitous attendance. To understate, the news was very bad. The doctor, who had just left, had said it would be at least six weeks before he could permit Fokine to dance.

But the performance had to be given Tuesday night. It was now Sunday. There was all the publicity, all the advertising, and the rent of the Metropolitan Opera House had to be paid. This was not all. A tour had been booked to follow the Metropolitan appearance, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. Apart from my own expenses, there were the responsibilities to the various local managers and managements concerned. Something had to be done, and at once. The newspapers had to be informed.

The silence of the hotel bedroom, hitherto broken only by Vera’s cooing ministrations, deepened. It was I who spoke. An idea flashed through my mind.

“Mikhail Mikhailovitch,” I said, “could Vera Petrovna do a full programme on Tuesday night on her own?”

Michel and Vera exchanged glances. There was something telepathic in the communication between their eyes.

Fokine turned his head in my direction.

“Yes,” he said.

Quickly the programme was rearranged. Fokine suggested adding a Chopin group, which he called Poland—Three Moods: Happiness, Revolt, Sadness.

We went into action. The orchestra seat prices were five dollars, and a five-dollar top was high in those days. Announcements were rushed out, informing the public in big type that Vera Fokina, Prima Ballerina Russian Ballet, would appear, together with the adjusted programme, which we agreed upon as follows: Arnold Volpe and his Symphony Orchestra would play Weber’s Oberon Overture; Saint-Saens’ Symphonic Poem, Rouet d’Omphale; Beethoven’s Egmont Overture; Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Capriccio Espagnol; Ippolitoff-Ivanoff’s Caucasian Sketches; and the Wedding Procession from Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Le Coq d’Or. Fokina had an evening cut out for her: the three Polish moods I have mentioned; The Dying Swan; The “Moonlight” Sonata; the Danses Tziganes, by Nachez; Sapeteado, a Gitano Dance, by Hartmann; two Caucasian Dances, to folk music arranged by Asafief; and four of Liadov’s Russian Folk Dances.

A large sign to the same effect was installed in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House. The news spread quickly. But the public did not seem to mind. In this eleventh-hour shifting of arrangements, I was happy to have the whole-hearted cooperation of John Brown and Edward Ziegler, the administrative heads of the Metropolitan Opera Company.

The first performance was sold out; the audience was enthusiastic. Moreover, while in those days there were no dance critics, the press comment, largely a matter of straight reporting, was highly favorable. I should like to quote The New York Times account in full as an example of the sort of attention given then to such an important event, some thirty-odd years ago: “FOKINA’S ART DELIGHTS METROPOLITAN AUDIENCE—Her Husband and Partner Ill, Russian Dancers Interest Throng Alone, with Volpe’s Aid: Vera Fokina, the noted Russian dancer performed an unusual feat on February 11, when she kept a great audience in the Metropolitan keenly interested in her art for almost three hours. When it was announced that Mr. Fokine, her husband, was ill and therefore not able to carry out his part of the program, a murmur of dissatisfaction was audible. But the auditors soon forgot their disappointment and wondered at Mme. Fokina’s graceful and vivid interpretations.

“Among the best liked of her offerings was the ‘Dying Swan,’ with Saint-Saens’s music. Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, well played by an invisible pianist, Izia Seligman, and the Russian and Gipsy pieces. She was compelled to give many encores.

“Arnold Volpe and his orchestra took a vital part in the program, playing the music with a fine instinct for the interpretative ideas of the dancer. He conducted his forces through some of the compositions intended as the vehicles for the absent Mr. Fokine, and thus won an honest share in the success of the entertainment.”

So much for ballet criticism in New York in 1920.

The tour had to go on with Fokina alone, although Fokine had recovered sufficiently to hobble about and to supervise and direct and oversee. A certain Mr. K. had associated himself as a sort of local representative. Mr. K. was not much of a local manager; but he did have an unholy talent for cheque-bouncing. It was not a matter of one or two, due to some error; they bounded and bounced all over the country in droves, and daily. If the gods that be had seen fit to give me a less sound nervous system than, happily, they have, K.’s financial antics could have brought on a nervous breakdown.

At the same time, Fokine, with his tremendous insistence on perfection, hobbled about, giving orders to all and sundry in a mixture of languages—Russian, French, German, Swedish, and Danish—that no one, but no one, was able to understand. Even up to the time of his death, English was difficult for Mikhail Mikhailovitch, and he spoke it, at all times, with an unreproducible accent. His voice, unless excited, was softly guttural. In typically Russian fashion, he interchanged the letters “g” and “h.” Always there was an almost limitless range of facial expressions.

On this tour, Fokine, being unable to dance, had more time on his hands to worry about everything else. His lighting rehearsals were long and chaotic, since provincial electricians were not conspicuous either for their ability, their interest, or their patience. During the lighting rehearsals, since he was immobilised by his injury, Fokine and Vera would sit side by side. He knew what he wanted; but, before he would finally approve anything, he would turn to her for her commendation; and there would pass between them that telepathic communication I often saw, and about which I have remarked before. Occasionally, if something amused them, they would laugh together; but, more often than not, their faces revealed no more than would a skilled poker-player’s.

Fokine could manage to keep his temper on an even keel for a considerable time, if he put his mind to it. There was no affectation about Fokine, either artistically or personally. In appearance there was not a single one of those artificial eccentricities so often associated with the “artistic temperament.” To the man in the street he would have passed for a solidly successful business man. At work he was a taskmaster unrelenting, implacable, fanatical frequently to the point of downright cruelty. At rest, he was a gentleman of great charm and simplicity, with a sense of humor and a certain capacity for enjoyment. Unfortunately, his sense of humor had a way of deserting him at critical moments. This, coupled with a lack of tact, made him many enemies among those who were once his closest friends. These occasional flashes of geniality came only when things were going his way; but, if things did not go as he wanted, his rages could be and were devastating, all-consuming.

