When Ballet First Came from Russia with Love New York Times Page 1 of 5

When Ballet First Came From Russia With Love New York Times Page 1 of 5

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When Ballet First Came From Russia Advertisement With Love

By JOHN ROCKWELL Published: October 30, 2005 EMail This PrinterFriendly LET it be said right out loud that "Ballets Russes," Reprints a film that just opened at the Film Forum in Save Article Manhattan and will be playing around the country, is a scrumptious chocolate layer cake of a documentary. "It was marvelous," says the now 91yearold dancer Frederic Franklin, recalling his glory days. And this movie is no less so.

Enlarge This Image So marvelous that just maybe it can transcend the dance audience and appeal to a wider public. If "Dancing With the Stars" can be a television hit and "Mad Past 24 Hours | Past 7 Days Hot Ballroom" at least a modest movie 1. Jumpy Enough to Chew a Chair? Try DogCatRadio success, then why not this, which is so 2. What's a Modern Girl to Do? much deeper and richer and sweeter and 3. Is New York Worth a Trip? Oui 4. Scientist at Work | Lisa Randall: On Gravity, Oreos and a more moving? How it will stack up Theory of Everything against an endless line of waddling 5. A New Weapon for WalMart: A War Room penguins, we shall see. Go to Complete List "Ballets Russes" refers to several linked ballet companies, and the catalyst for the Geller/Goldfine Productions From the documentary "Ballets film was a 2000 reunion of veterans of the Russes": George Zoritch and Nini various troupes. It took the filmmakers, Theilade in the Ballet Russe de Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, two more nytimes.com/realestate Monte Carlo production of years to complete followup interviews Massine's "Rouge et Noir," circa and to gather film and photo material, and 1939. then another two years to edit. In the meantime, some of the dancers who appear so lively and loquacious on screen have died. Where are America's last true bargains?

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A quick summary of an impossibly tangled tale: Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Also in Real Estate: Homes in NYC for $400,000 and less Russes grew out of a series of tours from Homes in the Berkshires for $400,000 and less St. Petersburg to Paris, culminating in Homes in North Carolina for $400,000 and less 1909 and formally constituted in 1911, Movie Minutes: 'Ballets when Vaslav Nijinsky left the Maryinsky Russes' ADVERTISEMENTS Theater for good to join Diaghilev's company. Until Diaghilev's death in 1929 Life Engine Trade Online: this was the most famous ballet company Scottrade. in the world, a nexus of famous dancers, Need a marketing engine? Movie Details: 'Ballets Russes' choreographers, composers and artists. VONAGE None of which is recounted in any detail The #1 Broadband Phone Service. Enlarge This Image in this film. Join now & get your 1st month FREE www.vonage.com

"Ballets Russes" the movie picks up the Cingular + iTunes story in 1929, tracing the rise of a new Learn about the new ROKR phone! company, eventually called the Original Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Ballet Russe, and a spinoff under Léonide Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Massine called the Ballet Russe de Monte Map Back to Top Carlo. The two companies fought over choreographers, dances and dancers and some of them wound up on the same boat fleeing Europe for New York in 1939. After working with both companies for a while, the American impresario Sol Hurok picked Massine's troupe, which toured the Geller/Goldfine Productions United States indefatigably until the war's Nini Theilade as Venus in Massine's "Bacchanale," circa end and afterward. 1939. As the Metropolitan Opera tours and broadcasts did for opera, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo is credited with engendering a love for ballet in American cities large and small.

"I thought it was the most glamorous thing I had ever seen in my life," recalls Maria Tallchief, who first saw the company in Oklahoma and wound up dancing with it before moving on to Balanchine (whom she married) and the New York City Ballet.

"They created audiences for dance when before there had been none," intones the film's narrator, Marian Seldes exaggerating, but true in its way.

The Original troupe decamped for Australia and then, after Hurok's rejection, to Latin America, where it weathered the war years in increasingly impoverished straits, but managed to plant the seeds for ballet on two more continents. Facing rivals in New York first the

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Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, then Ballet Theater (now American Ballet Theater), and finally Balanchine's Ballet Society (now the New York City Ballet) the Original Ballet Russe folded in 1948. The Monte Carlo company limped on until 1962; its last performance was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

So that's the back story. But what makes this film delightful is the people involved, the women madeup, coiffed, bejeweled, with their evident joy at seeing one another again, sometimes after nearly 40 years, and their unstoppable reminiscences. What makes this film important is what it tells us about the evolution of ballet as an art form.

The anecdotal gems include the sight of the everflirtatious Nathalie Krassovska and George Zoritch, so handsome that all the girls were in love with him, murmuring together in Russian and reenacting a romantic moment from "Giselle." Their mothers knew each other; Mr. Zoritch says he once had Krassovska's photo above his bed "like an icon"; he even asked her to marry him. Or Krassovska, who died in February, laughing coyly at the story of her sixweek marriage in Hollywood. "I had trouble with men," she recalls. "I was always in love."

Or Mr. Franklin, his quotes culled from 30 hours of interviews, recalling Balanchine's dismissal in favor of Massine: "The Russians weren't very nice to one another." Or Marc Platt on his audition for Massine in Seattle: "I just danced my fool head off." Or archival scenes of the young Mia Slavenska seductively urging a pianist to play "vite comme le diable, s'il vous plaît" and then dancing to the furious tempo. Or Mr. Franklin recalling with glee how they shocked America with a Massine ballet called "Bacchanale," set to the Venusberg music from Wagner's "Tannhäuser," with the angelic, nearnaked Nini Theilade emerging from the womb of a giant Dalídesigned swan: "They almost had us locked up," he says. "They had never seen anything like this." It's just heaven.

The postDiaghilev Ballets Russes, by and large, epitomized an age that prized stars over substance, dancing over choreography, for all of Massine's creative ups and downs. Or so Balanchine seems to have felt, and the disdain in the early 1940's was mutual.

The Ballets Russes dancers had a hard time adapting to new trends in choreography. Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo" from 1942 incurred their scorn. "Anyone who was not bedridden could have done it," grumbles Mr. Zoritch. "What kind of dancing was that?"

They wanted to be individuals, personalities, actors, stars, and thought the new styles common or cold. Mr. Franklin found it nearly impossible to dance without a character to inhabit: "We'd never been anything like this," he says. "We'd been something a tree."

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Ms. Theilade is disdainful of mere technical accomplishment, then and now. "Fourteen or 16 pirouettes?" she remarks, dismissively. "Be warm: tell me something."

By the end, the two companies had been taken over by businessmen who had forced out their artistic directors. The new leaders tried to their deaths to revive their franchises. But as Ms. Seldes remarks, "Their moment had passed."

No doubt. But it lives on in this wonderful film.

When Ballet First Came from Russia with Love ­ New York Times Page 1 of 5

When Ballet First Came from Russia with Love New York Times Page 1 of 5