DURING the very late ’thirties, Mikhail Mordkin had had a ballet company, giving sporadic performances on Sunday nights, occasionally on week-day evenings, and, now and then, some out-of-town performances. It was a small company, largely made up of Mordkin’s pupils, of which one, Lucia Chase, was prima ballerina. Miss Chase was seen in, among other parts, the title role of Giselle, in which she was later replaced by Patricia Bowman.
This little company is credited with having given the first performance on this continent of the full-length Tchaikowsky Sleeping Beauty. In order that the record may be quite clear on this point, the production was not that of the Petipa masterpiece, but rather Mordkin’s own version. It was presented at Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1937. Waterbury is the home town of Lucia Chase. Lucia Chase was the Princess Aurora of the production. So far as the records reveal, there was a single performance.
The season of 1938-1939 was the Mordkin company’s last. It was, as a company, foredoomed to failure from the very start, in my opinion. Its repertoire was meagre, unbalanced; it had no dancers who were known; it lacked someone of ballerina stature.
Towards the end of the company’s existence, Mordkin had an associate, Richard Pleasant, whose interest in ballet had, in earlier days, caused him to act as a supernumerary in de Basil company productions, and who had an idea: an idea that has lurked in the minds of a number of young men I know, to wit: to form a ballet company. It is one thing to want to form a ballet company, another to do it. In addition to having the idea, one must have money—and a great deal of it.
In this case, idea and money came together simultaneously, for the Mordkin school and company had Lucia Chase, with ambitions and interest as well. Lucia Chase had money—a great deal of it—and she wanted to dance. She had substantially financed the Mordkin company. Pleasant went ahead with his plan for a grandiose organization—with his ideas and Chase’s money. The Mordkin company was closed up; and a new company, on a magnificent scale, calling itself Ballet Theatre, was formed.
The Mordkin venture had been too small, too limited in its scope, too reactionary in thought, so Mordkin himself was pushed into the background, soon to be ousted altogether, and the tremendous undertaking went forward on a scale the like of which this country had never seen. In a Utopia such a pretentious scheme would have a permanent place in the cultural pattern, for the company’s avowed policy, at the outset, was to act as a repository for genuine masterpieces of all periods and styles of the dance; it would be to the dance what a great museum is to the arts of sculpture and painting. The classical, the romantic, the modern, all would find a home in the new organization. The company was to be so organized that it could compete with the world’s best. It should be large. It should have ample backing.
The company’s debut at the Center Theatre, in New York’s Rockefeller Center, on 11th January, 1940, was preceded by a ballyhoo of circus proportions. The rehearsal period preceding this date was long and arduous. The company’s slogans included one announcing that the works were “staged by the greatest collaboration in ballet history.” It was a “super” organization—imposing, diverse and diffuse. But it was a big idea, albeit an impractical one. Its impracticability, however, did not lessen the impact of its initial impression. More than thirteen years have elapsed since Ballet Theatre made its bow, and one can hardly regard its initial roster of contributors even now without an astonished blink of the eyes. There were twenty principal dancers, fifteen soloists, a corps de ballet of fifty-six. In addition, there was a Negro group numbering fourteen. There was an additional Spanish group of nineteen. The choreographers numbered eleven; an equal number of scene and costume designers; three orchestra conductors. Eighteen composers, living and dead, contributed to the initial repertoire of as many works.
Although the founders were American, as was the backing, there was no slavish chauvinism in its repertoire, which was cosmopolitan and catholic. Only two of its eleven choreographers were natives: Eugene Loring and Agnes de Mille. The company was international. Three of the choreographers were English: Anton Dolin, Andrée Howard, and Antony Tudor. Four were Russian: Michel Fokine, Adolph Bolm, Mikhail Mordkin, Bronislava Nijinska.
Only five of the eighteen works that made up the repertoire of the introductory season of Ballet Theatre remain in existence: Giselle, originally staged, after the traditional production, by Anton Dolin, who had joined the venture after an Australian stint with de Basil’s Original Ballet Russe; Swan Lake, in the one-act version, also staged by Dolin; Fokine’s masterpiece, Les Sylphides; the oldest ballet extant, La Fille Mal Gardée, staged by Bronislava Nijinska; and Adolph Bolm’s production of the children’s fairy tale, Peter and the Wolf, to the popular Prokofieff orchestral work, with narrator.
It was significant to me that the outstanding successes of that first season were the classics. First, there was Les Sylphides, restored by the master himself. This, coupled with Dolin’s Swan Lake, and Giselle, constituted the backbone of the standard repertoire.
The first four weeks’ season was, perhaps, as expensive a balletic venture as New York has known, with the possible exception of the Ballet International of the Marquis de Cuevas, some four years later.
Following Ballet Theatre’s introductory burst of activity, there was a hiatus, during which the company gave sporadic performances in Philadelphia, some appearances at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, and appeared in Chicago in conjunction with the Chicago Opera Company.
Before Ballet Theatre embarked on its second season, trouble was cooking. There were indications Lucia Chase and Pleasant were not seeing exactly eye to eye. The second New York season was announced to open at the Majestic Theatre, on 11th February, 1941. Now the Majestic Theatre is a far cry from the wide open spaces of the Center Theatre. It is the house where I had given a brief and costly season with de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the early days, on a stage so small that no justice can be done to dance or dancers, and where the capacity does not admit of meeting expenses even when sold out.
Pleasant’s newest idea, announced before the season opened, was to present a “company.” There were to be no distinctions or classifications of dancers. One of the time-honored institutions of ballet was also abolished; there was no general stage director, or régisseur-general, as he is known in the French terminology of ballet. Instead, the company was divided, like all Gaul, into three parts, to be known as “Wings,” with Anton Dolin in charge of the “Classic Wing”; Antony Tudor, of the “English Wing”; Eugene Loring, of the “American Wing.” Five new works were added to the repertoire, of which only two remain: Eugene Loring’s Billy the Kid, to one of Aaron Copland’s finest scores, and Agnes de Mille’s Three Virgins and a Devil, to Ottorino Respighi’s Antiche Danze ed Arie. Dolin’s Pas de Quatre, produced at this time, has been replaced in the company’s repertoire by another version.
The differences between Pleasant and Chase came to a head, and the former was forced to resign at the end of the four weeks’ season, which resulted in more substantial losses.
It was at this time that I was approached on behalf of the organization by Charles Payne, seeking advice as to how to proceed. We lunched together in Rockefeller Plaza, and while I am unable to state that the final decision was wholly mine or that the terminal action was taken exclusively on my advice, I counselled Payne that, in my opinion, the only course for them to follow would be to close down the company completely, place everything they owned into storage, and start afresh after reorganization. Receipts at the box-office having fallen as low as $319 a performance, there was no other choice. In any event, my advice was followed.
Reorganization was under way. In an organization of this magnitude and complexity, reorganization was something that took a great deal of both thought and time. It was by no means a simple matter. While the reorganization was in its early, indecisive stages, with protracted debates going on within the circle as to whether it should continue in any form or fold its wings in the sleep everlasting, Anton Dolin came to me to ask me to take over the management of the venture.
