Lifar at the Paris Opera

At the Paris Opera in those days the Dance was regarded as an agreeable amusement, a display of effortless grace where pretty girls assumed poses and were accompanied by male dancers whose role was to show off the ladies. Since a performance of this sort does not demand any very close attention from the audience, it had become a tradition for the chandeliers to be left lighted in the theatre. In this way people could recognise one another, the subscribers could exchange greetings and pay visits from box to box before going off to the sacrosanct foyer de la danse where old gentlemen met and made much of charming young women. And for a great many people such opportunities as these constituted the most obvious reason for having ballet performances at all.

. . . .

There was everything to be done. I started off energetically and the first thing I did was to give orders for the chandeliers to be put out during performances. In this way the attention of the audience would be directed towards what was happening on the stage. There were many other urgent reforms to be undertaken. I demanded from every performer an artistic make-up, for the art of make-up was totally unknown in the Opera ballet corps. At first I had to be myself the teacher. I forbade the wearing on the stage of all jewellery not forming an integral part of the costumes or absolutely necessary for the roles. I had real wigs made to replace the lumps of tow which up to then used to be stuck on dancers' heads. I did away with the trunk-hose worn over tights and the elastic on dancing-shoes. I made all the male dancers shave off their moustaches and forbade these to be worn on the stage. The hardest thing of all was to get the danseuses to dance on the tips of their toes and not half-toe.

Ma vie: From Kiev to Kiev; an autobiography by Serge Lifar. 1970. Page 107-8.