Preparation for a role

Great singers and dancers have approached the actual manner of presentation differently.  Some had to get inside the skin of the character, to prepare internally before going on stage.  Chaliapin could stand in the wings smoking and chatting one minute and stun the audience with his tragic figure of Tsar Boris the next.  For Maria Callas, full control meant that a performance must be linked to personal identification with the role, whether it was Norma, Violetta, or Medea.  The same was true of Anna Pavlova.  Maya Plisetskaya could dash about the shops right up to the beginning of a performance, then, barely warming up, go out on stage as the dazzling Odette.  Nijinsky is said to have seemed sleepy before the curtain went up.  He would wake up in his role, giving rein to his complexes, then retreat again behind his indifferent mask when the curtain fell.

Baryshnikov: from Russia to the West by Gennady Smakov.  1981.  Page 125.

Erik Bruhn and nerves

It is a hard illness to cure unless it is detected and checked from the start.  He [Bruhn] has reached the point of being a really great dancer.  He knows it, he feels it and people tell him so all the time.  He now finds it hard to live up to his own immense reputation and is consumed by fears.  His greatest fear is disappointing his public; that people will one day shrug after a performance and say, "So, that is the great Erik Bruhn?"

I was told once that it happens inevitably to all great bull fighters.  At the height of their fame and powers they develop tremendous fears they will disappoint the crowds; that they will fail to live up to their expectations.  And so they do something desperate, trying deliberately to repeat a previous successful feat that came spontaneously to them before.  In the end some of them get themselves killed.  Luckily our dear friends do not put their life at stake, but it's the same thing when nerves get in the way. . . .

Vera Volkova by Alexander Meinertz.  2007.  Page 129.

Baryshnikov as a child

'I got lucky,' he [Baryshnikov] adds.  'I fell in love with dance."  Every ounce of energy he had was channelled into ballet.  According to Juris Kapralis, who became his ballet teacher two months after his mother's death, he was a child workaholic.  'Very serious boy.  Perfectionist.  Even in free time, go in corner and practise over and over again.  Other boys playing, Misha studying.  And not just steps, but artistic, as actor.  He is thinking all the time what this role must be.  I remember, once, Nutcracker.  He was 13, perhaps.  I was prince, and he was toy soldier.  After Mouse King dies, Misha relax his body.  No longer stiff, like wooden soldier.  Soft.  Our ballet director ask him: 'Who says you should do this?'  He answer: 'When Mouse King dies, toys become human.  toys become boys.  Movements must change.'  He devise that himself.  Small boy, but thinking.'

"The reluctant prodigal" by Joan Acocella.  The Guardian.  28 February 1988.

Helgi Tomasson's ballet shoes

I want the sole to conform to my arch when I point my foot, so I order snug and flexible slippers.  Because of this fit, I am almost as sensitive to the floor in my slippers as I am in bare feet.  Quite often the stage is not flawless; even on linoleum the cracks in the wooden floor underneath can be dangerous, especially during a turning combination.  It's an advantage to be able to feel the problem spots so that you can avoid them.  However, I need the protection of slippers for classical ballet variations in which there are multiple turns and jumps.

It's possible to borrow tights, costumes, or make-up, but never ballet slippers.  My slippers must fit and belong to my own feet.  In fact, when I travel I never pack my shoes into the suitcase that will be stored in the baggage compartment; I always carry them on the plane with me for safety.  Wearing another dancer's shoes would be a disaster -- probably more psychologically than physically.

Dancershoes by Daniel and Stephanie Sorine.  1979.  Page 72.

A dancer's fame

The highly concentrated nature of ballet tends to turn most dancers into very nervous people.  It is almost constitutionally impossible to be calm and relaxed when the successes or failures in your career depend on a few minutes of intense dancing, and when your artistry is constantly put to the test.  A dancer's fame is ephemeral, and leaves no lasting mark, except in the spectator's memory.  A dancer's fame is fluid, because it depends on the sum total of his or her performances, never on a single perfect moment.  Finally, a dancer's fame is intangible, because it reflects a highly personal, yet harmonious, unity of movement, technique, maturity, musicality and "soul."