This was not a thing to be regarded lightly. The situation in ballet in general, and with the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe in particular, being as I have described it, I was interested in and attracted by the potential value of the company, if the proper sort of reorganization could be effected. Their Chicago season had been a complete fiasco at the box-office. There is a legend to the effect that, in an effort to attract a few people into the Chicago Opera House, members of the company stood outside the building as the office-workers from the surrounding buildings wended their way homeward to the suburban trains, passing out free tickets. The legend also has it that they managed to get some of these free tickets into the hands of a local critic who was one of the crowd.
I do not wish to bore the reader with the details of all the debates that highlighted those days. Sufficient is it to say that they were crowded and that the nights were often sleepless.
Anton Dolin was responsible for having German (“Gerry”) Sevastianov, no longer associated with de Basil, appointed as managing director, in succession to the resigned Pleasant.
The negotiations commenced and were both long and involved between all parties concerned which included discussion with Lucia Chase and her attorney, Harry M. Zuckert. Matters were reaching a point where I felt a glimmer of light could be detected, when a honeymoon intervened, due to the marriage of Zuckert. Ballet waited for romance. Throughout the long drawn-out discussions and negotiations, Zuckert was always pleasant, cooperative, diplomatic, and evidenced a sincere desire to avoid any friction.
Among the first acts of Sevastianov, after taking over the directorship, was to engage his wife, Irina Baronova, as a leading ballerina, together with Antal Dorati, former musical director of the de Basil company, and today the musical director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, to direct and supervise the music of Ballet Theatre. Later, through the good offices of Anton Dolin, Alicia Markova, whose contract with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo had terminated, became one of the two ballerine of the company.
The negotiations dragged on during the summer. Meanwhile, with the company and its artists inactive, Markova and Dolin, on their own, leased Jacob’s Pillow, the Ted Shawn farm and summer theatre in the Berkshires, and gave a number of performances under the collective title of International Dance Festival. This was a quite independent venture, but Markova and Dolin peopled their season and school with the personnel of Ballet Theatre.
This summer in the Berkshires had a two-fold effect on the company: first, the members were thus able to work together as a unit; second, with three choreographers in residence, it was possible for them to lay out and develop the early groundwork of three works, subsequently to be added to the Ballet Theatre repertoire: Slavonika, by Vania Psota; Princess Aurora, by Anton Dolin; and Pillar of Fire, by Antony Tudor.
Two of these were major contributions; one was pretty hopeless. Dolin’s Princess Aurora was a reworking of the last act of Tchaikowsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, a sort of Aurora’s Wedding, with the addition of the Rose Adagio, giving the company another classic work that remains in the company’s repertoire today, with some “innovations.” Pillar of Fire, set to Arnold Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht, revealed a new type of dramatic ballet which, in many respects, may be said to be Tudor’s masterpiece. Slavonika was set by the Czech Psota to a number of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, and was an almost total loss, from every point of view. The original version, as first produced, ran fifty-five minutes. I thought it would never end. But, as the tour proceeded, it was cut, and cut again. The last time I saw it was when I visited the company in Toronto. Then it was blessedly cut down to six minutes. After that, no further reduction seemed possible, and it was sent to the limbo of the storehouse, never to be seen again.
The deal between Ballet Theatre and myself was closed during the time the company was working at Jacob’s Pillow, and I took over the company in November, 1941. It might be of interest to note some of the chief personnel of the company at that time. Among the women were: Alicia Markova, Irina Baronova, Lucia Chase, Karen Conrad, Rosella Hightower, Nora Kaye, Maria Karnilova, Jeanette Lauret, Annabelle Lyon, Sono Osato, Nina Popova, and Roszika Sabo; among the men were: Anton Dolin, Ian Gibson, Frank Hobi, John Kriza, Hugh Laing, Yurek Lasovsky, Nicolas Orloff, Richard Reed, Jerome Robbins, Dmitri Romanoff, Borislav Runanin, Donald Saddler, Simon Semenoff, George Skibine, and Antony Tudor, to list them alphabetically, for the most part. Later, Alicia Alonso returned to the organization. A considerable number had been brought as a strengthening measure by Sevastianov.
One of the company’s weaknesses was in its classical and romantic departments. While there were Fokine’s Les Sylphides and Carnaval, I felt more Fokine ballets were necessary to a balanced repertoire. Sevastianov engaged Fokine to re-stage Le Spectre de la Rose and Petroushka, and to create a new work for Anton Dolin and Irina Baronova. Fokine started work on Bluebeard, to an Offenbach score, arranged and orchestrated by Antal Dorati, with scenery and costumes by Marcel Vertes.
Meanwhile, I lived up to my contract with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and presented them, in the autumn of 1941, at the Metropolitan Opera House, and subsequently on tour.
In order to prepare the new works, Ballet Theatre went to Mexico City, returning to New York to open at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre, on 12th November, 1941. In addition to the existing Ballet Theatre repertoire, four works were added and had their first New York performances: Psota’s Slavonika, and Dolin’s re-creation of Princess Aurora, which I have mentioned, together with Le Spectre de la Rose, and Bronislava Nijinska’s The Beloved One. The last was a revival of a work originally done to a Schubert-Liszt score, arranged by Darius Milhaud, for the Markova-Dolin Ballet in London. In the New York production it had scenery and costumes by Nicolas de Molas. It was not a success.
The season was an uphill affair. Business was not good, but matters were improving slightly, when we reached that fatal Sunday, the seventh of December. Pearl Harbor night had less than $400 in receipts. The world was at war. The battle to establish a new ballet company was paltry by comparison. Nevertheless, our plans had been made; responsibilities had been undertaken; there were human obligations to the artists, who depended upon us for their livelihood; there were responsibilities to local managers, who had booked us. There was a responsibility to the public; for, in such times, I can conceive no reason why the cultural entertainment world should stand still. It is a duty, I believe, to see that it does not. In Russia, during the war, the work of the ballet was intensified; in Britain, the Sadler’s Wells organization carried on, giving performances throughout the country, in camps, in factories, in fit-ups, as an aid to the morale both civilian and military. There could be no question of our not going forward.
Leaving New York, we played Boston, Philadelphia, a group of Canadian cities, Chicago. With such a cast and repertoire, it was reasonable to expect there would be large audiences. The expectation was not fulfilled. The stumbling-block was the title: Ballet Theatre. The use of the two terms—“ballet” and “theatre”—as a means of identifying the combination of the balletic and theatrical elements involved in the organization, is quite understandable, in theory. As a practical name for an individual ballet company, it is utterly confusing and frustrating. I am not usually given to harboring thoughts of assassination, but I could murder the person who invented that title and used it as the name for a ballet company. Ballet in America does not exist exclusively on the support of the initiated ballet enthusiast, the “balletomane”—to use a term common in ballet circles to describe the ballet “fan.” The word “balletomane” itself is of Russian origin, a coined word for which there is no literal translation. Ballet, in order to exist, must draw its chief support from the mass of theatregoers, from the general amusement-loving public, those who like to go to a “show.” The casual theatregoer, when confronted with posters and a marquee sign reading “Ballet Theatre,” finds himself confused, more likely than not believing it to be the name of the theatre building itself. My own experience and a careful survey has demonstrated this conclusively.
My losses in these days of Ballet Theatre were prodigious. Both Chase and Sevastianov were aware of them. Other managements, in view of such losses, might well have dropped the entire venture. In view of the heavy deficits I was incurring and bearing single-handed, I felt some assistance should be given.
