RUSSIAN BALLET

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 58, 6 September 1938, Page 4

RUSSIAN BALLET

THE END APPROACHES

THE FAILURE OF DE BASIL

NO NEW DIAGHILEFF

In the Co vent Garden foyer, on the opening night of the latest Russian ballet season, someone mentioned "the strange atmosphere in the house,*' writes James Monahan in the "Manchester Guardian." One might say it was simply because so much uncertainty had shrouded this opening,:but, for some people at least, there was more to it than that. The difficulties preceding this season had not just been the stock ones of this and other ballet companies. A split had come between the most creative force in ballet now, Massine, the choreographer, and the young Russian dancers who were the finest material for his moulding. More than that, these dancers were the heirs to the Rusisan tradition; on their feet, under Massine's guidance, depended- the "Russian" ballet which Western Europe has known for thirty years. The earlier part of the story has been often told—how a group of cosmopolitan young Russians worked a minor artistic revolution in Russia between 1890 and 1910, and how, having experimented with Russian painting, opera, music in Paris, they then turned to the ballet. THEIR IMPRESARIO. The one of this group that most concerns this story was a competent musician who also knew about painting: Serge Diaghileff, the impresario of thfe group. He had been in the nineties appointed to the Imperial theatres—home of , ; the traditional, by then stereotyped/ Russian ballet —but lost his ppst In some disgrace. Cut off from a "constitutional" career, he turned westwards, leaving ballet for opera and painting. Fokine wasythe1 happy, accident that brought him backto ballet for good. Here was a young choreographer doing for ballet what Diaghileff's \ group was doing in a wider sphere, breaking down dead cliches: and. conventions. Seasons in Paris in 1908 and 1909 were experimental, undertaken in breaks in the Imperial Ballet's seasons. In 1910 Diaghileff formed his permanent cqmpa/iy, a decision that caused much heartburning to the dancers. They were from the Maryinsky, the Imperial Theatre, whose , income was assured for life. Yet many went with Diaghileff when he left Russia. Whatever hopes they may have had of keeping a foot in Russia were shaken by the war a^id shattered by the Russian Revolution. ! SURVIVED THE WAR. The company somehow survived the war, but certain inevitable changes were visible. Not for nothing had its title changed from "Ballets Russes" to "Ballets Serge Diaghileff." Its aesthetic centre was becoming Paris, no longer petrograd; its composers and designers were chic, Parisian, in the movements of the twenties. It could scarcely have been otherwise! The essentially Russian ballets that began it all had to be supplemented, and as it all began as a novelty, so on novelties it depended. This, they say, j showed a decadence—the first ballets had been only incidentally new, the latest were new by" intent. Yet let it be remembered how strong was the power that could hold the forces togetner at all) and: how iexciting as works of art were some even of the ballets of the desperate twenties. vln 1929 Diaghileff died and it seemed to be the end. It was not the end, as it happened, but the beginning of a rather different chapter. At first Diaghileff s dancers were scattered all over the world, leaderless, and some of them, like Lifar, who went to the Paris Opera, have never returned again to Ballets. Russes. However, only three years after DiaghilefFs. death there was a new "authoritative" Russian ballet company. THE DE BASEL COMPANY. This was the De Basil company, built—by what was a stroke of business genius—on the combination of a famous Diaghilevian , choreographer with the "baby" dancers .Baronova, Toumanova, Riabouchinska. The company was young, integral; it had the power of growth; and, most remarkable, it was predominantly Russian. Its "baby" stars and others in it had only been born just before or just after the Revolution; all their short lives had been in exile, mostly in Paris; they had known nothing of the Maryinsky. / Yet in some way the tradition seemed to be in them, and no other country has; yet produced dancers to rival them. So it was still Russian ballet in this sense, and. it was still controlled by Russians. But there was no new Diaghileff. It was the weakness of the De Basil company that its business and its artistic heads were separate. Without this single control it played safer than Diaghileff would have deigned to do; its repertory was mainly "revivalist," those pre-war perennial successes, like "Sylphides" or "Carnaval," and a sprinkling of the later, safe Diaghileff successes, like "Boutique Fantasque" or "Tricorne." NOT REALLY NEW. A lot of fuss was made about its own choreographic symphonies—"the new classicism" they were called—but time has shown that there was no new seed in them. What appeared most conspicuously was that, lacking single j control, the collaboration of choreo[grapher, designer, and composer was a slapdash affair. This was the greatest difference, perhaps, between the new De Basil and the Diaghilevian ! ballets. Another difference was this: the De Basil company was much more com!mercial. By long seasons —too long— !in London and long tours in America 1 (think only of dancing in a hundred United States towns between October and March!) it gave its backers a fair enough return for their money, if not a full one. But the conditions were arduous; they did not make for steady excellence in production nor for con- • tentment among the dancers. j Soon enough the inevitable hap-: pened. This or that leading dancer I began to hope to do better elsewhere, in 1935 came the first break—that of Woizikovski, who had been one of Diaghileff's leading dancers. His rather wan little company broke, merged in the Blum company, another De Basil rival (Rene-Blum had helped to start the De Basil company), ■ merged again with the Blum dancers in the De Basil company, broke loose again, and has since vanished altogether. THE BALLET POLITICS. Truth is, a' frantic air had come over ballet politics. Dancers and choreo- : graphers had in the past broken from Diaghileff, but they could never really ' hope to set up as his rivals. Now : there was the hope, however faint, of rivalry. The seed of ballet had been scattered wide and was beginning to produce good dancers in other countries; there were more dancers about to. form passable companies. The United States particularly was the new recruiting ground; there ballet had ( been taking root since Pavlova —her- ( self the earliest secessionist from -, Diaghileff—had gone there. Novikoff, ,

Vladimiroff, Bolm had all taught there. Ballet was growing too, in London with a particular steadiness, and in Sadler's Wells London was even beginning to create her own school..' One could notice the effect of all this even on the personnel of the -De Basil company. Of, say seventy dancers, ten would be American, a few would be British or Canadian, there would be Poles, Yugoslavs, Germans, but still nearly fifty would be Russian. THE. LAST RUSSIANS.-'"' After the opening of the latest Co vent season a small party was given, and as one looked round the table one saw there Victor Dandre, who was Pavlova's husband, . 'Serge Grigorieff and his wife,: Tchernicheva—the one Diaghileffs right-hand, man from the start, the other his dancer from the start—David Lichine, the company's young choreographer, who has.to find his own difficult way without a Diaghileff to teach him, and Irina Baronova and • Tatiana Kiabouchinska, the two dancers who are the youngest heirs-. —and not the least considerable —to the tradition of the Maryinsky.' In that group there seemed to be the whole story of the "Ballets Russes"? they were all Russians, all had their part in that strange tale. During supper someone began, with a pencil, to mark on the evening's programme those dancers who are Russian and those who ■ are not. Serge .Grigorieff interrupted brusquely, "There are no Americans, no English; they are all Russian." "Ballets Russes'? can have no long future. - A single genius made it what it was and its influence is known now by the huge popularity of ballet and by the .beginnings of new national schools. The future is with thenij but it will be a duller future. It needed Diaghileff to raise ballet to its dizzy heights of co-partnership with music and painting; it will not fall to the supreme depths again, but it cannot stay in the heights. There is no hope for it from the new Soviet Russia, for, though people may talk of the'possibility of grafting this exile art on to its' own national tree, the two have grown too far apart for any,fruit to result. No, the story of the exiles it nearly done.