One such incident occurred in Philadelphia. As a matter of fact, Philadelphia was marked by incidents. The first was one I had with Edward Lobe, then manager of Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House, then at Broad and Poplar Streets. It had to do with some of the bouncing K.’s bouncing paper. This straightened out, I returned to the stage to find turmoil rampant. There was another crisis.

The crisis had been precipitated by the man whose job it was to operate the curtain. Fokine had shouted and screamed “Zanovess! Zanovess!” at the unfortunate individual. Now “Zanovess” is the Russian word for curtain. The curtain had not fallen. Fokine could not say “curtain.” The operator did not have the vaguest idea of the meaning of “zanovess.” Moreover, the stage-hand suspected, from the tone of Fokine’s voice, his barked order, and the fierce expression of his face that he was being called names. When, finally, Fokine screamed “Idyot!” at him, the curtain-man knew for sure he had been insulted. The argument and hostility spread through his colleagues.

Eventually, I got them calmed down. Fokine insisted they were all idiots; they were all ignorant. This idea leaked through to the stage-hands, and that did not help matters. I finally suggested that, since neither of them could understand the other, the best procedure would be not to scream and shout and stomp—uttering strange mixed French and Russian oaths—but to be quiet and to show by gesture and pantomime, rather than to give unintelligible verbal orders. So, with only minor subsequent scenes, the rehearsal got itself finished.

Also, in Philadelphia, we had substituted Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils, done to Glazounov’s score of the same name, in place of the “Moonlight” Sonata. It is hardly necessary to point out that the veils, all seven of them, are vastly important. Because of their importance, these had been entrusted to the keeping of Clavia, Vera’s Russian maid, instead of being packed with the other costumes. But, come performance time, Clavia could not be found. Hue and cry were raised; her hotel alerted; restaurants searched; but still no Clavia. She simply had to be found. I pressed Marie Volpe, Arnold Volpe’s singer-wife, into the breach to act as maid for Vera, and to help her dress. But only Clavia knew where Salome’s veils had been secreted. The performance started. The search continued.

Suddenly, there came a series of piercing screams emanating from an upper floor dressing-room. Haunted by visions of the Phantom of the Opera, I rushed up the stairs to find Clavia lying on the floor, obviously in pain. We managed to get her down to Fokina’s room and placed her on the couch in what was known in Philadelphia as “Caruso’s Room,” the star dressing-room Fokina was using. As we entered, Fokina stood ready to go on stage, costumed for The Dying Swan. The situation was obvious. Clavia was about to give birth to a child. The labor pains had commenced. I pushed Vera on to the stage and Marie Volpe into the room—in the nick of time. Mrs. Volpe, a concert singer, pinch-hitting as a maid for Vera, now turned midwife for the first time in her life. By the time the ambulance and the doctor arrived, mother and infant were doing as well as could be expected.

Next morning Mrs. Volpe found herself a new role. A lady of high moral scruples, herself a mother, she had realized that no one had mentioned a father for the child. Mrs. Volpe had assumed the role of detective (a dangerous one, I assure the reader, in ballet), and was determined to run down the child’s father. The newspaper stories, with the headline: “CHILD BORN IN CARUSO’S DRESSING ROOM,” had not been too reassuring to Mrs. Volpe. I counselled her that she would be well advised to let the matter drop.

On our arrival in Baltimore, I was greeted by the news that my rubber-wizard of a local manager, the bouncing Mr. K., had decamped with the box-office sale, leaving behind only some rubber cheques. This, in itself, I felt was enough for one day. But it was not to be. Vera, as curtain time approached, once again was up to her usual business of exhibiting “temperament,” spoiling her life, as she so often did in this respect, throughout her dancing career.

“What is it now?” I asked.

She waxed wroth with great volubility and at considerable length, with profound indignation that the stage floor-cloth was, as she said, “impossible.” Nothing I could say was of any avail. Vera refused, absolutely, irrevocably, unconditionally, to dance. Mrs. Volpe was to help her into her street clothes, and at once. She would return to her hotel. She would return to New York. I must cancel the engagement, the tour, all because of the stage-cloth. And the audience was already filling the theatre.

I thought quickly and went into action. Calling the head carpenter and the property man together, I got them to turn the floor-cloth round. Then, going back to the dressing-room, where Vera was preparing to leave, I succeeded in convincing her by showing her that it was an entirely new doth that we had just got for her happiness.

Vera Fokina never danced better than that night in Baltimore.

Our farewell performance, with both Fokines dancing, took place at Charles Dillingham’s Hippodrome, on Sunday evening, 29th May, 1920. For this occasion, the Fokines appeared together, by popular request, in the Harlequin and Columbine variation from his own masterpiece, Carnaval; Fokine alone danced the Dagestanskaja Lezginka, and staged a work he called Amoun and Berenis, actually scenes from his Une Nuit d’Egypte, which Diaghileff called Cléopâtre, adapted, musically, from Anton Arensky’s score for the ballet. I quote Fokine’s own libretto for the work:

The Hippodrome version consisted of “The Meeting of Amoun and Berenis” “The Entrance of Cleopatra,” by the orchestra; “The Dance Before Cleopatra”; “The Betrayal of Amoun and the Jealousy of Berenis”; “The Hebrew Dance,” by the orchestra; “The Death of Amoun and the Mourning of Berenis.”

