Fokine's Paganini Resurrected 1 Lynn Garafola

IN TULSA, , one night last artist, of roads taken and not taken - that winter, the curtain rose for the first time in darkened Fokine's ye ars in America. nearly forty years on Fokine's Paganini. Produced by the Original Ballet Russe , Staged by Vladimir Dokoudovsky, the Paganini opened at the Royal Opera production is the latest in a series of Ballet House, Covent Garden, 30 June 1939. Russe revivals by Roman Jasinski and The reviews were generally enthusiastic , the husb and-and-wife (Haskell's being an exception); the audi­ team that directs the Tulsa Ballet Theatre. ences more so. In New York, where the Incredibly, Fokine's reputation today rests first performance took place at the Fifty­ on a handful of works - Scheherazade, first Street Theatre, 8 November 1940, The Dying Swan, Petrouchka, the Polovt­ the notices were rhapsodic. John Martin sian Dances from Prince Igor, Le Spectre in the New York Times hailed the ballet de fa rose, Les Sylphides, Carnaval- cre ated as an "an unmistakable masterpiece." in his salad days as a choreographer. With Irving Kolodin in the New York Sun the exception of The Dying Swan, all were praised "Fokine's superlatively imaginative done for the Ballets Russe s or given their realization of the essence of Paganini in definitive form by Diaghilev; none date terms of dance," concluding that "there is from after 1911. Tulsa's Paganini (seen 8 no substitute for genius." Only Henry W. February) is thus the sole work of Fokine's Simon, the music-cum-dance critic of the maturity in repertory anywhere. left-wing tabloid PM , did not fall into The idea for the ballet came to him in line. "The obscure and rather fatuous 1937. Visiting Rachmaninoff in Switzer­ philosophical ideas the program says land, he heard, apparently for the fir st time, underly [sic] Paganini are hard to forget the composer's Rhapsody for Piano and and forgive. '" Soon afterward, a devastat­ Orchestra on a Theme by Paganini, op. 43 . ing critique appeared in the PM. letter The lu sh, romantic music intrigued him columns. It was signed by Lincoln Kirstein, and, typically, sent him rummaging about who unsheathed for the occasion not a for material. The more he read about rapier but a pair of brass knuckles: Paganini, the more "he discovered a clear " In the present Paganini the atmos­ parallel between his own destiny and that phere is the green spotlight, and hobble­ of the great musician.'" Fokine saw goblins, that at best is like a gifte-booke Paganini as an artist cursed by genius, a edition of Poe. No one credits that kind victim of jealous competitors who aped his of evil today, but because it is equipped style , critics who found fault with it, and with steps and platforms, it represents a slanderers who attributed its virtuosity to 'production.' The angels of the finale the Devil . The same demons haunted look like Red Cross nurses, the sole con­ Fokine. In Memoirs of a Ballet Master, he temporary touch, which was certainly wrote with bitterness of a life's work unintentional. The music is kitsch, and imitated, mutilated, reviled , ignored, un­ the dancing, with the exception of a compensated, gone up in smoke. Paganini brilliant danse d'ecole variation for Ria­ reiterates the pain and paranoia that bouchinska, is of a piece.'" recognition entailed. In the ballet we also Fokine's " fantastic ballet in three learn of the doubts - of his potency as an scenes" presents the violinist in as many

