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.