The pressure of performing live -- Deborah Bull

. . . the way a dancer feels as she steps out, alone, on an empty stage. That moment of no return – familiar to me from two decades spent dancing – when years of struggle and physical endeavour combine at a deadline that cannot be deferred; that sense of the world waiting to see whether you really can do it, well-wishers leaning in, eyes alight with hope, naysayers resting on their heels, arms folded across chests and knowing glances exchanged.

Harnessing the learning from years of failure to a single goal and summoning every ounce of emotional courage to dance the first step; the faltering start and then the gradual cresting of the wave as you realise you can do it – you’re doing it – and hardly daring to believe it lest the spell is broken; and then the moment of silence that follows your final flourish, launching a crescendo of applause which, however loud, can never compete with the roaring emotions in your head as the doubts, the hopes and years of wanting spin like the reels on a slot machine before they finally come to rest, three golden bars lined up in a row. You’ve hit the jackpot. You did it.

"The Truth About Ballet" by Deborah Bull in The Telegraph. (Wednesday 26 January 2011).  Full article.

Henning Kronstam and musicality

Every dancer who worked with Kronstam mentions his extraordinarily sensitive musicality. Kronstam was not a musician; his musical training consisted of those two years of piano lessons in childhood. However, he had an instinctive sense of both rhythm and melody. Julian Thurber, one of the company's rehearsal pianists who played for Kronstam for more than twenty years (and with his wife, Ingryd Thorson, also a rehearsal pianist, is a concert musician in his own right) described one aspect of Kronstam's musicality: "There's a connection between breath and dance. You can dance with a fixed diaphragm, where you sort of hop around, and probably do it all right, but where nothing happens, or you can dance with a free diaphragm, where certain things happen, and where you remain up in the air for longer periods, and where certain movements suddenly become worth something. That is the breath, and that breath is also a musical thing. He would choose slow tempi to work with until he got the breath inside the movement, and then he would work it." Thorson spoke of Kronstam's way of responding to music and how this was linked to the action in a dramatic ballet. "He pulls the tempi back when you're rehearsing with him. Where James first feels the Sylph coming in the window, Henning hears the music and responds to that, so it's like the music comes first, and then the response comes, and then the feeling that something is there, and then he moves. He doesn't move on the music, which normally people do. It's a response."

Many Danish dancers refer to this as "dancing through the music." Lis Jeppesen described it as a natural rather than regimented musicality: "The whole corps doesn't have to be on the beat, like soldiers," and added: "In one sense, it is singing the dance. You have to hear the music, and what is the soul of the music and what is the melody. And then you have to transfer the melody to your movements. The other thing you do is to extend the movement out as long as you can before you go further, and that is the phrasing."

Henning Kronstam: Portrait of a Danish Dancer by Alexandra Tomalonis. (2002). Pages 453-4.

An Ambassador's memory of Mathilde Kschessinska -- 1917

13  March  1917

At nightfall, I ventured out with my secretary Chambrun to cheer up some women friends who lived near and whom I knew to be extremely anxious. After a call on Princess Stanislas Radziwill and the Countess de Robien, we decided to return, as in spite of the darkness there was constant firing and, as we crossed the Serguievskaïa, we heard the bullets whistling past.

During a day which has been prolific in grave events and may perhaps have determined the future of Russia for a century to come, I have made a note of one episode which seems trivial at first sight, but in reality is highly significant. The town house of Kchechinskaïa, at the end of the Kammenny-Ostrov Prospekt and opposite Alexander Park, was occupied by the insurgents to-day and sacked from top to bottom. I remember a detail which makes it easy to see why the residence of the famous dancer has been singled out by mob fury. It was last winter; the cold was intense and the thermometer had fallen to -- 35°. Sir George Buchanan, whose embassy is centrally heated, had been unable to procure coal, which is the essential fuel for that system. He had appealed to the Russian Admiralty, but in vain. That very morning Sazonov had definitely told him it was impossible to find coal in any public depot. In the afternoon we went for a walk together on the Islands, as the sky was clear and there was no wind. Just as we were entering Kammenny-Ostrov Prospekt, Buchanan burst out: "Well, if that isn't a bit too thick!" He pointed to four military lorries opposite the dancer's house; they were laden with sacks of coal which a squad of soldiers was engaged in removing. "Don't worry, Sir George," I said. "You haven't the same claim as Madame Kchechinskaïa to the attentions of the imperial authorities."

It is probable that for years past many thousands of Russians have made similar remarks about the favours heaped upon Kchechinskaïa. The ballerina, once the beloved of the Tsarevitch and subsequently courted by two Grand Dukes at once, has become as it were a symbol of the imperial order. It is that symbol which has been attacked by the plebs to-day. A revolution is always more or less a summary and a sanction.