©1986 Lynn Garafola BALLET REVIEW 69 guises: the concert virtuoso beset by - of maids paired in gracious harmony, of devils of malice; the evil genius who sows guitar-strumming swains, of joy, youth, terror in simple hearts; the composer innocence, and love. With Paganini's struggling to create. The opening scene, entrance, a blight falls over the scene. which shows Paganini (persuasively mimed Grabbing a guitar from one of the youths, in Tulsa by Art Reasonover) on the con­ he reveals the dark side of his genius. For cert platform, swarms with figments of a the Florentine Beauty mesmerized by Paganini (originally Riabouchinska's role, danced in Tulsa by Ena Naranjo), Fokine has crafted a dazzling solo - a whirlwind of chaines, renverses, and turns in ara­ besque that ends in sudden stillness; then long drifts of bourrees, willed fore, aft, and into arcs by Paganini's satanic power. The last episode, Paganini in his solitude, is a Manichean struggle of light and dark, the first personified by Divine Genius (Baronova in the original production) and a corps of ministering angels, the latter by a pride of masked Paganini doubles and baton-wielding furies, Evil, Guile , Scandal, and Gossip. In the dance for the angels, Fokine plaits his sisterhood into images of harmony - long delicate chains, Bot­ ticellian threesomes, double rounds in which the outer circlet opens like a corolla into backbends. The flawless line of the arabesques in the solo for Divine Genius reiterates this luminous vision, as do the bourrees that carry her backward offstage. As in Les Sylphides, Carnaval, Firebird , and The Dying Swan, these steps invoke the poetic idealism that links Fokine to his clas­ Vladimir Dokoudovsky as Paganini and sical forebears and neoclassical successors. Moscelyne Larkin as Guile in the Fokine Tulsa Ballet Theatre may lack artists work at the Original Ballet Russe. of the caliber of Riabouchinska and Baron­ (Photo: Hermi) ova, but its Paganini conveys throughout the spirit and intent of the choreography. waking nightmare - looming shadows of In large measure, this achievement rests a fiddling hand, slithering black-veiled with Jasinski and Larkin, who have schooled furies, mocking doubles, quill-armed critics, their dancers in the all-but-Io st art of personifications of Envy, Scandal, Gossip, epaulement. Arms, Fokine believed, were Guile . There is little extended dancing: the "horizons,"4 a piece of wisdom Tulsa's episode gathers force from the circles drawn codirectors have also passed on to their like a vise around the gaunt musician on dancers. Toward the beginning of her solo the podium at center stage. By contrast, as Divine Genius, Kimberly Smiley opens the second scene, Paganini among the her arms, turning her palms upward, a people, is nearly all dancing. In this fete gesture that conveys the infinite bounty of champetre, set in the hills around Florence, divine goodness and succor. Neither here Fokine gives us a vision of earthly delight nor elsew·here does Fokine's movement

70 SPRING 1986 Art Reasonover as Paganini and Ena Naranjo as the Florentine Beauty in Tulsa Ballet's revival of Paganini. (Photos: Tulsa Ballet Theatre) seem incomplete, the case when many of lights sunk in the violins of the Paganini today's virtuoso performers grapple with doubles in the third scene have been extin­ his anti-virtuoso idiom. guished, as they were after the ballet's The production, of course, differs early performances. The Soudeikine designs, from the original. The cast has been pared carefully reproduced by George Verdak, - from forty-four to thirty-four - but as are mediocre, except for the pastel-bright in the old days the dancers double up on Florentine scene. The "hobble-goblins" do roles. The sixty-by-fifty-foot platform look dated and occasionally silly, but the that originally dominated the first scene pure dance passages do not. They speak (and took up a whole boxcar on the Ballet their truth classically. For allowing us to Russe train) is gone, but then it had been see this, Dokoudovsky and the Tulsa Ballet jettisoned on tour in the 1940s. The green Theatre deserve our thanks.

NOTES

1. Michel Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, Henry W. Simon, " The Roundup Shows Who's trans. Vitale Fokine, ed. Anatole Chujoy (Lon­ in the Groove .. . And Ballet Adds Two New don: Constable, 1961), p. 282. The chapter on Numbers," PM. , 11 Nov. 1940, p. 13. Paganini was written by Fokine's son, Vitale. 3. Lincoln Kirstein, letter to the editor, 2. John Martin, "'Paganini' Ballet Has Debut PM. , 1 Dec. 1940, p. 47. Here," New York Times, 9 Nov. 1940, p. 20; 4. Quoted in Dawn Lille Horwitz, "A Ballet Irving Kolodin, " Ballet Presents New Fokine Class With Michel Fokine," Dance Chronicle, Work," New York Sun , 9 Nov. 1940, p. 30; Vol. 3, No.1 (1979), p. 43.

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