In 1927, I presented the Fokines with their “American Ballet,” composed of their pupils, at the Masonic Auditorium, in Detroit, and on subsequent tours. Prominent professional dancers were added to the pupil roster.

That summer, with the Fokines and their company, I introduced ballet to the Lewisohn Stadium Concerts in New York, for three performances, to a record audience of forty-eight thousand people. I also presented them for four performances at the Century Theatre in Central Park West. The Stadium programmes included Les Elves, arranged to Mendelssohn’s Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the addition of the same composer’s Andante and Allegro from the Violin Concerto. Also Medusa, a tragedy set to Tchaikowsky’s Symphonie Pathétique, a work for four characters, the title role being danced by Vera Fokina, and the sea god Poseidon, who fell in love with the beautiful Medusa, danced by Fokine.

It was during one of the Stadium performances, I remember, I had occasion to go to the Fokines’ dressing-room on some errand. I knocked, and believing I heard an invitation to enter, opened the door to discover the two Fokines dissolved in tears of happiness. So moved was Michel by Vera’s performance of the title role in Medusa, that they were sobbing in each other’s arms.

“Wonderful, wonderful, my darling!” Fokine was murmuring. “Such a beautiful performance; and to think you did it all in such a short period, with so very few rehearsals; and the really amazing thing is that you portrayed the character of the creature precisely as it is in my mind!”

In the love, the adoration, the romance of Michel and Vera Fokine, there was the greatest continuous devotion between man and wife that it has been my privilege to know.

Fokine’s American ballet creations have been lost. Perhaps it is as well. For the closing chapter of the life of a truly great artist they were sadly inferior. Towards the end of his career, however, he staged some fresh, new works in France for René Blum’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, including Les Elements, Don Juan, and L’Epreuve d’Amour. Then, for de Basil’s Original Ballet Russe, Cinderella, or since he used the French, Cendrillon, to a commissioned score by Baron Frederic d’Erlanger, which might have been better. But choreographically Cendrillon was a return to the triumphant Fokine. There was also his triumphant re-staging of Le Coq d’Or. Perhaps his last really great triumph was his collaboration with Serge Rachmaninoff on Paganini, a work that takes rank with Fokine’s finest.

Fokine restaged Les Sylphides and Carnaval for Ballet Theatre’s initial season. When Ballet Theatre was under my management, he created Bluebeard, in 1941, for Anton Dolin. In 1942, I was instrumental in having German Sevastianov engage Fokine to stage the nostalgic tragedy, Russian Soldier, to the music of Prokofieff.

While in Mexico, in the summer of 1942, working on Helen of Troy, for Ballet Theatre, Fokine contracted pleurisy, which developed into pneumonia on his return to New York, where he died, on 22nd August. For a dancer, he was on the youthful side. He was born in Mannheim-am-Rhine, Germany, 26th April, 1880, the son of Ekaterina Gindt. According to the official records of the St. Petersburg Imperial School, his father was unknown. He was adopted by a merchant, Mikhail Feodorovitch Fokine, who gave him his name. In 1898, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Imperial School. In 1905, he married Vera Petrovna Antonova, the daughter of a master of the wig-maker’s Guild, who had graduated from the School the year before.

At the funeral service at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, in New York, were assembled all of the dance world in New York in mid-summer, to do him honor.

Some of his works will live on, but they suffer with each passing year because, in most cases, they are not properly done. The Sadler’s Wells and Royal Danish Ballet productions of the Fokine works are the exceptions. But all his works suffered continually during his lifetime, because Fokine had a faulty memory, and his restaging of the works was, all too often, the product of unhappy afterthoughts. Towards the end of his life he became more and more embittered. He, the one-time great revolutionary, resented the new developments in ballet, perhaps because they had not been developed by Fokine.

This bitterness was quite unnecessary, for Fokine remains the greatest creator of modern ballet. His works, properly staged, will always provide a solid base for all ballet programmes. Despite the hue and cry, despite the lavish praise heaped upon each new experiment by modern choreographers, and upon the choreographers themselves, in all contemporary ballet there is no one to take his place.

Other ballet-masters, other choreographers, working with the same basic materials, in the same spirit, in the same language, often require detailed synopses and explanations for their works, in spite of which the meaning of them often remains lost in the murk of darkest obscurity. I remember once asking Fokine to supply a synopsis of one of his new works for programme purposes. I shall not forget his reply: “No synopsis is needed for my ballets. My ballets unfold their stories on the stage. There is never any doubt as to what they say.”

I have visited Vera Petrovna Fokine in the castle on the Hudson where she lives in lonely nostalgia. But it is not quite true that she lives alone; for she lives with the precious memory of a great love, a tremendous reputation, the memory of a great artist, the artist who created Les Sylphides, Prince Igor, and Petroushka.

7. Ballet Reborn In America: W. De Basil and His Ballets Russes De Monte Carlo

THE last of the two American tours of Serge de Diaghileff’s Ballets Russes was during the season 1916-1917.

The last American tour of Anna Pavlova and her company was during the season 1925-1926.

Serge Diaghileff died at Venice, on 19th August, 1929.

Anna Pavlova died at The Hague, on 23rd January, 1931.

W. de Basil’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo gave their first American performances at the St. James Theatre, New York, on 21st December, 1933.

Such ballet as America saw between Pavlova’s last performance in 1926 and the first de Basil performance in 1933, may be briefly stated.

From 1924 to 1927, in Chicago, there was the Chicago Allied Arts, sometimes described as the first “ballet theatre” in the United States, sparked by Adolph Bolm.

In 1926 and 1927, there were a few sporadic performances by Mikhail Mordkin and his Russian Ballet Company, which included Xenia Macletzova, Vera Nemtchinova, Hilda Butsova, and Pierre Vladimiroff.