An Ambassador's Memoirs by Maurice Paléologue. 1923-5. Vol 3. Pages 229-30.

Mr. B Talks About Ballet by George Balanchine

When a person first comes into the ballet he should come and see, come and discover.  If you take a person to see a great painting in a gallery -- to see a Michelangelo, for instance -- he might say, "So what?  It's very boring, just a man standing there.  What is good about it?"  So you say, "You might not see anything in the beginning maybe, but look longer."  And if he comes again and again and stares -- sure enough, the fifth or sixth time, he will see how beautiful it is, how the air becomes transparent and you can smell it; there is a glow -- the space, the hands, everything is fantastically beautiful.  And he wants to see more.

It is the same at the ballet.  Just come in and stare.  Don't listen to anybody, especially not to so-called balletomanes.  These slinky people belong to a circle of "connoisseurs" who follow a dancer not because she is good but because she is famous and they want to say, "I know her."  Finally they go to her dressing room, she invites them to tea and they instantly become balletomanes.  They are as ignorant as before and they have bad taste.  These balletomanes breed bad taste and mediocrity.

The people who really appreciate ballet come and just look at it and if they don't understand, come back again.

George Balanchine by Robert Gottlieb. 2004. Pages 200-1.

Balanchine's childhood

George's first year at the theater school was an unhappy one -- later he often referred to himself as having been "stuck" there ("My parents stuck me in a ballet school when I was small").  The work was basic and mechanical:  During the first year, students were not exposed to actual performances and had very little notion of what they were working toward and what the drudgery of repeated exercises might lead to.  He was not successful in most of his academic subjects, receiving poor grades in everything but music and religion.  And he had trouble making friends.  In the early photographs of him, one can hardly miss a look of superiority, almost of disdain, certainly of wariness.

* * *

He was extremely lonely.  On weekends and holidays almost all the other children went home, but his home was hours away, and apart from occasional day-trips to the dacha with Aunt Nadia, he was left in the school. Toward the end of his life he would tell Volkov, "On Saturday the school was deserted, for two days. It was sad and lonely to be left:  You'd go to church and stand there for some time . . . .  You had to fill time before dinner.  I would go to the reception hall and play the piano.  There was no one there, total emptiness."

* * *

In his second year, a passion for ballet was finally ignited in him:  For the first time, as was usual for children at this point in their training, he was taken to the theater to participate in a performance.  The ballet was The Sleeping Beauty.  "I was Cupid, a tiny Cupid. It was Petipa's choreography.  I was set down on a golden eagle.  And suddenly everything opened!  A crowd of people, an elegant audience.  And the Maryinsky Theater all light blue and gold!  And suddenly the orchestra started playing.  I sat on the cage in indescribable ecstasy enjoying it all -- the music, the theater, and the fact that I was onstage.  Thanks to Sleeping Beauty I fell in love with ballet."

George Balanchine by Robert Gottlieb. 2004. Pages 13-5.

Working with the Ballets Russes

When Serge Diaghilev and the acclaimed Ballets Russes made a series of momentous tours to America in 1915, 1916 and 1917, publicity and promotion was managed by Edward L Bernays. Bernays is now an acknowledged pioneer of the concept of public relations and a man more recently described as the father of spin. For the Diaghilev tours he developed a highly successful publicity campaign, flooding American newspapers and magazines with images and stories about the company. He specifically promoted the company as one that was bringing disparate arts together, whose work and personnel could have an impact on the American way. His campaign was not without its flamboyant moments -- in one enlightened move he promoted the largely unknown dancer Flora Revalles by having her photographed in her costume as Zobéide in Schéhérazade with a live snake from the Brooklyn zoo draped around her neck.

Bernays found the experience of dealing with Diaghilev and his company fascinating, as he recalled his autobiography:

I had never imagined that the interpersonal relations of the members of a group could be so involved and complex, full of medieval intrigue, illicit love, misdirected passion and aggression. But while it happened I took it all for granted as part of a stimulating job. Nevertheless, my experience had a life long effect on me for it prepared me to understand and cope with the vagaries of men and women who lived in special worlds of their own.

"People, Patronage and Promotion: The Ballets Russes Tours to Australia, 1936-40" by Michelle Potter in Ballets Russes: The Art of Costume edited by Robert Bell. 2010.  Page 183.

Jonathan Cope speaking about retirement

"It’s a death of something you love dearly and you mourn it terribly.  Not so much the adoration and the applause and all that side of it but just dancing to music.