Ballet as body language by Joan McConnell.  1977.  Page 129.

The tragedy of Chodinsky Field -- the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II

And then as though it had been a signal, the whole aspect of that vast throng changed.  It was instantaneous and complete.  Men, women, and children charged  forward in a solid mass, for all the world like a stampede of the cattle that, in their stolidness, they so closely resembled.  They swept forward relentlessly, oblivious of obstacles, indifferent to the dangers they were creating for themselves and their fellows . . .

On the fringes of the throng, police and military exchanged sharp and anxious glances.  No words were necessary to point out the risks of disaster that mounted every minute.  The blind, unreasoning panic of a crowd -- especially one such as this -- is terrifying and terrible enough at any time, certain to lead to injury and probably death.  But it was not this danger that was uppermost in the minds of those whose unenviable responsibility it was to endeavour to ensure safety.  The field was a veritable death trap.  No planks, however strong, could withstand the load imposed by that tumultuous charge.

A captain of police stepped forward and shouted, trying to halt or turn the mob.  He was swept aside, and his body trampled underfoot.  All around him others were sharing his fate, as the rushing people stumbled into the ditches, in which they were pressed down by the weight of those who fell on top of them.

It was a horrifying sight that remained for ever sharply photographed in Ivan's mind.  Often I heard him, in after years, tell the story of the coronation tragedy, and I seemed to see the scene with the same vividness as he.

"Never before or since," he said, "have I been so overwhelmed by a sense of tragedy and helplessness.  I had soldiers -- several hundred of them -- at my disposal.  All round the field there were other detachments, as well as the police.  But what could we do?  We were powerless to stem that rush, which swept forward like some mountain torrent.  Panic was everywhere.  Yet the crowd crashed forward as though it was impelled by a single desire which must be satisfied at any cost -- to gain possession of those cheap, glittering tin cups and the pathetic little bags of food that were the Tsar's gifts to his people.  We could have fired, perhaps, but the risk was too great.  A single shot even into the air would have turned that pressing mob into a horde of raging beasts who would have torn at each other's throats and brought greater disaster where there was already disaster enough.

"All we could do was to keep on the fringes, trying to contain the mob and reduce in whatever way we could its mad momentum.  That was difficult enough.  Two of my men stepped forward trying to protect and rescue a middle-aged muzhik woman who carried a small child in her arms and had another, perhaps five or six years old, by her side.  They were swept away like small logs tossed into a cascade.  The woman, too, disappeared beneath the thousands of trampling feet.  Later, when it was all over, we found the woman, children, and our two men . . . they were unrecognizable.

One Russian's story by George Sava. 1970. Pages 91-2.

The mirror and self-scrutiny

. . . this self-scrutiny is hardly narcissistic because it holds so little pleasure.  Yet one understands why dancers are so often considered hopeless narcissists, so absorbed in their own images that they do not connect, not even when they dance together.  One of the oddest experiences I've had was watching Natalia Makarova and Alexander Godunov rehearse a lyrical, romantic pas de deux to the strains of Tchaikovsky.  I imagined them melting into one another, yet for these two dancers merging was hardly the order of the afternoon.  Coupling to the music, they stared past each other, through each other, over each other, straining for a glimpse in the mirror, making this lyrical dance an almost comic parody.

Off balance: the real world of ballet by Suzanne Gordon. 1983. Page 26.

Nijinsky as choreographer

The experiment of appointing Nijinsky as chief choreographer seems to have been generally regarded at the time as disastrous.  Diaghilev's motive was to find a talent responsive to new ideas, and one which he could mould according to his own theories, which at the time included an inordinately high regard for the music-visualization theories of Dalcroze and his method of eurhythmics.  Curiously, there seems little evidence of the effect of these theories in Nijinsky's one surviving work, L'Après-midi d'un Faune; and curiously also, that work shows an exceptionally strong plastic and atmospheric sense, suggesting that maybe Nijinsky was a better choreographer than he gets credit for.  Massine in his autobiography expressed great admiration for the meticulous way Nijinsky explained each small detail when rehearsing Faune and said categorically that in different circumstances Nijinsky would have been a great choreographer.  His Sacre du Printemps also, although difficult and unappreciated, was thought by some to have a quality of pathos which Massine's later, better-organized version lacked.