An understanding was reached whereby I agreed to reduce the number of new productions to be furnished for the next season, in order that their expenses might be minimized. In consideration of this a certain amount was refunded. At that moment it was a help; but not a sufficient help to reduce my losses to less than $60,000. As a matter of fact, the agreement was beneficial to both sides. In my case, it temporarily eased the burden of meeting a heavy weekly payroll at a time when there were practically no receipts; as for Ballet Theatre, it substantially reduced their investment in new productions.
The continuing war presented additional problems. Personnel changes were frequent on the male side of the company owing to the war-time draft. There was an increasing demand for ballet; but a new uninformed, uninitiated public was not in the market for ballet companies, but for ballets—works about which they had somehow heard. I had two companies, Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and I presented them, one after the other, at the Metropolitan Opera House. In my opinion, many of the problems could have been solved by a merger of the two groups, had such a thing been possible, thus preserving, I believe, the best properties and qualities of each of them.
During the spring of 1942, two new works were presented: Tudor’s Pillar of Fire, on which he had been working for a long time, and Fokine’s Russian Soldier. The latter was done at a time when we were all thrilled by the tremendous effort the Russians were making in their battles, their heroic battles, against the Nazi invader. In discussing the idea with Fokine, himself Russian to the core, we emphasized the symbolic intent of the tragedy, that of the simple Russian peasant who sacrifices his life for his homeland. Although we of course did not realize it at the time, this was to be the last work Fokine was to complete in his long list of balletic creations. Russian Soldier had some of the best settings and costumes ever designed by the Russian painter, Mstislav Doboujinsky. For music, Fokine utilized the orchestral suite devised by Serge Prokofieff from his score for the satirical film, Lieutenant Kije, which was extremely effective as music, but with which I was never entirely happy, since Prokofieff, the musical satirist, had packed it with his own very personal brand of satire for the satiric film for which the music was originally composed. At the same time, I doubt that any substantial portion of the audience knew the source of the music and detected the satire; the great majority found the work a moving experience.
Aside from being perhaps Tudor’s most important contribution to ballet, Pillar of Fire—with its settings and costumes by Jo Mielziner, his first contribution as a noted American designer to the ballet stage—served to raise Nora Kaye from the rank and file of the original company to an important position as a new type of dramatic ballerina.
Leonide Massine, parting with the company he had built, joined Ballet Theatre as dancer and choreographer before the company’s departure for a second summer season at the Palacio des Bellas Artes in Mexico City, as guests of the Mexican Government.
In addition to performances there, the company used the Mexican period as one of creation and rehearsal. Massine was in the midst of a creative frenzy, working on two new ballets. One was Don Domingo, which had some stunning scenery and costumes by the Mexican artist, Julio Castellanos; an intriguing score by Sylvestre Revueltas; a Mexican subject by Alfonso Reyes; Don Domingo was prompted by the sincere desire to pay a tribute to the country south of the border which had played host to the company. That was Massine’s intention. Unfortunately, the work did not jell, and was soon dropped from the repertoire.
The other work was Aleko, which takes rank with some of the best of Massine’s creations. It was a subject close to his heart and to mine, the poetic Pushkin tale of the lad from the city and his tragic love for the daughter of a gypsy chieftain, a love that brings him to two murders and a banishment. As a musical base, Massine took the Trio for piano, violin, and violoncello which Tchaikowsky dedicated “to the memory of a great artist,” Nicholas Rubinstein, in an orchestration by Erno Rapee. The whole thing was a fine piece of collaboration between Massine and the surrealist painter, Marc Chagall; and the work was deeply moving, finely etched, with a strong feeling for character.
I have particularly happy memories of watching Chagall and his late wife working in happy collaboration on the Aleko production in Mexico City. While he busied himself with the scenery, she occupied herself with the costumes. The result of this fine collaboration on the part of all the artists concerned resulted in a great Russian work.
The Ballet Theatre management was, to put it mildly, not in favour of Aleko. It was a production on which I may be said to have insisted. Fortunately, I was proved correct. Although it was dropped from the repertoire not long after Ballet Theatre and I came to a parting of the ways, it has now, ten years after its production, been crowned with success in London. Presented at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, by Ballet Theatre, in the summer of 1953, it has proved to be the outstanding hit of their London season, both with press and public. I cannot remember the unemotional and objective Times (London) waxing more enthusiastic over a balletic work.
During the Mexican hegira the company re-staged the Eugene Loring-Aaron Copland Billy the Kid, still one of the finest American ballets, although originally created in 1938. Certainly it is one of Copland’s most successful theatre scores. Simon Semenoff also brought forth a condensed and truncated version of Delibes’s Coppélia, as a vehicle for Irina Baronova, with settings and costumes by Robert Montenegro. It was not a success. It was a case of tampering with a classic; and I hold firmly to the opinion that classics should not be subjected to tampering or maltreatment. There is a special hades reserved for those choreographers who have the temerity to draw mustaches on portraits of lovely ladies.
Yet another Mexican creation that failed to meet the test of the stage was Romantic Age, a ballet by Anton Dolin, to assorted music by Vincenzo Bellini, in a setting and with costumes by Carlos Merida. An attempt to capture some of the balletic atmosphere of the “romantic age” in ballet, it was freely adapted from the idea of Aglae, or The Pupil of Love, a work by Philippe Taglioni, dating back to 1841, originally a vehicle of Marie Taglioni.
Michel Fokine and his wife Vera were also with the company in Mexico City, re-staging his masterpiece, Petroushka, and commencing a new work, Helen of Troy, based on the Offenbach opéra bouffe, La Belle Hélene. Unfortunately, Fokine was stricken with pleurisy and returned to New York, only to die from pneumonia shortly after.
Helen of Troy, however, promised well and a substantial investment had already been made in it. David Lichine was called in and worked with Antal Dorati on the book, as Dorati worked on the Offenbach music, with Lichine staging the work on tour after the Metropolitan Opera House season in New York. Still later, when Vera Zorina appeared with the company, George Balanchine restaged it for his wife. The final result was presumably a long way from Fokine, but a version of it still remains in the Ballet Theatre repertoire today.
André Eglevsky joined the company during this season. Later on, Irina Baronova, under doctor’s orders, left. Because there was no sound artistic direction and no firm discipline in the company, I urged Sevastianov to engage an experienced and able ballet-master and régisseur-general in the person of Adolph Bolm, to be responsible for the general stage direction, deportment, and the exercise of an artistic discipline over the company’s dancers, particularly the dissident elements in it, which made working with them exceedingly difficult at times. Sevastianov discussed the matter with Miss Chase, who agreed. Before accepting, Bolm telephoned me from California seeking my advice and I could but urge him to accept because I felt this would go a long way toward stabilizing the company artistically.
It was at the close of the autumn season of 1942, at the Metropolitan Opera House, that I bade good-bye to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Universal Art. There was a brief ceremony back-stage at the end of the last performance. Denham and I both made farewell speeches. It is always a sad moment for me to leave a company for whose success I have given so much of my time, my energy, and money. I felt this sadness keenly as I took leave of the nice kids.
