Dancing Genius This page intentionally left blank Dancing Genius The Stardom of Vaslav

Hanna Järvinen The Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland © Hanna Järvinen 2014 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in , company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the , Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–40772–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. This book is for demoss and for my late grandparents, Siiri and Eino, Eeva and Vilho, who were all born subjects of Nicholas II This page intentionally left blank Contents

Introduction: A Genealogy 1 Part I The Russian Invasion 1 An Audience for Ballet 27 2 56 Part II The Silent Body of a Genius 3 The Unique Genius 83 4 Male Beauty 121 5 Corporeality 141 6 The Mad Genius 173 Part III A Russian ? 7 The Old and the New Ballet 191 8 Revolutionary Exiles 219 Conclusion 242

Notes 245 Bibliography 283 Index 317

vii This page intentionally left blank Introduction: a Genealogy

Nijinskymania

My first encounter with (Вацлавъ O~омичъ Нижинскій, 1889–1950) was one of instant and troubling familiarity, a feeling of déjà lu when reading an account of his life. Frankly, the man’s life sounded too much like a movie script to be plausible.1 All the elements of other narratives of great men seemed present, even if these contra- dicted each other. Seeking an alternative, I read other accounts and encountered denigration of Nijinsky’s off-stage person combined with laudatory accounts of his wonderful dancing. , the same feeling bothered me: why did this sound so familiar, so self-evident? I had encountered what Craig Dodd (1991, 6) called nijinskymania, the admiration (or rather, worship) of someone nicknamed ‘the God of the ’, born somewhere on the Russian steppes, sometime between 1888 and 1892, as the second son of the Polish dancers Eleonora Bereda and Thomas Nijinsky.2 Nijinsky’s fabulous Western career lasted only a dec- ade from 1909, when he became a household name as the leading male ̪ dancer in ’s (Сергьйъ Павловичъ Дягилевъ, 1872–1929) dance troupe, the , to the personal abyss of insanity in the wake of the First World War in 1919. Nijinskymania has primarily focused on Nijinsky as the star dancer of the exotic Russian troupe, and only more recently on his four controversial choreographic works for the company – L’Après-midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun, 1912), (Games, 1913), Le Sacre du Printemps (, 1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916). Consequently, this book will also primarily focus on Nijinsky as a dancer. Over the years, nijinskymania has produced (as a frustrated colleague retorted) “so much Nijinsky kitsch it makes your eyes bleed” – everything

1 2 Dancing Genius from ballets, plays and forms of fiction based on his life to postcards, paper dolls and porcelain figurines depicting him and his roles. People seem to be able to fit his image to any context, from to rock music.3 Countless stories have been told of Nijinsky – stories which are not and could never have been reality, but which within the discourse have received such truth-value that one repeatedly has to prove them false in order to present claims to the contrary. Nijinskymania is a myth in the Barthesian sense: a simplification of historical contingen- cies and contradictions, a mode of making sense of a complex set of changing circumstances (Barthes 1972, especially 11–2, 68–70, 109–59). This myth forced me to invert my original question and ask how an individual’s life has been constructed according to the rules of a movie narrative. Much of what ‘Nijinsky’ signifies today rests on the image created of him in the publicity for the Ballets Russes during his active career and shortly afterwards. Perhaps even more than his contemporary , Nijinsky became the first superstar of ballet – someone known to audiences who had never seen him dance. Even today, Nijinsky’s name carries a resonance rarely associated with a member of his pro- fession, but for reasons somewhat different from the ones that first made him famous (see Carter 2004, 14). Instead of perpetuating the myth, my interest in Nijinsky is both metahistorical and genealogical (Foucault 2001, especially 1004–24). Following Michel Foucault’s works on authorship and the operations of power, I discuss Nijinsky’s canoni- sation as a dancing genius and argue that in his figure, early twentieth- century dance aficionados found the perfect means for boosting the status of the art form. Another book would be necessary to do justice to the various later representations of Nijinsky and what they reveal of what was consid- ered of importance in dance as an art form at a given time. By the end of the Second World War, the outline of nijinskymania had fallen into place: in the creation of the tragic madman, “the idiot of genius” (Misia Sert according to Lieven 1973, 323) primary source materials contem- porary to Nijinsky’s career were overlooked in favour of reminiscences, hindsight and speculation. Having read this far, you have already been influenced by this mythical ‘afterlife’, so in what follows I have, at times, given examples of how my interpretation, based on contempo- rary materials, contradicts some of these later representations, most of which used to be hegemonic and some of which still are. I shall begin by briefly illustrating this ‘afterlife’ and the epistemologi- cal problems in addressing a career that ended abruptly in mental illness. Introduction: a Genealogy 3

After the Introduction, however, the historical individual becomes a lens for looking at how dance figured in the wider cultural discourses of the pre-war period. As a historian, I am interested in Nijinsky primarily as a means to address what kinds of insights his corporeal art form could produce for historiography. As a Foucauldian, I hope that if dance could once move, destabilise and disturb contemporary discourses, perhaps it could also do so today. As I see it, nijinskymania has prevailed and still prevails for three major reasons. First, Nijinsky’s purported of movement unri- valled by his contemporaries; second, his enigmatic life outside the stage; and third, the abrupt end to his career. The first aspect is sig- nificant because Nijinsky has been lauded as the ‘World’s Best Dancer’ (sometimes with an additional ‘Ever’), even though it is quite difficult to define what combination of qualities can be termed thus, and impos- sible to ascertain whether Nijinsky possessed precisely those qualities. Nijinsky fans seem to believe anything was possible for this dancer, and have taken contemporary metaphors as actual reality. Simultaneously, much of the negative attention on Nijinsky has centred on disproving contemporary claims and reminiscences about his dance as defying the laws of nature. Later generations have voiced doubts about Nijinsky executing an entrechat-dix or a triple tour-en-l’air and/or claimed that his audiences were incapable of telling apart ten beats from six or three turns from two. It is an asset for both parties that, despite the fact that he was one of the most photographed of his contemporaries, only one pre-war photograph definitely shows Nijinsky’s famous jump and even this is somewhat blurred.4 Persistent rumours exist of a film showing Nijinsky dancing his first choreography, L’Après-midi d’un Faune (1912), but in all likelihood these are untrue.5 This lack of visual sources emphasises the mystery to such an extent that one might think it intentional that Nijinsky’s leaps were never caught on film. However, it also reveals how the continuation of nijinskymania relies on the imagined readings of ‘Nijinsky’ by generations who have not seen Nijinsky dance. This begs the question of what is the purpose of (re)imagining this long-dead Russian, today? Which of our discourses need to be destabilised? As Marcia B. Citron (1995, especially 113–6, 184–7) has shown, the name of a genius (a word still frequently used of Nijinsky) allows others to bask in its reflected glory: the name of a genius signifies more than that of a regular author-figure. How ‘Nijinsky’ has been utilised reflects historical changes in what is expected of a (male) dancer in terms of gendered behaviour, aesthetic qualities like expressivity or mimesis, or 4 Dancing Genius physical ones such as virtuosic stunts. Together with beliefs regarding health, diet and well-being, these expectations and assumptions have visibly changed the physical bodies of dancers and the qualities of their dance, as is evident from the few films that do exist of turn-of-the- century dancers.6 Such visible historical changes reveal fault-lines in the discourse on dance such as beliefs in technical and aesthetic progress or universal criteria for beauty altogether too easily taken for granted. Generations of admirers of the Ballets Russes have claimed that famous ballets like depended so wholly on the artistry of the original stars (Nijinsky and Karsavina) and the original production values that no one since has been able to present them with- out appearing ridiculous.7 But since the Ballets Russes works depended on the aesthetics of a different era, our ideas about what the ‘original’ should be differ from the expectations of the original spectators. Even with, or I should perhaps say especially with, Nijinsky and Karsavina, Spectre today could not live up to the masterpiece we know (or rather, imagine) from canonical narratives of this ballet. Works like Spectre or famous figures like Nijinsky thus direct us to question how our pre-existing modes of thought influence how we evaluate the past, what we select from it, and where our attention is focused. The second reason I offer for the prevalence of nijinskymania pro- poses that the public image of Nijinsky (the star) cannot be equated with his private self (the person). This is not to construct a dichotomy of representation (star) versus an underlying core of truth (self): in my Foucauldian manner of thinking, everything is representation, particu- larly whatever is constructed as ‘the core’. Much of what is claimed to be known of Nijinsky off-stage is either indicative of what was once expected of a foreigner, a dancer, a star and a genius, speculative, reductive, distorted, fabricated, or all of the above. Cultural differences and personal opinions, as well as historical events, have played their part in the ways in which people saw Nijinsky, in what they chose to divulge of their perception to others, when and how. Also, Nijinsky himself actively built his own image, though he may have used dif- ferent strategies when writing to close friends than when speaking to reporters or other members of the audience. Some of these strategies succeeded, others failed. But any attempt at trying to find a ‘self’ other than this construction in what remains of the historical person is not merely futile but leads to discursive violence where the actual com- plexity of an unknown other (the historical individual) is reduced to a simple narrative that has to make sense – a biography where events gain significance post factum and where the expert has more authority Introduction: a Genealogy 5 over the life of the subject than the subject her/himself (Halperin 1997, 128–30, 135–6, 145.) Complexity tends to create contradictions and, with Nijinsky, contra- dictions that emerged between the expectations of the audience – itself a discoursive construct (Alasuutari 1999, 6) – and the personality of the star (or later, between expert opinion and the historical subject) played their part in Nijinsky’s reputation as a genius and a madman. They relate to the third aspect of nijinskymania I mentioned: the abrupt end to Nijinsky’s career. Thanks to his institutionalisation in 1919, nobody ever saw Nijinsky’s star in decline, whilst the Romantic myth of the mad genius (Becker 1978, especially 21, 28–31) made his personal tragedy seem predestined. Retrospectively, everything about Nijinsky could be fitted into this framework. Although Nijinsky’s four choreographies – and the construction of the choreographic author – mostly fall outside the scope of this book, Faune, Jeux, Sacre and Till were a systematic attack on those aesthetic values that had created Nijinsky’s reputation as a dancer. Their scandalous reception influenced how Nijinsky was canonised after his institutionalisation. In many ways, Nijinsky’s madness solved the conflict between what his public wanted of him as a dancer and the evidence of his choreo- graphic aspirations. In the infallible light of hindsight, Nijinsky’s insan- ity ascribed all inconsistencies in the public image to the madness of the historical person. This eliminated the need to question authorities or reflect upon the changes in the aesthetics (and even ontology) of the art form. From the 1920s onwards, figures of speech used of Nijinsky’s choreographies coincided with reality, but they acquired truth value only through repetition as Nijinsky’s mental illness was used time and again to prove the madness of his choreographies and vice versa.8 Yet, as with his dancing, even negative references to Nijinsky’s choreographic œuvre only perpetuated the myth of Nijinsky as an inexplicable genius. Like the absence of moving images of his dancing, the disappearance of Nijinsky’s choreographies added to their , which led to numerous attempts at reconstructing these alleged masterpieces. Nijinsky’s danc- ing already functioned as proof of the ephemerality of dance as an art form, but the choreographies finally rendered him incomprehensible as well as unattainable – a true genius of dance. Today, a century after his notorious triumphs, Nijinsky has become a symbol for the ephemeral and performative qualities of his art form. Since dance as a concrete work of art exists only in performance, in bod- ies dancing, it changes as these bodies change, so that two performances of the same work are never quite alike. In the past, this performative 6 Dancing Genius quality has been used to claim a special status for dance as an art that cannot be recorded, not even on film (for example, Siegel 1996, 4) or to reduce dance into something inexpressible, an art transcending or preceding words and defying analysis (Kolb 2009, 25). Although in dance studies, as Mark Franko (1995) and André Lepecki (1999) point out, ephemerality already functions as something that allows for new kinds of theoretical interventions, the emphasis on the presentness of dance, the experience of being present in the present, in performance, is still a source of tension in dance history. Dance history deals with the presentness of the past, and often with a past defined as canonical, meaning something of lasting value and significance (see Dodds 2011, especially 2–3; also Murray 1989a, 7; Gaskell 2001). But how can one aesthetic notions like authenticity or originality central to ideas of ‘a work’ and ‘a canon’ in an art that constantly changes? From a historian’s viewpoint, these questions are rather irrelevant. Dance is no more ephemeral than any human action. In fact, in some ways it is less so, since performances tend to be something out of the ordinary and thus leave traces – images, costumes, diary entries, legal documents – although as time passes these traces may become faint or erased. Sources on dance may be dispersed, fragmented, and difficult to understand, but were there no sources, the phenomenon – the exist- ence of an event, an individual, or an opinion – would not be known to us at all. There is nothing in dance that would make it an impossible topic for investigation using basic historiographical tools, nor anything in its reception that would defy the historicity of both the performance and its audience.9 Unfortunately, professional historians have largely ignored dance history and theoretical reseach on performance. Since in dance, the particularities of an ‘original’ are always in flux, any notion of ‘the authentic’ is also always-already a later construction. From this perspective, any communities construed upon such ‘authentic’ expres- sions – like the nation state – become performative. Consequently, the modes of inquiry utilised to discuss the past of dance can be used to deconstruct performances of self and other, of gender or nationality, and to discuss the affective significance of such performances on and off stage, in the past and in the present.

