A LIVING LEGEND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 151, 23 December 1938, Page 14

A LIVING LEGEND

FOKINE ON THE BALLET

THE EVOLUTION OF A STYLE,

A CREATIVE ARTIST

it is very delightful when a legend becomes a person and speaks of other legends as if they were persons, too,writes Margaret Lloyd in the "Christian Science Monitor." It would be even more so if their spoken words could be preserved like seckel pears or watermelon rinds, so that the aromatic flavour of an accent which falls always on the wrong American syllable (but the Russian right one), of thoughts halting Visibly for verbal expression in a strange tongue, could be imparted along with the ideas behind them. The Fokine I had read about in snatches—the Fokine of- the Five Points, the innovator, the Fokine who was said to have been strongly influences by Isadora, the Fokine who had associated with Diaghilev, and danced with Pavlova—talked with me quite simply of these things and cast new light upon them, as he told me about the course of his career, which had just resurged with splendour in the. De Basil Ballet Russe production of hi new ballet, "Le Cog d'Or." Fokine and Fokinq. Ho\. grand those names had looked on the billboard years ago. I had saved my pennies". I haJ. counted the days. But when the time for their appearance in Boston came, a snowstorm intervened. I never saw them dance. PORTRAIT COME TO LIFE. But now, fokine sat beside me iri the lounge of his hotel, and all the lo . experience of Russian ballet was in his face. How much could I learn' of that experience—in broken English? I had glimpsed Madame Fokina at the ballet the night beforebeautiful, sumptuous, remote. I had hoped to meet her on this occasion. But she did not join us. Fokine himself was like a portrait come to life. The light and shade of thinking back played across his finelymodelled features, animating his black eyes, turning up little Curves of amusement or indenting small angles of reflection at the corners of his mouth. First I asked about Isadora Duncan —if it really was she who had changed his ideas of ballet technique—for this is what I had heard. It was not so. Fokine was a born innovator. He was the kind of boy who set all his teachers by their ears, asking them why and what for. He could not blindly accept. directions without finding out xor himself why it must be so. And he was not sure it must be so. What, was the reason for all the rules laid down by somebody long ago and adhered to so strictly by those that followed? When he finished his training at the old Imperial School in "St. Petersburg, he was not certain that ballet was satisfying enough to give his life to it, to make it his career. A STALE PRESCRIPTION. The prescription of over two hundred years' standing had become stale and banal. It was stupid, he thought, to mime the story and then stop short for a variation of technical display. It was actually comic in its jerkiness from mime to dancing and back to mimetic gesture again. It was downright dull to repeat the same technical formulas over and over again, without a hairsbreadt:. of difference ir the repetitions. This dualism in ballet, like two separate languages spoken simultaneously against each other, troubled the young Fokine so much that he wrote a letter about it to the directors of the Imperial School and all the great artists he was associated with. Mime, he said, among other things, should be in rhythm," and not blocked out separately and non-rhythmically, like the parlando passages * which are an obtrusion in opera. The dance movement should be expressive and not confined to a soulless geometric pattern The whole ballet should have unity, should flow and blend together instead of being cut up into fragments stopping the action for a display of virtuosity, or stopping the dancing for narrative mime—or for bows.

The letter brought, no response from his conservative directors. But he realised his ideas by composing and producing new ballets in charity performances. He had the use of the Imperial Theatre, the sets and the costumes. The performances would be given for the benefit of a children's school, a home for girls, and so on. He created not only a new ballet form, but the foundation of new charitable institutions at the same time.

Yes, he admired Duncan. But he could still admire and go his own way. To begin with, Duncan had no t^^~

nique. It was natural dancing she did and always in one uniform style, while his ballets were and are based on complicated technique and always totally different in style. And although Duncan was inspired and made natural dancing as she did it, a form of art, there was nothing in it that could actually be taught or that had enough body to hold together when transferred through any other teacher. Before he produced "Daphnis et Chloe," Fokine wrote an introduction to the libretto, explaining \his ideas about the new form of ballet, including a new system of pantomime, improved musical selections, a choice of costumes more related to character than the übiquitous tutu, and movement that should be more plastic, more expressive, than - a series of technical feats. "THE DYING SWAN." Before he met Diaghilev in 1908, he had composed "the expressive dance of the soul—'The Dying Swan'," he had turned from the formal acrobacy of tradition ito the poetry of "Les Sylphides," he had composed ballets in Greek and Egyptian style, and altered the classic form. He had made ballets with Benois and Bakst before Diaghilev became a ballet impresario. / We spoke of Nijinsky. Was he a born choreographer, I asked, or did he not rather have choreography thrust upon him? Wasn't he just a dancer of superior physical endowment but no very penetrating mentality? Wrong agafr£;; So . trustworthy is rumour and tiekrsay. There is an extra element, "something not only physical, not only mental," about a dancer. It is a sort of intuition, feeling, if you like, for movement. Nijinsky had that attribute. He understood the most difficult nuances: of movement. Fokine never had another male dancer (as pupil and performer of his compositions) who could discern so exactly the meaning of what he was showing him, ♦who could perform so precisely the finest shadings of technique. DANCER AND MASTER. "But one may be very good dancer and never make maitre de ballet," he said. "Although one cannot be good ballet master without first being good dancer." I asked Fokine if he would still go on creating ballets when he officially joined the De Basil Ballet Russe in February, 1939, if he still saw possibilities of change and development in ballet technique. "Every ballet I create is different from the last. My lessons yary. They are not every day the same. There are always new things to do. You know in the classical training, you do every day the same things over and over, first at bar, then floor practice. It is not so with me." ' • i Fokine is writing an autobiography —of his ideas as well as of his life. Much*has been.written about him. Much he has written in essays and articles, which have been translated into English. It is time Fokine told his own story, in full.

"But," he says, "when I write book, 1 cannot compose ballet—like 'Cdq d'Or.' When I compose new ballet, 1 cannot write book."