Petrouchka

Since then Diaghilev's production of Petrouchka has become distinctly worn and shabby--which is not surprising, seeing how many years it has been in the repertoire. The ballet has lost its charm for me and I feel sad when I go to see it, for des ans l'irreparable outrage seems to have told on everything. Many items have disappeared entirely, as, for instance, the merry-go-round on which children used to have rides and the windmills whose multi-coloured, crossed sails waved in the air. The gingerbread and sweetmeat stalls are gone too and the outside steps leading into the huge balagan, where the people crowded together, waiting for admittance to the performance. The small table with its enormous steaming samovar where tea was sold is hardly noticeable nowadays. All these things were there in 1911 and they gladdened my eyes, for I had tried to reproduce the picture of our St. Petersburg Butter Week Fair in full detail.

But I was still more grieved by the disorder which in the later productions, reigned on the stage. For the original production every figure had been individually thought out by me. I used to watch carefully during the rehearsals to see that every walker-on fulfilled the part that had been given him. The mixture of various characteristic elements gave the illusion of life. The "people of good society" showed elegant manners, the military men looked like real soldiers and officers of the time of Nicolas I, street-hawkers seemed really to be offering their goods, the peasant men and women looked like real mouzhiks and babas. I allowed nobody to "improvise" or over-act. Later these instructions were forgotten and improvisation and dilettantism reigned on the stage. People walked about aimlessly from corner to corner, without knowing who they were and what they were to do, trying to cover their "emptiness" by affected gesticulation. I was particularly irritated by the "drunks." In the original production I had insisted that only three tipsy fellows--one of them playing an accordion--should from time to time become noticeable against the background of the more or less "decent and orderly" crowed. Nowadays everybody seems to be drunk and the impression is quite false, for although people did drink in Russia, still, the street had its own rules and regulations, its own conception of good behaviour and decency, and it is only thus that the digression from these rules could seem amusing and typical.

Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet by Alexandre Benois. 1941. Page 335-6..

About Nijinsky

It was a great misfortune that Diaghilev, who had fully realised his friend's [Nijinsky's] significance and value as an artist, should have over-estimated his intellect. Diaghilev imagined that he could make that fantastic being, who did not belong to this world and who understood nothing of life, into an active creator.

Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet by Alexandre Benois. 1941. Page 290.

August Bournonville

August Bournonville, through his own religious principals, his public behavior, his ballets and his demands upon his dancers, strove for a new ballet era on the socioeconomic level. He wanted ballet to be respected. He wanted dancers to be given the same treatment as that accorded a doctor or a minister. He did not want the male dancer to be looked upon as "half-man". And he fought ceaselessly for better financial conditions for all in the theater. In other lands, actors, singers and dancers were considered something less than first-class citizens. But thanks in great part to Bournonville, such attitudes did not prevail in Denmark.

The King's Ballet Master: a biography of Denmark's August Bournonville by Walter Terry. 1979. Page 55-6.

Danish "style"

This link between dance and drama underlies an understanding of and appreciation for the art of Bournonville. A century after his death, "Bournonville" means to most dancers outside of Denmark a "style", a special way of moving, of executing the steps of classical ballet. This viewpoint has originated because non-Danish ballet repertories present his work primarily in excerpt, in divertissements, such as the popular pas de deux from Flower Festival in Genzano, a pas de trois from La Ventana, the tarantella from Napoli and other extracted dances. But these are only fragments of Bournonville. Even if they are delicious divertissements when taken out of context, they are not what Bournonville ballet is all about. The mimed antics of two street vendors in Napoli are as important to the ballet as the flashing tarantella, but if these hawkers are not played by consummate actor-dancers, the whole scene fails.

The King's Ballet Master: a biography of Denmark's August Bournonville by Walter Terry. 1979. Page 34.