I sometimes think now if I could just go into a studio with one of my old partners with nobody around and have a great pianist in the corner and we could just do the pas de deux I would still be satisfied.  I wouldn’t need anyone to see it.  It’s just the feeling of moving with music and with somebody that you hold dear.  It’s something you love so much."

Quote from a broadcast of Value Judgements, Series 14, Episode 5, BBC Radio Wales, 12 Jan 2011 Interview with ballet dancer Jonathan Cope talking to Phil George about his dance career and retirement.

Petrushka and the Fairground

Few things are as colourful and charming as a fairground at full tilt, overwhelming every sense with blaring music, deafening mechanical squeals, lurid colours and lights and the mingled smell of fast food and recently dried varnish. The Russian funfairs, though less elegant (it was said) than their Italian or French counterparts, were every bit as appealing. The sensual impressions they made, as Ivan Shcheglov, an activist in the People's Theatre movement, recalled in the late nineteenth century, were unforgettable:

But inside the circle [of the fairground] -- good heavens, what goes on inside the circle! You can hardly take it in, let alone describe it. First, the music -- truly, the music alone could deprive someone who'd just arrived of his senses, because the point is that it's not the music, it's all sorts of music -- several kinds together, and your ears are deafened simultaneously by a satanic compound of wind and strings, steam and barrel organs, accordions, with the classic squeal of 'Petrushka' rising above all, in place, as it were, of a tuning fork . . .  And then there are the cries of the men and women selling things . . .  They are shouting now quite differently from the way they usually shout in streets and markets, with a sort of special frenzy, until tears come into their eyes and they go hoarse.

The Russian fairgrounds offered a range of entertainments equal to any in Europe: swings, roundabouts, roller-coasters, puppet shows, dancing bears, acrobatics and clowns inside wooden booths and on the street, Harlequinades and sleigh rides, stalls with drinks and gingerbread. Between the late eighteenth century and the Revolution a visit to these fairs was a nearly obligatory item on the itinerary of foreign visitors to Russia, and many of them have left vivid accounts of what they saw there. A German visitor wrote in the 1840s:

There are booths with clever horses and stupid people doing tricks, with bears and boxers, apes and actors; there are big and little roundabouts, Russian swings and ordinary ones, and two ice hills as well, if the weather is still cold enough at Easter; sellers of brandy, nuts and gherkins, Prenniks [ = pryaniki, spiced gingerbread], and kvas [small beer made from fermented bread and water], kislie shchi [fizzy kvas] and spun sugar, apples and sausage, spice cakes and pig's tripe, carob, pickled herrings and rotten apples  -- and bread and cakes and music here, there and everywhere. You can see trick riding and beheadings followed by resurrections, giantesses and dwarfs, boring transformation scenes with a Taglioni look-alike; and lately entrepreneurial nterests have brought in roundabouts with steam-boats and steam-trains, which have done very well despite the simple naivety of the general public.

Petrushka, The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre by Catriona Kelly. 1990.  Pages 18-9.

Russian Court Balls -- 1865

Court festivities followed one another with unparalleled luxury and magnificent pageantry.

The former English ambassador, Lord Loftus, an eyewitness of this gorgeous period, wrote in his Diplomatic Reminiscences that the Court was very brilliant and admirably maintained; its pomp almost Oriental. The balls, with the romantic setting of the Circassian Guard, the picturesque variety of the uniforms, the beauty of the dresses, the fairy-like sparkle of the jewels, surpassed in splendour and magnificence anything he had seen in other countries.

Théophile Gautier, who visited Russia at. this precise period, 1865, and was granted the privilege of being present at a Court Ball, has exhausted the resources of his vocabulary to describe this brilliant occasion for us. To obtain a better view of the scene as a whole, he took up his position in the gallery which commands a view of the Hall of Saint George:

"Leaning over this gulf of light one's first feeling is a sort of vertigo. At first nothing can be distinguished through the waves of perfume and light, the gleam of candles, mirrors, gold, diamonds, gems and rich stuffs. A shimmering radiance prevents the eye from defining any individual form, Then in a little while the sight grows accustomed to the glare, and grasps as a whole this vast hall, of white marble and stucco. . .  It is one mass of uniforms faced with gold, epaulettes studded with diamonds, jewelled orders, clusters of enamel and precious stones glistening on the breasts of the men. The uniforms are so brilliant, so rich, so varied, that the women, with their modern elegance and the light grace of present-day fashion find it difficult to compete with their massive splendour. Unable to be richer, they are more beautiful: their uncovered throats and shoulders are worth all the gold facings."

The Tragic Romance of Alexander II of Russia by Maurice Paléologue.  1926. Pages 46-7.