Nijinsky: a metahistory

Nijinsky’s institutionalisation and his subsequent position in the canon of his art form as both an aesthetic dinosaur and a vanguard modern- ist (depending on who is doing the defining) effectively necessitates Introduction: a Genealogy 7 a differentiation between materials contemporary with Nijinsky’s active career and later primary source materials. All reminiscences, as well as all edited collections of contemporary primary source material (including translations) are, to an extent, influenced by later events – some more so than others. Of course, all sources are coloured by the agendas of the author(s) at the time of writing, but reminiscences fulfil a different role in my work than in most previous research on the Ballets Russes: they are primary sources on Nijinsky to the extent that they are author(is)ed by people who knew Nijinsky, but in many ways they resem- ble contemporary primary sources less than they resemble secondary sources written by people who never saw him dance. This is because in the performing arts, many reminiscences published as ‘autobiographies’ are ghostwritten by critics, who have considerable authority in the dis- course precisely because of their personal ties with prominent figures as who and of whom they write.10 Moreover, early histories of the Ballets Russes relied heavily on remi- niscences and hearsay, which also meant the expertise of aspiring writ- ers was defined more by their personal connections (that is, their access to potentially unpublished anecdotes) than by their critical faculties. This kind of amateur dance history – ‘amateur’ both in the sense of passionately loving the subject and in the sense of lacking academic credentials – offers fascinating dilemmas for anyone interested in the role of gatekeepers (Bourdieu 1995, 76–80, 131–41), canonisation (for example, Citron 1995; DeNora 1995), or the author-function (Foucault 2001, especially 817–49). When dance history became an academic pursuit in the 1980s, those teaching and writing this history had little training in historiography and relied on gatekeepers for access to mate- rials or for career opportunities. Even today, too much of dance history still reproduces the ‘truth’ of the canon: the gatekeepers of art institu- tions and academe both obscure and render their hegemony ‘natural’, since any such hegemony perpetuates itself not only by disallowing and silencing but also by assimilating alternative interpretations and contradictory evidence. When expertise is granted by peer review only to those who have internalised the canonised opinion, questioning this opinion becomes difficult, even .11 Such use of power becomes disciplinary violence when the hegem- onic opinion – particularly powerful outside academe – actively sup- presses the circulation of alternative experiences, identities and forms of signification. Oral reminiscences of the Ballets Russes collected in the 1970s and 1980s offer palpable evidence of disciplinary violence. Questioned by people who already think they know what happened, 8 Dancing Genius the interviewees get treated as if they had no right to disagree with these assumptions: interviewers not only select questions to which they already ‘know’ the answers but impertinently correct what they are being told by the interviewees whose reminiscences are purportedly being recorded; they interrupt and distract these eye-witnesses to lead them to comply with the interviewer’s hegemonic view and with mate- rials already published; and discourage discussion on affective personal reactions, memorabilia or the dancers’ everyday life of which we know so little (see, for example, Nemchinova 1975; Kachouba 1979; compare with Prins 2001). Fortunately, since the 1990s, dance history has changed almost beyond recognition: new methodologies, interesting research questions and rigorous criticism of the accepted truths have revealed just how much dance history has to offer to histories of other arts and of culture. The present volume owes much to this new research, notably the work of Ramsay Burt, Susan Foster, Mark Franko, Helen Thomas and André Lepecki to name but a few. Yet, in this rewriting of dance’s past, present and future, the Ballets Russes has remained an unassailable edifice of all that bothers historians about dance scholarship: a Russian troupe in the research of which contemporary Russian sources and research on , society and politics are conspicuously absent; where laborious archival work is overlooked in favour of easily available remi- niscences; and where the anecdote rules over critical method. There exists a veritable industry on the Ballets Russes, producing a continu- ous flow of reconstructions, books, exhibitions and memorabilia that mostly reproduce what is already known. With a canonised company, the relevance of all this activity to dance today is rarely questioned. Having said this, although the present volume engages with both the contemporary popular press and with Russian materials, I have not purposely sought for the as yet unknown source. As Foucault (2001, 1004–5) notes, in genealogy, the most often heard stories are the most important to address precisely because they are so often heard – they are what is allowed and legitimate, and therefore they exemplify the hegem- onic view on Nijinsky at a given time. There is no definitive version of history, and although I have tried to contextualise the Ballets Russes by looking at what else is being said in contemporary materials, I have not exhausted even the most often quoted reviews of the Ballets Russes, let alone covered other types of sources. In history, there is always more – reviews in German, Italian and Spanish, for example, are not included here, nor are Surviving costumes, designs or musical scores – and I look forward to others making use of these materials in their work.12 Introduction: a Genealogy 9

Yet I want to stress that the historian’s basic method is still source criticism. The famous Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky is a textbook case for test- ing this method. Originally written by Nijinsky between 19 January and 4 March 1919, the manuscript was not a diary, autobiography or even a manifesto of aesthetic aims but rather the author’s associative tirade about life, the universe and everything.13 At present, the Russian manu- script is preserved in the New York Public Library Dance Collection (henceforth NYPLDC), and for practical purposes I have used the new ‘unexpurgated’ translation (Nijinsky 1999) – mostly because the text has very little bearing on the subject of this book apart from showing Nijinsky well knew what was required of the artist-genius. However, this translation is by no means unaltered (Fitz-Lyon 1999; also Hodson 2000, 73, 78) and is, moreover, a relatively new addition to the canon. The most influential version of the Diary text (Nijinsky 1991) was origi- nally published in 1936. Edited by Nijinsky’s wife, Romola Nijinsky (née de Pulzsky), it rearranged the manuscript and cropped most of the text, eliminating any evidence of incoherence (partly due to drugs Nijinsky was given at the time of writing) as well as the majority of the author’s views on sex and family life, including his criticism of the editor herself. Nevertheless, this edition has been treated as if the views presented were Nijinsky’s unmediated reflections and, furthermore, as if these had pre- vailed throughout his life (as in Reiss 1957 and Ostwald 1991). From the first, the Diary’s reception has owed much to Mme Nijinsky’s earlier publication, a highly melodramatic biography of her husband (Nijinsky 1980). Depicting the author as a virtuous maiden saving the captive but fragile genius from the evil impresario Diaghilev, this book used the rhetoric of popular culture to rewrite history in ways that angered many of Diaghilev’s collaborators and friends (for example, Stravinsky & Craft 1978, 655n7; Haskell 1955, 21, 247) and even mem- bers of her own family (Nijinsky 1991b, especially 252–7). Unable to speak either Russian or Polish, lacking ballet training, and praising the very works her husband had publicly derided, Romola Nijinsky’s com- petence in presenting her husband’s views on dance can be doubted; and despite the subtitle of the biography, it is unlikely she was willing to represent their intimate life very accurately.14 Nonetheless, the book whipped up sympathy for her and her husband in some quarters; and most biographers have subsequently used it as the ultimate truth about Nijinsky and his choreographic aesthetic.15 Romola Nijinsky’s book was part of a flood of writing on the Ballets Russes following the death of Diaghilev in 1929 and the dispersion of his company. However, revisions to Nijinsky’s reputation had started 10 Dancing Genius soon after his first dismissal from the Ballets Russes in 1913. Nijinsky’s choreographies had sharply divided public opinion and endangered the financial viability of Diaghilev’s . Many of the self-proclaimed experts who disliked Nijinsky’s choreographic ideas soon began to argue that the true genius of dance simply could not be the one dancer just about everybody (regardless of whether they had ever attended a per- formance) knew about. By the 1940s, connoisseurship in dance had become virtually synonymous with demoting Nijinsky in favour of less well-known dancers and particularly the choreographer of the pre-war seasons, Mikhail (Michel) Fokine (Михаиль Фокинъ, 1880–1942). The Dance Encyclopaedia, first published in 1949, went as far as to claim that there existed a ‘Nijinsky conspiracy’ keeping the fame of the dancer alive:

[S]o few people, comparatively speaking, ever saw Nijinsky dance, that if his fame were based on his actual appearances before the pub- lic, he would now have been completely forgotten. [ . . . ] Nijinsky’s lasting fame is due mostly to the legend that has been created around him. This legend has been continually fed by the writings of people connected with (or disconnected from) the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, who considered it vital or profitable to delve into the most minute details of Nijinsky’s dancing and, more often, Nijinsky’s personal relations with Serge Diaghilev. Also, there is a group of people on the fringe of ballet which has made Nijinsky its demigod and continues to worship at his shrine. [ . . . ] But his role in the and his influence on the art of ballet are extremely modest. (Chujoy & Manchester 1967, 670–3).

