Pursuing the matter of Firebird, Ballet Theatre informed me they were not in a position to expend more than $15,000 in any production. I suggested they prepare careful estimates on the cost of Firebird. This was done—at least, they showed me what purported to be estimates—and these indicated the costs would be something between $17,000 and $20,000. Therefore, in order to ease their financial burden, I offered to pay the costs of the production in excess of $15,000, but not to exceed $5,000. And so it was, at last, settled.
We had all agreed on a distinguished Russian painter, resident in Hollywood, a designer of reputation, who not only had prepared a work for Ballet Theatre, but whose contributions to ballet and opera with other organizations had been considerable.
Despite these arrangements, as time went on, there were definite indications that Firebird would not be ready for the opening date at the Metropolitan Opera House, which had been agreed upon. No activity concerning it was apparent, and Adolph Bolm, its choreographer, was still in Hollywood. On the 15th September, I addressed an official letter to Ballet Theatre concerning the delay.
While no reply to this was forthcoming, I subsequently learned that, without informing the original designer who had been engaged and contracted to design the scenery and costumes, and who had finished his task and had turned his designs over to the scene painters, without informing the choreographer, without informing me, Ballet Theatre had surreptitiously engaged another designer, who also was at work on the same subject. We were now faced with two productions of the same work which would, of course, require payment.
A telephone call from Ballet Theatre to one of my staff, however, added the interesting information that Firebird (in any production) would not be presented until I paid them certain moneys. The member of my staff who received this message, quite rightly refused to accept the message, and insisted it should be in writing.
It was not until the 23rd October, the day before the work was scheduled to be produced, that Oliver Smith, of the Ballet Theatre direction, threatened officially to delay the production of Firebird until I paid them the sum they demanded. In other words, Ballet Theatre would not present the Stravinsky work, and it would not open, unless I paid them $11,824.87 towards its costs. These unsubstantiated costs included those of both productions, all in the face of my definite limitation of $5,000 to be paid on one production, since it was impossible to imagine that there would be two of them.
Here was an ultimatum. The Metropolitan Opera House was already sold out to an audience expecting to see the new Firebird. All-out advertising and promotion had been directed towards that event. The ultimatum was, in effect, no money, no production.
It was, in short, a demand for money under duress, for which there is a very ugly word. At any rate, here was a bona fide dispute, a matter to be discussed; and I suggested that Ballet Theatre submit the matter to arbitration, both disputants agreeing, of course, to be bound by the arbiter’s decision.
Lucia Chase, Oliver Smith, and Ballet Theatre’s new general manager refused to submit the matter to arbitration. The ultimatum remained: no money, no performance. The sold-out house had been promised Firebird. The public was entitled to see it.
I paid them $11,824.87, the sum they demanded, under protest, noting this money was demanded and paid under duress. Firebird had its first performance the next night, as scheduled. Meanwhile, the dress-rehearsal that afternoon had been marked by a succession of scenes that can only be characterized as disgraceful, the whole affair being conducted in an atmosphere of tensity, ill-feeling, carping, with every possible obstacle being placed in the way of a satisfactory performance and devoid of any spirit of cooperation.
It soon became apparent to me that the troubles attendant upon the Firebird production were merely symptomatic of something much larger, something much more sinister; something that was, in effect, a conspiracy to break the contract between us, a contract which was to continue for yet another season.
I learned through reliable sources that Ballet Theatre was surreptitiously attempting to secure bookings on their own with some of the local managers with whom I had booked them in the past, and with whom I was endeavoring to make arrangeents for them for the ensuing season. On the 28th February, I served official notice on the directorate of Ballet Theatre calling upon them to cease this illegal and unethical practice, and, at the same time, notified all managers of my contract with the organization.
It was early in our 1946 spring engagement at the Metropolitan Opera House, and I was working alone one evening in my office. It was late, the staff having long since left, and I continued at my desk until it was time for me to leave for the Metropolitan Opera House. I had not dined, intending to have a bite in Sherry’s Bar during one of the intervals. As I was crossing the by now deserted and partly darkened lower lobby of my office building, a stranger lunged forward from the shadows and thrust a sheaf of papers into my hand, then hurried into the street. Surprised, astonished, puzzled, I returned to my office to examine them.
The papers were a summons and complaint from Ballet Theatre. Although my contract with the organization had another year still to run, Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith were attempting to cancel the contract in mid-season. The grounds on which the action was based, as were subsequently proved, had no basis in fact.
But the company was slipping. It had no policy, no one capable of formulating or maintaining one. It was losing valuable members of its personnel, some of whom could no longer tolerate the whims and capriciousness of “Dearie,” as Chase was dubbed by many in the company. Jerome Robbins had gone his way. Dorati, who gave the organization the only musical integrity and authority it had, had departed. Others, I knew, were soon to be on their way. Dry rot was setting in. As matters stood, with the direction as it was, I had no assurance of any permanent survival for it. The company continued from day to day subject to the whims of Lucia Chase. The result was insecurity for the dancers, with all of them working with a weather-eye peeled for another job. One more season of this company, I felt, and I would be responsible for dragging a corpse about the country, unless, of course, I should myself become a corpse.
Ballet Theatre’s lawyers and my trusted counsel of many years’ standing, Elias Lieberman, arranged a settlement of our contract. Among its clauses was a proviso that the properties for Firebird remained my property, together with a cash payment to me of $12,000.
When the final papers were signed, we all shook hands. The parting between us may be described as “friendly.”
* * *
What the future of Ballet Theatre may be, I have no way of knowing. I am not a prophet; I am a manager. Ballet Theatre’s subsequent career has not been particularly eloquent; not especially fortunate. There has been a period when there was no ballet season, with the decision to spend a “sabbatical” coming so late that many artists were left with no employment at a time of the year when all other possibilities for work with other companies had been exhausted. My own feeling, while wishing them well, is that, so long as Ballet Theatre continues to have no categorical policy or practice, and so long as it attempts to continue with expediency dictating its equivocal programme, its future is circumscribed. It is an axiom that a ballet company’s character is determined by the personality of its director.
However many collaborators Miss Chase may have on paper, Ballet Theatre is and will remain her baby. Co-directors, advisory boards, even the tax-exempt, non-profit organization called Ballet Theatre Foundation, formed in 1947, as a “sponsoring” group, do not alter the fact that Miss Chase is its sponsor. She pays the piper and the organization will dance to his melody. Sponsoring groups of the type I have mentioned have little value or meaning today. Ballet will not achieve health by dripping economic security down from the top. The theory that propping can be done by this method of dripping props from the top, does not mean from the top of ballet, but, hopefully, from the top of the social and financial worlds.
Healthy ballet cannot come, in my opinion, from being treated as an outlet or excuse for parties, nor from parties as an adjunct to ballet. The patronage of the social world in such organizations is practically meaningless today. It was useful, in bygone days, to have a list of fancy names out of the Blue Book as patrons. The large paying audience which ballet must have, and which I have developed through the years, certainly pays no attention to social patronage today. As a matter of fact, I suspect they resent it. The only people conceivably impressed by such a list of names would be a handful of social climbers and society columnists. The only patrons worth the ink to print their names are those who pay for tickets at the box-office, average citizens, even as you and I.