The subsequent Ballet Theatre tour developed recurring headaches. They were cumulative, piling up into one big headache, and it will be less trying both to the reader and to myself to recount it later in one place, at one time.
With the spring of 1943, back we came to the Metropolitan for our spring season. There was a managerial change. German Sevastianov went off to war as a member of the United States Army, and J. Alden Talbot became managing director in his stead. This began the period of the wisest direction Ballet Theatre has known. Janet Reed joined the company as a soloist, and Vera Zorina appeared as guest artist in Helen of Troy, and in a revival of George Balanchine’s Errante. This was a work set to the music of Schubert-Liszt, originally done for Tilly Losch for Les Ballets 1933, in London, when Balanchine left de Basil, and one which the American Ballet revived at the Adelphi Theatre, in New York, two years later, with Tamara Geva. Balanchine also revived Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète, with André Eglevsky, Zorina, Nora Kaye, and Rosella Hightower, to one of Stravinsky’s most moving scores.
The other work was history-making. It was Antony Tudor’s Romeo and Juliet. It was a work of great seriousness and fine theatrical invention. On the opening night Tudor had not finished the ballet, although he had been at it for months. It was too late to postpone the première, so, after a good deal of persuading, it was agreed to present it in its unfinished state. The curtain on the first performance fell some twelve minutes before the end. I have told this tale in detail in Impresario. The matter is historic. There is no point in laboring it. Tudor is an outstanding creator in the field of modern ballet. Romeo and Juliet is a monument to his creative gifts. The pity is that it no longer can be given by Ballet Theatre, no longer seen by the public, with its sharp characterization, its inviolate sense of period, the tenseness of its drama sustained in the medium of the dance.
Tudor’s original idea with Romeo and Juliet was to utilize the Serge Prokofieff score for the successful Soviet ballet of the same title. However, he found the Prokofieff score was unsuitable for his choreographic ideas. He eventually decided on various works by the English composer, Frederick Delius. Because of the war, it was found impossible to secure this musical material from England. Consequently, Antal Dorati, the musical director, orchestrated the entire work from listening to gramophone recordings of the Delius pieces. How good a job it was is testified by Sir Thomas Beecham, the long-time friend of Delius and the redoubtable champion of the composer’s music. I engaged Sir Thomas to conduct a number of performances of Romeo and Juliet at the Metropolitan Opera House, and he was amazed by the orchestration, commenting, “Astounding! Perfectly astounding! It is precisely as written by my late friend.”
The list of Beechamiana is long; but here is one more item which I believe has the virtue of freshness. I should like to record an incident of Sir Thomas’s first orchestral rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet. As I recall it, this rehearsal had to be sandwiched in between a broadcast concert rehearsal Sir Thomas had to make and the actual orchestral broadcast to which he was committed. There was no time to spare. Our orchestra was awaiting him at their places in the Metropolitan pit. The rehearsal was concise, to the point, with few stoppings or corrections on Sir Thomas’s part. At the conclusion, Sir Thomas looked the men over with a pontifical eye. Then he addressed them as follows: “Ladies and gentlemen. I happen to be one of those who believes music speaks its own language, and that words about it are usually a waste of time and effort. However, a word or two at this juncture may not be amiss.... I happened to know the late composer, Mr. Delius, intimately. I am also intimately acquainted with his music. I have only one suggestion, gentlemen. Tonight, when we play this music for this alleged ballet, if you will be so good as to confine yourselves to the notes as written by my late friend, Mr. Delius, and not improvise as you have done this afternoon, I assure you the results will be much more satisfactory.... Thank you very much.” And off he went.
That night the orchestra played like angels. The ballet was in its second season when I invited Sir Thomas to take over the performances. It was a joy to have him in command of the forces. Too little attention is accorded the quality of the orchestra and the conductor in ballet. Quite apart from the musical excellence itself, few people realize of what tremendous value a good conductor and a good orchestra can be to ballet as a whole. Romeo and Juliet never had such stage performances as those when Sir Thomas was in charge. And this is not said in disparagement of other conductors. Not only was the Beecham orchestral tone beautifully transparent, but Sir Thomas blended stage action and music so completely that the results were absolutely unique. The company responded nobly to the inspiration. It was during this season, endeavoring to utilize every legitimate means to stimulate interest on the part of the public that, in addition to Sir Thomas and various guest dancing stars, I also brought Igor Stravinsky from California to conduct his own works during the Metropolitan Opera House engagement.
For the sake of the record, let me briefly cite the chronological tabulation of Ballet Theatre through the period of my management. In the autumn of 1943, at the Metropolitan Opera House, there were three new productions, one each by Massine, Tudor, and David Lichine: Mademoiselle Angot, Dim Lustre, and Fair at Sorotchinsk.
Massine took the famous operetta by Charles Lecocq, La Fille de Mme. Angot, and in a series of striking sets by Mstislav Doboujinsky, turned it into a ballet, which, for some reason, failed to strike fire. It is interesting to note that when, some years later, Massine produced the work for Sadler’s Wells at Covent Garden, it was a considerable success. Tudor’s Dim Lustre, despite the presence of Nora Kaye, Rosella Hightower, Hugh Laing, and Tudor himself in the cast, was definitely second-rate Tudor. Called by its creator a “psychological episode,” this sophisticated Edwardian story made use of Richard Strauss’s Burleske, an early piano concerto of the composer’s, with a set and costumes by the Motley sisters. Lichine’s Fair at Sorotchinsk was a ballet on a Ukrainian folk tale straight out of Gogol, with Moussorgsky music, including a witches’ sabbath to the Night on a Bald Mountain, with settings and costumes by Nicolas Remisoff. It was an addition to the repertoire, if only for the performance of Dolin as Red Coat, the Devil of the Ukraine, who danced typically Russian Cossack toe-steps and made toe-pirouettes. Had the Cossack “Colonel” de Basil seen this, he would, I am sure, have envied Dolin for once in his life. While Fair at Sorotchinsk did not have a unanimously favorable reception at the hands of the press, it was generally liked by the public, as evidenced by the response at the box-office.
After the 1943-1944 tour, two more works were added during the spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, two sharply contrasted works by American choreographers: Jerome Robbins and Agnes de Mille. Robbins’s Fancy Free was a smash hit, a remarkable comedy piece of American character in a peculiarly native idiom. As a result of this work, Robbins leapt into fame exactly as Agnes de Mille had done a couple of years before as the result of her delightful Rodeo. Fancy Free was a collaborative work between Robbins and the brilliant young composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein, whose score was as much of a hit as was the ballet itself. Bernstein’s conducting of the orchestra was also a telling factor, for his dynamism and buoyancy was transmitted to the dancers.
Agnes de Mille’s work, Tally-Ho, was in a much different mood from her Rodeo. From present-day America, she leapt backwards to the France of Louis XVI, for a period farce-comedy, set to Gluck melodies, re-orchestrated by Paul Nordoff. The settings and costumes, in the style of Watteau, were by the Motleys, who had decorated her earlier Three Virgins and a Devil. Combining old world elegance with bawdy humor, Tally-Ho had both charm and fun, and although the company worked its hardest and at its very best for Agnes, and although she put her very soul into it, it was not the success that had been hoped.
