Stories from the Worlds of Ballet, Broadway, the Ballroom, and Modern Dance
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DANCE ANECDOTES Also by Mindy Aloff Night Lights: Poems DANCE ANECDOTES Stories from the Worlds of Ballet, Broadway, the Ballroom, and Modern Dance MINDY ALOFF 2006 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2006 by Mindy Aloff Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aloff, Mindy, 1947– Dance anecdotes : stories from the worlds of ballet, Broadway, the ballroom, and modern dance / by Mindy Aloff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-505411-8 ISBN-10: 0-19-505411-3 1. Dance—Anecdotes. 2. Dancers—Anecdotes. I. Title. GV1594.A46 2006 792.8—dc22 2005024553 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my father, Jack Aloff, genius, and to the memory of my mother, Selma Album Aloff, genius loci This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Towering Figures 1 Marie Taglioni 1 Anna Pavlova 6 Vaslav Nijinsky 11 Isadora Duncan 16 Martha Graham 25 Margot Fonteyn 31 Sir Frederick Ashton 37 George Balanchine 45 Of Steps and Their Authorship 56 Music Makes Me . 60 The Rehearsal Room 72 Coaches and Teachers 76 Hands and Things That Can Fill Them 93 Balletomania and Other Thrills 98 Inspiration 102 Seductions Attempted, Surmised, and Realized 110 Critical Lines 116 Turning Points 127 From Stage to Page 132 Fauna 139 viii CONTENTS Scandals 144 Touring 148 The Theaters 154 Costumes, Footgear, and Hair Do’s and Don’ts 159 Makeup 168 Conductors 171 Dancing and Related Theatrical Professions 175 Dancing and the Movies 179 Injuries, Maladies, Misfortunes, and Cures 185 On Partnering and Partnerships 193 A Mark, a Yen, a Buck, or a Pound 205 Sets and Stagecraft 214 Big Pictures 218 Afterword: A Note on Anecdotes as Ingredients of Dance History 230 Bibliography 241 Acknowledgments 251 Credits 257 Index 259 CONTENTS ix Preface This is a book of stories about dancing from all over the globe. I wanted to put together the kind of collection that one might pick up in a country inn on a rainy day and while away an hour browsing through: the group as a whole is subjective and partial. For dance fans and balletomanes, I’ve tried to avoid repeating many of the most famous dance anecdotes and, instead, to choose those that might be unexpected. Some of the stories are recent, and some are ancient. Although novelty was my concern, history was my guide. Dance has in- spired the sweetest, noblest, and most affecting stories of any of the arts, and in constructing this anthology I was thinking, especially, of readers whose first encounter with the variety and shadings of the dancer’s world might take place in these pages. It is my hope, too, that the fragments here will prompt readers to seek out the wonderful books listed in the bibliography, from which most of the anecdotes have been drawn. M.A. This page intentionally left blank DANCE ANECDOTES This page intentionally left blank Towering Figures Marie Taglioni (1804–1884) Why She Was Great Choreographer, teacher, artistic director of several ballet companies, holder of a master’s degree in arts and literature, and co-author (with Jean-Pierre Pastori) of the book, Tradition, Pierre Lacotte is best known internationally for his attempts to reconstruct works from the repertory of nineteenth- century ballet that were hitherto considered lost. He embarked on his first reconstruction in 1968, when he discovered documents concerning Filippo Taglioni’s landmark 1832 production of La Sylphide, starring the choreo- grapher’s daughter and principal pupil, Marie—an encounter that led Lacotte to reconstruct the ballet for a televised production and, in 1972, for the Paris Opéra, which had first performed La Sylphide nearly a century and a half before and where Lacotte himself had been a premier danseur in the 1950s. He is certainly among the leading authorities on Marie Taglioni in our time. In the following account, Lacotte gives a historian’s idea of La Sylphide’s opening night and of the ballerina’s contribution: Until the 1820’s were seen what we call “ballets d’action.” The ballerinas, generally dressed “à la grecque,” danced in a very realistic manner. .