Ballet cannot pay for itself, for new productions, for commissioned works, by its box-office takings, any more than can opera or symphony orchestras. The only future I can see is some form of Government subsidy for ballet and the other arts. Some of our leading spirits in the fields of art are opposed to this idea. This is difficult for me to understand. I cannot conceive how there could be any hesitancy on that score. We know that in Great Britain and in most countries of Europe the arts, including ballet, are subsidized by the Government. These countries are not Communist-dominated. Here in the United States many big businesses are subsidized by the Government in one form or another, at one time or another. There are the railways, the airlines, the shipping companies, the mine subsidies, the oil subsidies—and the something like twenty-seven-and-one-half percent deduction allowed annually on new buildings erected is also a form of subsidy.
In the United States only the arts and the artists are taboo when it comes to Government help. I do not suggest that any of the arts should be dependent upon charity, either by individuals or foundations. I feel it is the plain duty of Government and of the lawmakers to finance and subsidize the arts: ballet, orchestras, opera, painters, sculptors, writers, composers.
A country with the tremendous wealth we have should not have to depend on charity or hobbyists for the advancement of culture and cultural activities.
Since we still lack what I feel is the only proper form of cultural subsidy, we needs must get on as best we can with the private hobbyist support. In this respect, Lucia Chase has been an extremely generous sponsor of Ballet Theatre. I have said that a ballet company’s character is determined by the personality of its director. I should like to add, by the personality of its sponsor as well. Let us look at the personality of Lucia Chase.
With a fortune compounded in unequal parts of Yonkers Axminster and Waterbury Brass, her largess has been tossed with what has seemed akin to reckless abandon. A lady of “middle years,” she was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, one of several children of a member of the Chase Brass Company clan. A cultured lady, she went to the “right” finishing school, did the “right” things, and, it is said, early evinced an interest in singing and in the theatre. She married Thomas Ewing, to whom the sobriquet, “the Axminster carpet tycoon,” has been applied. On his death, Miss Chase was left with a fortune and two sons. Her distraction over the loss of her husband, so it is said, drove her to an early love as a possible means of assuaging her grief, viz., the dance. She took ballet lessons from Mikhail Mordkin; financed the newly formed Mordkin Ballet; in 1937, became its prima ballerina. So far as the record reveals, her debut was made in the Brass City of her birth, in no less a role than the Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty.
As a dancer, she is an excellent comedienne; yet for years she fancied herself as a classical ballerina. Her insistence on dancing in such ballets as The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Pas de Quatre, Petroushka, Princess Aurora, and most of all, Les Sylphides, was so regrettable that it raises the question that, if she is so unconscious of her own limitations as a dancer, what are her qualifications for the directorship of a ballet company?
At the beginning of every venture, at the inception of every new idea, Lucia Chase bursts with a remarkable, pulsating enthusiasm. Then, after a time, turning a deaf ear to the voice of experience, and discovering to her astonishment that things have not worked out as she expected, she sulks, tosses all ideas of policy aside, and then turns impatiently and impulsively to something that is in the way of a new adventure. Off she goes on a new tack. Eagerly and rashly she grasps frantically at the next idea or suggestion forthcoming from any one who is, at that moment, in favor. So, she thinks, this time I have got it!... The pattern repeats itself endlessly and expensively.
It started thus, with her financing of the Mordkin Ballet, before the days of Ballet Theatre. With the Mordkin Ballet, aside from financing it, she danced; danced the roles of only the greatest ballerinas. This pleasure she had. So far as operating a ballet company is concerned, she still leaps about without a policy, and each time the result seems unhappily to follow the same disappointing pattern.
Above all, Lucia Chase has what amounts to sheer genius for taking the wrong advice and for surrounding herself with, for the most part, inexperienced, unqualified, and mediocre advisers. Her most successful years were those when, by happy chance rather than by any design, the organization was managed and directed by the able J. Alden Talbot, informed gentleman of taste and business ability. It was during the Talbot regime that Miss Chase had her smallest deficits and Ballet Theatre attained its period of highest achievement.
When left to her own devices, Miss Chase is, so far as policy is concerned, uncertain, undetermined, irresolute, and meandering. The future of Ballet Theatre as a serious institution in our cultural life is questionable, in my opinion, because Miss Chase, after all these years, has not yet learned how to conduct or discipline a ballet company; has not learned that important policy decisions are not made because of whims. Because of these things, the organization as it stands, possesses no real and firm basis for sound artistic achievement, progress, or permanence. There is no indication of personality, or color, or any real authority in the company’s conduct. More and more there are indications or intimations of some sort of middle-of-the-road policy—if it really is policy and not a temporary whim; even so there is no indication whatsoever of the destination towards which the vehicle is bound.
With lavish generosity, Lucia Chase has spent fantastic sums of money on Ballet Theatre and on its predecessor, the Mordkin Ballet. Since Ballet Theatre is a non-profit organization and corporation, a substantial part of this money may be said to be the taxpayer’s money, since it is tax-exempt. Since the ultimate aim of the organization has not been attained, since it has not assumed aesthetic responsibility, or respected vital tradition, or preserved significant masterpieces of every style, period, and origin, as does an art museum, and as was announced and avowed to be its intention; since it has not succeeded in educating the masses for ballet; it must be borne in mind that the remission of taxes in such cases is largely predicated upon the educational facets of such an organization whose taxes are remitted.
I would be the last person to deny that Miss Chase has made a contribution to ballet in our time. To do so would be ridiculous. But I do insist that, whatever good she has done, almost invariably she has negated it and contradicted it by an impulsive capriciousness.
WITH Ballet Theatre gone its own way, I was placed in a serious predicament. According to a long established and necessary custom, bookings throughout the country are made at least a season in advance. This is imperative in order that theatres, halls, auditoriums may be properly engaged and so that the local managers may arrange their series, develop their promotional campaigns, sell their tickets, thus reducing to as great an extent as possible the element of risk and chance involved.
Since my contract with Ballet Theatre had had one more year to run, the transcontinental bookings for the Ballet Theatre company had been made for the entire season. It was necessary for me to keep faith with the local managers who had built their seasons around ballet and, since local managers have faith both in me and in the quality of the ballet I present, I was on a spot. The question was: what to do?
Something had to be done to fulfil my obligations. I had no regrets about the departure of Ballet Theatre, other than that personal wrench I always feel at parting company with something to which I have given so much of myself. The last weeks with Ballet Theatre added nothing but trouble. There was a ludicrous contretemps in the nation’s capital. Jascha Horenstein, for some reason known only to himself, put down his baton before the beginning of the long coda at the end of Swan Lake, and walked out of the pit. As he departed, he left both the dancers and the National Symphony Orchestra players suspended in mid-air, with another five minutes left for the climax of the ballet. As a consequence, the performance ended in a debacle.
Matters balletic were in a bad way. It is times such as these that present me with a challenge. There is no easy solution; and frequently, almost usually, such solutions as there are, are reached by trial and error. This was no exception.