From 1928 to 1931, Leonide Massine staged weekly ballet productions at the Roxy Theatre, in New York, including a full-length Schéhérazade, with four performances daily, Massine acting both as choreographer and leading dancer. In 1930, he staged Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, for four performances in Philadelphia and two at the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York, with the collaboration of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and with Martha Graham making one of her rare appearances in ballet, in the leading role.

That is the story. Hardly a well-tilled ground in which to sow balletic seed with the hope of a bumper crop. It is not surprising that all my friends and all my rival colleagues in the field of management prophesied dire things for me (presumably with different motives) when I determined on the rebirth of ballet in America in the autumn of 1933. Their predictions were as mournful as those of Macbeth’s witches.

The ballet situation in the Western World, after the deaths of Diaghileff and Pavlova, save for the subsidized ballets at the Paris Opera and La Scala in Milan, was not vastly different. If you will look through the files of the European newspapers of the period, you will find an equally depressing note: “The Swan passes, and ballet with her” ... “The puppet-master is gone; the puppets must be returned to their boxes” ... and a bit later: “Former Diaghileff dancers booked to appear in revues and cabaret turns.” ...

In England, J. Maynard Keynes, Lydia Lopokova, Ninette de Valois, Marie Rambert, Constant Lambert, and Arnold L. Haskell had formed the Camargo Society for Sunday night ballet performances, which organization gave birth to Marie Rambert’s Ballet Club and the Vic Wells Ballet. In 1933, the glories of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet were hardly dreams, not yet a glimmer in Ninette de Valois’ eye.

In Europe there remained only the Diaghileff remains and a vacant Diaghileff contract at Monte Carlo. This latter deserves a word of explanation. Diaghileff had acquired the name—the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo—thanks to the Prince of Monaco, himself a ballet lover, who had offered Diaghileff and his company a home and a place to work.

René Blum, an intellectual French gentleman of deep culture and fine taste, took over the unexpired Diaghileff Monte Carlo contract. Blum was at hand for, at the time of Diaghileff’s death, he was at the head of the dramatic theatre at Monte Carlo. In fulfilment of the Diaghileff contract, for a time Blum booked such itinerant ballet groups as he could. Then, in 1931, he organized his own Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. George Balanchine, who had staged some of the last of the Diaghileff works, became the first choreographer for the new company. For the Monte Carlo repertoire, he created three works. To it, from Paris, he brought two of the soon-to-become-famous “baby ballerinas,” Irina Baronova and Tamara Toumanova, both from the classroom of Olga Preobrajenska.

Early in 1932, René Blum joined forces with one of the most curious personalities that modern ballet has turned up, in the person of a gentleman who wished to be known as Col. W. de Basil.

De Basil had had a ballet company of sorts for some time. I first ran into him in Paris, shortly after Diaghileff’s death, where he had allied himself with Prince Zeretelli’s Russian Opera Company; and again in London, where the Lionel Powell management, in association with the Imperial League of Opera, had given them a season of combined opera and ballet at the old Lyceum Theatre. With ballets by Boris Romanoff and Bronislava Nijinska, de Basil had toured his little troupe around Europe in buses, living from hand to mouth; had turned up for a season at Monte Carlo, at René Blum’s invitation. That did it. De Basil worked out a deal with Blum, whereby de Basil became a joint managing director of the combined companies, now under the title of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. A season was given in the summer of 1932, in Paris, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.

It was there I first saw the new company. It was then I took the plunge. I negotiated. I signed them for a visit to the American continent. A book could be devoted to these negotiations alone. It would not be believable; it would fail to pass every test of credibility ever devised.

I feel that this is the point at which to digress for a moment, in order to sketch in a line drawing of de Basil, with some of the shadows and some of the substance. Unless I do, no reader will be able to understand why I once contemplated a book to be called To Hell With Ballet!

To begin with, de Basil was a Cossack and a Caucasian. Neither term carries with it any connotation of gentleness or sensitivity. De Basil was one of the last persons in the world you would expect to find at the head of an organization devoted to the development of the gentle, lyric art of the ballet. Two more dissimilar partners in an artistic venture than de Basil and Blum could not be found.

René Blum, the gentle, cultured intellectual, was a genuine artist: amiable, courteous, and fully deserving of the often misused phrase—a man of the world. His alliance with de Basil was foredoomed to failure; for one of René Blum’s outstanding characteristics was a passion to avoid arguments, discussions, scandals, troubles of any sort. Blum commanded the highest respect from his artists and associates; but they never feared him. To them he was the kind, understanding friend to whom they might run with their troubles and problems. Blum’s sensitivity was such that he would run from de Basil as one would try to escape a plague. René Blum, you would say, was, perhaps, the ivory-tower dilettante. You would be wrong. René Blum gave the lie to this during the war by revealing himself a man of heroic stature. On the occupation of France, he was in grave danger, since he was a Jew, and the brother of Léon Blum, the Socialist leader, great French patriot and one-time Premier. René, however, was safely and securely out of the country. But he, too, was a passionate lover of France. France, he felt, needed him. Tossing aside his own safety, he returned to his beloved country, to share its fate. His son, who was the apple of his father’s eye, joined the Maquis; was killed fighting the Nazis. René Blum was the victim of Nazi persecution.

Let us look for a moment at the background of Blum’s ballet collaborator. The “Colonel” was born Vassily Grigorievitch Voskresensky. In his native milieu he had some sort of police-military career. Although he insisted on the title “Colonel,” he certainly never attained that rank in the Tsar’s army. He was a lieutenant in the Gendarmes. After the revolution, in 1918, he turned up as a captain with Bicherakoff’s Cossacks. Later on he turned naval and operated in the Black Sea.