Only one première marked the autumn season at the Metropolitan. It was one done by Balanchine, called Waltz Academy, the first work he had created for Ballet Theatre, in contrast to numerous revivals I have mentioned. It was not a very good ballet, static in effect, although classical in style. Its setting was a reproduction of the ballet room at the Paris Opera, by Oliver Smith. The music was a dry orchestration of dance melodies, largely waltzes, by Vittorio Rieti, who composed a pair of latter-day Diaghileff works. A ballet that could have been entertaining and lively, just missed being either.
The lack of new works and the necessity to stimulate public interest made it necessary to add guest stars, particularly since Markova and Dolin had left the company to appear in Billy Rose’s revue, The Seven Lively Arts. Consequently, Tamara Toumanova, Tatiana Riabouchinska, David Lichine, and André Eglevsky made guest appearances.
The subsequent tour compounded internal complications until the only ameliorating feature of my association was the wise and understanding cooperation of J. Alden Talbot, who was, I knew, on the verge of resigning his post, for reasons not entirely different from my own in considering writing a book to be called To Hell with Ballet!
On tour, during 1944-1945, Tudor rehearsed the only new work to be offered during the 1945 spring season at the Metropolitan. It was Undertow, the story of an adolescent’s neurosis, suggested to Tudor by the well-known playwright, John van Druten. It was packed with symbols, Freudian and otherwise; and my own reaction to its murky tale dealing with an Oedipus complex, a bloody bitch, a lecherous old man’s affair with a whore, a mad wedding, a group of drunken charwomen, a rape of a nasty little girl by four naughty little boys, and a shocking murder, was one of revulsion. The score was specially commissioned from the present head of the Juilliard School, the American William Schuman. The settings and costumes, as depressing as the work itself, were by the Chicago painter, Raymond Breinin.
The rigors of war-time ballet travel were considerable, a constant battle to arrive on time, to be able to leave in time to arrive in time at the next city. Each day presented a new problem. But it had its comic side as well. We had played the Pacific Northwest and, after an engagement in Portland, there followed the most important engagement of the west thus far, that at the War Memorial Opera House, in San Francisco.
There was immense difficulty in getting the company and its properties out of Portland at all. It should be remembered, and there is no harm pointing out that the entire railway transportation system of our country from Portland, Oregon, in the far Northwest, to New Orleans, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, is in the hands of a single railway, thousands of miles of it single-track line, with no competition, and thus a law unto itself. For a long time, during this particular tour, this railway insisted, because of military commitments, it could not handle the company and its baggage cars from Portland to San Francisco in time for the first performance there.
The reader should know that there are no reduced fares or concessions for theatrical or ballet companies. First-class fares are paid, and full rates for Pullmans and food. My representative, with a broad experience in these matters, continued to battle, and it was eventually arranged that the company would be attached in “tourist” coaches to a troop train bound for the south, but with no dining facilities for civilians and no provision for food or drink. At least, it would get them to San Francisco in time for the opening performance.
So, the rickety tourist cars were attached to the troop train and the journey commenced. The artists were carefully warned by my representative that this was a troop train, that no food would be available, and that each member of the company should provide himself enough food and beverage for the journey.
At daybreak of the next morning, cold and dismal, the train stopped at a junction point in the Cascades to add a locomotive for the long haul over the “divide.” Opposite the station was a “diner.” Twelve members of the company, including four principal artists, in nightclothes—pyjamas, nightgowns, kimonos, bed-slippers, with lightweight coats wrapped round them—insisted on getting down from the train and crossing to the little “diner” for “breakfast.”
Our company manager warned them not to leave the train; told them that there would be no warning, no signal, since this was not a passenger train but a troop train, and that they risked missing the train altogether. He begged, pleaded, ordered—to no avail. Off they went in the cold of the dawn, in the scantiest of nightclothes.
Silently and without warning, as the manager had foretold, the train pulled out, leaving a dozen, including four leading artists, behind in an Oregon tank town without clothes or tickets.
By dint of a dozen telephone calls and as many telegrams, the nightgown-clad D.P.’s were picked up by a later train. After fourteen hours in day coaches, crowded with regular passengers, they arrived at the San Francisco Ferry, still in their nightclothes, thirty minutes before curtain time; they were whisked in taxis to the War Memorial Opera House. The curtain rose on time. The evening was saved.
It had its amusing side. It was one of the many hardships of wartime touring, merely one of the continuous headaches, although a shade on the unusual side. It was also yet another example of the utter lack of discipline and consideration in the company, and of the stubborn refusal of some of its members to cooperate in the cause of a fine art.
Another of the many incidents having to do with the difficulties of war-time touring was one in Augusta, Georgia, where no hotel or other housing accommodations could be found, due to the war-time overcrowding.
Most of the company slept, as best they could, in the railway station or in the public park. It is recorded that Alicia Markova spent the night sleeping on the sidewalk in the entrance-way to a grocer’s shop, wrapped in newspapers and a cloak by the company manager, while that guardian angel spent the night sitting on the edge of an adjoining vegetable-stand, watching over her, smoking an endless chain of cigarettes.
This attitude was but an indication of the good sportsmanship the youngsters evidenced on more than one occasion, proving that, au fond, they were, on the whole, good “troupers.”
While I had been prepared for the departure from the company of J. Alden Talbot, I was saddened, nevertheless, when he left. Lucia Chase and the scene designer, Oliver Smith, became joint managing directors, with the result that there was precious little management and even less direction. We played a summer season in California, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, in conjunction with the City’s Art Commission, and at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. In Hollywood we rehearsed some of the new works to be given in New York in the autumn. They were five in number, and unequal both in quality and appeal. Only one was a real success. The five works were by an equal number of choreographers: Simon Semenoff, Michael Kidd, John Taras, Jerome Robbins, and Adolph Bolm.
Semenoff’s work, Gift of the Magi, was an attempt to make a ballet out of O. Henry’s little short story of the same title, a touching tale of the pathos of a young married couple with taste and no money. For the ballet, young Lukas Foss wrote a workmanlike score, and Raoul Péne du Bois supplied a great deal of scenery, difficult to manipulate. Nora Kaye and John Kriza, as the young lovers, gave it a sweetness of characterization. But, despite scenery, costumes, properties, and sweet characterization, there was no real choreography, and the work soon left the repertoire.
Michael Kidd’s first choreographic attempt for Ballet Theatre, and his first full-scale work as a matter of fact, was a theatre piece. A musical comedy type of work, it never seemed really to belong in a ballet repertoire. Kidd called it On Stage! For it Norman dello Joio provided a workable and efficient score, and Oliver Smith designed a back-stage scene that looked like back-stage. The costumes were designed by Alvin Colt.
Another first choreographic effort was young John Taras’s Graziana, for which I paid the costs. Here was no attempt to ape the Broadway musical comedy theatre. It was a straightforward, fresh, classical piece. Taras had set the work to a Violin Concerto by Mozart. He used a concise group of dancers, seventeen all told, four of whom were soloists. There was no story, simply dancing with no excuses, no apologies, no straining for “novelty,” tricks, stunts, or gags. It was, in effect, ballet, and the public liked it. Just what the title meant I never knew. My guess is that Taras had to call it something, and Graziana was better than Number One.
