The Ballet was given every Sunday and Wednesday in the Marinsky Opera House, nearly all the stalls and boxes being taken by abonnements, which were themselves not always easy to obtain as they were very often hereditary and handed down from father to son. For the Opera one could sit in any part of the house one liked, but for the Ballet no lady could sit anywhere but in a box, and it was also considered highly unseemly to remain sitting in the box during the entr'acte, so, directly the curtain went down, everybody retired to the little ante-room at the back of each box where one could smoke and talk and receive the visits of young men who had been sitting in the stalls.
When I shut my eyes I can still feel the individual atmosphere of that huge theatre, the scent of ambre and chyprc, of chocolates and cigarettes, the faint smell of heating, of leather and of the age-old dust raised by hundreds of dancing feet. I can visualize the white and blue and gold of the decorations, the four tiers of boxes, the dim far-away gallery, the parterre of stalls crowded with artists, musicians, young diplomats, officers in brilliant uniforms, old bald-headed Generals. Now and then, defying convention, a young girl would lean from a box to smile a greeting at some young man below, a few old men, grouped together in earnest discussion, would for once not be talking politics but would be arguing about the technique of some dancer's step, shaking their heads mournfully as they agreed that the true art of choreography was deteriorating, and that the last ballets lacked the beauty of the older productions. Fat ladies of the merchant classes munched chocolates brought to them in beribboned boxes by portly men with smooth faces, outside in the foyer young girls and boys from the gallery seats would walk solemnly round and round, watched by some anxious mother, sitting eating cream cakes and drinking weak sugared tea.
Then the orchestra would come trooping back, a bell would shrill loudly, people would hurry along the corridors, the doors of the boxes would open and shut, there would be a rustle and a stir as the lights slowly faded out and the great curtain went up once more on the land of "Make Believe".
The Dissolution of an Empire by Meriel Buchanan. (1932). Pages 24-5.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Irina Baronova.on Learning Swan Lake - 1933
Halfway through our season, Danilova became sick. The morning she informed Colonel de Basil she would have to take a few days off, he came in towards the end of our class and I observed him in earnest discussion with Papa Grigoriev by the side of the stage. The class over, they asked David Lichine and me to join them. Colonel de Basil told us that Danilova was indisposed, that the program was set for that week and could not be changed, and that he was asking me to help out and dance Swan Lake the next night.
'You must know it pretty well,' said Papa Grigoriev. 'You've watched every rehearsal and every performance.'
'Yes, but I've never rehearsed it.'
'David will rehearse with you all day today and tomorrow. So, will you do it?'
What a challenge! By now my mother had joined us, to discover what this little conference was about. Lichine stood in silence all this time, looking at the floor, but then all hell suddenly broke loose! David started screaming that he would not dance Swan Lake with someone only 'three inches higher than a chamber pot' (a Russian expression used to slap down a cocky youngster). I was only fourteen, but his comment was unfair. I burst into tears, Mama started screaming at Lichine, Colonel de Basil tried to pacify everyone, and Papa Grigoriev offered me his hanky.
At that moment Anton Dolin appeared -- at what must have looked and sounded like a Turkish bazaar. He approached us and asked what the matter was, so Colonel de Basil explained the situation. Dolin, looking Lichine up and down, exclaimed, 'I never heard such nonsense! I'll dance with Irina myself.'
Everyone looked happy except Lichine. I was overflowing with gratitude for Dolin's generosity, After his vote of confidence, I could not refuse the challenge. It was settled -- I was to dance Swan Lake the next night.
Dolin took me to his studio, having phoned ahead to ask his pianist to meet us there. We rehearsed all day. His partnering was a wonderful new experience -- he made it all so easy and let me into the 'secrets of the trade', as he laughingly called them. I was learning far more than just Swan Lake.
Irina by Irina Baronova. 2005. Pages 108-9.
'You must know it pretty well,' said Papa Grigoriev. 'You've watched every rehearsal and every performance.'