I began the trial and error period by building up, as an experiment, the Markova-Dolin company, with a group of dancers, including André Eglevsky and soloists, together with a corps de ballet largely composed of Ballet Theatre personnel that had broken away because of dissatisfaction of one sort or another. In addition to Markova, Dolin, and Eglevsky, the company included Margaret Banks, a Sadler’s Wells trained dancer from Vancouver, Roszika Sabo, Wallace Siebert, and others, with young John Taras as choreographer and ballet-master. The reader who has come this far will realize some of the problems involved in building up a repertoire. Here we were, starting from scratch.
The two basic works were a Giselle, staged by Dolin, with Markova in her best role, and Swan Lake. In staging the second act of Swan Lake, Dolin used a setting designed by the Marquessa de Cuevas for the International Ballet. Dolin also mounted the last act of The Nutcracker. John Taras staged a suite of dances from Tchaikowsy’s Eugene Onegin; and the balance of the repertoire was made up from various classical excerpts.
Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit were selected as try-out towns in the spring of 1946. The celestial stars that hung over the experiment cannot be called benign. The well-worn adage that it never rains but it pours, was hardly ever better instanced than in this case. It was the spring of the nation-wide railway strike, and the dates of our performances coincided with it. By grace of the calendar we managed to get the company to Milwaukee, where the company’s first performances were given at the old Pabst Theatre. By interurban street-car and trucks we got the company to the Chicago Opera House. There the difficulties multiplied. Owing to the firm restrictions placed upon the use of electricity in public places, in order to conserve the dwindling coal supply, it was impossible to light the Opera House auditorium or foyers, which were swathed in gloom, broken only by faint spots of dull glow emanating from a few oil lanterns. The current for the stage lighting was supplied from a United States Coast Guard vessel, which we had, with great difficulty, persuaded to move along the river side of the Opera House, to the engine-room of which vessel we ran cables from the stage. The ship could generate just enough “juice” for stage purposes only. That “just enough” might have been precisely that in computed wattage; but it was direct current. Our lighting equipment operated on alternating current, and, by the time the “juice” was converted, the actual power was limited to the point that, try as the technical staff did, the best we were able to obtain was a sort of passable low visibility on the stage.
To add to the general fun, the Coast Guard vessel broke loose from its moorings, floated across the Chicago River, destroyed some pilasters of the Chicago Daily News and jammed the Randolph Street drawbridge of the City of Chicago, adding to the general confusion, to say nothing of the costs.
When it came time for the company to move to Detroit, no trains were running, and buses and trucks would not cross state lines. It took some master-minding on the part of our staff to arrange to have the company, baggage cars and all, attached to a freight train, which was carrying permitted perishable fruits and vegetables. In Detroit, the slump had set in. The feeling of depression engendered by the darkened buildings and streets, the dimly-lighted theatres, the murk of stygian restaurants, together with the fact that the Detroit engagement had to be played at one of the “legitimate” theatres rather than at the Masonic Temple which, for years, had been the local home for ballet, played havoc with the engagement; people, bewildered by the situation, one which was as darkness is to light, were discouraged and daunted. They remained away from the theatre in droves and the losses were fantastic.
Using the word in the best theatrical sense and tradition, it was a catastrophe. Perhaps it was as well that it was; somehow I cannot entirely reject the conviction that things more often than not work out for the best, for as the company and the repertoire stood, it would not fill the bill. Nor was there anything like sufficient time to build either a company or a repertoire.
The projected Markova-Dolin company was placed in mothballs. The problems, so far as the ensuing season was concerned, remained critical.
The Markova-Dolin combination was to emerge later in a different form. For the present it marked time, while I pondered the situation, with no solution in sight.
At this crucial moment an old friend, Nicholas Koudriavtzeff, entered the picture. An American citizen of long standing, by birth he was a member of an old aristocratic Russian family. His manner, his life, his thinking are Continental. A man of fine culture, he is an idealistic business man of the theatre and concert worlds; a gentle, kind, able person, with an irresistible penchant for getting himself involved, for swimming in waters far beyond his depth, largely because of his idealism, together with his warmheartedness and his gentleness. It is this very gentleness, coupled with a certain softness, that makes it almost impossible for him to say “no” to anyone.
He is married to a former Diaghileff dancer and de Basil soloist, Tatiana Lipkovska. They divide their homes between New York and Canada, where he is one of the leading figures in Montreal’s musical-balletic life, and where, on a gracious farm, he raises glorious flowers, fruits, and vegetables for the Montreal market. His wife, in her ballet school, passes on to aspiring pupils the sound tradition of the classical dance. Koudriavtzeff had been mixed up in ballet, in one capacity or another, for years. There was a time when he suffered from that contagious and deplorable infliction: ballet gossip, in which he was a practiced practitioner; but there are indications that he is well on his way to recovery. He is a warm friend and a good colleague.
Koudriavtzeff and I have something, I suspect, in common. Attracted and attached to something early in life, a concept is formed, and we become a part of that idea. From this springs a sort of congenital optimism, and we are inclined to feel that, whatever the tribulations, all will somehow work out successfully and to the happiness of all concerned. In this respect, I put myself into the same category. I strongly suspect I am infected with the same virus as Koudriavtzeff.
One of my real pleasures is to linger over dinner at home. It is no particular secret that I am something of a gourmet and I know of no finer or more appropriate place to enjoy good food than at home. So, it is with something of the sense of a rite that I try, as often as the affairs of an active life permit, sometime between half-past six and seven in the evening to have a quiet dinner at home with Mrs. Hurok.
The telephone bell, that prime twentieth century annoyance, interrupted, as it so often does, the evening’s peace.
“Won’t they let you alone?” was Mrs. Hurok’s only comment.
It was Koudriavtzeff.
“Call me back in half an hour.” I said.
He did.
“I should like to talk with you, Mr. Hurok,” he said in the rather breathless approach that is a Koudriavtzeff conversational characteristic.
Since he was already talking, I suggested he continue—over the telephone. But no, this was not possible, he said. He must talk to me privately; something very secret. Could he come to my home, there and then? Was it a matter of business? I inquired. It was. I demurred. I had had enough of business for one day.
However, there was such urgency in Koudriavtzeff’s voice, after making due allowance for an almost perpetual urgency with Koudriavtzeff, even in discussing the weather, that I agreed. He must have telephoned from a booth round the corner, for Koudriavtzeff arrived, breathless, almost as soon as I had put down the instrument.
We sat down over a glass of tea. For a few minutes the conversation concerned itself with generalities. Since I did not feel especially social, I brought the talk around to particularities.
“Well, what can I do for you?” I inquired.
The story came pouring out like water from a burst dam. It developed, as I pieced it together, that Koudriavtzeff was trying to make certain bookings for de Basil’s Original Ballet Russe on the way back from South America. Although there were some bookings, he had not been able to secure sufficient dates and, under the arrangement he had made with the “Colonel,” Koudriavtzeff was obliged to deliver. That was not all. Not only was he short with dates; he did not have the means with which to make the necessary campaign, even if he had obtained the dates.