Notably, the illicit discourse “disconnected from” the Ballets Russes and “on the fringe of ballet” focuses on making money from the scandalous relationship between two men, Nijinsky and Diaghilev (of whom there is a long eulogy in the same book, focusing, of course, on his profes- sional achievements). This is clearly a jibe at Romola Nijinsky and her followers, but it also constructs a highly important opposition between normative expertise and popularity that explains many of the lacunae in subsequent research. This early hegemonic interpretation on the Ballets Russes, predomi- nant until the 1970s, derived its power from the firm association of legitimate (normative) writing on dance (privileging ballet) with the male artists of Diaghilev’s coterie, whose reputations grew the more they belittled Nijinsky. Obviously, male dancers performing to people who had seen Nijinsky dance were none too happy about being constantly Introduction: a Genealogy 11 compared with a dancer whose admirers imbued him with fantastic characteristics. As for Nijinsky’s former colleagues, it was very conveni- ent for many of them “to keep either a deprecatory silence about his creative expression (apart from his dancing) or to flatly run it down” (Kirstein 1987, 283; similarly, Borodin 1952, 90–3). This was especially true of two individuals for whom the Ballets Russes had been a spring- board to great careers outside ballet – and . Both rewrote their early careers as avant-garde artists through downplay- ing Nijinsky’s choreographic work and his mental acuity. Many of their innovations seemed more radical if Nijinsky’s choreographic work was forgotten, and much of what they had contributed to the success of the Ballets Russes could be enhanced if Nijinsky’s part in the events was reduced. Cocteau, who did not ally himself with avant-garde art until 1915 (Silver 1989, 108, 112–26), was not intimate with either Stravinsky or Diaghilev until after Nijinsky had left the company. In contrast, Stravinsky and Nijinsky were close friends until 1916, when the dancer failed to invite the composer to tour with him.16 Taking sole credit for the theatrical scandal of the twentieth century seems to have been too big a temptation for Stravinsky, who might also have wanted to dissociate his music from Nijinsky’s insanity (as suggested by Hodson 1996, xviii). During his career, Nijinsky had made enemies who were quick to seize the day once the dancer became incapable of defending himself. Nijinsky had dethroned Mikhail Fokine first as the company’s male lead and later as its choreographer. In 1916, perhaps in retaliation for his own 1913 dismissal, Nijinsky fired both the company régisseur Serge(i) Grigoriev (1883–1968) and his wife from the second American tour of the Ballets Russes. Both men wrote books (Fokine 1961; Grigoriev 1953) widely used as unbiased accounts of the Ballets Russes and of Nijinsky and his choreographic works, although Fokine saw only one of them (Fokine 1961, 202–9) and Grigoriev (1953, 110–16) denigrated the one he could not have seen since he was not on the same continent. Similarly, the observations of Aleksandr (Alexandre) Benois (Бенуа, 1870–1960), one of Diaghilev’s early friends and a set and costume designer for the Ballets Russes, are quoted as intimate eye-witness statements of Nijinsky as an artist, although Benois (1945, 346–51) never saw any of Nijinsky’s choreographies as he fought with Diaghilev in 1911 and parted com- pany with the Ballets Russes. Like Fokine, Benois habitually regarded artistic development in others as a lack of taste and style, and regularly downgraded all whose fame surpassed his own – including Diaghilev. Not all who wrote of Nijinsky’s dancing in the post-war years for- gave him for his choreographic “” (Nijinsky in, for example, 12 Dancing Genius

Comoedia 18 April 1912), whilst others re-wrote their original dislike into praise (Blanche in Revue de 1 December 1913; compare with Blanche 1938, 258–62). In contrast, some of Nijinsky’s collaborators did everything they could to assure his works would be remembered. Both Nijinsky’s choreographic assistant, (Miriam Ramberg, 1888–1982), and his sister, (1890/91–1972), posi- tioned themselves against what had been considered as the expert opinion about the famous dancer. In the process, their own reputa- tions received a boost: Nijinska (1992, especially 469) wrote of her brother’s work as inspiration for her own choreographies, and Rambert (1983, 77) of how Nijinsky had encouraged her to leave Diaghilev and form her own company. Like Cocteau’s position in the French cultural scene, Rambert’s subsequent importance to British dance retrospec- tively increased the prominence of the Ballets Russes in the history of twentieth-century dance and these authors’ reliability as sources about the company. Because of its illustrious audiences, its expansive touring and relative longevity as a company, the Ballets Russes moulded public opinion about ballet and the status of dance as an art form for generations to come. Paradoxically, dance has been rather secondary to the halo of a troupe whose only constant was the impresario Diaghilev, the employer of many artists and musicians iconic to the 1910s and 1920s (albeit usu- ally only after they had secured their reputations elsewhere). Yet, many of the people subsequently quoted as intimate observers of the pre-war Ballets Russes were not all that intimate with the backstage life of the company at the time. Besides Cocteau, Mikhail Larionov had, it is true, known Diaghilev since 1906, but he did not become involved with the Ballet until 1914 (Larionow 1930, 48, 50; compare with Haskell 1955, 292–3), and he had no scruples about misdating things when it came to boosting his own reputation: for example, he drew imagined scenes of Nijinsky in rehearsal (as in Kahane 2000, 168–9). By his own admission, Cyril W. Beaumont (1951, vii, 71–2) did not know Nijinsky personally, and his famous recollections of the 1914 Saison Nijinsky in London that portray Nijinsky as insane rest on hearsay (Beaumont 1951, 77–83). Prince Peter Lieven similarly wrote hundreds of pages on the pre-war bal- let but admits he did not actually get to meet either Diaghilev or Nijinsky until 1916 (Lieven 1973, 231, 322). Others, such as Ernst Ansermet (quoted in for example, Haskell 1955, 270), placed notable provisos on how well they ever knew Nijinsky, ignored by later researchers. To complicate matters still further, reminiscences about the Ballets Russes tend to rely upon earlier sources: people checked what they Introduction: a Genealogy 13

“remembered” from accounts already published. For example, Lydia Sokolova (pseudonym of Hilda Munnings, 1896–1974) followed the reminiscences of Serge Grigoriev (1953) and (1945) as well as Stravinsky’s so-called Autobiography (1975) – she countered her own published claims in later interviews and admitted she “couldn’t speak Russian at all in those days” (Sokolova 1998, 140). Similarly, Bronislava Nijinska’s posthumously published memoirs are obviously heavily edited to fit the hegemonic accounts. In this way, published reminiscences perpetuated the ‘expert opinion’ of the earlier authors they cited. This created grey eminences such as Walter Nouvel (Вальтеръ Нувель, 1871–1949), Diaghilev’s lawyer and Benois’s good friend and former classmate, who ‘collaborated’ with Arnold Haskell in writing Diaghileff (1945). When Haskell compares Nouvel’s stories with those of Benois and with Stravinsky’s Chroniques de Ma Vie (1935), ghost-written by Nouvel, he gives an appearance of critical research when in actuality there is none. Having said this, both Haskell 1955 and Lifar 1945 do dis- cuss Diaghilev’s Russian years at length and their understanding of cer- tain aspects of Russian culture and society is far more accurate than that of later representations (such as Buckle 1993 or even Garafola 1992). The power of this early hegemony – and the perpetuation, with slight changes in emphasis, of its major views throughout the twentieth century – derives not as much from silencing or outlawing critical voices as from assimilation of all contradictions. Assimilation is usually accompanied by a condescending attitude whereby deviant informa- tion is represented as only slightly mistaken and actually very welcome as an addition to the unchanging (or very slowly changing) truth of the hegemony. Consequently, both the interpretations offered in defence of Nijinsky and against his importance tend to share four character- istics. First, they blatantly disregard contemporary primary sources, particularly the opinions Nijinsky voiced in interviews and unpublished materials. Second, they ignore historical changes in context: subsequent events affect how earlier events get remembered and what significance is given to them. Third, they insist that Nijinsky was inarticulate – as silent as his art form – either to claim he was dependent on Diaghilev for everything, including choreography, and/or to justify dismissal of Nijinsky’s published opinions. Finally, they cite very selectively, choos- ing from the array of primary source evidence only those opinions that correspond with the desired results. This is usually achieved by crediting the authors of such desirable opinions ‘experts’ not duped by Diaghilev’s publicity tricks and the mere virtuosic display onstage that most audi- ence members (that is, the ignorant masses) took for reality. 14 Dancing Genius

Until the 1980s, Nijinsky’s choreographic oeuvre was treated as per- manently lost17 and, regardless of whether these four works were seen as signs of his insanity or not, they were effectively rendered inexplicable and thus fundamentally inconsequential to subsequent developments in dance ( as well as ballet, although there is a marked bias against modern dance in the discourse surrounding the Ballets Russes at this time). Although varying in degree and kind, the function of these modes of speech is to uphold a particular idea of dance as an art form through construing an image of Nijinsky that fits the aims of the writers and bears little resemblance to what was actually said about him or by him during his active career. The striking similarities between the two superficially opposed tra- ditions of discussing Nijinsky – the popular Nijinsky-cult attributed to Romola Nijinsky, and the ‘expert opinion’ accreditable to people like Grigoriev, Fokine and Benois – also explains how they could be integrated into the new hegemony that arose in the 1970s and 1980s. Together with changing aesthetic preferences that rekindled academic interest in turn-of-the-century arts and Russian émigré culture (see, for example, Gray 1971; Kennedy 1977), the deaths of some of Diaghilev’s sacred monsters alerted the new generation of dance researchers to col- lect what they could whilst simultaneously relieving them of the burden of having to be approved by these eye-witnesses. By this time, the market for nijinskymania had also changed. In the wake of the defection and subsequent career of – often spoken of as ‘the second Nijinsky’ – and of television, ballet’s popularity increased and its cultural influence spread outside its tradi- tionally elitist fan-base. Following the Stonewall riots, Diaghilev and Nijinsky became pioneers of ‘gay liberation’, another Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas (as in Kopelson 1997, 4–5; see also Miller 1995, 208–13). This narrative not only rests on untenable and ahistorical understanding of sexuality as essentially defining a person but, as Peter Horne (1996, 132) has pointed out, the emphasis on an artist’s homosexuality reproduces the discoursive construction of the homo- sexual as saturated by her or his sexuality, which reasserts the logic that made homosexuality criminal and pathological in the first place (see Foucault 2005, 109–13). Popular culture again played its part in this rereading of Nijinsky with the 1980 feature film, Nijinsky, based on Romola Nijinsky’s book and directed by . Suddenly, Nijinsky’s private self was all that mattered, and this private self was read as analogous to the most famous roles Nijinsky had performed on stage. Introduction: a Genealogy 15

