Karsavina speaking of Nijinsky

He [Nijinsky] was very musical and we felt. . . I should say we were tuned together, knowing each other, never bothering, sometimes even slightly improvising the movement.  But off-stage he was uncommunicative, and not very articulate.  I remember we had once a misunderstanding and that was in Giselle when we revived it on the stage of the Paris Opéra, where it hadn't been given for a very long time, and Diaghilev attached very great importance to it.  I remember he came to fetch me in my dressing room and, as Russians do, made the sign of the cross on me and led me from my dressing room on to the stage, and said, 'Let's go and re-create Giselle in the Paris Opéra.'   At rehearsals I did it as others did it before me, taking the style in which the gestures were not quite conventional but the old kind of pantomime.  and when we rehearsed, Nijinsky just stood and did nothing and it was very disconcerting, it put me off.  So I talked to Diaghilev about it and he said to me, 'Now leave him, he will get it right, you will come to understand each other.  He doesn't talk much, but he writes reams and reams of paper just on that part.  He thinks it.  He was just thinking the part in his head.' And finally at the performance it did come together very well, in harmony.

Speaking of Diaghilev by John Drummond.  1997.  Pages 93-4.

Leighton Lucas speaking of Diaghilev

Tell me about discipline in the company.  Was it strict?

Oh, very strict, very strict indeed.  There was one thing that always amused me very much.  I noticed that when after a rehearsal or a class we'd all change, the last man out always bowed to the room before we shut the door.  This I liked very much.  It's a formal gesture.  Every time Diaghilev came in to visit a rehearsal or a class, we all had to stand up, and mistakes were not only frowned upon, they were verboten.  We were not allowed to make mistakes, although I must quote an example of this.  Pulcinella, Stravinsky-Pergolesi.  The most beautiful, beautiful work.  We did the first performance of that at the Paris Opéra and we had been rehearsing, as the ballet used to rehearse for months and months on this one work.  There were four little Pulcinelli, of whom I was one, and we were all dressed in huge white gowns with black wooden masks over our faces, so we were completely anonymous, and little red hats designed by Picasso.  By the first performance of this work we knew it, we were bored, we knew it so well, and came the moment we four little Pulcinelli were doing our dance, and for the briefest second I hesitated.  My mind wandered -- is it right or left turn -- and before I had thought about it I had done it the right way and forgotten it.  And when I left the theatre that night, my name was on the board.  Lukin rehearsal tomorrow morning, Pulcinella.  And for two hours the next morning I had to go through this dance until I went screaming mad, to make perfectly sure I never did such a thing again.  Diaghilev was in front of every performance, and he had seen this and his ire worked to such an extent to think that anybody in his company could make a mistake.  This was the sort of standard we were set.


Speaking of Diaghilev by John Drummond.  1997.  Page 209.

Balanchine and story ballets

Then too, without story ballets he [Balanchine] didn't have to buy scenery, which was good because he didn't have any money.  He was kind of a free man.  He could do what he wanted.  I always had the feeling that he wanted to choreograph with nobody bothering him.  He decided to do his style and didn't care about scenery and costumes.  When he came to New York he changed everything.  He was smart when he saw he could do this.  Balanchine made a tremendous revolution.

Roman Jasinski: a Gypsy Prince from the Ballet Russse by Cheryl Forrest and Georgia Snoke.  2008.  Page 235.