The dance master's kit

The kit, otherwise known as the pochette (Fr. small pocket or small fiddle), or sordine (It. mute), was a pocket-size violin widely used in Europe by dance masters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Praetorius refers to the instrument as a gar kleinen Geiglein mit dry Siiiten bezogen, off Franzosiscli Pochetto genant (very small violin with three strings, often called the French pochetto) and illustrates two examples, one shaped like a medieval rebec and the other like a narrow boat, that are captioned kleine Poschen/Geigen ein Octav hoher (small pochettes/violins an octave higher). Mersenne refers to the instrument as la Poche (the pocket) and depicts a boat-shaped version fitted with four strings with the lowest string tuned to G.
Because of the kit's slender shape, a dancing master could slip it into his jacket or waistcoat pocket while demonstrating a step and then quickly withdraw it to play a tune. They were made in a variety of shapes, like that of a boat, medieval rebec, miniature viol, viol, or viola d'amore, the latter equipped with sympathetic strings. Because the kit was the essential accouterment of court dance masters, they were often made of exotic woods, ivory, or tortoiseshell, and had elaborately carved heads, festooned outlines, and staved backs. They were equipped with short bows and often tooled leather cases. Despite the efforts lavished on their appearance, kits produced a muted sound.


Stradivari by Stewart Pollens.  2010.  Page 136.

An Ambassador's memory of Mathilde Kschessinska -- 1916

Thursday, April 27, 1916.

This evening, at the Marie Theatre, Tchechinskaïa was dancing Gisela and Paquita, masterpieces of old-time choreography, the conventional and acrobatic art in which the genius of the Fanny Elsslers and Taglionis once triumphed. The archaic character of the two ballets is heightened by the defects and qualities of the principal interpreter. Tchechinskaïa is entirely without charm, feeling or poetry; but her formal and cold style, the tireless vigour of her pivoting, the mechanical precision of her entrechats and the giddy agility of her pirouettes make all the enthusiasts wild with delight.

During the last interval I spent a few minutes in the box of the director of the imperial theatres, Teliakovsky, where the prowess of Tchechinskaïa and her partner, Vladimirov, was being celebrated in terms of rhapsody. An old aide-de-camp of the Emperor said to me with a subtle smile:

"Our enthusiasm may seem somewhat exaggerated to you, Ambassador; but Tchechinskaïa's art represents to us, or at any rate men of my age, something that you don't perhaps see."

"What's that? " He offered me a cigarette, and continued in a melancholy tone:

"The old ballets, which were the joy of my youth -- somewhere about 1875, in the reign of our dear Emperor Alexander II., alas! -- presented us with a very close picture of what Russian society was, and ought to be. Order, punctiliousness, symmetry, work well done everywhere; the result of which was refined enjoyment and pleasure in perfect taste. Whereas these horrible modern ballets -- Russian ballets, as you call them in Paris -- a dissolute and poisoned art -- why, they're revolution, anarchy ! . . ."

An Ambassador's Memoirs by Maurice Paléologue. 1923-5. Vol 2. Page 242.

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.