'Yes, but I've never rehearsed it.'
'David will rehearse with you all day today and tomorrow. So, will you do it?'
What a challenge! By now my mother had joined us, to discover what this little conference was about. Lichine stood in silence all this time, looking at the floor, but then all hell suddenly broke loose! David started screaming that he would not dance Swan Lake with someone only 'three inches higher than a chamber pot' (a Russian expression used to slap down a cocky youngster). I was only fourteen, but his comment was unfair. I burst into tears, Mama started screaming at Lichine, Colonel de Basil tried to pacify everyone, and Papa Grigoriev offered me his hanky.
At that moment Anton Dolin appeared -- at what must have looked and sounded like a Turkish bazaar. He approached us and asked what the matter was, so Colonel de Basil explained the situation. Dolin, looking Lichine up and down, exclaimed, 'I never heard such nonsense! I'll dance with Irina myself.'
Everyone looked happy except Lichine. I was overflowing with gratitude for Dolin's generosity, After his vote of confidence, I could not refuse the challenge. It was settled -- I was to dance Swan Lake the next night.
Dolin took me to his studio, having phoned ahead to ask his pianist to meet us there. We rehearsed all day. His partnering was a wonderful new experience -- he made it all so easy and let me into the 'secrets of the trade', as he laughingly called them. I was learning far more than just Swan Lake.
Irina by Irina Baronova. 2005. Pages 108-9.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Mukhamedov's audition at the Bolshoi -- 1970
And so to the final and most crucial test: an assessment of his musicality and his basic potential to be a dancer.
Yet again, ten o'clock in the foyer and another hour's wait, then follow the clipboard up two flights of stairs and change into trunks and singlet with nine young colleagues. Out of the changing-room, along the passage and back into the brightly lit ballet studio to face Golovkina. This time the boys all knew their fates would be sealed before they bowed farewell to her.
Golovkina's secretary asked each one what they would dance, and which piece of music they would require the pianist to play. Irek had prepared a solo, 'Chapaevtsi', to a traditional tune and confidently told the secretary so. He could scarcely believe his ears when he was informed that the pianist could not play it. 'Can you manage without music?' he was asked. 'No,' he mumbled in reply. 'Then you will have to dance to one of the tunes we are going to play,' they said.
Irek sat and waited his turn in a sweat of fear. He knew he could do 'Chapaevtsi', and do it well; everyone had told him so. He had never improvised, certainly not in public, since his five-year-old capers in hospital. What would he do? What would happen when they called his name?
One by one the boys were called to the piano to clap, run and jump in time to different rhythms, then to dance their solos. Luckily for Irek, they nearly all chose to dance to the same piece of music, a folk tune adapted by the composer Gliere from his ballet Red Poppy, called 'Yablochko, the sailor's dance.
Now it came to Irek, still in a state of shock. For him keeping time to changing rhythms was instinctive, achieved through feeling, not thought. The solo, though, was another matter. The music started, so he had to do something. The panic-stricken boy somehow managed to string together the steps he had watched the other boys do, improvising sequences he had desperately memorised as he waited his turn.
He sat down white and shaking. His first and most crucial audition, he felt, had been a fiasco. Rasheda, when he finally made it back downstairs to tell her the news, agreed. What a disaster!
They hardly considered it worth returning the next day to study the list of successful entrants, but they did. Which was just as well, because Irek Mukhamedov had won one of the eighty places on offer and was therefore accepted as a pupil of the Moscow Ballet School and would start his studies in September.
Anatoly Yelagin, Irek's first teacher at the school, was a member of the auditioning commission, and picked him out almost at once. 'He was a little boy, not very tall. When he came into the audition, he sat quietly on the chair and almost against my will I found myself looking at him. He made a very clear visual impression on me. He was a quiet and very balanced little boy.
'It's not possible to say that he had very good feet, and his build was slightly stocky, but when we asked him to dance something, they played the music and he improvised, and he danced so well that we said, "Yes, he must study with us."'