The Robbins work came directly from Broadway, or the Avenue of the Americas, to be precise. It was called Interplay, and had originally been done for a variety show at the Ziegfeld Theatre. It was Robbins’s second work. It was merely a piece of athletic fun. It was a genuine hit. For music it had Morton Gould’s Interplay Between Piano and Orchestra, which he had originally written for a commercial radio programme as a brief concert piece for José Iturbi, with orchestra. The “interplay” in the dance was that between classical dance and “jive.” Actually what emerged was a group of kids having a lot of fun. For once, in a long while, I could relax and smile when I saw it, for this was a period when I had little time for relaxation and even less cause to smile.
The production of Stravinsky’s Firebird is something with which I shall deal separately. There was still another season to tour and a spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, in 1946. In outlining the productions and chronology of Ballet Theatre during this period, I have tried to be as objective as possible so that the organization’s public history may be a matter of record. Its private history, in so far as my relations are concerned, is quite another matter.
The troubles, the differences, the discussions, the intrigues of de Basil and his group, of Universal Art were, for the most part, all of a piece. I cannot say I ever got used to them, but I was prepared for them. I knew pretty much the pattern they would follow, pretty much what to expect. Being forewarned, I was forearmed. With Ballet Theatre I had expected something different. Here I was not dealing with the involutions and convolutions of the Cossack and the Slavic mind. Here, I felt, would be an American approach. If, as a long-time American, I felt I knew anything about the American people, one of their most distinctive and noteworthy characteristics was their honesty of approach, their straightforwardness, directness, frankness. Alas, I was filled with disillusionment on this point. Ballet Theatre, in its approach to any problem where I was concerned, had a style very much its own: full of queer tricks, evasions, omissions, and unexpected twists of mind and character, as each day disclosed them.
There were two chief bones of contention. One was the billing. I have pointed out the lack of public interest in Ballet Theatre when I took it over and how the very title worked to its disadvantage. If ballet is to remain a great, universal entertainment in this country, and is, by the purchase of tickets at the box-office, to help pay its own way, at least in part, we must have a great mass audience as well as “devotees.”
The other bone of contention, and the one which eventually caused the rupture of our association, was the matter of guest artists. The opposition to guest artists was maintained on an almost hysterical level. There were, as in every discussion, two sides to the question. Reasonably stated, Lucia Chase’s argument could have been that Ballet Theatre was an organic whole; that it was an instrument with the sensitivity of a symphony orchestra, and “stars” damaged such a conception. As a matter of fact, it was her basic argument. The argument, plausible enough on the surface, does not, however, stand up under examination, for the comparison with a symphony orchestra does not hold.
Lacking the foresight and wisdom to keep the members of her company under contract, each season there were presented to Miss Chase a flock of new faces, new talents, unfamiliar with the repertoire, trained in a variety of schools with a corresponding variety of styles; it took them months to become a fully functioning and completely integrated part of Miss Chase’s “organic whole.” Great symphony orchestras hold their players together jealously year after year. Great symphony orchestras manage to reduce their colossal deficits to some extent by the engagement of distinguished soloists to appear with their “organic wholes.” Such is the present state of musical appreciation in this country that it is an open secret that in many cities the way to sell out, or nearly sell out the house, is to engage soloists with box-office appeal. I do not here refer to such great symphonic bodies as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, but I do refer to those symphonic bodies in those many cities that are something less than metropolitan centers. Nor do I mean to suggest that this situation is one to be commended or applauded, or that it represents the ultimate desired raison d’être for the existence of a symphony orchestra. But I do suggest it is the only system feasible in the perilous situation today in which our symphonic bodies are compelled to operate.
The analogy between ballet and symphony in this view is not apposite. Again there was no attempt on Miss Chase’s part to understand the situation; there was merely stubborn, unrelenting opposition after recrimination. It should be recorded that J. Alden Talbot during his tenure as general manager of Ballet Theatre fully realized and understood the situation and shared my feelings. I remember one day in Montreal when I had a conference with Lucia Chase to go over the entire matter of guest artists. I listened patiently to her mounting hysteria. I pointed out that, as the company became better known throughout the country, as the quality of public ballet appreciation improved, the company of youngsters might be able to stand on their own pointes; but that, since the company and its personnel were as yet unknown, it would require infinite time, patience, and money to build them up in the consciousness of the public; and that, meanwhile, at this point in the company’s existence, the guest stars gave a much needed fillip to the organization, and that, to put it bluntly, they were a great relief to some of the public, at any rate; for the great public has always liked guest stars and some local managements have insisted on them; of that the box-office had the proof. It was my contention that the guest star principle had been responsible for American interest in ballet. I hope the reader will pardon me if I link that system, coupled with my own love, enthusiasm, and faith in ballet, with the popularity that ballet has in this country today. There is such a thing as an unbecoming modesty, and I dislike wearing anything that is unbecoming.
TAMARA TOUMANOVA
It was during the 1945-1946 season, for example, that I engaged Tamara Toumanova as a guest artist. In addition to appearing in Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, and various classical pas de deux, I had Bronislava Nijinska stage a short work she called Harvest Time, to the music of Henri Wieniawski, orchestrated by Antal Dorati, in which Toumanova appeared with John Kriza, supported by a small corps de ballet. The association, I fear, was not too happy for any of us, including the “Black Pearl.” There was a resentment towards her on the part of some of the artists, and Toumanova, over-anxious to please, almost literally danced her head off; but the atmosphere was not conducive to her best work.
Having watched Toumanova from childhood, knowing her as I do, it is not easy, nor is it a simple matter for me to draw an objective portrait of her, as she is today. One thing I shall not do, and that is to go very deeply into biographical background. That she was born in a box-car in Siberia, while her parents were escaping into China from the Russian Revolution, is a tale too often told—as are the stories of her beginnings as a dancer in Paris with Olga Preobrajenska, and an appearance at the Paris Trocadero on a Pavlova programme, at the age of five or so.
It was her father, Vadim Boretszky-Kasadevich, who called a temporary halt to the child prodigy business, by insisting that dance be suspended for a year until she could do some school work.
Discovered at Preobrajenska’s school by George Balanchine, he placed her with the de Basil company, and for a half-dozen years she remained there, save for a brief interlude with Balanchine’s short-lived Les Ballets 1933.
It was that same year that I brought the de Basil company to America the first time, where she joined the trinity of “baby ballerinas”—Baronova and Riabouchinska, of course, being the other two. It is a matter of history how Toumanova became the American rotogravure editors’ delight; how America became Toumanova-conscious.
Strong, remarkably strong though her technique was even in those days, her performances were frequently uneven. Toumanova was a temperamental dancer then, as now, and to those who know only her svelte, slender, mature beauty of today, there may be some wonder that in those days she had to fight a recurring tendency towards embonpoint, and excessive embonpoint. But there were always startling brilliancies. In Jeux d’Enfants and Cotillon, I remember the dazzling fouetées. It is one of Toumanova’s boasts that she was the first dancer to do thirty-two double fouetées and sixteen triples in actual performance. I am not an authority on these technical matters and can, therefore, merely record the statement.
Her unsuccessful Broadway appearance (a musical called Stars in Your Eyes) was followed by a reunion with the de Basil Company in Australia and a short season with him at the Hollywood Theatre, in New York; and there was a later sojourn with the Massine Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Then Hollywood beckoned. There was one film in which she played an acting part, Days of Glory. The picture was certainly not much to talk about, but she married the producer-writer, Casey Robinson.