“Pro- vocative smiles, poses bordering on the obscene,” to quote Veron. The ballet master, Auguste Vestris, used to say to his dancers: “Be coquettish, give to your every movement the greatest liberty possible. Before and after each pas, you must inspire love; everyone in the parterre and the orchestra must want you in his bed.” Ten years later, [Filippo] Taglioni was to say the exact opposite: “Your dancing must be imbued with auster- ity, delicacy, and taste. Women and young girls must be able to watch you dancing without blushing.” 2 DANCE ANECDOTES Everything changed on the evening of March the 12th, 1832; this was a turning point in the history of ballet. In the milky white light of the gas lamps (which had only just recently been installed in the theater), the ballerinas made their appearance; they were light, modest, dressed in white. The costume [that] Eugène Lami had designed for them was, and still is, a chef d’oeuvre: The romantic tutu—long line; bras that left the shoul- ders bare; the skirt, which was white and diaphanous. The proportions were perfect; they allowed free movement and brought out the best in the dancing. And, then, these “sylphides” covered long patterns on [their] pointes. In the period just prior to the première of La Sylphide, certain ballerinas had been seen in Vienna, in St. Petersburg, and in Paris rising on pointe, but the result was not always a happy one. This was the first time that the entire stage was crossed with ease. One can only imagine how impressed the audience was with these aerial passages, and how unreal everything seemed when, in [the] course of this two-act ballet, unseen wires lifted the ballerinas into the air. In addition, a certain young woman of 28, Marie Taglioni, had the main role. She was the daughter of the author-choreographer of this Sylphide. Marie’s renown had been gaining in luster over the previous seasons; she had enchanted the Paris public a few months earlier in the divertissement of the opera Robert le Diable. On this particular evening, however, she demonstrated that she was an artist of genius. “Her feet seem not to touch the ground,” “. she walks on flowers without damag- ing them,” were the reactions of critics and poets. She never showed the beginning or the end of a pas. Her style was fluid, smooth, distinguished but never affected. When she was dancing at a fast tempo with extraordinary precision, she would suddenly slow her movements down as if she were holding her breath, and the lie would be so subtle, so delicate, that she would appear to belong no longer to the terrestrial sphere, that she would become immaterial, unreal. Her way of using pointes, which had just recently been invented and which no one could employ with her ease, was another trump in her performance. She seemed to float on the tips of her toes, accomplishing the most difficult movements with extraordinary facility and charm. She was the first dancer to balance on one foot. This was not an at- tempt to create an effect but rather a means of punctuating a movement, similar to an organ point on a note which is held for a short time. She never finished a pirouette with an accent intended to demonstrate her virtuosity; on the contrary, she made an effort to finish smoothly, so that the movement looked simple, natural. She delayed the ends of her turns and the descents from her pointes so as to finish with grace, marking an opening of the hands, just after the music, the end of the pirouette. This expression of good taste astonished and subjugated the audience. —Lacotte, unpaginated TOWERING FIGURES 3 Endless Pleasure at the Paris Opéra In 1860, the great nineteenth-century Danish choreographer, August Bournonville (1805–1879), published eight essays on the ballet, in French, in the form of “Letters” (Lettres sur la danse et la choréographie). These clearly articu- lated personal writings appeared in the Parisian weekly L’Europe artiste, and— as much fine journalistic writing often used to—evolved from conversations with an enlightened editor, in this case, the founding editor of L’Europe artiste, Charles Desolme. In the following paragraph from the Third Letter, an ap- preciation of Marie Taglioni, the leading ballerina of the Romantic period, Bournonville functions as a critic in the sense that he conveys something of what his cherished art ought to be able to achieve, even though it rarely does: The arrival of Mlle Marie Taglioni (1827) heralded a new era for the dance at the Opéra. This excellent dancer had an expression of innocence, a youthful freshness that, without inspiring voluptuousness, charmed the heart with endless pleasure.