Simultaneously, dance research held the seeds of another kind of revisionism. By the 1960s, some of the long-term Nijinsky fans had become very influential in the world of ballet. These included , the founder, with (Giorgi Balanchivadze, 1904–83) of both the School of American Ballet (later the Ballet) and the Ballet Society (The New York City Ballet). In 1975, Kirstein published a monograph on Nijinsky, Nijinsky Dancing, in which he insisted Nijinsky be repositioned in the canon of the art form as a choreographer of note and as a precursor of (surprise, surprise) the neo- classicism of Balanchine. This came at the heels of the 1971 biography, Nijinsky, by the British ballet critic Richard Buckle, who soon also pub- lished a biography on his idol Diaghilev (1979) that further discussed the Nijinsky–Diaghilev imbroglio. These authors represent the first of the new hegemony, dominated by a synthetic approach where even mutually exclusive versions of events had to be forced to make sense, but where contemporary materials were still made to fit the established truths of the earlier hegemony. Slightly later, the interest in constituting an academic discipline of dance studies coincided with a new attention given to historical “masterworks”. A canon traditionally necessitates access to the (unmediated) original work of the absent author, something that can be evaluated independently of its historical context by each new generation. In the wake of Nijinsky’s reinstatement in this canon, his choreographic work was subjected to a curious form of academic inquiry with the purpose of immediate practical applications: reconstruction. In 1967, the composer Igor Stravinsky, responsible for some of the most vicious attacks on Nijinsky’s musical and choreographic skills since his “autobiography” of 1935 (Stravinsky 1975), found his own manu- script notes for Sacre. Swallowing his considerable pride, he reversed his former opinion (Stravinsky 1969, especially 35). Although his statements went largely unheeded, even amongst musicologists, until the 1990s (Taruskin 1995; Fink 1999), they were crucial to the new interest in Nijinsky’s choreographies that, in the 1980s, culminated in their resusci- tation both in academic research and in performance practice. Supported by the prolific writing of the people making their living in recreating the past from the archive, the various Nijinsky reconstructions constitute the most recent phase in the hegemonic interpretation, in which Nijinsky is repositioned as an important precursor of (American) modern dance, particularly Martha Graham’s work (Hodson 1985, especially 167–72). Even though no one today would claim Nijinsky’s choreographies were insignificant to his art form (as was still in the 1980s), 16 Dancing Genius much of what is said of the (reconstructed) choreographies and their purported author still reproduces what is known – or rather, what is claimed to be known – in earlier hegemonic accounts. As Mark Franko (1989) has argued, reconstruction as a practice has the potential for revealing the historicity of our understanding of dancing and its devel- opments, but in performance practice, most reconstructions tend to gloss over the difficulties involved in the process of recreating past dance, the agendas of the reconstructor(s), and important questions about what ‘the original’ is and if and why it is even necessary in a per- forming art. Millicent Hodson’s highly problematic reconstructions per- petuate the synthetic belief that amassing all the pieces of the “Nijinsky puzzle” (Hodson 1990) would somehow bring about the ‘truth’ of Nijinsky, to recreate the past ‘wie es egentlich gewesen ist’ (as it really was), to cite the notorious dictum of Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). Fortunately, the 1980s also produced dance researchers adept at applying research methods and points of view from other academic dis- ciplines. Lynn Garafola’s Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1989) emphasised the economic factors necessary for the creation of art and Diaghilev’s social networks; and works like Joan Acocella’s unpublished The Reception of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes by Artists and Intellectuals in Paris and London, 1909–1914 (1984), and Deborah Jowitt’s Time and the Dancing Image (1988) focused on the role of the fin-de-siècle aesthetic in the popularity of the Ballet and the relationship of this troupe to other contemporary dance performers and companies. Paradoxically, with the new theoreti- cal frameworks and the interest in contextualising the Ballets Russes, the old problems dance history had with applying the historiographical methods to this particular topic got obscured. In some instances, this new research could not quite keep track of plausibility – such as when Diaghilev was accused of destroying the truly feminine art of ballet by his (homosexual, perverse) love of male dancers.18 Lacunae remained: although it was noted that the works of the Russian ballet had some- thing to do with Orientalism, there were few actual attempts at criticis- ing the (continuous) Orientalisation of the troupe (and of ).19 Russian dance research and Russian sources were (and are) conspicu- ously absent from research on the Russian Ballet, which exemplifies Linda Nochlin’s (1989a, xvi, 33–59) point about canon formation as a colonialist practice. For the same reason, Soviet dance research has been somewhat unjustly attacked in the West (as in for example, Small 1981) and little of it has been translated. Since the mid-1990s, the work of these academic pioneers has allowed dance, music and performance studies scholars to focus on Introduction: a Genealogy 17 corporeal experience and corporeal knowledge in ways that enrich our understanding of past dance and its relevance to the present. By reading today’s views on dance as based on a series of historically and culturally specific representations and assumptions about what dance should be, this scholarship has paved the way for a critical ontology of dance, to which I hope this book will also contribute. Yet implausible stories and silly speculations do also have their place, and I have tried to address some of them here with the gusto they deserve as landmarks of nijinskymania. However, I have explicitly avoided any chronology of the Ballets Russes or a grand narrative of Nijinsky’s career – previ- ous research has created quite sufficient catalogues of works performed and thick descriptions of what allegedly took place on stage and off. Instead, I focus on epistemological themes that emerge in contempo- rary discourse on dance and prevail in later research, paying particular attention to what is not being said. Since discourse constitutes its own object, nothing exists outside discourse, and I will consider that I have succeeded if, at the end of this volume, you have become aware of the narrative quality of what is being said. It is only by questioning how something is said as well as what is said that alternative uses of power can be established (Foucault 2001, especially 709–23; Chartier 1997, especially 16–22.) I urge you to do this with the present text.

The pact of acquiescent sorcery

There is something inherently similar between the writing of history and the purposeful misdirection of a stage magician. Both the reader of a history and the magician’s audience are aware of being duped and misled in more or less harmless ways, and they know that the secret of the art is not visible in the end result. However, as the unreliable narra- tor tells the imagined reader of a fallacious manuscript in Christopher Priest’s (1995, 37–8) The Prestige, “there are always one or two who will take the secret away with them and worry at it without ever coming near to solving it”. Above, I revealed something of how I have worried about one particular problem, and what follows is the outline of the ‘secret’ in the present book. The work that you do not see comprises decades of work in the archives; careful reading anew, with constant awareness of the temporal and cultural difference, what was said in those contemporary materials I have had in my disposal. This work has led to numerous dead ends, mistaken identities, errors in translation, and fruitless meanderings into areas that have not contributed to the present book (Victorian sewage can be quite fascinating). 18 Dancing Genius

However, the following trick points your attention to the significance of certain words and their uses in my source materials. Words such as ‘genius’, ‘barbarian’, or ‘madman’ contain a fixed identity, a representa- tional (stereo)type that posits the individual as outside the normative; and whenever such notions are called forth, they bring with them sets of value-judgements that, quite concretely, constitute these bodies (Grosz 1994, especially x–xi; Hall 1996a, 307–8; Hall 2002, 269–76). In the present volume, I illustrate how the Western (mostly French, British and American) press treated the Russian dancers of the Ballets Russes as a cultural Other, and how the Russian press responded to this. Creating this impression requires a degree of purposeful misdirection in the form of simplification and generalisation without which the trick could not be performed. Unlike the stage magician, however, I have tried to be as honest as possible about this misdirection, not only because this is my academic duty but because I have begun to worry at an issue that I see as crucial in both these sources and our present-day discourse: What was actually meant by ‘dance’ at the turn of the twentieth century? Although particularly crucial for discussing the four choreographies Nijinsky made for the Ballets Russes between 1912–16, this ontological question is also linked to the three central notions of this work, the terms ‘virtuoso’, ‘star’, and ‘genius’. When I discuss virtuosity, I principally discuss dancing as a skill – the role of dance technique, dance training and the tradition of ballet as an academic art form. Virtuosity is excellence in performance, a surpass- ing of existing standards. It allows me to focus on dance as a physical, performative art. In contrast, my discussion on stardom focuses on Nijinsky’s image in the media, his role on stage as something to be looked at, and the context of his audience and how they, in turn, were (stereo)typed. Both virtuosity and stardom were inherently negative terms in the discourse because both were rhetorically associated with ‘low’ forms of theatre, entertainment, and the (presumably) ignorant masses. Since Romanticism, virtuosi and stars had acquired a host of adverse characteristics: fake effects, charlatanism, improper behaviour, and pursuit of profit over artistic merit (Stafford 1999, especially xxvi; Metzner 1998, especially 273–90). Although both Nijinsky’s virtuos- ity and his stardom were, in certain ways, unprecedented in his art form, I argue that he could only be distinguished from other dancers by asserting he was a dancing genius. Through recognising this danc- ing genius in Nijinsky, certain members of his audience could raise themselves above the rest, define themselves as experts who re-assessed dance – and specifically, ballet – as an art form deserving serious Introduction: a Genealogy 19 attention, big institutions, state support and a social status superior to other cultural forms. I have structured my argument in three parts. Part I introduces the Western audience of the Ballets Russes in an effort to explain why a young Russian male dancer would fascinate these people. I discuss how the aesthetics of the Russian Ballet relied on nostalgia, a yearning for the past, the lost youth of not only the members of the audience but of humankind. I look into the Orientalism that pervaded the enthusi- astic responses of the critics and other members of the audience, and posit that this Orientalism was founded on what, in those days, were accepted notions of racial (biological) difference between the naturally dancing emotional barbarians on stage and their over-civilised, physi- cally controlled and intellectually superior modern audiences across the footlights. Even if by no means all agreed with such dichotomies or what they implied, this frankly racist aspect of contemporary discourse has to be addressed both because it has been overlooked in previous research, and because it is inseparable from contemporary ideas on and history.20 Cultural prejudices about dancing enabled Nijinsky’s star- dom, but they were problematic in respect of his alleged genius. Part II of this book focuses on particular characteristics of Nijinsky used to create this dancing genius, beginning from his virtuosic leap to fame and end- ing in the significance given to his madness after his institutionalisation. I discuss how Nijinsky became a celebrity, how his audiences behaved like fans, and how his person was set apart from both other Russian ballet dancers and from the pioneers of new, ‘free-form’ dance. I argue that Nijinsky could be attributed with genius because he seemed to be a man without equal, a natural prodigy whose superior mind controlled the matter that was his body; and a man, moreover, willing to sacrifice the fickle fame of stardom for the greater glory of the art form. Nijinsky’s sex made him eligible for the laurels of genius, and the mostly unortho- dox roles he danced on stage were justified through an existing rhetoric about genius as a man with feminine (but definitely not female) qualities. I claim that the agenda in attributing Nijinsky with genius relates to the cultural economy discussed in Part I, the concern with raising the status of both the art form and its experts. Specifically, I focus on gender because much of this discourse opposed the true art of the (male) ballet genius with that of the (female) free-form dancers and virtuosi on variety stages. I also address why Nijinsky was and has ever since been equated with the roles he danced on stage, and why some of these roles have been more popular than others as representations of Nijinsky’s ‘true self’. 20 Dancing Genius