Since then, she has turned up as guest-artist with one organization after another: the Paris Opera Ballet, the Marquis de Cuevas company, Anton Dolin’s Festival Ballet in London, the San Francisco Civic Ballet; a nomadic balletic existence, interrupted by another Hollywood film appearance, this time in the role of Pavlova in Tonight We Sing, based on my earlier book, Impresario.
As a person there is something about her that is at once naive and ingenuous and, at the same time, deep and grave and tragic. She cries still when she is happy, and is also able to cry when she is sad. She adores to be praised; but, unlike some other dancers I know, she is also anxious for criticism. She solicits it. And when she feels the criticism is sound, she does her best to correct—at least for the moment—the faults that have prompted it. Her devotion to her mother—“Mamochka”—herself an attractive, voluble, and highly emotional woman, is touching and sometimes a shade pathetic. Toumanova’s whole life, career, and story have been, for the most part, the thrice-familiar tale of the White Russian émigré. Like all émigré stories, hers is extremely sentimental. Sentiment and sentimentality play a big part in Tamara’s life.
She is, I feel, unbreakable, unquenchable. She is, in her maturity, even more beautiful than she was as a “baby ballerina.” She is, I suppose, precisely the popular conception of what a glamorous ballerina is, or at least should be. Her personality is that of a complete theatrical extrovert. The last row of the gallery is her theatre target. Hers is not a subtle personality. It is a sort of motion picture idea of a ballerina assoluta, a sort of reincarnation of the fascinating creatures from whose carriages adoring balletomanes unhitched the horses and hauled them to Maxim’s for supper, dining the course of which the creatures were toasted in vintage champagne drunk from slippers. It doesn’t really matter that her conception is a bit dated. With Toumanova it is effective.
Tamara’s conception of the ballerina in these terms is deliberate. She admits her desire is to smash the audience as hard as she can. With her a straight line is veritably the shortest distance between two points, and no ballerina makes the distance between herself and her audience so brief. This conception has been known to lead to overacting and to the ignoring of the colleagues with whom she is dancing at the time.
There is with her, as ever, great charm, an eager enthusiasm, and I am happy to say, a fine sense of loyalty. This is a quality I particularly appreciate. It has been shown to me on more than one occasion. When I brought the Paris Opera Ballet for the New York City Festival, Tamara was not nor had she been at that time a member of the Paris Opera Company. She barely knew Lifar, yet it was she who became his champion in New York. It was a calculated risk to her career which she took, because she respected Lifar as an artist, did not believe the stories about him, and was interested in fair play.
As I watch Toumanova today, I see but an extension in time, space and years of the “baby ballerina” in her adult personality; there is still an extravagant and dazzling glamor; there is still steely technique; there is still a childlike naivete about her, even when she tries to be ever so sophisticated; everything about her is still dramatic and dramatized. And there is still “Mamochka,” in constant attendance, helping, criticizing, urging; and although Tamara has been happily married for a decade or so, “Mamochka” is still the watchdog. Many ballet “mamas” are not only difficult, but some of them are overtly disliked. Toumanova’s mother is another category. She has been at all times a fine and constructive help to Tamara, both with practical assistance and theoretical advice.
Tamara’s approach to the dance is beautiful to observe. Her devotion to ballet amounts almost to a religion. Nothing under the sun is more important to her than her work, her attendance at lessons. Nothing ever is permitted to interfere with these.
I firmly believe that such is her concentration and devotion to her work that, if a fire were to break out back-stage during a performance while Tamara was in the midst of her fabulous fouetées, she would continue with them, completely unperturbed, more intent on fouetées than on fire.
The Montreal discussions with the Ballet Theatre direction on the subject of guest stars produced no understanding of the situation; only the tiresomely reiterated, “It’s a sacrilege! It’s a crime!”
What was a “crime” then, was a sheer necessity. Let us look, for a moment, at the Ballet Theatre situation today, after it is no longer under my management, but entirely on its own, responsible for its own destiny. During the last year of our association, following the resignation of J. Alden Talbot as managing director, as I have pointed out, Lucia Chase, who pays the bills, and Oliver Smith became joint managing directors. They were running the company when we came to a parting of the ways. It was they who protested most bitterly over the guest-star system. Now, with the company, after thirteen years of existence, presumably established, Miss Chase is firmly perpetrating the same “crime” herself. I certainly do not object to it. But surely what was a “sacrilege,” what was a “crime” at the time I was responsible for their perpetration, must, now that the Ballet Theatre is on its own, no longer be either sacrilegious or criminal.
Another recurring trouble source and the cause of many a contentious discussion was the question of new productions. The arguments and conferences over them were seemingly endless. Now the question of new productions is one of the most vital and important in ballet management, and one of the most pressing. All ballet management contracts call for a ballet company to supply a certain number of new works each year. The reason for this is that there must be a constant flow of new ballets in a repertoire in order to attract the attention of both the critics and the public. Standard works form the core of any repertoire and at least one is necessary on every programme. But ballet itself, in order to keep from becoming stagnant, must refresh itself by constantly expanding its repertoire. Frequently, in contrast to the undying classics, nothing can be deader than last years “novelty.” My contractual arrangement provides that the management shall have the right either to accept or reject new work as being acceptable or otherwise.
As time went on, many of the new works produced, some of which were accepted by me against my sounder judgment, proved, as I feared, to be unacceptable to the general public throughout the country. It should be clearly understood that ballet cannot live on New York alone. America is a large continent, and the hinterland audiences, while lacking, perhaps, some of the quality of sophistication of metropolitan audiences, are highly selective and quite as critical today as are their New York counterparts. A New York success is by no means an assurance of a like reception in Kalamazoo or Santa Barbara. Ballet needs both Santa Barbara and Kalamazoo, as it needs New York. The building of repertoire should be the joint task of the company direction and the management—since their desired ends are the same, viz., the successful continuation of the organization. Repertoire is a responsible and exceedingly demanding task.
It certainly required no clairvoyance on my part to discern a very definite antagonism toward any repertoire suggestions I offered. Certain types of ballets were badly needed and were not forthcoming. Perhaps I can most clearly illustrate my point by recapitulating the Ballet Theatre repertoire at the time we parted company.