Irek Mukhamedov by Jeffery Taylor. 1994. Pages 16-17.
Yet again, ten o'clock in the foyer and another hour's wait, then follow the clipboard up two flights of stairs and change into trunks and singlet with nine young colleagues. Out of the changing-room, along the passage and back into the brightly lit ballet studio to face Golovkina. This time the boys all knew their fates would be sealed before they bowed farewell to her.
Golovkina's secretary asked each one what they would dance, and which piece of music they would require the pianist to play. Irek had prepared a solo, 'Chapaevtsi', to a traditional tune and confidently told the secretary so. He could scarcely believe his ears when he was informed that the pianist could not play it. 'Can you manage without music?' he was asked. 'No,' he mumbled in reply. 'Then you will have to dance to one of the tunes we are going to play,' they said.
Irek sat and waited his turn in a sweat of fear. He knew he could do 'Chapaevtsi', and do it well; everyone had told him so. He had never improvised, certainly not in public, since his five-year-old capers in hospital. What would he do? What would happen when they called his name?
One by one the boys were called to the piano to clap, run and jump in time to different rhythms, then to dance their solos. Luckily for Irek, they nearly all chose to dance to the same piece of music, a folk tune adapted by the composer Gliere from his ballet Red Poppy, called 'Yablochko, the sailor's dance.
Now it came to Irek, still in a state of shock. For him keeping time to changing rhythms was instinctive, achieved through feeling, not thought. The solo, though, was another matter. The music started, so he had to do something. The panic-stricken boy somehow managed to string together the steps he had watched the other boys do, improvising sequences he had desperately memorised as he waited his turn.
He sat down white and shaking. His first and most crucial audition, he felt, had been a fiasco. Rasheda, when he finally made it back downstairs to tell her the news, agreed. What a disaster!
They hardly considered it worth returning the next day to study the list of successful entrants, but they did. Which was just as well, because Irek Mukhamedov had won one of the eighty places on offer and was therefore accepted as a pupil of the Moscow Ballet School and would start his studies in September.
Anatoly Yelagin, Irek's first teacher at the school, was a member of the auditioning commission, and picked him out almost at once. 'He was a little boy, not very tall. When he came into the audition, he sat quietly on the chair and almost against my will I found myself looking at him. He made a very clear visual impression on me. He was a quiet and very balanced little boy.
'It's not possible to say that he had very good feet, and his build was slightly stocky, but when we asked him to dance something, they played the music and he improvised, and he danced so well that we said, "Yes, he must study with us."'
Irek Mukhamedov by Jeffery Taylor. 1994. Pages 16-17.
The Tsar and Sleeping Beauty
Modelled, albeit loosely, on French courtly entertainments of the seventeenth century, Sleeping Beauty may be interpreted as an apostrophe to the reigning monarch, expressed through the analogy of Florestan/Louis XIV. There are hints of magnanimity in the King's forgiving the misdeeds of his subjects, and he weathers the tribulations of destiny to emerge at the end having fulfilled his original task. One presumes that some such objective motivated Vsevolozhsky, the experienced courtier, in the choice of time and setting. And the ballet is filled with glorifications of the King, though if the Director truly sought to reproduce in some way the theatre of Louis XIV, there is surely something amiss in this portrayal: Lully and his collaborators forbade the inclusion of anything not flattering to Louis XIV. Vsevolozhsky's Florestan has an incompetent Master of Ceremonies and cannot even make sure that the laws of his kindgom are obeyed -- extraordinary breaches of etiquette if such a parallel were intended (especially considering how much of Russia was under martial law during Alexander Ill's reign). The Tsar, who reacted coolly to the new work, may well have thought that if Sleeping Beauty were somehow an allegory of his realm it was uncomplimentary, if not wholly undeserved.
Tchaikovsky's Ballets by Roland John Wiley. 1991. Page 149.
Tchaikovsky's Ballets by Roland John Wiley. 1991. Page 149.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)