There is an interval in de Basil’s life that has never been entirely filled in with complete accuracy: the period immediately following his flight and escape from Russia. The most credible of the legends surrounding this period is that he sold motor-cars in Italy. Eventually, he turned up in Paris, where my trail picked him up at a concert agency called Zerbaseff, which concerned itself with finding jobs for refugee artists. It was then he called himself de Basil.

At the time I met him, he had a Caucasian partner, the Prince Zeretelli whom I have mentioned, and who was a one-time manager of the People’s Theatre, in St. Petersburg. It was this partnership that brought forth the Ballet and Opéra Russe de Paris, which gave seasons at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, in Paris, and, as I have mentioned, at the Lyceum Theatre, in London.

Let me first set down the man’s virtues. De Basil had great charm. By that I do not necessarily mean he was charming. His charm was something he could turn on at will, like a tap, usually when he was in a tight spot. More than once it helped him out of deep holes, and sticky ones. He had an inexhaustible fount of energy, could drive himself and others; never seemed to need sleep; and, aiming at a highly desired personal goal, had unending patience. With true oriental passivity, he could wait. He had undaunted courage; needless, reckless courage, in my opinion; a stupid courage compounded often out of equal parts of stubbornness and sheer bravado. He was a born organizer. He intuitively possessed a flair for the theatre: a flair without knowledge. He could be an excellent host; he was a cordon bleu cook. He was generous, he was simple in his tastes.

Yet, with all these virtues, de Basil was, at the same time, one of the most difficult human beings I have ever encountered in a lifetime of management. This tall, gaunt, cadaver of a man had a powerful physique, a dead-pan face, and a pair of cold, astigmatic eyes, before which rested thick-lensed spectacles. He had all the makings of a dictator. Like his countryman, Joseph Stalin, he was completely impossible as a collaborator. He was a born intriguer, and delighted in surrounding himself with scheming characters. During my career I have met scheming characters who, nevertheless, have had certain positive virtues: they succeeded in getting things done. De Basil’s scheming characters consisted of lawyers, hacks, amateur managers, brokers, without exception third-rate people who damaged and destroyed.

It would be an act of great injustice to call de Basil stupid. He was as shrewd an article as one could expect to meet amongst all the lads who have tried to sell the unwary stranger the Brooklyn Bridge, the Capitol at Washington, or the Houses of Parliament.

De Basil deliberately engaged this motley crew of hangers-on, since his Caucasian Machiavellism was such that he loved to pit them one against the other, to use them to build up an operetta atmosphere of cheap intrigue that I felt sure had not hitherto existed save in the Graustark type of fiction. De Basil used them to irritate and annoy. He would dispatch them abroad in his company simply to stir up trouble, to form cliques: for purposes of chantage; he would order them into whispered colloquies in corners, alternately wearing knowing looks and glum visages. De Basil and his entire entourage lived in a world of intrigue of their own deliberate making. His fussy, busy little cohorts cost him money he did not have, and raised such continuous hell that the wonder is the company held together as long as it did.

De Basil’s unholy joy would come from creating, through these henchmen, a nasty situation and then stepping in to pull a string here, jerk a cord there, he would save the situation, thus becoming the hero of the moment.

I shall have more to say on the subject of the “Colonel” before this tale is told.

Now, with the contracts signed for the first American visit, we were on our honeymoon. Meanwhile, however, the picture of what I had agreed to bring was changing. Leonide Massine, his stint at the Roxy Theatre in New York completed, had met a former Broadway manager, E. Ray Goetz. Together they had succeeded in raising some money and planned with it to buy the entire Diaghileff properties. With this stock in hand, Massine caught up with de Basil, who was barnstorming through the Low Countries with his company in trucks and buses; and the two of them pooled resources. Although Massine’s purchase plan did not go through entirely, because much of the Diaghileff material had disappeared through lawsuits and other claims, nevertheless Massine was able to deliver a sizable portion of it.

As the direct result of Massine’s appointment as artistic director, a number of things happened. First of all, Balanchine quit, and formed a short-lived company in France, Les Ballets 1933, the history of which is not germane to this story. Before he left, however, Balanchine had created three works for the de Basil-Blum Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo: La Concurrence, Le Cotillon, and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Massine, as his first task, staged Jeux d’Enfants and Les Plages; restaged three of his earlier works, The Three-Cornered Hat, Le Beau Danube and Scuola di Ballo; and the first of his epoch-making symphonic ballets, Les Présages, to Tchaikowsky’s Fifth Symphony. These were combined with a number of older works from the Diaghileff repertoire, including the three Fokine masterpieces: Les Sylphides, Prince Igor, and Petroushka.

Massine had strengthened the company. There were the former Diaghileff régisseur general, Serge Grigorieff, of long memory, as stage director; his wife, Lubov Tchernicheva, a leading Diaghileff figure, for dramatic roles; the last Diaghileff ballerina, Alexandra Danilova, to give stability to the three “baby ballerinas”: Baronova, Toumanova, and Tatiana Riabouchinska, the last from Kchessinska’s private studio, by way of Nikita Balieff’s Chauve Souris, where she had been dancing. There was the intriguing Nina Verchinina, a “different” type of dancer. There were talented lesser ladies: Eugenia Delarova, Lubov Rostova; a group of English girls masquerading under Russian names. Among the men, in addition to Massine, there were Leon Woizikovsky, David Lichine, Roman Jasinsky, Paul Petroff, Yurek Shabalevsky, and André Eglevsky.