Imperial Russia

What kind of place was Imperial Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century? What were her vital statistics, identifying features, ideas, and ideals? Here was a land mass stretching 2,905 miles (4,675 kilometers) north to south and 6,669 miles (10,732 kilometers) west to east, with a latititude form the Artic wastes to the mountain ranges in the south and longitude from Europe to the Pacific Ocean. In 1900 the population of Russia was over 150 million, 10 percent of whom lived in cities, 1.5 million living in St. Petersburg. By 1913, however, the population had increased to over 174 million, with the two metropolitan populations almost doubling in size, while Russia's railroads had expanded from a mere 15 1/2 miles (25 kilometers) in 1840 to over 236,000 miles (380.000 kilometers) -- demographic and technological developments which help to explain the major economic, social, and cultural changes which St. Petersburg and Moscow, especially, witnessed during the Silver Age. On the other hand, even as late as 1913 land was still owned largely by the gentry, and in st. Petersburg alone there were 25,000 homeless. If, in 1913, Russians reportedly consumed over 39,000,000 pounds (18 million kilos) of potatoes and could have read 26,629 books published in Russian, and if Moscow alone boasted 163 bookstores, poverty, disease, and undernourishment were rampant and only half the total population was literate. True, recent decades had seen urgent reforms or, at least, efforts to introduce palpable change, such as the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 (two years before the emancipation of the slaves in the United States), the assassination Of Alexander II by anarchists in 1881, and the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1904.

On the other hand, Russia of the early twentieth century was still a predominantly rural and agricultural power and, at least outwardly, maintained a patriarchal, hierarchical order with the Tsar of all the Russias at the apex of the social pyramid and the peasants at the base. Russian noblemen still lived most of the year in France or Italy and the Orthodox Church continued to mark the calendar with numerous feasts and saints' days. Hawkers and vendors plied their trades as they had done for centuries, markets and bazaars abounded, and coachmen still egged on their horses.

Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia's Silver Age: 1900-1920 by John E. Bowlt. 2008. Pages 33-4.

Diaghilev's collection

"There was a persistent rumor that Lifar had no right to the ownership of the Library [ Diaghilev's], but when, much later, I helped to catalogue the remnants of the Kochno Collection I came across documents showing that Lifar had indeed bought the collection as he had always maintained. " Alexandre Schouvaloff.

A Feast of Wonders: Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes edited by John E. Bowlt, Zelfira Tregulova and Nathalie Rosticher Giordano. 2009. Page 99.

Chekhov speaking to Gorky about teachers

He [Chekhov] suddenly fell silent, coughed, glanced sideways at me, and smiled his gentle, kind smile which was always so irresistibly attractive and evoked especial and keen attention to his words.

"You find it boring, listening to my fantasies? But I like talking about this. If you knew how much the Russian village needs a good, intelligent, educated teacher! Here in Russia he needs to be given certain special conditions, and this should be done as soon as possible if we realize that without broad popular education the state will collapse like a house built of badly baked bricks! A teacher needs to be an actor, an artist, passionately devoted to his work, but in Russia he's a laborer, a badly educated man who goes to teach village children with the same enthusiasm with which he would go into penal exile. He is hungry, ignorant, frightened of losing his daily bread. Yet, he ought to be the most important man in the village, able to answer any questions the villagers put to him; so that they recognize in him a force worthy of attention and respect, and no one dares to shout at him, humiliate him as now everyone does: the village constable, the rich shopkeeper, the village priest, the local police superintendent, the local school patron, the village elder, and the official with the title of school inspector, who does not concern himself with improving school education but only with scrupulous adherence to district circulars. Is it not folly to pay a mere pittance to a man who is called upon to educate the people--you understand?--educate the people! It should not be permitted that such a man is obliged to dress in tatters, shiver from cold in damp, drafty schools, breathe in the fumes from a broken-down stove, develop laryngitis, rheumatism and tuberculosis at the age of thirty. It's a shame on all of us! Our teacher lives for eight or nine months of the year like a hermit; he has no one to talk to; he becomes dull from loneliness, lacking books and entertainment. And if he sends for his colleagues, he's accused of unreliability--a stupid word used by the crafty to frighten fools! It's all revolting--the abuse of a man who is doing enormous and terribly important work. You know, when I see a teacher, I feel embarrassed by his timidity, his shabby clothes; I have the feeling that I am somehow guilty of the fact that he is so poor--honestly."

Anton Chekhov and His Times compiled by Andrei Turkov. 1995. Page 151-2.