World of Diaghilev by John Percival.  1971. Pages 62-4.

Ashton and dancing

I have know Frederick Ashton from his first years as a student in the ballet world.  I can remember him in the 'twenties, first as a pupil of Leonide Massine and later with Marie Rambert.  Small, nervous and touchingly eager to please, is the picture that I recall of him.  Like so many artists, he was more in love with his second best talent: for at one time he appeared to want to dance more than anything else in the world.  When a member of Madam Rambert's Ballet Club, he would dance sometimes with me as an 'extra in the early Old Vic Christmas Ballets -- before Sadler's Wells was rebuilt.  The Ballet Club gave its first performance at the Mercury Theatre about three months ahead of the opening of the Sadler's Wells Theatre.

Ashton joined the Vic-Wells Ballet the year that Markova left us in 1935.  From that autumn, until the outbreak of war, we had the benefit of his first group of ballets.  He was exceptionally prolific -- always working with a great facility.  He has never cared to wander far from his native ballet company, and when he has done so, he has always appeared to be profoundly miserable until he has returned home again.

Ashton has an intensely ephemeral attitude towards his ballets -- I doubt if he has any notes of reference on any of them. . . he would prefer to re-compose rather than endeavour to remember.

He always says that his idea of happiness is to be in the corps de ballet.  Some years ago I was standing next to him during a rehearsal of Purcell's Faerie Queen at the Royal Opera House.  He was directing the choreography: an unconsciously humorous (to balletic minds anyway) rendering of a song was in progress, and although the corps de ballet were in a group on the stage, their faces were turned away from the auditorium.  Suddenly a faint shaking was discernible -- a ripple that increased in vibration as it noticeably passed through the bodies of the dancers.  'Look,' said Fred, 'they are having such a wonderful giggle -- Oh, I wish I was still in the corps and able to giggle like that. . .'

Ashton's giggling days were spent in the Ida Rubinstein Company in the last years of the 'twenties.  He and William Chappell were humble members of the Company.  I can imagine them: two small English boys -- inexperienced, half-trained and underpaid.  He has told me of the economic embarrassment that was caused when the two of them had a quarrel, and might not be on speaking terms for some days: finances demanded the sharing of the tooth paste, the cake of soap and the hair oil; silence made all requests for such mundane possessions a matter of acute, though momentary, lost of dignity. . . .

In his early days Ashton might be lethargic about his choreography, but there was never as much as a hint of lethargy about his dancing.  When young, his weakness lay in a difficulty in keeping time with the music -- and the clock.  Eagerness and intense nervous energy (his natural reaction to movement) made him deaf to sound; one would hold on to him grimly and at the same time experience something of the trouble encountered by anyone involved in the capture of a wild Dartmoor pony.

Come dance with me: a memoir, 1898-1956 by Ninette de Valois.  1957. Pages 180-1.

The foot

To most balletgoers, the aristocratic foot of the dancer is the distinguishing feature of classical ballet.  Strong and supple, and as sensitive as a hand, the foot is used by the dancer in a manner that, to the eye of the observer, departs distinctly from the ordinary mechanics of movement.

To a dancer the feet are servants of the first rank.  Like the tiny feeder roots of a tall strong tree, on which the health and well-being of every leaf and branch depend, the feet are a source not only of strength and support, but also of propulsion and shock absorption and, most importantly, of perception.  Sensations relayed from the foot inform the rest of the body of the level of its support, its trajectory, its orientation to space, and countless subtleties that are reflected instantly in every movement.  It is no exaggeration to say that the quality of a dancer's movement is directly related to the level of sensitivity in the use of the feet.

Inside Ballet Technique: separating anatomical fact from fiction in the ballet class by Valerie Grieg. 1994.  Page 95.