A successful breaking-in season was given at the Alhambra Theatre, in London’s Leicester Square. While this was in progress, we set about at the most necessary and vastly important business of trying to build a public for ballet in America, for this is a ballet impresario’s first job. That original publicity campaign was, in its way, history-making. It took a considerable bit of organizing. No field was overlooked. In addition to spreading the gospel of ballet, there was a Sponsors’ Committee, headed by the Grand Duchess Marie and Otto H. Kahn. Prince Serge Obolensky was an ever-present source of help.

It was a chilly and fairly raw December morning in 1933 when I clambered aboard the cutter at the Battery, to go down the Bay to board the ship at Quarantine. It is a morning I shall not soon forget. I was in ballet up to my neck; and I loved it. There have been days and nights in the succeeding two decades when I have seriously played with the notion of what life might have been like if I had not gone aboard (and overboard) that December morning.

I took with me the traditional Russian welcome: a tray of bread, wrapped in a white linen serviette, a little bowl of salt, which I offered to de Basil. I was careful to see that the reporters and camera men were in place when I did it. De Basil’s poker-face actually smiled as I handed him the tray, uncovered the bread, poured the salt. But only for a moment. A Russian word in greeting, and then there was an immediate demand from him to see the theatre. We were on our way. Driving uptown to the St. James Theatre, the arguments commenced. There was the matter of the programme. There was the matter of the size of de Basil’s name; the question of the relative size of the artists’ names; the type-face; the order in which they should be listed; what was to become the everlasting arguments over repertoire and casting. But I was in it, now.

I believed in the “star” system—not because I believe the system to be a perfect one, by any means, but because the American public, which had been without any major ballet company for eight years, and which had had practically no ballet activity, had to be attracted and arrested by something more than an unknown and heretofore unheard-of company and the photograph of a not particularly photogenic ex-Cossack.

The pre-Christmas première at the St. James Theatre, on the night of 21st December, marked the beginning of a new epoch in ballet, and in my career. It was going to be a long pull, an uphill struggle. I knew that. The opening night audience was brilliant; the house was packed, enthusiastic. But the advance sale at the box-office was anything but encouraging. Diaghileff had failed in America. The losses of his two seasons, paid for by Otto H. Kahn, ran close to a half-million dollars. I was on my own. Since readers are as human as I am, perhaps they will forgive my pardonable pride, the pride I felt sixteen years later, on reading the historian George Amberg’s comment: “If it had not been for Mr. Hurok’s resourceful management and promotion, de Basil would certainly not have succeeded where Diaghileff failed.”

But I am anticipating. The opening programme consisted of La Concurrence, Les Présages, and Le Beau Danube. Toumanova in the first; Baronova and Lichine in the second; Massine, Danilova, and Riabouchinska in the third. It was a night. The next day’s press was excellent. It was John Martin, with what I felt was an anti-Diaghileff bias, who offered some reservations.

Following the opening performance, I gave the first of my many ballet suppers, this one at the Savoy-Plaza. It was very gala. The Sponsors’ Committee turned up en masse. White-gloved waiters served, among other things, super hot dogs, as a native gesture to the visitors from overseas. The “baby ballerinas” looked as if they should have been in bed. That is, two of them did. One of them was missing, and there was some concern as to what could have happened to Tamara Toumanova. However, there was no necessity for concern for Tamara, since she, with her sense of the theatre, the theatrical, and the main chance, made a late and quite theatrical entry, with Paul D. Cravath on one arm and Otto H. Kahn on the other. The new era in ballet was inaugurated by these two distinguished gentlemen and patrons of the arts sipping champagne from a ballet slipper especially made for the occasion by a leading Fifth Avenue bootmaker.

The opening a matter of history, the publicity department went into action at double the record-breaking pace at which they had been functioning for weeks. The resulting press coverage was overwhelming and national.

But, however gratifying all this may have been, I had my troubles, and they increased daily. The publicity simply could not please all the people all the time. I mean the ballet people, of course. There was always the eternally dissatisfied de Basil. In addition, there were three fathers, nineteen mothers, and one sister-in-law to be satisfied. Then there were daily casting problems. The publicity department was giving the press what it wanted: feature stories on ballet, on artists, on the daily life of the dancer. It was then de Basil determined that all publicity must be centered on his own august person. He had a point of view, I must admit. Dancers were here today, gone tomorrow. De Basil and his ballet remained. But no newspaper is interested in running repeated photographs of a dour, bespectacled male. They wanted “leg art.” When de Basil insisted that he be photographed, the camera men would “shoot” him with a filmless or plateless camera.

In addition to having to contend with what threatened to become a chronic and incurable case of Basildiaghileffitis, I was losing a potful of money. The St. James Theatre is no better than any other Broadway house as a home for ballet. The stage is far too small either to display the décor or to permit dancers to move freely. The auditorium, even if filled to capacity, cannot meet ballet expenses. We were not playing to anything like capacity. There was a tour booked; but, thanks to a “stop clause” in the theatre contract—a figure above which the attraction must continue at the theatre—we could not leave. We had made the “stop clause” too low. There was only one thing to do in order to protect the tour. I decided to divide the company into two companies.

Forced to fulfil two sets of obligations at the end of the first month at the St. James Theatre, I opened a tour in Reading, Pennsylvania, with Massine, Danilova, Toumanova, the larger part of the corps de ballet, Efrem Kurtz conducting the orchestra, and all of the ballets in the repertoire except three.

The company remaining at the St. James had Baronova, Riabouchinska, Lichine, and Woizikovsky, with the corps augmented by New York dancers, and Antal Dorati as conductor. This company gave eight performances weekly of the Fokine masterpieces, Les Sylphides, Petroushka, and Prince Igor. The steadily increasing public did not seem to mind.