There were: Fokine’s heritage—Les Sylphides, Carnaval, (no longer in repertoire), Petroushka (no longer in repertoire), Spectre de la Rose (no longer in repertoire), plus two creations, Bluebeard, and Russian Soldier (no longer in repertoire). Andrée Howard had staged Death and the Maiden and Lady Into Fox (both dropped before I took over the company). Bronislava Nijinska had revived La Fille Mal Gardée and The Beloved One (no longer in the repertoire). Anton Dolin had revived Swan Lake, Giselle (now performed in a Balanchine version), Princess Aurora (now touched up by Balanchine), and had created Quintet (dropped after the first season), Capriccioso (dropped in the second season), Pas de Quatre (now done in a version by Keith Lester), and Romantic Age (no longer in the repertoire). Leonide Massine had revived The Fantastic Toy Shop, Capriccio Espagnol, and The Three-Cornered Hat (all out of repertoire). He had produced three new works, Don Domingo, Aleko, and Mlle. Angot, none of which was retained in the repertoire. Antony Tudor had revived The Lilac Garden, Judgment of Paris, Dark Elegies, Gala Performance, and had produced Pillar of Fire, Romeo and Juliet, Dim Lustre, and Undertow, none of which remain. Agnes de Mille had produced Black Ritual, Three Virgins and a Devil, and Tally-Ho, none of which is actively in the repertoire. José Fernandez had produced a Spanish work, Goyescas, which lasted only the first season. David Lichine had revived Graduation Ball, and had produced Helen of Troy and Fair at Sorotchinsk (the latter no longer in repertoire). Adolph Bolm had revived his Ballet Mecanique (first season life only), produced Peter and the Wolf, a perennial stand-by, and the short-lived version of Firebird. John Taras had contributed Graziana, and Simon Semenoff a version of Coppélia and Gift of the Magi, neither of the three existing today. Jerome Robbins’s Fancy Free and Interplay remain while his Facsimile has been forgotten. Balanchine had revived Apollo, Errante, and had produced Waltz Academy, all of which have disappeared.
In order to save the curious reader the trouble of any computation, this represents a total of fifty-one ballets either produced during my association with Ballet Theatre or else available at the time we joined hands. From this total of fifty-one, a round dozen are performed, more or less, today. A cursory glance will reveal that the repertoire was always deficient in classical works. They are the backbone of ballet. It is to be regretted that the Tudor ballets, which were the particular glory of Ballet Theatre, have been lost to the public.
I shall not labor the point of our differences, save to cite one work as an example. That is the production of Firebird. This was the first Stravinsky ballet for Diaghileff, and was first revealed in Fokine’s original production at the Paris Opera in the Diaghileff season of 1910, with Tamara Karsavina in the title role, Fokine himself as the handsome Tsarevich, Enrico Cecchetti as the fearsome Kastchei, and Vera Fokina as the beautiful Tsarevna whom the Tsarevich marries at the end. In later productions Adolph Bolm took Fokine’s place as the Tsarevich. The original settings and costumes were by Golovine. For a later Diaghileff revival the immensely effective production by Nathalie Gontcharova was created. This was the production revealed here by the de Basil company, a quite glorious spectacle.
Firebird had always been a popular work when well done. From a musical point of view it has been one of the most popular works in the Stravinsky catalogue, both in orchestral programmes and over the radio. One of the surest ways to attract the public to ballet is through musical works of established popularity. This does not mean works that are cheap or vulgar, for vulgarity and popularity are by no stretch of the imagination synonymous: it means Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Schéhérazade, Coppélia, Petroushka, Firebird—I mention only a few—the music of which has become familiar, well-known, and loved through the medium of radio and gramophone recordings. This is the music that brings people to ballets of which it is a part.
Miss Chase was flatly opposed to Firebird. Her co-director had no choice but to follow her lead. I was insistent that Firebird be given as one of the new productions required under our contract for the season 1945-1946; and then the trouble began in earnest.
There were various dissident elements in the Ballet Theatre organization, as there are in all ballet companies. These elements had no very clear idea of what they wanted, or for what they stood. Their vision was cloudy, their aims vague, their force puny. The company lacked not only any artistic policy, but also a managing director capable of formulating one, and able to mould these various dissident elements into what Miss Chase liked to call her “organic whole.”
With the exception of J. Alden Talbot and German Sevastianov, there had never been a managing director or manager worthy of the title or the post. During the Talbot regime, my relations with the Ballet Theatre were at their highest level. I always found Talbot helpful, understanding towards our mutual problems, cooperative, of assistance in many ways. Because of his belief in the organization and his genuine love for ballet, Talbot gave his services as general manager without fee or compensation of any sort other than the pleasure of helping the company. It is almost entirely thanks to Talbot that Fancy Free achieved production. Talbot was also instrumental in founding and maintaining an organization known as Ballet Associates, later to become Ballet Associates in America, since the function of the society is to cultivate ballet in general in America in the field of understanding, and, more specifically and particularly, to encourage, promote and foster those creative workers whose artistic collaboration makes ballet possible, viz., choreographers, composers, and designers. The practical function of the society is very practical indeed, for it means finding that most necessary fuel: money. The organization, through the actively moving spirit of J. Alden Talbot, sponsored by substantial contributions no less than four Ballet Theatre productions: Tudor’s Pillar of Fire and Romeo and Juliet, Agnes de Mille’s Tally-Ho, and Dolin’s Romantic Age. It was entirely responsible for Michael Kidd’s On Stage!
A cultured, able gentleman of charm, taste, and sensitivity, J. Alden Talbot was the only person associated with Ballet Theatre direction able to give it a sound direction, since he was able not only to shape a definite policy, which is vastly important, but also to give it a sound business management.
Following Talbot’s departure, there came frequent changes in management, changes seemingly made largely for purely personal reasons. At the time of the stresses and strains over the inclusion of Firebird into the repertoire, although Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith were the titular managing directors, there was no head to the organization and no director or direction, in fact. Actually, caprice was at the helm and Ballet Theatre had a flapping rudder, a faulty compass, with Chase and Smith taking turns at the wheel trying to keep the badly listing ship into the wind. Acting as manager was a former stage-manager, without previous experience or any knowledge whatever of the intricate problems of business management. With the enthusiasm of an earnest Boy Scout, he commenced a barrage of bulletins and directives, and ludicrously introduced calisthenics classes for the dancers, complete with dumb-bells, down to the institution of his own conception of the “Stanislavsky” method of dramatic expression, the latter taking the form of setting the company to acting out charades on the trains while on tour.
Coincidental with this was increased intrigue and the outward expression of his theme song, which he chanted to all within earshot, the burden of which was: “How can we get rid of Hurok? How can we get rid of Hurok? Who needs him?”
The question of the Firebird production was, as I have suggested, the most contentious and controversial of any that arose in my relationships with Ballet Theatre.
Firebird was hounded by troubles of almost every description, as each day upturned them. Its production was marked by disputes, aggravations, and untold difficulties from first to last. If history is to be believed, that sort of thing has been its lot from its inception in the Diaghileff days of 1910.
The Adolph Bolm production eventually reached the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, after a series of vicissitudes, on the night of the 24th October, 1945, with Alicia Markova in the title role, and Anton Dolin in the role of Ivan Tsarevich, originally danced in the Diaghileff production by Michel Fokine.
The Firebird is an expensive work to produce; there are numerous scenes, each requiring its own setting and a large complement of costumes. In order to help overcome some of the financial problems involved, I agreed with Ballet Theatre to contribute a certain sum to the cost of production. I shall have something more to say about this a bit later.
As for the work itself, I can only say that the conception and the performance were infinitely superior to that which, in these latter days, is given by the New York City Ballet, to which organization, as a gesture, I gave the entire production for a mere token payment so far as the original costs to me were concerned.
Under my contractual arrangements with Ballet Theatre, the organization was obligated to provide a new second ballet for the season. I felt Firebird had great audience-drawing possibilities. Ballet Theatre insisted Firebird was too expensive to produce and countered with the suggestion that Antony Tudor would stage a work on the musical base of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. While this work would have been acceptable to me, I could discover no evidence that it was in preparation.