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.