I pondered the situation.
“Is de Basil in South America?” I asked.
“No,” replied Koudriavtzeff. “He is here in New York.”
Somehow, I could not regard this as good news.
I pondered the matter again.
After all I had gone through with this man, I asked myself, why should I continue to listen to Koudriavtzeff? If ever there was a time when I should have said, firmly, unequivocally “to hell with ballet,” it was at this moment. But I continued to listen.
With one ear I was listening to the insistent refrain: “To hell with ballet.” With the other, I was harking to my responsibilities to the local managers, to my lease with the Metropolitan Opera House.
Koudriavtzeff proceeded with his rapid-fire chatter. From it one sentence came sharp and dear:
“Will you please be so kind, Mr. Hurok? Will you, please, see de Basil?”
It could have been that I was not thinking as clearly and objectively as I should have been at that moment.
I agreed.
The next evening, de Basil, Koudriavtzeff, and I met.
Mrs. Hurok sounded the warning.
“I don’t object to your seeing him,” she said, “but you’re not going in with him again?”
The meetings were something I kept from the knowledge of my office for several days.
As I have pointed out before, de Basil was a Caucasian. The Caucasians and the Georgians have several qualities in common, not the least of which is the love of and desire for intrigue, coupled with infinite patience, never-flagging energy, and nerves of steel. It was perfectly possible for de Basil to sit for days and nights on end, occasionally uttering a few words, silent for long, long periods, but waiting, patiently waiting. It is these alleged virtues that make the Caucasians the most efficient and successful members of those bodies whose job it is to practice the delicate art of the third-degree: the O.G.P.U., the N.K.V.D.
I had agreed to meet de Basil, and now I was in for it. There was one protracted meeting after another, with each seeming to merge, without perceptible break, into the next. The “Colonel” had a “heart,” which he coddled; he brought with him his hypochondriacal collection of “pills,” some of which were for his “heart,” some for other uses. With their help, he managed to keep wide awake but impassive through night after night. Discussion, argument; argument, discussion. As the conferences proceeded, de Basil reinforced his “pills” with his lawyers, this time the omnipresent Lidji and Asa Sokoloff.
No one could be more aware of the “Colonel’s” inherent avoidance of honesty or any understandable code of ethics than I, yet he invariably commenced every conversation with: “Now if you will only be sincere and serious with me....”
Always it was the other fellow who was insincere.
Nearly all these meetings took place in the upper Fifth Avenue home of a friend of de Basil’s, a former Time magazine associate editor, where he was a house-guest. I cannot imagine what sort of home life he and his wife could have had during this period when, what with the long sessions and the constant comings and goings, the place bore a stronger resemblance to a committee room adjacent to an American political convention than a quiet, conservative Fifth Avenue home. Not only was the place crowded with antiques, for de Basil’s host was a “collector,” but the “Colonel” had piled these pieces one on the top of another to turn the place into a warehouse. It was during the after-war shortage of food in Europe, whither the “Colonel” was repairing as soon as he could.
Here, in his host’s home, the “Colonel” had opened his own package and shipping department. Box upon box, crate upon crate of bulky foods: mostly spaghetti. All sorts of foods: cost cheap, bulk large.
This was the first time in my ballet career that I had written down a repertoire on cases of spaghetti. As these meetings continued, and took the toll of human patience and endurance, we were joined by my loyal adjutant, Mae Frohman, who was served a sumptuous dish of not particularly tasty but certainly very filling Russo-Caucasian-Georgian-Bulgarian negotiations.
It is not to be supposed that this period was brief. It went on for nearly three weeks, day and night.
One night progress was made; but before morning we were back where we started. Miss Frohman begged me to call off the entire business, to get out of it while the getting was good. The more she saw and heard, the more certain she was that her intuition was right; this was something to be given a wide berth. But I was in it now. There was no going back.
Time, however, was running out. I had booked passage to fly to Europe. The date approached, as dates have a way of doing, until we reached the day before my scheduled departure. Mrs. Hurok remonstrated with me over the whole business.
“What good can come from this?” she protested. “Are you mad?”
Perhaps I was.
“What are you trying to do?” she went on. “Trying to kill yourself?”
Perhaps I was.
It was not a matter of trying; but it could be.
While de Basil was working his way back from South America with his little band, he managed to secure another engagement in Mexico City. It was there that that interesting figure of the world of ballet and its allied arts, the Marquis de Cuevas, saw the de Basil organization. The Marquis, a colorful gentleman of taste and culture, is, perhaps, the outstanding example we have today of the sincere and talented amateur in and patron of the arts. He is a European-American, despite his South American birth. He had a disastrous season of ballet in New York, in 1944, with his Ballet International, for which he bought a theatre, and lost nigh on to a million dollars in a two-months’ season—which may, to date, be the most expensive lesson in how not to make a ballet. Today the Marquis’s company functions as a part of the European scene. During his initial season in New York, he had created a reasonably substantial repertoire, including four works of quality I felt could be added to the de Basil repertoire in combination, in the event I succeeded in coming to terms with the “Colonel.” These works were Sebastian, The Mute Wife, Constantia, and Pictures at an Exhibition.
After viewing the de Basil company in Mexico City, the Marquis had an idea that it might be wise for him to join up with the “Colonel.” Returning to New York, the Marquis came to me to discuss the matter. I succeeded in dissuading him from investing and buying the worn-out scenery, costumes, and properties, which were, to all intents and purposes, valueless.
The Marquis departed for France. As the protracted negotiations with de Basil continued, I cabled the Marquis, informing him that I had parted with Ballet Theatre, and that I was negotiating with de Basil. Pointing out my obligations to the local managers, and to the Metropolitan Opera House, I asked the Marquis if he would participate, or contribute a certain amount of money, and add his repertoire to that of the “Colonel.”
The final de Basil conference before my scheduled departure for Europe commenced early. The night wore on. We were again on the verge of reaching an agreement. By two o’clock in the morning the possibility had diminished and receded into the same vague, seemingly unattainable distance where it had so long rested. Then, shortly after four o’clock, the pieces suddenly all fell into place, with all of us, including Mae Frohman, in a state of complete exhaustion, as the verbal agreement was reached. The bland, imperturbable, expressionless de Basil was the sole exception, at least to outward appearances.
Since my Europe-bound plane was departing within a few hours, it was necessary that all the voluminous documents be drawn up and signed before my departure. The lawyers, Lidji, Sokoloff, and my own legal adviser and friend, Elias Lieberman, worked on these as we sipped hot, black coffee, for the millionth time.
The sun was bright when we gathered round a table in the Fifth Avenue apartment where de Basil was a guest, and affixed our signatures.
It was six o’clock in the morning.
At twelve o’clock my plane rose over La Guardia and headed for Paris.
It was the first commercial plane to make the flight to Paris after the War. Mrs. Hurok, Mae Frohman, and Mr. and Mrs. Artur Rubinstein were at the field to wish me “bon voyage.”