The last section of the book, Part III, focuses on the Russian opinions about the Ballets Russes and discusses Nijinsky’s reputation as a great classical dancer. I discuss traditions and their significance to art mak- ing and canonisation, and contextualise the Ballets Russes not only in relation to Diaghilev’s earlier career as the editor of the arts journal Mir iskusstva (World of Art, 1889–1904), but in terms of the contemporary discussion on new theatre and new dance in Russia. Consequently, this part reveals how the Western admiration for the Ballets Russes revolved around mistaken notions of Western cultural, political and moral supe- riority. Around 1911, the central members of the Ballet Russes and their expert helpers rewrote the company into a revolutionary organisation opposing the political system of Russia and, in this, Nijinsky’s dismissal from the Imperial Theatres played an important part. Subsequently, this ‘revolutionary’ reputation obscured both the development of ballet in Russia and the Russian expert opinion of the Ballets Russes as variety entertainment for Western dilettantes who knew nothing of ballet as an art form. I conclude the book by arguing that this revolutionary reputation predisposed audiences to see Nijinsky’s choreographic work as unprec- edented, but that it also explains why these works disturbed critics who had previously admired the company. I claim that the discourse of dance actually changed significantly in the wake of Nijinsky’s enthronement as a choreographer, both in the sense of radicalising the arguments for and against the Russian Ballet in the Western press, and in the sense of changing what was said of dance in ways that actually proved the Russian critics were mistaken – at least to a degree – in their condemnation of their Western colleagues. As such, the conclusion will point to why the kind of epistemological inquiry central to this piece of historical research can be relevant for our discourse of contemporary dance practice. As with stage magic, my sleight of hand would not have come to pass without the work of scholars to whose work I am deeply indebted and the assistance of a number of individuals who have commented and criticised various versions of different parts of this manuscript. Because this book has evolved over so many years, it really is impossible to list all of you, for which I offer my profound apologies. In terms of institu- tions, I thank the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where a post-doctoral research fellowship allowed me to develop my thesis topic into this book. Earlier, the ASLA-Fulbright scholarship enabled me to study at the Department of Performance Studies at New York University as well as conduct research at the New York Public Library. Without Introduction: a Genealogy 21 this opportunity, I simply would not have become a dance scholar. The Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Wihuri Foundation, and the Ella och Georg Ehrnrooths Stiftelse enabled me to concentrate on research at important junctions, including the long process of finding a publisher for this book. I also wish to thank Paula Kennedy at Palgrave Macmillan for her enthusiastic approval and Christine Ranft for her sharp editorial assistance. I began my research at the Department of Cultural History at the University of Turku, where I learned how exciting history could be. Anu Korhonen, Marjo Kaartinen, Hannu Salmi and Ritva Hapuli, in particu- lar, read and commented upon what I wrote, argued with me when necessary and always encouraged me with what was, admittedly, an odd- ball’s choice of topic. Riitta Pyykkö, Keith Batterbee and Paul Dillingham corrected my linguistic stumbles. Leena Rouhiainen, Esa Kirkkopelto and their colleagues welcomed me to the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, where work with Anne Makkonen in particular offered new nuances to the present book. Mark Franko, André Lepecki, and the late Richard Stites all read and commented upon my manuscript, offering valuable clues as to further sources and research questions. I also wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to Ramsay Burt, Thomas DeFrantz, Karen Vedel, Michael Huxley and Theresa Buckland for their help and for our many wonderful conversations, as well as to Lynn Garafola for the determined example she has set to this work from its inception to its final form. As a bibliophile, I would like to express my gratitude to the libraries I have worked in and their kind staff: The British Library Newspaper Collection; The Bobst Library at New York University; The New York Public Library, particularly the Library for the Performing Arts; the librar- ies of the University of Helsinki, particularly the Slavic Library; the Library of the Theatre Academy in Helsinki; the Åbo Akademi, the University of Turku, and the Sibelius Museum Libraries in Turku; and the wonderful digital collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr. Note on orthography and dating: References to Russian sources include both old style (Julian) and new style (Gregorian) dates (that is, 24 May/6 June 1912), unless I am quoting a secondary source. Direct quotations from materials in languages other than English are given in the original in the text; a translation is provided in the endnotes. In my translations, the polite form of address (vous, вы) is indicated by capital letters. I have used a modified Library of Congress system for the trans- literation of Russian, with the exception of those names that already have an established Western transliteration, that is, Vaslav Nijinsky not Vatslav Nizhinskii, Diaghilev not Diagilev, Benois not Benua, and so 22 Dancing Genius on. For these, Cyrillic is given in parentheses. Soft and hard signs are omitted, letters in old orthography rendered as they would have been written in the new orthography, and in names, the common masculine ending -ии (or -ыи/-йи) is rendered as -y. Note on italics: Titles of works and names of magazines are given in italics, whereas exhibitions, artist groups, and the like are not itali- cised (Mir iskusstva or miriskusstniki thus refers to the group of people publishing the magazine Mir iskusstva). To avoid confusion, terms in languages other than English (such as zapadniki or ) are not italicised. My additions to direct quotes are given in square brackets [like this] and omissions are marked with an ellipsis in brackets [ . . . ]. For the purposes of building a coherent argument, the notes are arranged in the order the reader should compare the sources given. Note on ballet: For the past three centuries, ‘ballet’ has meant a form of theatrical (performed) dancing based on a particular technique. In the following, ‘ballet’ can refer to either 1) the art form, 2) a specific spectacle, 3) its danced component, or 4) the organisation creating and/ or performing ballets. The meaning should be clear from the context. ‘Russian ballet’ encompasses all forms of ballet defined as ‘Russian’ by the Russian theatrical papers, both in Russia proper, within the (such as or Finland), and abroad. In contrast, ‘The Ballets Russes’, ‘the Russian Ballet’, or ‘the Ballet’ refers to the specific company directed by Diaghilev. The names of ballets and operas are given primarily in French in the form that they appeared in the theatrical newspaper Comœdia: that is, Petrouchka not , Le Spectre de la Rose, not Le spectre de la rose. Since the Ballets Russes also performed works or excerpts of works previ- ously performed in Russia, I have opted to use French for all titles and capitalise them in like manner – that is, La Belle au Bois Dormant rather than Sleeping Beauty or Спящая красавица. Contemporary Western sources allocate a dizzying array of stylistic categories to the works performed by the Ballets Russes without much consistency or explanation as to why certain works were sometimes ‘mimodramas’ or ‘pantomimes’ (perhaps implying a predominance of mimed gesture over danced steps) and at other times ‘dance poems’ or ‘choreographic poems’ (where the reverse might be true). By ‘classical ballet’, ‘academic ballet’, or ‘old ballet’, I mean the style taught in the Ballet Schools of the Imperial Theatres21 of St. Petersburg and Moscow in the last decades of the nineteenth century, generally associated with the ballet master (1818–1910). It was ‘old’ only in con- trast to the ‘new ballet’, a Russian style that developed at the beginning Introduction: a Genealogy 23 of the twentieth century, associated with Aleksandr Gorsky (1870-1924) and the Ballets Russes. All of these terms are problematic. ‘Classical’ and ‘academic’ imply ‘correct’, giving the impression of an eternal tradition existing by virtue of its superiority, although both terms can also be read as synonyms for ‘mummified’ and ‘not modern’. ‘Old ballet’ not only contrasts itself with the implicitly ‘progressive’ ‘new ballet’, but both of these period terms were predominantly used (and comprehensible) only in the Russian discourse, where ‘old ballet’ implied an unchanging tradi- tion that has never existed in the art form (see Barchan 1919, 3–4). Moreover, like ‘classical music’, classical ballet is an anachronism: as Beth Genné (2000) has discussed, Petipa’s works only began to be dis- cussed as ‘classical’ in the 1930s, which creates an odd temporal disjunc- tion in the history of dance whereby

Sleeping Beauty gradually begins to be thought of as belonging to a timeless, almost mythical past – an ur-text for classical dance, while Isadora and the other artists who are roughly contemporary with its creation entered the public imagination as revolutionaries of the modern era. (Genné 2000, 149)

Genre adds to the confusion: some (but not all) of the ‘old ballets’ were ‘grands ballets’, elaborate spectacles lasting several hours and including spectacular special effects. ‘Ballet féerie’, another term often used in a derogatory sense, refers to the predominantly French genre of fantastic ballets with supernatural themes (and lots of special effects), including many but not all of the grands ballets, and some canonised works like La Belle au Bois Dormant. ‘Ballet d’action’ refers to works where dramatic content (narrative) is central, as it was in most of the Ballets Russes spectacles, although the invention of this genre is usually attributed to Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810). In contrast, ‘neoclassical ballet’ has come to designate the mostly abstract works of twentieth-century choreographers (Balanchine, Nijinska) that emulate certain aspects of the old (as opposed to the new) ballet, with particular emphasis on re- imagined academic ballet technique. This page intentionally left blank Part I The Russian Invasion This page intentionally left blank 1 An Audience for Ballet

Mapping the terrain

In order to understand a culture distant in time and/or place, we must first leave behind (but not forget) our own carefully constructed models of reality, or, as José Gil (1998, ix) put it,

to understand oneself experiencing – and grasping in theoretical images – the circuits of intensity that emerge as one leaves, via a kind of methodological breakout, the domain mapped out by our signs.

Like travellers in unfamiliar terrain, we must stay vigilant for surpris- ing differences and curious even of the seemingly familiar. We need to understand our own difference and rescind our position of expertise about reality, or else we will only see what we expect to see – our own domain – and experience none of the wonders of an alien land. This challenge is particularly difficult the better we think we know the other. All that we associate with the name ‘Nijinsky’ is intimately tied to his being the figurehead of a company of Russian dancers, the Ballets Russes. Yet, in 1909, when Nijinsky first appeared in Western Europe, he was not the leading dancer of the troupe, which was not even pri- marily a dance company. The overnight success of the Russian Ballet in Paris is a myth that has obscured many of the cultural complexities involved in the reception and subsequent canonisation of the company and its biggest male star, Nijinsky. Not only were these dancers not the first Russians to have brought their ballet to the West but the responses of audiences were heterogeneous, dependent on hierarchies of art, the changing political environment, issues of social class and gender, of nation and morals, as well as projected cultural ideals (see, for example,

27 28 Dancing Genius

E.D. in Revue musical 1 July 1909; Le Théatre 1 August 1909). Although the majority of the reviews in Paris, London and New York were positive in tone, the justifications used for praising the Russians rested on local theories about culture and on stereotypes that need to be analysed, if only because these attitudes have greatly affected how we understand this company and its stars today. In order to examine the meanings Nijinsky’s audience associated with him and the emergence of the nijinskymania discussed in the Introduction above, this chapter will draft out some of the cultural expectations of his audiences. I discuss how these expectations, some of which were local to Paris or London, constructed the particular framework in which Nijinsky became a star, and a dancing genius. As such, this chapter opens a map of cultural ideas that affected Nijinsky’s position in the public eye, setting aside, for the time being, the rather different cultural discourse of ballet in Russia, discussed in Part III. Like a map that by no means reproduces the intricacies of the terrain for which it stands, some gross simplifications are necessary for the sake of coherence. Perhaps the largest simplification is the definition of Russia as somehow non-Europe, non-West – one that can be traced to the 1054 division of Christendom into the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faiths, but also one that, in many ways, indicates an ‘occiden- tal’ world view (Mikkeli 1999, especially 146–7; Wittram 1973, especially 7–8). Nonetheless, at the beginning of the twentieth century such a divi- sion was believed to exist – in culture, society, ethics, politics, and even biology. Therefore, any discourse on art was also entangled in debates over race, gender, nation and morality, emphasised when the art in question was of foreign origin. Cultural otherness was racial otherness, biological difference, to an extent difficult to imagine in our world of instant global communications. The Russian dancers were strange and exotic to their Western spectators, scandalous and sensational, and they have been represented as such ever since. Consequently, pointing to how culture was an indication of inherent difference only a century ago draws attention to how many of the stereotypes about our cultural Others (and of ourselves) still prevail. Of course, representations are always open to different and changing interpretations even if their meaning is restricted by the codes we have access to and by what kinds of other representations are available to us. In some ways, this chapter attempts to chart the horizon of expectations (Koselleck 2004, especially 255–75) available for the audiences of the Russian Ballet. Yet, I want to stress that not all contemporary sources corroborate or concur with these stereotypes about the cultural Other; An Audience for Ballet 29 that not all critics or audience members perceived the world in these terms. A given audience is composed of individuals (Alasuutari 1999, 6), and although an individual critic’s voice is important in the formal reception of an art work, she/he does not represent the audience as a whole and, as a critic, has a specific relationship to art and the specific art work (Citron 1995, 166–70). Having said this, many of those who did perceive the Russians as racial others are the ones cited in research literature as giving particularly truthful insight into the company, its members and its repertoire. Moreover, although representational cat- egories never exclude individuals from belonging to, identifying with, and being identified as representing other (even opposing) categories, they do have an actual impact on the lives of these individuals (for example, Dyer 1993b, especially 1–2; Hall 2002, especially 262–3). Thus, the categories used to define Russians (barbarians, Orientals, and so on) can be used to explain something of the choices made by these particular Russians even if they did not see themselves as belonging to these categories. After all, any successful artistic enterprise has to take into account the expectations of its audience.