Arthur Saint -Léon's last years

So Saint-Léon came back to Paris in 1870 to savour his last and greatest triumph, Coppélia, which was created at the Opéra at the end of May.  No doubt he, and others too, looked forward to a long and fruitful association with the Opéra, but that was not to be.  For some years his health had been disintegrating, and it was a miracle that in his physical condition he could still produce a masterpiece so light-hearted and charming.  In his younger days he had enjoyed good health, suffering only from minor ailments such as rheumatism, for which he took the waters at Bath in 1847, and this had given him more than a fair share of energy.  As well as dancing and devising ballets, he concerned himself with all details of the production as well as musical matters, he coached his ballerinas, and he was capable of managing his own company.  If he grumbled about his "position of a galley slave", it was his life and he would surely have had it no other way.  But in 1866, exhausted by the demands made on him in Russia and frustrated at being unable to supervise the final rehearsals of La Source in Paris, his health began to fail.  It was a moral as well as a physical crisis.  "How I loathe my profession," he confessed to Nuitter.  Assailed by rheumatism, headaches and stomach trouble, he began to find his duties a burden.  By the winter of 1868-69 he was enduring "unbelievable pain" from "a complicated disease of the kidneys and the intestines," and for two and a half months he was able to sleep only for short periods crouched up in an armchair.  Depression and fatigue took a heavy toll, and in the last summer of his life, 1870, he was a man grown old before his time.

Two weeks after the first night of Coppélia he went, on doctor's advice, to Wiesbaden to take the waters.  The Franco-Prussian War broke out shortly after his return to Paris, and as the time for his return to St. Petersburg approached, news of heavy defeats and withdrawals was reaching Paris.  The end came with merciful suddenness.  He collapsed with a heart attack in the Café du Divan, in the Passaage de l'Opéra, on the evening of 2nd September 1870, and was dead before his friends could bring him back to his home in the rue de Laval, where he lived with Louise Fleury.

It was the end of an era in more sense than one.  The Opéra had just closed for the duration of the war, and would not reopen until the following year, after France's defeat, the fall of the Second Empire, and the holocaust of the Commune.  The great flowering of ballet, which had reached its peak under the influence of Romanticism in the 1830s and 1840s but had continued, with diminishing strength, until 1870, had passed.  The repertory of those years was to disappear as its ballets, with only one exception, were forgotten.  The exception was Coppélia, which has survived to enchant us still, one of the last brilliant flames of the Second Empire, reflecting all the confident gaiety of that vanished age, and a lively and fitting memorial to its creator, Arthur Saint-Léon.

from the introduction to Letters from a Ballet-Master: The Correspondence of Arthur Saint-Léon edited by Ivor Guest. 1981. Pages 33-5.

Darcey Bussell on Conductors

One of the hard things about dancing -- particularly in classical ballets -- is that the performance doesn't just depend on us, the dancers.  Conductors especially can affect us because they determine the speed of the music, and if they hear it differently from us it can throw our whole performance.

When we have a conductor like Victor Fedotov guesting from the Kirov it's a great luxury because he takes his speeds from the dancers, unlike many conductors over here who don't adjust their tempi at all -- they play the music as they would a concert score.  In Russia dancers seem to wield more power though, so conductors like Fedotov will speed up or slow down the orchestra to suit the dancing.

When we work with him it's wonderful to get so much attention, but it can be unnerving.  At first I couldn't get used to the way he'd virtually stop the orchestra whenever I took a balance, and wait for me to come down before he started up again.  Because I'm so used to having to keep time with the orchestra I kept on balancing longer and longer as he slowed down, and both the music and I nearly ground to a halt.

Since most Opera House conductors don't indulge us in the same way we have to adjust our speeds to them.  It's fine if everyone's rehearsed together but if a new conductor comes in or there hasn't been enough preparation time then the music may be played at an alarmingly different speed from the way we've rehearsed it.  It's a terrible feeling -- you're being forced off the music and you can't do the steps properly.  Dancers often come off the stage in tears because the conductor has spoilt their show.  Being tall, I generally prefer conductors to take speeds slightly slow.  If the music goes too fast I can't always fit in the steps and I'm in danger of tripping over myself.  If it goes too slow I can always save something,  I can always pull a phrase out longer -- except of course when I'm jumping.  I can't actually fly.