In Paris I met the Marquis and Marquessa de Cuevas, the latter a gracious lady of charm and taste. Food was short in Paris, hard to find, and of dubious quality. Somehow, the Marquessa had been able to secure a chicken from her farm outside Paris, and we managed a dinner. I explained the settlement I had made with de Basil to the Marquis, and urged his cooperation joining de Basil as Artistic Director, hoping that, as a result, something fine could be built, given time and patience. Such an arrangement would also permit at least some of the Marquis’s repertoire from deteriorating in the store-house, and bring the works before a new and larger public.
Carerras, the manager for the Marquis at the time, was flatly opposed to de Cuevas cooperating in any way with the “Colonel,” but eventually de Cuevas decided to do what, once again, proved to be the impossible, viz., to collaborate with the Caucasian de Basil.
This much having been settled, I went on to London, where I saw the Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden for the first time; shortly afterwards I left for California, to spend a little time at my Beverly Hills home which I had maintained during the war.
On my arrival in California, there were messages from my office awaiting me. They were disturbing. Already troubles were brewing. The de Basil repertoire was in dubious condition. Something must be done, and at once. Moreover, despite de Basil’s assurances, the repertoire was too small in size and was inadequately rehearsed. I left for New York by the first available plane.
On my arrival in New York, I quickly made arrangements to send John Taras, the young American who had been the choreographer and ballet-master for the Markova-Dolin experiment, to South America to whip the company into shape. With him went a group of American dancers to augment the personnel.
Meanwhile, as the days sped on, every conceivable difficulty arose over getting the de Basil company and its repertoire out of South America. There were financial troubles. As was so often the case, de Basil had no money. But he did have debts and other liabilities that had to be liquidated before the company could be permitted to move. One thing piled on another. When these matters had been straightened out, the climax came in the form of a general strike in Rio de Janeiro, with the situation out of hand and shooting in the streets. This prevented the company from embarking for New York; not only was it impossible for passengers to board the ship, but neither scenery, properties, nor luggage could be loaded. Further delay meant that they could not arrive in New York in time for the mid-October opening at the Metropolitan Opera House, which I had had engaged for months, and for which season the advertising was in full swing, the promotional work done.
Once again, fast action was necessary to save the situation. In New York we had the de Cuevas repertoire, but no company. By long distance telephone I got John Taras to leave Rio de Janeiro for New York by plane. I engaged yet another group of artists here in New York, and Taras, immediately upon his arrival, commenced rehearsals with this third group on the de Cuevas repertoire, in order to have something in readiness to fulfil my obligations in the event that the de Basil company was unable to reach New York in time for the opening. It was, at best, makeshift, but at least something would be ready. The season could open on time, and faith would be kept.
While these difficulties and problems were compounding, the “Colonel” was far from the South American battlefield. He was safely in New York, stirring up the already quite sufficiently troubled waters.
I was more firmly convinced than ever before that to have two closely-linked members of the same family in the same field of endeavor is bad. Two singers in one family, I submit, is very bad. Two dancers in one family is very, very bad. But when a manager or director of a ballet company has a wife who is a dancer in his own company—that is the worst of all.
These profound observations are prompted by the marital complications that provided the chief contentious bone of this period of stress. These marital arrangements were two in number. De Basil’s first wife, who had divorced him, had married the company’s choreographer, Vania Psota, the creator of the late and unlamented Slavonika, of early Ballet Theatre days, and both Psota and his wife were with the company, soon, I prayed, to arrive in New York. De Basil, already in town, had married Olga Morosova, one of the company’s artists. This was an additional complication, for, although Morosova was only a soloist, upon her marriage she had immediately been promoted to the role of the company’s prima ballerina. All leading roles, de Basil insisted, must now be danced by her.
The arguments were almost continuous, and only a Caucasian could have endured them, unscarred. The battle raged.
To sum up, I should like to offer a word of caution. If you who read these lines are a dancer, do not marry the manager. It cuts both ways: if you are a manager, do not marry a dancer. If, by chance these lines are read by one who has ambitions to become a ballet manager, do not allow yourself any romantic connection with a dancer in the company. It simply does not work, and it is not good for ballet, or for you.
All of these continuing, persisting discussions served merely to speed the days. Opening night was drawing perilously near, coming closer and closer, while de Basil’s company and repertoire were still being held in Rio de Janeiro by the general strike. The “Colonel” again needed money. Unless the money he required was forthcoming, strike or no strike, the company would not embark. Once again I was being held up, with the gun at my back; on legal advice and out of sheer necessity, the money was forthcoming.
This type of blackmail, the demand for money under duress, was threatening to become a habit in ballet, I felt. But, after all, if I sought to allocate blame for the situation, there was no one to whom it could be charged except myself. It was my own fault for having consented to listen to the siren voice of Koudriavtzeff in the first place. No one can make greater trouble for one, I believe, than one’s own self. I had agreed to the whole unhappy business against the considered advice of all those in whom I had confidence and faith. There was nothing to be done but to see it through with as much grace as I could muster. I determined, however, to take stock. This time I was certain. I was, at last, satisfied that when this season finished, I was finished with ballet. No more. Never again.
* * *
The de Basil crowd eventually arrived at a South Brooklyn pier, barely in time, on a holiday afternoon before the Metropolitan opening. The rush, the drive, the complicated business of clearing through customs promised more headaches, more heartaches, and yet more unforeseen expense. We now had two companies merged for the Metropolitan Opera House engagement. In this respect we had been fortunate, for the de Basil scenery and costumes were in a pitiable state of disrepair. Since there was neither sufficient time nor money for their rehabilitation, we provided both, and, meanwhile, had the advantage of the de Cuevas works.
De Basil had been able to make but few additions to his repertoire during the lean and long South American hegira. These were Yara and Cain and Abel. Yara had been choreographed by Psota, to a score by Francisco Mignone. It was a lengthy attempt to bring to the stage a Brazilian legend. It had striking sets and costumes by Candido Portinari, and little else. Cain and Abel was a juicy tid-bit in which David Lichine perpetrated a “treatment” of the Genesis tale to, of all things, cuttings and snippets from Wagner’s Die Götter-Dammerung. It was a silly business.
The four works from the Marquis de Cuevas repertoire were given a wider public, and helped a bad situation. Sebastian, with an excitingly dramatic score by Gian-Carlo Menotti, his first for ballet, had been staged by Edward Caton, in a setting by Oliver Smith. It made for a striking piece of theatre. The Mute Wife was a light but amusing comedy, adapted by the American dancer-choreographer, Antonia Cobos, from the familiar tale by Anatole France, The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, to Paganini melodies, principally his Perpetual Motion, orchestrated by Vittorio Rieti. The third work, Constantia, was a classical ballet by William Dollar, done to Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F Minor, enlisting the services of Rosella Hightower, André Eglevsky, and Yvonne Patterson. Its title, confusing to some, referred to Chopin’s “Ideal Woman,” Constantia Gladowska, to whom the composer dedicated the musical work.