The high and the low

Particularly outside academe, the artistic novelty and the aesthetic value of the Diaghilev troupe have been seen as major reasons for its success; and within dance history, the skills of the impresario have been emphasised as being crucial to the success of a Russian ballet company. In 1909, when the Russian company first appeared at the Châtelet theatre, the Paris Opéra company was rarely newsworthy (Gutsche- Miller 2010, especially 19–26) and ballet was associated with variety shows and entertaining spectacles. However, researchers focusing on the Ballets Russes have over-emphasised the degree of and reasons for this apparent disinterest, which did not rest simply on critical realisa- tion of an aesthetic (that is, qualitative) ‘decline’ in the art form.1 The aesthetic qualities of sets, music or dance technique do not by themselves explain how the Ballets Russes were able to evoke such great interest, and no single individual could have changed the situation, no matter how good they might have been at marketing art (see DeNora 1995, especially on evaluation of greatness 5). To reiterate a familiar narrative, ballet, based on seventeenth-century court dances, survived the French Revolution to enjoy great public favour during Romanticism, but by 1850, this interest had waned, in part because ballet did not suit the aesthetics of Realism. The aesthetics of 30 Dancing Genius ballet rested firmly on notions like grace and elegance, reminiscent of the origins of ballet as an aristocratic pastime, and ballet plots, many of which dealt with the exotic and the supernatural, had few preten- sions to addressing social ills or everyday reality that interested artists in other art forms. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, dance was not generally thought of as being suited to the kind of expression of lofty ideas or profound emotional content that was required of ‘real’ art – a view often cited even in favourable reviews of the Ballets Russes (for example, The Times 24 June 1911; The Bellman 13 November 1915). Dancing was performative, its reception focused on the here-and-now of stars and spectacle. Dance works could not be owned or exhibited as bourgeois possessions; and few of them remained in repertories long enough to become regarded as ‘masterpieces’ that could form the tradi- tion and canon necessary for evaluation of new works of art. Moreover, professional dancers tended to come from dubious bohemian origins, and their labour was physical, associating it with the bodily labour of the working classes and with the irrational, sexual body rather than the thinking mind. Ballet technique became increasingly virtuosic throughout the nineteenth century, and ballet spectacles more spectacular, culminating in the grands ballets of Luigi Manzotti (1835–1905), extremely popular productions filled with thrilling effects that celebrated modern life with little or no plot to connect particular scenes. The success of such bal- lets associated the already physical art form with the entertainment of the music halls, more concerned with show than with socio-political content.2 However, the fact that dance research stresses the popular- ity of the Romantic ballet and ignores the works by Manzotti and his contemporaries because of their popularity should point to why the Ballets Russes has been categorised as the former rather than the latter: the Russians justified theatrical dance was Art, and moreover, an Art of, for and by the elite. Hence, it was crucial that the 1909 Russian season was one of opera and ballet – in many papers, the opera performances received far more attention than ballet (see, for example, Gil Blas 11 May–15 June 1909). During the nineteenth century, ballet had lost what remained of its special status as a pastime for aristocratic courts, although in France, the fiction of aristocratic libertinism still governed images of women on stage (Berlanstein 2001, especially 1–8, 13–14, 23–6). As feminist historians have shown, women had relatively little influence on how dance narratives represented gender, let alone how institutions were run (for example, McCarren 1998, especially 52–7, 70–9.) After the July An Audience for Ballet 31

Revolution of 1830, the Paris Opéra lost much of its state funding and underwent drastic institutional changes. The new director, Louis-Désiré Véron (1798–1867), turned the Foyer de la danse into an exclusive back- stage salon, where a limited number of (male) patrons could enjoy the informal company of the (female) dancers. Véron’s excellent contacts with the intellectuals and artists of his day, and his lavish refurbishing of the theatre (including the instalment of new stage technology that allowed for the latest in special effects) may have created the success of the Romantic ballet (Huckenpahler 1984) but, seventy years later, the Foyer de la danse was still equated with an institutionalised seraglio (for example, Bennett in The English Review January 1911; Le Courrier Musical 1 July 1910). In a book discussing a male dancer, it is noteworthy that together with the dubious reputation of the dancing profession, the heteronor- mativity of the romantic encounter on stage (where the subject was almost always a man either in pursuit of a woman or set between two women representing different ideals) and offstage (in the Foyer de la danse) made admiring male dancers rather problematic. Outside sci- entific discourse, discussing sexual desires was fraught with concerns about propriety. Even in France, for (male) critics, lauding a man exhibiting his body came dangerously close to crossing the boundary from homosocial to homosexual; and although male dancing never disappeared (Smith 2007; also Dumesnil 1952), during the nineteenth century discussing the male dancer became laden with the same anxie- ties about moral health that had influenced the disappearance of male finery in dress and male nudes in art.3 Although more prominent in the English-speaking world, these anxieties also show in the responses of French male dancers to the success of their Russian colleagues (Le Monde illustré 29 May 1909 and 15 July 1911). Whatever its actual position during Romanticism, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, ballet was not at the cutting edge of intellectual debate anywhere in Europe. Even in Paris, ballet had increas- ingly become either a variety theatre or an adjunct of grand opera. Requiring clear rhythm for danced sections interspersed with more expressive music for the mimetic ones (for example, Wiley 1988, 48–9, 58; Smith 2000b, especially 33–8), ballet music did not conform to the lofty ideals associated with music in general, particularly operatic music in the tradition of Wagner.4 Overall, the highly conven- tionalised ballet music followed equally conventional plot-lines and devices for various kinds of staged dancing (Gutsche-Miller 2010, espe- cially 200–73.) At a time when it was believed, to quote the 1873 dictum 32 Dancing Genius of Walter Pater (1986, 86), that “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”, the reputation of ballet music contributed to the prejudice that dancing was merely entertaining – that it had no social significance or capacity for inspiring the mind. Formulaic sets and revealing costumes only added to this impression. In contrast, the short works of the Russian Ballet went against the expected principles of ballet. Although the Russians were often praised for the variety of dance styles they mastered (for example, Le Théatre 1 July 1909; The Lady 20 July 1911), individual works kept to one ‘period’ style. Perhaps more importantly, by utilising concert music for character dances they broke the conventions about what kind of music was ‘danceable’. Western critics usually saw this as derivative of contempo- rary free-form staged dance – the high prestige of music in contemporary aesthetic theories had clearly influenced why, in the late 1890s, some performers (most famously Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan) began to use concert music for their dance performances. The use of concert music involved the Russians in existing debates about whether this was a crime against the music and the composer’s intentions or whether it actually enhanced the significance of the dance, turning spectacle into art.5 However, the association with other new forms of dancing height- ened the physical and ideological distance of the Ballet from what was perceived as ballet in the West. This made the Russians’ dancing less tied to the values present in French ballet and therefore more easily adopted as something incomparable, new and unrelated to French culture, as exemplified by their tradition of ballet. At the same time, new dance forms on stage and off further contributed towards the marked lack of interest in ballet: regardless of the claims to the inherent ‘modernity’ of these new forms, theatrical papers were far more likely to review them simply because they were new, illustrative of contemporary (that is, ‘modern’) culture and of contemporary aesthetic values. Although many variety theatre ballets were set in the present and/or dealt with contemporary topics (see Gutsche-Miller 2010, 254–8, 261, 268–73), the art form still tended to be associated with the old, with past aristocratic glories, and – in the rhetoric of the advocates of new ‘’ and ‘classical’ dance6 – with distorting the (female) body. Given all this, how was it possible that a troupe of Russian bal- let dancers should become the most fashionable thing in the City of Lights? Although aesthetic quality cannot explain the success of the Ballets Russes as a phenomenon, the aesthetic of their pre-war seasons did play its part in creating a social demand for the troupe – a demand that had at least as much to do with the visual designs of the company An Audience for Ballet 33 and the musical scores used as with what was performed on stage. This style looked like a fusion of ballet traditions and forms of new dance, which made it seem novel enough to be appreciated as distinct from French ballet but also familiar enough not to protest. In com- parison with new dance forms, it was also virtuosic, easily identifiable as ‘good’ (that is, professional) dancing. The Ballets Russes attracted audiences of a class and a generation who had, in their youth, admired ‘Aesthetes’ or ‘Decadents’ like Oscar Wilde, Gustave Moreau and Joris-Karl Huysmans. Any close reading of both audience reactions and narratives produced in and of the Ballets Russes shows a reliance on Symbolist views that, in turn, resuscitated the Romantic view of art as a higher, transcendent truth. Here, art was self-referential ‘art for the sake of art’ that needed no link to reality. The periods (such as the eighteenth century), cultures (especially ‘Oriental’ cultures), and modes of behaviour (emotionalism) appraised in this fin-de-siècle art went against the normative, and were considered excessive or ‘Decadent’ – a term that implied decline from an achieved level of cultural progress.7 Perhaps most importantly, however, this fin- de-siècle aesthetic was elitist and distrustful of commercialisation and the democratisation of art and of society, making it wonderfully suited to an art that one could possess but briefly, in performance. Importantly, the elitism of the Ballets Russes went beyond the social standing of its audiences – the aristocrats that biographies and exhibi- tion catalogues adore. In Aestheticism, elitism was about taste, not titles or money, and the tendency to divide the audience of the Ballets Russes into true connoisseurs and fashionable fans is the one constant in the audience responses from the first season onwards (for example, Gauthier-Villars in Akademos 15 July 1909). The discourse about the Ballets Russes reflects contemporary rhetorical division of culture into the appropriate ‘high’ art and the lamentably ‘lowbrow’ mass entertain- ment, even as it reveals the malleability of the qualities of ‘high’ and ‘low’: impresarios, critics and artists of the Ballets Russes did much to the company with the former. However, because the general aesthetics of the productions and the themes of the works reproduced fin-de-siècle , quite out of pace with what was considered ‘avant-garde’ in 1909 and lacking any reference to contemporary life, political radicals and most intellectuals regarded the Ballets Russes as merely an expensive version of popular entertainment (Garafola 1992, 334; compare with Järvinen 2013b, 28). Following the example of other Russian touring companies, the Ballets Russes performed short, one-act works given as triple bills8 in order to 34 Dancing Genius build a variable repertory very quickly. This necessitated a great number of new works per season, which was demanding for the artists involved and quickly led to the repetition of themes and plot structures. The short works did not allow much in terms of depth or character develop- ment, even when they literally gave room for set design and fanciful costuming. Together with the melodramatic plots, this soon likened the Ballet to the predictable entertainments of variety theatres. In the nineteenth century, new inventions (for example, photogra- vure, phonograph, film) and institutions (museums, libraries, concert halls) gave larger sections of the population access to art, which led to new anxieties about cultural ownership. True, valuable, and high culture – art – was the domain of the rich elite; and low popular culture – entertainment – was usually seen as detrimental to the behaviour and morality of its lower-class audiences. This popular culture was rhetori- cally set apart from the folk culture, which was seen as vital to the nation state and threatened by these a historical urban forms (for example, Wilson 1973, 824; Stites 1993, especially 9–12). For the establishment, the secular temples of art and ‘high’ culture were a disciplinary meas- ure enlightening and teaching middle-class values and manners to the masses.9 Opposed to commercial entertainment that depended on the box office, this “rational recreation” was often served with the explicit purpose of increasing the productivity of the working classes by pre- venting drunkenness, disorder, sexual excesses and dubious political activities. The masses, unenlightened and governed by their instincts, were reckoned incapable of understanding ‘difficult’ ideas or aesthetic forms (such as Realism), mistaking them for the advocation of licentious behaviour. Hence, what was shown to the masses was heavily censored.10 As an enterprise financed by the donations from rich patrons, the Ballets Russes set itself against both rational recreation and popular entertainment. Fin-de-siècle Symbolism, particularly in its more extreme forms, scorned popularity and any efforts at enlightening the masses. Neither genius nor artistic connoisseurship, two concepts crucial to the reception of the company, had anything to do with democracy: ever since Romanticism, the genius had been a nobleman of talent, above the average through personal and inborn qualities (Becker 1978, especially 24–5). The gender of the genius was definitely male (Battersby 1994, espe- cially 8–15) and he expressed something of his rarefied perception of the transcendental in his works of art. However, as Romantic artists such as Goethe and Coleridge had emphasised, the genius also had to struggle to keep his creativity alive amidst the muck of a spiritually phlegmatic age, where the masses had been lulled into the capitalist pursuit of material An Audience for Ballet 35 goods (industrialised, mass-produced objects) rather than the transcen- dental values offered by the genius (in the true experience offered by unique artworks). The Romantic genius was both a secular absolute and a martyr deviating from the norm, and was thus bound to suffer misun- derstandings and social ostracism whilst burdened by his transcendental knowledge. Only another genius or the rare connoisseur in the audience could perceive and appreciate this transcendental knowledge.11 In other words, the ability to understand genius and to verify the truth of the genius was also an innate (that is, unlearned) characteristic in the selected few, the cognoscenti, art experts who mediated the mate- rial power of the rich patrons over immaterial aesthetic production, evaluation and value. No genius could exist without the art expert, since only the expert recognised and validated the genius of a given author-figure, but the connoisseur assumed a position of power through qualities shared with the genius: intuition, rarefied perception and depth of feeling that, like genius, could not be learned. The connoisseur thus pushed a wedge between the power to own art (economic value) and the true purpose and meaning of art (aesthetic value), denouncing the materiality of the former as irrelevant to the spirituality of the lat- ter. In this kind of idealism, art audiences and patrons of art lacking the spirituality of the connoisseur could only hinder the genius by support- ing mediocre, unworthy talents. Thus, just as high culture was always defined against the low, so the genius and the expert were juxtaposed with the merely talented professional and the average spectator lacking the ability to perceive transcendence.12 The function of these purely discursive distinctions was proprietary, serving the interests of the ruling classes, but like all discursive forma- tions, they had concrete effects upon the careers of (prospective) art- ists.13 In practice, despite all the talk of innate ability, aesthetic expertise was very much tied to wealth, class and social position. The cognoscenti acquired their expertise through extensive travel and study, requiring leisure time, money and the right connections. Reference to extensive, cosmopolitan experience proved the expertise of the expert, which is particularly evident whenever the self-proclaimed experts chose to admonish the philistine majority in public:

Wishing to see and hear well some of the Russian ballets, I commit- ted the imprudence of taking a box on the grand tier. I saw the ballet. What I heard was the boisterous antics of a party of picnickers in the box on my left, and the boisterous antics of another party of picnick- ers in the box on my right. Similar phenomena, I willingly admit, are 36 Dancing Genius

to be observed at the , and worse at the Scala at . But the Brussels Monnaie is better, and the New York is much better. (The New Statesman 19 April 1913)

Arnold Bennett, the author of Literary Taste: How to Form It (1909), here attests to how the elitist rhetoric of connoisseurship encompassed the Ballets Russes. He ascertains his expertise by listing opera houses, and more specifically, the leading opera houses in the world, which, like his reference to sitting in a box, marks him as an upper-class connoisseur. (He had already complained of the Paris Opéra boxes and their regular spectators in The English Review in January 1911.) By evaluating the opera houses not through the art performed but through the civilised behav- iour of the audiences, he both fails to reveal any actual aesthetic prefer- ences and swears allegiance to the notion of art as secular religion – it is hardly coincidental that he places his own rarified sensory experience (hearing) as above that of the sympotic philistines in the surround- ing boxes, who, quite outrageously, behave as if they were outdoors. (See also McReynolds 2003, 55.) Bennett’s focus reveals how, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, much of the social function of upper-class theatre had been relegated temporally and spatially outside the performance – to inter- missions and to the foyers of the theatre building (Carlson 1993, espe- cially 149–58). The dimming of house lights and other measures that focused the attention of audiences on the spectacle also distinguished performance from social function, art from life. Bennett’s public asser- tion of his annoyance points to how, as with other bourgeois temples of art, discipline was imposed through architecture, policing and peer review (for example, Bailey 2003, especially 140–8). In the announce- ments of the performances of the Russian Ballet, the audiences were instructed that latecomers would not be admitted, and they were even given directions as to what to wear: “La toilette de soirée est de rigueur, les dames sans chapeau.” (“Evening dress is mandatory, ladies without hats.” Le Figaro 6 June 1911.) Such explicit demands as regards habitus (evening dress) and behav- iour (no latecomers) guaranteed that only the right kind of audience would attend the performances and that they would also behave in ways (no picnicking) that helped to construe what they witnessed as art and themselves as the experts of this art. This had the explicit pur- pose of construing the spectacular performances as art rather than as entertainment akin to the variety stage. In variety theatres, people were regularly offered refreshments during performances – in café-concerts, An Audience for Ballet 37 drinking was a requirement for staying on the premises. The audiences also responded to what was being performed more directly than in the opera houses – with the performers retaliating in kind.14 The social class of the Ballet’s audience is also obvious in which papers originally published the most extensive and often cited pri- mary sources of the troupe. The Parisian boulevard press – Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, Gil Blas, L’Echo de Paris, L’Eclair and Le Temps – were already exclusive in terms of their circulation: they were read mostly by peo- ple above average wealth and education (Berlanstein 2001, 18). Apart from art periodicals such as the monthly S.I.M. Revue Musicale or the bimonthly Comœdia illustré, the supplement to the daily theatrical paper Comœdia (Davis 2010, 26), these boulevard papers really were the press that covered the Ballets Russes. More popular newspapers like Le Matin paid far less attention to the company, possibly because theatre was not very topical in French political life (Berlanstein 2001, 20–1). Notably, the attitude of the boulevard press towards the Ballets Russes was also one of ownership and shared experience – the assump- tion was that the reader at least contemplated the possibility of going to see the Russians. In comparison, the cheaper illustrated press (for example, Le Monde illustré), which gravitated towards the variety stage spectacles and populist nationalism, adopted a less friendly tone towards the company and has been silenced in research as well. In Britain, the conservative daily The Times and the upper-class illus- trated periodicals like The Graphic and The Lady generally favoured the company, whereas popular papers like The Illustrated London News reserved most of its enthusiasm for Nijinsky’s Jeux, represented as epitomising modern life. In America, the company figured quite con- spicuously in fashion magazines (Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar) and the offi- cial paper of the Metropolitan Opera, Musical America whereas Variety was outright hostile towards it. It is unlikely that the success of the Ballet would have been possible had Diaghilev started his career as an impresario of Russian ballet or had he catered primarily to the audiences of Western theatrical danc- ing. By 1909, he had accumulated his social capital in Parisian society for more than a decade: in the 1890s, he had made his name as a con- noisseur of fine art, the editor in chief of the Russian arts journal Mir iskusstva (The World of Art, 1898–1904),15 and the associated exhibition society modelled after Western Secessionist16 groups. The journal had brought Diaghilev in touch not only with Western artistic trends but with particular individuals whose help became invaluable in creating an audience for his later ‘Russian seasons’:17 painting (1906), concert music 38 Dancing Genius

