Jean Babilée in Nazi-Occupied Paris

Then as now, one of the secrets of the Paris Opera Ballet's success was its ballet school, which put its students, long nicknamed les petits rats, through the kind of tough regime needed to prepare them for a career on the stage.  Some petits rats from that time would later become famous: Roland Petit as a choreographer, Juliette Gréco as a singer and Jean Babilée, just twelve when he entered the school in 1935, as one of France's great postwar dancers, famous above all for his soaring leaps. "I loved the work," he recalled decades later, "all the girls around me, appearing as an extra in operas. It was marvelous."  In 1940, as the Wehrmacht approached Paris, he left for a family farm in the south of France, accompanied by his friend Petit.  But while Petit soon returned to Paris, Babilée instead joined the Ballet de Cannes, where, now seventeen, he was given lead roles in Les Sylphides and Le Spectre de la rose.  In early 1942, he decided to return to Paris and, too old for the ballet school, he was auditioned by Lifar and accepted into the corps de ballet.

Babilée nonetheless knew he was taking a risk: he had borrowed his stage name from his mother, but the name on his identity papers -- Gutman -- was that of his Jewish father.  Inside the Palais Garnier, he was soon reminded of that. "One day in the dressing room we all shared, someone painted a large yellow star and the word Juif on my mirror," he said.  "I purposefully ignored it, but it stayed there for three days.  Then one afternoon the school's dresser saw it and said, 'Aren't you ashamed of yourselves, boys?' And he wiped it off."

More dangerous were the German patrols, not least because the Nazi Kommandantur, or commander's office, was in the place de l'Opera.  "Once I was stopped and asked for my papers," Babilée remembered.  "The German saw 'Gutman' and asked, German?  I nodded and he let me go." He had a narrower escape during the mass roundup of Jews known as the rafle du Vel'd'Hiv' in July 1942.  He was staying in a cheap hotel on the rue du Sentier when he was awakened at six a.m. on July 16 by someone banging on his door.

"There was a huge Frenchman in a leather overcoat," Babilée recalled.  "He asked for my papers, put them in his pocket and told me to get a blanket and a bag and go downstairs.  I looked out of the window and saw a parked bus.  I had no way out.  I dressed and started going down the stairs slowly.  I suddenly heard footsteps.   The same guy was hurrying back up.  'Are these your papers?'  I nodded.   'With this name, it's too dangerous.  Go back to bed.' "

In early 1943, like hundreds of thousands of other young men, Babilée received a summons to work in Germany.  The director of the opera, Marcel Samuel-Rousseau, refused him a certificate stating that he was on contract to the opera house.  "He said Germany would do me good," Babilée related.  A German doctor then rejected his claim to be excused on medical grounds.  "I decided I would not go and would leave my papers at a friend's house," Babilée said.  "As I came out of the métro, I saw two German soldiers at the exit.  I turned and ran, I heard cries as they followed me.  I jumped over the gate to the platform and got into a métro car as it was leaving.  My coat caught in the door."  The next day, he fled Paris and spent the rest of the war with the maquis in the Touraine region.  After the liberation, he refused to return to the Opera Ballet and instead joined the new Ballets des Champs-
Élysées, which Roland Petit had just created.  "I was disgusted with the Opera," he said.

And the Show went on: Cultural life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding. 2011. Pages 159-160.

The Court of the Last Tsar

The salaries of people employed in the imperial theaters -- the Mariinsky, the Alexandrinsky, and the Maly Theaters in St. Petersburg, and the Bolshoi and the Maly in Moscow -- including directors, dancers, teachers, and pupils, were also paid from the Civil List, as all were considered to be members of the Emperor's Household. At the end of every season, as Mathilde Kschessinska remembered, all of the pupils at the Imperial Ballet School and the dancers in the ballet itself received presents from the emperor. "In most cases," she wrote, "it consisted of a jewel in gold or silver, enriched sometimes with precious stones according to the class of gift and always bearing a crown or Imperial eagle. Male dancers usually received a gold watch. On the whole, these gifts were not particularly beautiful." The annual cost of funding the imperial theaters alone amounted to some 2 million rubles a year. Also included were the upkeep of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, the Alexander III Museum of Russian Arts, and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Thus the emperor's outlay each year was certainly enormous. According to the Romanovs in exile, Nicholas was lucky to survive from financial year to financial year, so strained were his resources.

The Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp, Power, and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II by Greg King. 2006. Page 235.

Stalin and ballet's Golden Age

 In the storm of meetings, debates, and humiliating self-criticism that followed, Asafiev condemned Shostakovich's score for the ballet as "Lumpen-Musik" and Vaganova dutifully denounced The Bright Stream for having strayed from the "correct path" of art. Shostakovich retreated, and Lopukhov never made another important dance.

"Ballet Fraud" unleashed a panic. Dancers and ballet masters scrambled to interpret the official pronouncements and to create or revise their productions to suit Stalin's elusive tastes. As the Terror spread, dram-balets took on ever more ideologically strident tones and obvious themes. The stakes were high. Although dancers were spared the worst of Stalin's horrors, the sense of danger was acute and pervasive -- and not only for Lopukhov, whose past difficulties had made him an easy target. One morning in 1937 Vaganova arrived at the theater to find a note posted on the door stating that she had "resigned" her position as director; she quietly withdrew into teaching. The ballerina Marina Sernenova's husband (a high-ranking diplomat) was arrested and killed; Semenova was put under house arrest but eventually released (she was Stalin's favorite dancer). In 1938 Meyerhold's theater was shut down, and when he dared to speak out he was arrested, tortured, and shot; his wife was found stabbed to death in their home. Fear cast a pall over art, but the effect on dance was not always immediate or apparent. Whatever they were thinking at the time -- and we really don't know -- Ulanova, Chaboukiani, and many others continued to dance their hearts out. Artists who were there will tell you that, the Terror aside, this was ballet's golden age.
 
Apollo's Angels: a history of ballet by Jennifer Homans. 2010. Page 357.

The importance of hands -- José Limón

One of the most eloquent of the voices of the body is the hand. It is its function to give completion to movement and gesture. The hand is the seal upon the deed. A powerful gesture with the body cannot fully convince unless the hand is in accord with it, nor can a subtle, restrained one be completely so without having the hand in full consonance. The hand can be said to breathe like the lungs. It expands and contracts. It can project movements seemingly to infinity, or gather them back to their source within the body. It is a mouthpiece, a moderator. It has a brilliant range, capable of complexities and subtleties unequalled by other regions of the dancer's "orchestra." It is the abettor of all that the dancer intends. It is unthinkable, a dance without hands.

"On Dance" by José Limón in The Vision of Modern Dance edited by Jean Morrison Brown. 1979. Page 103.

The Score -- Shostakovich's View

A ballet, just like an opera, should be staged using the actual score and not an "imaginary one". Furthermore, in the choreographic world the approach to ballet music is still rather like the approach to a '"semi-finished" product at a factory, that is not deserving of any particular respect. . . . Respect for the composer's work should be the first commandment for interpreters, be they choreographer, producer, conductor or designer.  No distortions of the composer's text must be allowed; that is a rigid rule.  And, of course, the ballet cannot be an exception in this instance. [fragment from an unpublished letter from Shostakovich]

"The Golden Age: The True Story of the Première" by Manashir Yakubov in Shostakovich Studies edited by David Fanning. 1995. Pages 203-4.

A Description of Crown Prince Rudolph's Deterioration

From the autumn of 1883, ever since he had been officially residing in Vienna, the Crown Prince had been gratifying his sexual passions without restraint. Before long, being satiated with amorous intrigues which had a more or less romantic aspect, he went completely off the rails and plunged into the lowest depths of vicious debauchery.

On several occasions he had the idea of forcing the Archduchess Stephanie to accompany him on what he called "nights out." It gave him a sadistic pleasure to show her all that was most squalid and sordid in Viennese night life. This was really his exquisite stroke of revenge upon Spanish etiquette, upon the hieratic ceremonial of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. The Archduchess agreed to go there, "just for once." In order to escape recognition, she went attired as the wife of an ordinary citizen.