The response on the road and in New York was surprisingly good. When we finally left New York, the two groups merged, and we played a second Chicago engagement, at the marvellous old Auditorium Theatre. All were there, save for Grigorieff, Alexandra Danilova, and Dorati, who returned to Monte Carlo to fulfil de Basil’s contract with Blum for a spring season in Monaco.

There was a brief spring season in New York, preceded by a week at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia, where Massine’s first “American” ballet had its dress rehearsals and first performances. This was Union Pacific, a four-scened work in which Massine had the collaboration of the distinguished American poet, Archibald MacLeish, on the story; Albert Johnson, on the settings; Irene Sharaff, with costumes; and a score, based on American folk-tunes, by Nicholas Nabokoff. It was the first Russian ballet attempt to deal with the native American scene and material, treating the theme of the building of the first transcontinental railway.

We gave its first performance on the night of April 6, 1934, and the cast included Massine himself, his wife Eugenia Delarova, Irina Baronova, Sono Osato, David Lichine, and André Eglevsky, in the central roles.

It was Massine’s prodigious Barman’s dance that proved to be the highlight of the work.

The balance of the company eventually returned to Europe for their summer seasons in London and Paris, and to stage new productions. Back they came in the autumn for another tour. The problem of a proper theatre for ballet in New York had not been solved; so I took the company from Europe to Mexico City for an engagement at the newly remodeled Palacio des Bellas Artes. There were problems galore. Once again I fell back on my right-hand-bower, Mae Frohman, rushed her to Mexico to clear them. Back from Mexico by boat to New York, with a hurried transfer for trains to Toronto, and a long coast-to-coast tour. The New York engagement that season was brief: five performances only. The only theatre available was the Majestic, whose stage is no less cramped, and whose auditorium provides no illusion. During this brief season a new work by Massine was presented: Jardin Public (Public Garden). It was based on a fragment from André Gide’s The Counterfeiters, in a scenario by Massine and Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke) who supplied the music. It was not one of Massine’s most successful works by any means. But the première did provide an amusing incident. Danilova was cast as a wealthy woman; Massine and Toumanova as The Poor Couple. On the opening night, Danilova, who showed her wealthy status by dancing a particularly lively rhumba, lost her underpants while dancing in the center of the stage. The contretemps she carried off with great aplomb. But, on her exit, she did not carry off the underwear, which remained in the center of the stage as a large colored blob. Danilova’s exit was followed by the entrance of Toumanova and Massine, clad in rags as befitted The Poor Couple. Toumanova, fixing her eyes on the offending lingerie, picked it up, examined it critically, and then, as if it were something from the nether world and quite unspeakable, dramatically hurled it off-stage in an attitude of utter disgust, as if it were a symbol of the thing she most detested: wealth.

Although the five performances were sold out, we could not cover our expenses. In the autumn of 1935, when the company returned for its third season, we were able to bring Ballet to the Metropolitan Opera House and, for the first time since its rebirth in America, the public really saw it at its best.

During this time we had made substantial additions to the repertoire: Massine’s second and third symphonic ballets, the Brahms Choreartium, and the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique; Nijinska’s The Hundred Kisses. In addition to Fokine’s new non-operatic version of Le Coq d’Or, which I have mentioned, there were added Fokine’s Schéhérazade, The Afternoon of a Faun, and Nijinsky’s Le Spectre de la Rose.

The gross takings of the fourth American season of the de Basil company reached round a million dollars.

By this time matters were coming to a head. All was not, by any means, well in ballet. Massine, by this time, was at swords’ points with de Basil. I was irritated, bored, fatigued, worn out with him and his entourage. Since de Basil had lost his Monte Carlo connection, he had also lost touch with the artistic thought that had served as a stimulus to creation.

It is necessary for me to make another digression at this point. The opening chapter of the New Testament is, as the reader will remember, a geneological one, with a formidable list of “begats.” It seems to me the course of wisdom to try to clear up, if I can, the “begats” of Russian Ballet since the day on which I first allied myself with it. I shall try to disentangle them for the sake of the reader’s better understanding. There were so many similar names, artists moving from one company to another, ballets appearing in the repertoires of more than one organization.

In this saga, I have called this chapter “W. de Basil and his Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.” It is a convenient handle. The confusion that was so characteristic of the man de Basil, was intensified by the fact that the “Colonel” changed the name of the company at least a half-dozen times during our association. To attempt to go into all the involved reasons for these chameleon-like changes would simply add to the confusion, and would, I feel, be boring. Let me, for the sake of conciseness and, I hope, the reader’s illumination, list the six changes:

In 1932, it was Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.

From 1933 to 1936, it was Monte Carlo Ballet Russe.

In 1937, it was Colonel W. de Basil’s Ballet Russe.

In 1938, it was Covent Garden Ballet Russe.

In 1939, it was Educational Ballets, Ltd.

From 1940 until its demise, it was Original Ballet Russe.

I have said earlier that the alliance between René Blum and de Basil was foredoomed to failure. The split between them came in 1936, both as a result of incompatibility and of de Basil’s preoccupation with the United States to the exclusion of any Monte Carlo interest. Blum had a greater interest in Monte Carlo, with which, to be sure, he had a contract. So it was not surprising that René Blum organized a new Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with Michel Fokine as choreographer.

De Basil and his methods became increasingly aggravating. His chicanery, his eternal battling, above all, his overweening obsession about the size of his name in the display advertising, were sometimes almost unbearable. He carried a pocket-rule with him and would go about cities measuring the words “Col. W. de Basil.” Now electric light letters vary in size in the various cities, and there is no way of changing them without having new letters made or purchased at considerable expense and trouble. I remember a scene in Detroit, where de Basil became so obnoxious that the company manager and I climbed to the roof of the theatre and took down the sign with our own hands, in order to save us from further annoyance that day.