Thanks to Ballet Associates in America, there was one new work. It was Camille, staged by John Taras, in quite unique settings by Cecil Beaton, for Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin. It was a balletic attempt to tell the familiar Dumas tale. In this case, the music, instead of being out of Traviata by Verdi to use stud-book terminology, consisted of Franz Schubert melodies, orchestrated by Vittorio Rieti. It was not the success one hoped and, after seeing a later one by Tudor, to say nothing of one by Dolin, I am more and more persuaded that Camille belongs to Dumas and Verdi, to Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt, not to ballet. There was also an unimportant but fairly amusing little Pas de Trois, for Markova, Dolin, and Eglevsky, set by Jerome Robbins to the Minuet of the Will o’ the Wisps, and the Dance of the Sylphs, from Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust. It was a burlesque, highlighted by the use of a bit of the Rákoczy March as an overture, loud enough and big enough to suggest that a ballet company of gargantuan proportions was to be revealed by the rising curtain.
The trans-continental tour compounded troubles and annoyances with heavy financial losses. The Original Ballet Russe carried with it the heavy liability of a legend to a vast new audience. This audience had heard of the symphonic ballets; there were nostalgic tales told them by their elders about the “baby ballerinas,” Toumanova, Baronova, Riabouchinska. There were no symphonic ballets. The “baby ballerinas” had grown up and were in other pastures. The repertoire and the interpretations revealed the ravages of time. Perhaps the truth was that legends have an unhappy trick of falling short of reality.
While the long tour was in progress, the Marquis de Cuevas was making arrangements with the Principality of Monaco for a season at Monte Carlo with his own company. Immediately on getting wind of this, the “Colonel” did his best to try to doublecross the Marquis. This time, the “Colonel” did not succeed. For several seasons, the de Cuevas company, under the title Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo, largely peopled with American dancers, including Rosella Hightower, Marjorie Tallchief, Jocelyn Vollmar, Ana Ricarda, and others, and under the choreographic direction of John Taras, functioned there. When his Monte Carlo contract was at an end, the name of the company was changed to the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.
In 1951, the Marquis brought his company to New York for a season at the Century Theatre. It was completely unsuccessful, and while the losses were less than the initial American season, when it was called Ballet International, since there were no production costs to be met, much less a theatre to be bought, it was indeed an unfortunate occasion. The debacle, I believe, was not entirely the fault of the Marquis, since the entire season was mismanaged and mishandled from every point of view.
The long, unhappy tour of the Original Ballet Russe dragged its weary way to a close. Nothing I could imagine would be more welcome than that desired event. When it was all over, I was happy to see them push off to Europe. The losses I incurred were so considerable that it still is a painful subject on which to ponder, even from this distance of time. Suffice it to say they were very considerable.
The Original Ballet Russe had been living on its capital far too long. In London, in 1947, the “Colonel” made an attempt to reorganize his company. Clutching at straws, the shrewd “Colonel,” I am sure, realized that if he had any chance for survival, it would be on the basis of a successful London season, scene of his first triumphs. For this purpose, he formed a new company, since almost none of the original organization survived. It was a failure.
Nothing daunted, in 1951, he was preparing to try again. Death intervened, and Vassily Grigorievitch Voskresensky, better known to the world of ballet as Colonel W. de Basil, was gathered to his fathers. I was shocked but not surprised when the news reached me. He had, I knew, been living a devil-may-care existence. We had quarrelled, argued, fought. We had, on the other hand, worked together for a common end and with a common belief and purpose.
He was truly an incredible man.
I was enjoying a brief holiday at Evian when the news came to me, through mutual friends, that de Basil was seriously ill.
“I am going to Paris to see him and to do what I can,” I told them.
The next day I was at lunch when there came a telephone call from Paris. It was his one-time agent, Mme. Bouchenet, to tell me, to my great regret, that de Basil had just died.
We had had our continuing differences, but his had been a labor of love; he had loved ballet passionately. He had been a truly magnificent organizer. May he rest in peace.
De Basil was, I suppose, technically an amateur in the arts; but he managed to do a great service to ballet. By one means or another, he formed a great ballet company. He had the vision to sponsor one of the most revolutionary steps in ballet history since the “romantic revolution”: Massine’s symphonic ballets. In the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, he succeeded in keeping a company of warring personalities together for years. On the financial side, still an amateur, without the benefit of many guarantees from social celebrities or industrial magnates, he managed to keep going. His methods were, to say the least, unorthodox; he was amazing, fantastic, and, as I have said, incredible. He was no Diaghileff. He was de Basil. Diaghileff was a man of deep culture, vast erudition, an inspirer of all with whom he came into contact. De Basil was a sharp business man, a shrewd negotiator, an adroit manager. He was a personality. In the history of ballet, I venture to suggest, he will be remembered as the man who was the instrument by which and through which new life was instilled in the art of the ballet at a time when it was in dire danger of becoming moribund. Why and how he came to be that instrument is of little importance. The important thing is that he was.
At the time of de Basil’s death little remained save a memory. For four seasons, at least, by reason of his instinct, his drive, his collaborators, he presented to ballet something as close to perfection as is possible to imagine. For that, all who genuinely love ballet should be grateful.
* * *
Although I heaved a sigh of relief when the “Colonel” and his ragtag-bobtail band clambered aboard the ship bound for Europe, there were still serious problems to be considered. The uppermost questions that troubled me were merely two parts of the same query: “Why should I go on with this ballet business?” I asked myself. “Haven’t I done enough?”
Against any affirmative answer I could give myself, were arranged two facts: one, the magnetic “pull” ballet exerted upon me; two, the existence of a contract with the Metropolitan Opera House, which had to be fulfilled.
So it was that, in the autumn of 1947, that I gave a short season of ballet there. It was not a season of great ballets, but of great artists. The programmes centered about Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, André Eglevsky.
From this emerged a dance-group company, compact, flexible, the Markova-Dolin Company, which toured the country from coast to coast with a considerable measure of success. This was not, of course, ballet in the grand manner. It was chamber ballet; a dozen dancers, a small, well-chosen group of artists, together with a small orchestra and musical director. In addition to the two stars, the company included Oleg Tupine, Bettina Rosay, Rozsika Sabo, Natalia Condon, Kirsten Valbor, Wallace Siebert, Royes Fernandez, George Reich, with Robert Zeller, young American conductor, protegé of Serge Koussevitsky and Pierre Monteux, as Musical Director.
The repertoire included three new works: Fantasia, a ballet to a Schubert-Liszt score, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska; Henry VIII, a ballet by Rosella Hightower, to music of Rossini, arranged by Robert Zeller, and costumes by the San Francisco designer, Russell Hartley; Lady of the Camellias, another balletic version of the Dumas tale, choreographed by Anton Dolin to portions of Verdi’s La Traviata, arranged and orchestrated by Zeller; the Jerome Robbins Pas de Trois, to the Damnation of Faust excerpts, in costumes by the American John Pratt; and two classical works, viz., Famous Dances from Tchaikowsky’s The Nutcracker, staged jointly by Markova and Dolin, with costumes by Alvin Colt; and Suite de Danse, a romantic group, including some of Les Sylphides, in the Fokine choreography; a Johann Strauss Polka, staged by Vincenzo Celli; Pas Espagnole, to music by Ravina, by Ana Ricarda; Vestris Solo, to music by Rossini, choreographed by Celli; and Dolin’s delicious Pas de Quatre.