"I was unable to conceal my surprise when I noticed how little the heir-apparent troubled to keep to his disguise. My amazement increased still more when we visited together the cafés-chantants and other dubious places in Vienna and the outlying parts. It was difficult enough to breathe the vitiated atmosphere, poisoned by fumes of garlic, rotten meat, wine and tobacco. However, we remained seated at bare and greasy tables until the first streak of dawn, in the company of cabmen who were playing cards, whistling and singing. Dancing was, always going on. Girls would keep jumping on tables, and seemed never tired of putting themselves in the same vulgar sentimental postures, to the accompaniment of a wretched orchestra that likewise seemed never tired of playing.

"I was willing enough to be amused, but the visits to these dens disgusted me altogether. They were not only vile, but utterly boring into the bargain. I could not understand what pleasure the heir-apparent was able to find in it all."

In the month of February, 1886, Rudolph contracted a serious and mysterious illness, alarming enough to prompt the despatch of an urgent summons to the Empress to return to Vienna. Elizabeth was then at Miramar, on the point of leaving for a cruise. A casual encounter had infected him with venereal disease. On the 1st March, in order to hasten his cure, the doctor prescribed a long stay in the island of Lacroma, opposite Ragusa, where his wife was to keep him company.

But Stephanie had hardly arrived at Lacroma before she, in her turn, fell seriously ill. "For weeks I was confined to bed and my sufferings were terrible. The doctors, summoned from Vienna and from Trieste, diagnosed peritonitis. By orders from above, strict secrecy was maintained regarding my state of health, and the doctors were pledged to silence. My sister, Louise of Coburg, hastened to my bedside, and did not leave me...." Two months later she had recovered.

*  *  *

From this time onward, Rudolph's life entered upon a new phase. All who came in contact with him were struck by the physical and moral transformation which he had undergone. He nearly always looked utterly exhausted, with a dry skin, a livid complexion, trembling hands, and restless and burning eyes. He passed through strange alternations of sorrow and of anger. He was either in a state of loquacious excitement or of sullen silence.

From chance remarks that escaped him, it became apparent that he was utterly and completely disillusioned. The splendid visions that had buoyed him up but a short time before, for the regeneration of Austria, now seemed to him but foolish and absurd fancies.

To conjure away his gloomy thoughts and his perpetual lassitude, he began secretly resorting to the dangerous antidotes of morphia and of alcohol, whence he derived a few daily hours of consolation and exaltation, but, under this regime, his organic deterioration proceeded apace.

Tragic Empress: The Story of Elizabeth of Austria by Maurice Paléologue. (1939). Pages 101-3.

Story of a ball costume designed by Bakst

The second ball was even more brilliant than the first, though the guests were less numerous they were more select. All the ladies were in coloured wigs -- it was the first introduction in Petrograd of this new fashion, and the effect created was marvellous.

The Schouvalov mansion was graced by numerous members of the Imperial Family, eager to witness the novel sight of elegant women in evening attire wearing their hair in all the colours of the rainbow.

The Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna was not present -- the Countess had omitted to invite her.

I am reminded by this ball of an incident which occurred recently to a very smart rnember of  Petrograd society. Last season she went to a fancy-dress ball in a costume designed by Mr. Bakhst the painter à la mode and the arbiter of ladies' fashions. No one ever understood what the costume was intended to represent; it was a costly and amazing mixture of myrtle-green and cobalt-blue. The lady had the shape of a turnip, pointed at the top and getting very wide at the hem of the short skirt, from under which peeped two daintily shod feet, the legs being clothed in silk bladder-shaped trousers. A blue wig, green gloves and costly gems completed the costume. Green roses were painted by M. Bakhst on the higher part of the lady's arms, but truth compels one to add that the heat of the ballroom sadly affected this over-modern art production, the paint melted on the warm skin and trickled down in ugly green streaks.

Russian Court Memoirs by B. Wood. [1917?].  Pages 262-3.