All of this accumulated irritation added up to an increasing conviction that life was too short to continue this sort of thing indefinitely, despite my love for and my interest and faith in ballet both as an art and as a popular form of entertainment.

As I have said, Leonide Massine’s difficulties and relations with de Basil were becoming so strained that each performance became an ordeal. I never knew when an explosion might occur. There were many points of difference between Massine and de Basil. The chief bone of contention was the matter of artistic direction. Massine’s contract with de Basil was approaching its expiration date. De Basil was badgering him to sign a new one. Massine steadfastly refused to negotiate unless de Basil would assure him, in the contract, the title and powers of Artistic Director. De Basil as steadfastly refused, and insisted on retaining the powers of artistic direction for himself.

There was, as is always the case in Russian Ballet, a good deal of side-taking. Granted that, for his purposes, de Basil’s insistence on keeping all controls over his company in his own hands, had a point. But let us also regard the issue from the point of view of ability and knowledge, the prime qualifications for the post. From the portrait I have given, the reader will gather the extent of the “Colonel’s” qualifications. This would seem to be the time and place for a sketch of Leonide Massine, as I know him.

* * *

One day there must be a book written about Massine. Not that there is not already a considerable literature dealing with him; but there is yet to appear a work that has done him anything like justice. For me to attempt more than a line drawing would be presumptuous and manifestly unjust; but a sketch is demanded.

Leonide Massine was born in Moscow in 1894. He graduated from the Moscow Imperial School in 1912. It was a year later that Diaghileff, visiting Moscow, was taken by Poliakov, the famous Moscow dramatic critic, to see a play at the Ostrovsky Theatre. It happened that Massine was appearing in the play in the role of a servant. There is no record as to what Diaghileff thought of the play or the performance. The one fact that emerges from this chance evening Diaghileff spent at a theatre is that he was impressed by the manner in which the unknown boy, Massine, carried a tray. Diaghileff asked Poliakov to take him back-stage and introduce him to the talented young mime.

Artistically, Diaghileff was in the process of moving onward from the exclusively Russian tradition that was represented by Benois, Bakst, Stravinsky, and Fokine. He was moving towards a greater internationalism, a broader cosmopolitanism. He was in need of a creative personality who would carry forward this wider concept. Diaghileff’s intuition told him this seventeen-year-old boy with the enormous brown eyes was the person. Diaghileff took Massine from Moscow into his company and fashioned him into a present-day Pygmalion. Diaghileff took over the boy’s artistic education. As part of a deliberate plan, Diaghileff pushed a willing pupil into close contact with the world of modern painting and music, with the finest minds of the period. Picasso, Larionov, Stravinsky, and de Falla became his mentors; libraries, museums, concert halls, his classrooms. The result was a great cosmopolitan choreographer, perhaps the greatest living today.

An American citizen, he will always have strong Russian roots. Some of his best works are Russian ballets; but he is no slavish nationalist. He is as much at home in the cultures of Italy, Scotland, or Spain. His was a precocious genius, discovered by Diaghileff’s intuition. Massine began at the top, and has remained there.

Massine is difficult to know, for he is shy, and he has a great wall of natural reserve that takes a long time to penetrate. Once penetrated, it is possible to experience one of life’s greater satisfactions in the conversation, the intelligence, the knowledge of the mature Massine. Massine’s poise and sense of order never leave him. There is a meticulousness about him and a neatness that indicate the possession of an orderly mind. Everything he reads which he feels may be of even the slightest value to him at some future time, he preserves in large clipping-books. About him is a calm that is exceptional in a Russian—a calm that is exceptional in any one associated with the dance, where the habit is to shout as loudly as possible at the slightest provocation, or no provocation at all, and to become violently excited and agitated over the most unimportant things. There is about him none of the superficial “temperament” too often assumed to be the prerogative of artists. He has a sharp sense of humor; but it is a sense of humor that is keen and dry. His wit can be sharp and extremely cutting. He has not always been loved by his associates; but very few of them have ever really known him.

Filled with fire, energy, enthusiasm, his constant desire is to build something better.

As a dancer, he still dances, as no one else, the Miller in The Three-Cornered Hat and the Can Can Dancer in La Boutique Fantasque. Personally, I prefer only Massine in the roles he has created for himself. No other dancer can approach him in these.

I have mentioned his long sojourn at the Roxy Theatre, in New York. Under the conditions imposed—a new work to be staged weekly, to dance four times a day—masterpieces were obviously impossible; but the work he did was of vast importance in building a dance public in New York.

There are those today who chide Massine for his all too frequent re-creations of his old pieces, and lay it to Massine’s obsession with money. It is true, Massine does have a concern for money. But, after all, he has a wife, two growing children, and other responsibilities. However, I do not believe finance is the sole reason, and I, for one, wish he would not be eternally reproducing his old works. Le Beau Danube will live forever as one of the finest genre works of all time. But it must be properly done. I remember, to my sorrow, seeing a recent production of the Danube Massine staged in Paris, with Roland Petit—with a company of only fourteen dancers. Further comment is not required.

I have a deep and abiding affection for Leonide Massine as a person—an affection that is very deep and real. As an artist, I believe he is still the greatest individual personality in ballet today—a choreographer of deep knowledge, imagination, and ability.

The composer of some sixty-odd ballets, it is the most imposing record in modern ballet’s history, perfectly amazing productivity. No one but himself is capable of restoring them. When produced or restaged without his fine hand, they are a shambles.