Henry VIII, Rosella Hightower’s first full work as a choreographer, was no balletic masterpiece, but it provided Dolin with a part wherein, as the portly, bearded, greatly married monarch of Britain, he was able to dance and act in the great tradition of Red Coat, Devil of the Ukraine, Bluebeard, Gil Blas, Tyl Eulenspiegel, Sganarelle, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, and all the other picaresque heroes of ballet, theatre, and literature. While Dolin, of course, confined himself to the choreographer’s patterning, I should not have been surprised if he had resorted to falling over sofas, squirting Elizabethan soda water syphons in the face of Katherine Parr, or being carried off to the royal bedchamber in a complete state of intoxication.
While such an organization is far from ideal for the presentation of spectacular ballet, which must have a large company, eye-filling stage settings, and all the appurtenances of the modern theatre, since ballet is essentially a theatre art, it nevertheless permitted us to take a form of ballet to cities and towns where, because of physical conditions, the full panoply of ballet at its most glamorous cannot be given.
The highlight of this tour occurred at the War Memorial Opera House, in San Francisco, where, because of an unusual combination of circumstances, an extremely interesting collaboration was made possible. The San Francisco Civic Ballet, an organization that promised much in the way of a civic supported ballet company of national proportions, had just been formed, and with the cooperation of the San Francisco Art Commission, and with the full San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, was undertaking its first season. At its invitation, it was possible for us to combine its first productions with those of the Markova-Dolin company, and, in addition to the San Francisco Civic Ballet creations, a splendid production of Giselle was made, staged by Dolin, with Markova, according to all reports, including that of the informed critic, Alfred Frankenstein, giving one of the most remarkable interpretations of her long career in the title role. This tribute is the more remarkable, since Giselle is one of Frankenstein’s “blind spots” in ballet. No critic is entirely free from bias or prejudice, and since even I admit that—countless examples to the contrary notwithstanding—the critic is also a human being, why should he be utterly free from those very human qualities or defects, as the case may be?
The artists of the Markova-Dolin company supplemented the San Francisco company, with the local company supplying the production, the two groups merging for substantial joint rehearsal. I have said the San Francisco Civic Ballet promised much. It is to be regretted that means could not be forthcoming to insure its permanence. Its closing was the result of the lack of that most vital element, proper subsidy. These things shock me.
The Markova-Dolin company was no more the ultimate answer to my balletic problem than was the Original Ballet Russe. It was, however, something more than a satisfactory stop-gap; it was also a very pleasant association.
Markova and Dolin are a quite remarkable pair. For years their stars were congruent. Until recently there were indications that they had become one, a fixed constellation, supreme, serene, sparkling. Those gods in whose hands lie the celestial disposition have seen fit to shift their orbits so that now each goes his or her separate course. I, for one, cannot other than express my personal regret that this is so. One complemented the other. I would go so far as to say that one benefited the other. Both as individual artists and in partnership, the distinguished pair of Britons are an ornament to their art and to their native land.
ALICIA MARKOVA
Alicia Markova, née Lilian Alicia Marks, was born in London, 1st December, 1910. Her life has been celebrated in perhaps as many volumes and articles as any other ballerina, if for no other reason than that the English seem to burst into print about ballet and to encase their words between solid covers more extensively than any other people I know, not excluding the French. It is almost a case of scratch an Englishman and you will find a ballet author. Because of this extensive bibliography, the details of Markova’s career need not concern me here, save to establish the highlights in a public life that has been extraordinarily successful.
When Markova arrived in this country to join the Massine Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, she already had behind her a high position in British ballet; yet she was, in a sense, shy and naive. Her father had died when Alicia was thirteen. There were three other sisters, and an Irish mother, who had adopted orthodox Judaism on her marriage to Alicia’s father, all in need of support. Alicia became the head of and bread-winner for the family. The mother worked hard at the business of being a mother, but kept away from the theatre’s back-stage. The story of the family life of the mother and the four daughters sounds like a Louisa M. Alcott novel, with theatre innovations and variations.
Before she became a pupil at the Chelsea studio of Seraphina Astafieva, late of the Imperial and Diaghileff Ballets, little Alicia had been a principal in a London Christmas pantomime and had already been labeled “the miniature Pavlova.” It was in this studio that her path crossed that of one Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay, soon to have his name truncated and changed to Anton Dolin by Serge Diaghileff. It was Dolin who brought Alicia Marks to Diaghileff’s attention, not, however, without some difficulty. Dolin’s conversations with Diaghileff about “the miniature Pavlova” brought only disgust from the great founder of modern ballet. The pretentiousness and presumptuousness of such a title roused only repugnance in the great man.
Eventually, Dolin succeeded in bringing Diaghileff to a party at the King’s Road studio of Astafieva, where little Miss Marks, at fourteen, danced. As a result, Diaghileff changed Marks to Markova, dropped the Lilian, and took her, with governess, into his company, detailing one of his current soloists, Ninette de Valois by name, to keep a weather-eye out for the child. Markova was on her way rapidly up the ladder, with two Balanchine creations under her pointes, The Song of the Nightingale and La Chatte, when Diaghileff died.
This meant a complete change of focus for Markova, in 1929. She earned a living for herself and her family for a time dancing in the English music halls, dancing for Marie Rambert’s Ballet Club and the Camargo Society for buttons. After two years at Marie Rambert’s Ballet Club, where Frederick Ashton took her in hand, as coach and teacher, adviser, and mentor extraordinary, she became the leading ballerina of the Vic-Wells Ballet, the predecessor of Sadler’s Wells, where, under the overall guidance of Ashton and de Valois, she danced the first English Giselle, the full-length Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker. Dolin was a guest star of the Vic-Wells in those days; their stellar paths again intertwined as they had at Astafieva’s studio, and in the Diaghileff Ballet.
In the fall of 1935, Dolin and Markova formed the Markova-Dolin Ballet, with a full repertoire of classical works, playing London and touring throughout Great Britain.
Markova, if she is honest, and I have no reason to believe she is not, should be the first to admit her profound debt to three persons in ballet: Anton Dolin, who has projected her, protected her, and occasionally pestered her; Frederick Ashton and Marie Rambert who, jointly and severally, encouraged, advised, and guided her.
In 1938, I was instrumental in having Markova join the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where she competed with Danilova, Toumanova, and Slavenska. Her London triumph in our season at Drury Lane was not entirely unexpected. After all, she was dancing on her home stage. Her performance in Giselle, on 12th October, 1938, at the Metropolitan Opera House, made history.
There was an element in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo direction, of which Leonide Massine was not one, that was not at all pleased with the idea of having Markova with the company. Despite her great London success, Alicia decided she would be wise not to come to America.
Alicia and her mother, I remember, came to the Savoy to see me about this. Mrs. Hurok and I urged her to reconsider her decision. She was determined to resign from the company. She did not feel “at home” in the organization. Although “Freddy” Franklin, who had been a member of the Markova-Dolin Company, had joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Alicia felt alone, and she would be without Anton Dolin, and would miss her family.