Life in Dance by Darcey Bussell. 1999. Pages 66-7.

Diaghilev conquers Paris

One truly beautiful day I had a visit from Diaghilev, who asked me if I would come to Paris with him, where he was planning to organize a number of symphony concerts, in order to acquaint the French public with Russian music and its historical development.  I agreed to take part in them since I knew how interested Europe was in Russian works.  I was most enthusiastic about his idea.  This for me was a new adventure, and I looked forward to it very much.

When we reached Paris I took up residence in the same hotel as Diaghilev.  I soon understood that what we had embarked upon was work of the greatest importance, and everybody concerned was throwing heart and soul into the task.  I will say this, that there was more life humming round Diaghilev than in all the streets of Paris. He told me that there was such an enormous interest in the forthcoming concerts that even the Grand Opera House would not hold the thousands who were already clamouring for tickets.  He said that Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, and many other composers would be taking part in the concerts, and that Rimsky-Korsakov, Blumenfeld, and Nikish were to conduct.

We began the first concert with the first act from Russlan and Ludmilla, and it was very well received.  I myself sang excerpts from Sadko, Prince Igor, and Boris Godunov, as well as a number of ballads with pianoforte accompaniment.  The French are erroneously considered to be frivolous, but they were very much drawn to us, liking particularly the Mussorgsky music, and spoke of this composer with great enthusiasm.  The concerts were so successful that it gave us the idea of bringing Russian opera to France the following season.  And this we did.

The mere announcement that Diaghilev was putting on Boris Godunov was sufficient news for the Parisians to acclaim it as a gala season.  I shall never forget what feeling, what electrifying energy, the chorus and orchestra of the Grand Opera put into their work.  It was simply wonderful.  We produced the work in full, something quite impossible in Russia owing to the censorship.  The work was most impressive, and in all my twenty-five years in the theatre I have never witnessed such a magnificent production.

Chaliapin: an autobiography as told to Maxim Gorky.  1967. Page 164.

Michel Fokine -- Letter,"The Times", 6th July 1914

The Five Principles [of the New Ballet]

Not to form combinations of ready-made and established dance-steps, but to create in each case a new form corresponding to the subject, the most expressive form possible for the representation of the period and the character of the nation represented -- that is the first rule of the new ballet.

The second rule is that dancing and mimetic gesture have no meaning in a ballet unless they serve as an expression of its dramatic action, and they must not be used as a mere divertissement or entertainment, having no connection with the scheme of the whole ballet.

The third rule is that the new ballet admits the use of conventional gesture only where it is required by the style of the ballet, and in all other cases endeavours to replace gestures of the hands by memetic of the whole body.  Man can be and should be expressive from head to foot.

The fourth rule is the expressiveness of groups and of ensemble dancing.  In the older ballet the dancers were ranged in groups only for the purpose of ornament, and the ballet-master was not concerned with the expression of any sentiment in groups of characters or in ensemble dances.  The new ballet, on the other hand, in developing the principle of expressiveness, advances from the expressiveness of the face to the expressiveness of the whole body, and from the expressiveness of the individual body to the expressiveness of a group of bodies and the expressiveness of the combined dancing of a crowd.

The fifth rule is the alliance of dancing with other arts.  The new ballet, refusing to be the slave either of music or of scenic decoration, and recognizing the alliance of the arts only on the condition of complete equality, allows perfect freedom both to the scenic artist and to the musician.  In contradistinction to the older ballet it does not demand "ballet music" of the composer as an accompaniment to dancing; it accepts music of every kind, provided only that it is good and expressive.  It does not demand of the scenic artist that he should array the ballerinas in short skirts and pink slippers.  It does not impose any specific "ballet" conditions on the composer or the decorative artist, but gives complete liberty to their creative powers.

These are the chief rules of the new ballet.

Michel Fokine and his ballets by Cyril W. Beaumont. 1953. Pages 146-7.