Mrs. Hurok and I finally succeeded in dissuading her from her avowed intention, and in convincing her that a great future for her lay in the United States.
From the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo she came to Ballet Theatre, where, under my management, she co-starred with Dolin. Her roles with that company as guest star which I arranged and paid for, together with almost one-half of her salary at other times, for Lucia Chase did not take kindly to Alicia Markova as a member of Ballet Theatre, and the American tour of the Markova-Dolin company, all of these I have dealt with at length.
During one of the seasons of the London Festival Ballet, which was organized by Dolin for the two of them, the team came to a parting of the ways. Like so many associations of this kind, the break could have been the result of any one or more of a combination of causes. One who is sincerely interested in both of them, expresses the hope that it may be only a passing difference. Yet, pursuing a course I follow in the domestic lives of my personal friends, I apply it to the artistic lives of these two, and leave it to them to work out their joint and several destinies. There are limits beyond which even a loyal and fond manager may not go with impunity.
One of the greatest ballerinas of our own or any other time, I cannot say that Markova’s triumphs have not altered her. To be sure, although she still has a manner that is sometimes reserved, outwardly timid, I nevertheless happen to know that behind it all lurks a determined, stubborn, and sometimes downright blind willfulness, coupled with a good deal of unreasonability. It was not for nothing that she earned from Leonide Massine the sobriquet of “Chinese Torture”—as Massine used to put it, “like small drops of water constantly falling on the head.”
As a dancer, Markova is in the straight and direct classical line, as Michel Fokine once observed to me, while watching her Giselle.
Bearing these things in mind, including the fact that the gods have been less than generous to her in matters of face and figure, I am deeply moved by her expertness, her ethereality, her precision, her simplicity. Yet, on the other hand, I can only deplore the stylization and mannered quality she brings to her latter-day performances. When she is at her best, Markova has something above and beyond technique: a certain evanescent, purely luminous detachment. All these things reinforce my conviction that Markova should confine herself to the great classical interpretations, and recognize her own physical limitations, even within this field. Her Giselle is in a class by itself. She has made the role her own. Personally, however, I do not find she gives me the same satisfaction as the Swan Queen, nor in Fokine’s Les Sylphides. To my way of thinking, her Swan Queen, while technically precise, lacks both that deep plumbing of the emotions and the grand, regal manner that the role requires. Her Prelude in Sylphides is spoiled, in my opinion, by excessive mannerisms.
It is in Giselle and The Nutcracker that Markova can bring joy and pleasure to an immense public, that joy the public always receives, whether they know the intricate details of ballet or not, by seeing a great classical ballerina at her best. One of Markova’s best characterizations was that of Taglioni in Dolin’s Pas de Quatre, a delightful cameo, yet today, or, at least, the last time I saw it, it, like her Prelude in Sylphides, suffered from an accretion of manner, until it bordered on the grotesque.
One of the qualities Markova has in common with Pavlova, some of whose qualities she has, is her agelessness. As I said of Pavlova, “genius knows no age,” so might it be said of Diaghileff’s “little English girl” now grown up. The great Russian painter and co-founder of the Diaghileff Ballet, Alexandre Benois, the most noted designer of Giselle, once asserted that Pavlova’s ability to transmute rather ordinary and sometimes banal material into unalloyed gold was a theatrical miracle. It is in roles for which she is peculiarly and individually almost uniquely fitted that Markova, too, is able to work a theatrical miracle.
Under the proper direction, under which she will not be left to her own devices, and will not be required to make her own decisions, but will have them made for her by a wise and intelligent director conscious of her limitations, Markova will be able the better to fulfil her destiny. It is to that desired end that I have been deeply interested in the fact that she had secured an invitation from the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for her to become, once again, a member of the company, with certain freedoms of action outside the company when her services are not required. The initial step has been taken. It is in such a setting that she belongs.
I hope she will continue in this setting.
Always I have been her devoted friend from the beginning of her American successes, and shall continue to be.
It is ballerinas of the type of Alicia Markova who help make ballet the great art it is. There are all too few of them.
Often I have told Anton Dolin that the two of them, Markova and Dolin, individually and collectively, have been of immeasurable service and have done great honor to ballet both in England and throughout the world.
ANTON DOLIN
The erstwhile Sydney Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay, metamorphosed into Anton Dolin whose star has so often paralleled and traversed that of Markova, was born at Slinfold, Sussex, 20th July, 1904. A principal dancer of the Diaghileff Ballet at an early age, he was unique as the only non-Russian premier danseur ever to achieve that position.
Leaving Diaghileff in 1926, he organized the Nemtchinova-Dolin Ballet, with which they toured England and Europe. Alternating ballet with the dramatic and musical theatre, he turned up in New York in Lew Leslie’s unhappy International Revue, along with Gertrude Lawrence, Harry Richman, and the unforgettable Argentinita. On his return to London, Dolin became the first guest-star of the Vic-Wells Ballet before it exchanged the Vic for Sadler’s.
In 1935, with the valued help of the late Mrs. Laura Henderson, he was indefatigable in the formation of the Markova-Dolin Ballet, one of the results of which was the laying of the foundation stones of ballet’s popularity in Great Britain. A period with the de Basil company in Australia was followed by his extended American sojourn, with Ballet Theatre, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, as guest artist, The Seven Lively Arts, the Original Ballet Russe, and again under my management with the Markova-Dolin company.
Without making too detailed a research, I should say that the Dolin literature is nearly as extensive as that about Markova, making due allowance for the fact that the glamorous ballerina always lends herself to the printed page more attractively than her male vis-a-vis. However, Dolin, often as busy with his pen as with his feet, has added four volumes of his own authorship to the list. Divertissement, published in 1931, and Ballet-Go-Round, published in 1938, were sprightly volumes of autobiographical reminiscence and highly personal commentary and observation. There has also been a slender volume on the art of partnering and, more recently, a biographical study of Markova entitled Alicia Markova: Her Life and Art.
My acquaintance and friendship with Dolin dates back to the Diaghileff season of 1925. It is an acquaintance and friendship I value. There is an old bromide to the effect that dancers’ brains are in their legs. As in all generalizations of this sort, it contains something more than a grain of truth. Dolin is one of the shining exceptions to this role. Shrewd, cultured, with a fine background, he is the possessor of a poised manner, and something else, which is, I regret to say, rare in the dancer: a concern for ethics.
There is a weird opinion held in many parts of this country and on the continent of Europe, to the effect that the Englishman is a dull and humorless sort of fellow. This stupid charge is quite beyond the understanding of any one who has thought twice about the matter. I have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing England and the English for a great many years and, as a consequence, I venture to assume the pleasing privilege of informing a deluded world that, whatever else there may or may not be in England, there is more fun and laughter to the square acre than there is to the square mile of any other known quarter. My observation has been that even if an Englishman does achieve a gravity alien to the common spirit about him, he is not able to keep it up for long. Dolin is the possessor of a brilliant sense of humour and much wit, both often biting; but he has a quality which invites visitations of the twin spirits of high and low comedy.