(1907) and opera (1908). Thus, the primary interests of the patrons of the season of Russian opera and ballet in 1909 were music and fine art, which greatly influenced how expertise was constituted and conse- quently, how the company was situated in the cultural field. It can be argued that because this audience was not primarily interested in dance, it did not wholly share the moral prejudices against ballet, particularly ones against male dancing. Yet this seems not to have been true: as I will argue in Part II, the (mostly male) critics writing of Nijinsky did share many of these existing prejudices – they simply discussed Nijinsky’s art through rhetorical modes that exempted both the dancer and his audi- ence from any (moral) blame. Personal (as opposed to institutional) contacts were crucial in the artis- tic world of the turn of the century, where each amitié fostered others. For example, in 1898, Diaghilev met Count Robert de Montesquiou about a Whistler painting (Jullian 1967, 222). The wife of de Montesquiou’s one-time lover, Prince de Polignac, was Winnaretta Singer, arts collector and salon hostess who became a significant Maecenas for Diaghilev’s enterprises. Montesquiou’s cousin, Countess de Greffulhe, was an important patroness of music who apparently introduced Diaghilev to the French impresario (1864–1938), responsible for the public relations of the 1909 season. Later, Astruc’s press ties, his Société Musicale, and his reputation in the musical and artistic salons of Paris ensured an international array of patrons for Diaghilev’s private ballet company, founded late in 1910. Indeed, without contracts with major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York, arising from Astruc’s personal contacts, it is unlikely that Diaghilev would have risked such a venture.18 Because of Diaghilev’s earlier ‘Russian seasons’, his campaign for bal- let quickly attained international prestige: some habitual members of the audience regularly travelled between Paris, Berlin, London and New York, and even timed their visits to Paris so that they could attend the Russian season.19 Diaghilev was proud of having “весъ ‘Faubourg’”20 in the auditorium (even if he did not differentiate which Faubourg this was). Like journalists and reporters, the fashionable, wealthy spectators spread the reputation of the group to potential future audiences, and associated the Ballet with the trendy cosmopolitan life of a metropolis, with novelty and fashionable things to do – in good and in evil. Like a fashion, the Ballet was both an elitist phenomenon and soon gone; like a fashion, it could also be condemned as a passing fad without per- manent artistic value.21 With nationalism raising new anxieties about cultural others, cosmopolitanism had an increasingly ambiguous tang, An Audience for Ballet 39 evident in articles like Maurice Lefevre’s “Paris aux parisiens” (“Paris for Parisians”) in Le Monde artiste (11 ).22 Ballet had, for the French, a specifically nationalist implication: ballet evoked both the Grand Siècle (ballet du cour) and early nineteenth- century Romanticism. The Russians were seen to acknowledge this his- tory in works like Pavillon d’Armide and in 1909 and in 1910, all of which could be read as emulations of the greatness of French ballet: the first was set in the seventeenth-century with costumes that could have been worn at the Opéra of that time; the second cele- brated Romantic ballet during its heyday in the Paris of Taglioni, Elssler and Grisi; and the third was a shortened version of the French master- piece of 1841. In Comœdia (20 May 1909), Armide was even reviewed as “franco-russe” (“French-Russian”), perhaps in reference to the Entente of 1907. Yet the fact that the Russians seemed better at this evocation of French greatness than the French also vexed some critics (see, for example, Gauthier-Villars in Akademos 15 July 1909.) From the first, the Russian Ballet was given the respectability, promi- nence and desirability of ‘high culture’ through exclusivity, rarity and elitism: taking place only a few times in the biggest cities, it was an ephemeral rarity and advance notices often advertised the scarcity of tickets (for example, Gil Blas 20 May 1909). Even for residents of the metropolis, attendance required that one had the leisure for an evening at the theatre, often in the middle of the week, and the money to pay for tickets priced almost as high as those for opera performances.23 In the press, an evening at the Russian Ballet was, from the first, con- strued as a sign of social prestige through the considerable emphasis on who was in the audience. The Russian Seasons of opera and ballet in 1909 and of ballet in 1910, as well as the Coronation season perfor- mances in London 1911, were official visits of the Imperial Theatres of St. Petersburg and Moscow, and their official patrons included close relatives of the Tsar (such as the Grand Duke24 Paul Aleksandrovich). As Le Figaro (20 May 1909) noted, the presence of the French minister of foreign affairs and the Russian ambassador at the opening of the season pointed to the political significance of the occasion. Reports of the first performances of new works often included lists of who were there that were longer than the actual review.25 The Maecenae of the season were also lauded in the lavish souvenir programmes published as supple- ments to Comœdia Illustré from 1910 onwards.26 Yet browsing through the illustrious names and titles in such lists one cannot help but notice that beyond the occasional Royal title, the audiences were of a class that needed to ascertain and show they had 40 Dancing Genius class: bankers, diplomats, industrialists, society artists and rich foreign- ers rather than the crème de la crème of Parisian society, le gratin, or the British court (Garafola 1992, 273–329). Society had its own pecking order, and ‘upstarts’ such as the Jewish impresario Astruc, or scandal- ous divorcées such as the salon hostess Misia Edwards (née Godebska, formerly Natanson, later Sert) were not welcome at all Parisian houses. In London, too, many members of the audience would have person- ally invested in the project of raising the status of ballet to that of an exclusive high art form – after all, philanthrophy and artistic patron- age had been a means to improve one’s social standing at least since the Renaissance (ibidem.; Hobsbawm 1987, 170–9, 184–7; also Gold & Fitzdale 1980 on Misia). After Diaghilev founded his private ballet company, the Ballets Russes, this need to raise the status of who were there through the status of what they saw became acute. Previously, Imperial patronage (and the presence of members of Russian high society) had sufficed as a kind of guarantee of social prestige. But starting from 1911, the impresarios of the new, private company actively undermined the reputation of the Imperial Theatres and represented themselves as artistic revolutionaries even as they still used the dancers’ training in the Ballet Schools of the Imperial Theatres to prop up the reputation of the troupe (sometimes regardless of whether the said dancers had ever set foot in these institu- tions). As the strategies they used pertain to questions of novelty and tradition, I shall be returning to them in Part III. What is noteworthy, however, is that these strategies also made it easier to represent the novel aesthetic of Nijinsky’s choreographic works (1912–1913) as an absolute break with the past. The desire to associate the Ballets Russes with the leisure classes and high society explains the curious denigration of professionalism and apparent carelessness about money that is apparent in many of the reminiscences by the inner circle of the pre-war Ballet.27 Professionalism is usually seen as a major requirement for the canonisation of artists (Citron 1995, 80–4), but in the circle around Diaghilev’s Mir iskusstva journal, dilettantism was favoured because it associated the artists with aristocratic privilege, leisure deriving from sufficient (inherited) income to dabble in the arts without having to make a living in it (see, for example, Filosofov quoted in Kamensky 1991, 131). Like notions of the nobility of genius, imitation of aristocratic privilege had been a strong strain in late-nineteenth-century Symbolism, where the lack of interest in worldly goods indicated dedication to greater things – the art works – created regardless of earthly limitations and thus free of any commercial An Audience for Ballet 41 pursuit that would have tarnished the search for the transcendental. However, aristocratic privilege had specific lustre for Russians, since Russian society was very hierarchical and aristocracy more prestigious than in republican France or parliamentary England.28 Diaghilev may not even have been able to imagine other ways for financing his export campaign of Russian art than donations from rich Maecenae, but his financial dependence on art patrons had certain inevitable repercus- sions: as Garafola (1992, especially 213–14) has shown, the more Diaghilev had to rely on the box office for income, the more acute became his financial crisis. As noted, the prejudice that ballet was merely entertaining did not disappear overnight. Characteristically, those commentators who felt the most acute need to disassociate the Ballets Russes from contempo- rary French ballet and from variety theatre dancing tended to be the most vociferous in pointing attention to the ‘high art’ qualities of the spectacles. In their rhetoric, the truly artistic dancing of the Russian Ballet was set apart from other, less savoury forms through emphasis on the Russians’ training system, their artistry, the ballet tradition, the connoisseurship of the audience, and even the quality of the venues in which the troupe performed. In actuality, dancers crossed from what were understood as ‘high art’ venues to ‘low’ ones simply in order to make a living: having a ballet prodigy from the Imperial Theatres of St. Petersburg appear in a London music hall was nothing strange in 1910, not even when the same dancer would appear as the star of the Russian company in the Paris Opéra a mere few weeks later.29 As will be discussed below, the celebrity status of the leading dancers of the Ballets Russes as well as the popularity of the company became somewhat problematic over the years, since this popularity undermined the argu- ment that only connoisseurs, people with rare taste, could understand exceptional greatness and genius. The reliance on patrons of art also influenced aesthetic decisions and, by this, I specifically refer to the frequently heard claim that Diaghilev promoted young modernist artists and that the Ballets Russes was somehow aesthetically and/or politically ‘avant-garde’. Frankly, this is untrue (see Nochlin 1989a, 2, 12–17 on ‘avant-garde’). Prior to the First World War, the Ballets Russes predominantly attracted artists who had personal or aesthetic ties with the fin-de-siècle (Symons, Sickert), had an established reputation amongst the patrons in the boxes (painters like Blanche or Sargent or composers like Debussy and Ravel, who belonged to Misia Sert’s musical coterie), associated themselves in general with duchesses (like Proust), or arrived at the insistence of their rich patrons 42 Dancing Genius

( was invited by his Russian patron, Sergei Shchukin).30 Moreover, attendance by no means guaranteed that the Ballet would have had any influence upon the work of these artists or vice versa: amidst the tomes of correspondence and memoirs of the group, there is barely a mention of the Ballets Russes (Acocella 1984, 396–400; Garafola 1992, 314–29, especially 329.) Canonised modernists of the pre-war years are so notably absent from the audiences of the Russian Ballet because most of them would have felt less than welcome – or at all interested in the Ballet. As Acocella (1984, 304–8, 352–9, 387–452) has noted, few of these artists had the means to attend an elitist event like the Ballets Russes and many were also foreigners, without the necessary ties to the local elite. Many young artists, especially those in London, were in the process of disavowing the legacy of Symbolism and the eclectic opulence of the Victorian era – both aesthetic qualities essential to the Ballets Russes. Moreover, Diaghilev only employed people with established reputa- tions in society (Stravinsky being the only notable exception); and particularly after the War, he used the more bohemian salons, like those of Misia Sert and Lady Ottoline Morrell, to find future collaborators.31 Reliance upon the established moneyed leisure class as the primary patrons of the enterprise did not encourage Diaghilev to employ art- ists whose works would shock their political or aesthetic values and stop the steady flow of gold from their purses to his constantly empty coffers. Indeed, both the reactions of this audience to Nijinsky’s uncon- ventional choreographies and Diaghilev’s doubts about these works (and his willingness to revert back to the good old Fokine for the 1914 season) attest to this (see Järvinen 2013a, 23–5). Politically, too, the rep- ertory reflected the relatively conservative expectations (or prejudices) of the people who financed the enterprise. This troupe did not look forward as much as backward in time: the primary component of the aesthetic of the Ballets Russes, and one particularly well suited to later appraisals of the pre-war Ballet, was nostalgia.

Nostalgia

A sentimental longing for things past pervades all reminiscences of the pre-war Ballets Russes and even much of the research on the phenom- enon. After the war, when the size of the company diminished, the troupe performed mostly in variety theatres, and the technical stand- ards of the productions fell, nostalgia for the pre-war period became a conservative justification for audiences to forgive these shortcomings An Audience for Ballet 43 through appeals to past greatness. The significant social changes brought about by the war had, after all, created the notion of la belle époque, a time when all had been well and in the hegemonic narrative, the Ballets Russes quickly came to epitomise this lost era (for example, Vaudoyer 1929, 710; similarly, Schouvaloff 1993, 90–1, 99). This discourse might seem to validate Peggy Phelan’s (1993, especially 146) claim that melancholia is the affect of performance, produced by its ontological condition as ephemeral, as something whose life is only in the present (aptly criticised by Lepecki 2006, 123–31; see also Thomasson 2010). But as noted in the Introduction, assuming ephem- erality the ontological condition of performance ignores both that this is the ontological condition of all experience and that, in art, only recounting, recollection and remembering of specific events actually create masterpieces, authors and canons. Although nostalgia is, histori- cally speaking, a spatiotemporal form of melancholia (Turner 1987), the discourse of the Ballets Russes reveals how, prior to the First World War, nostalgia was not conservative in the sense of preserving the status quo. Rather, mourning for the lost aesthetic of the fin-de-siècle was a revival, a revitalisation, a cure for the ills of contemporary life (Fritzsche 2001.) In 1909, the fin-de-siècle aesthetic that attracted the cultured French audience to the Ballet was, in itself, a return to a past that was already lost. For those members of the audience who had begun their artistic careers or their patronage of contemporary art in the late nineteenth century, the aesthetic of the Ballets Russes became associated with their own youthful tastes, with Symbolism, Aestheticism and art for the sake of art. From the first, some of these critics (such as Boisard in Le Monde illustré 29 May 1909) stressed how much of the charm of the Russians was due to there being little that was actually new in the nov- elty. Symbolism reached Russia in the 1890s, and in the Mir iskusstva, Diaghilev and his colleagues had advocated what really was, for them, the latest artistic fashion. However, by 1909, this aesthetic was definitely passé: and plays, and Cubism, ragtime and atonality had disrupted what was expected of ‘the new’ in all the arts. In contrast, the Ballets Russes spectacles reproduced an array of popu- lar fin-de-siècle themes from the adoration of the eighteenth century (Le Pavillon d’Armide, 1909) via Oriental femmes fatales and ennui alle- viated only by sex and death (Cléopâtre, 1909, Schéhérazade, 1910) to the resurrection of somewhat morbid Romantic themes of ghostly lovers (Les Sylphides, 1909, Giselle, 1910, Le Spectre de la Rose, 1911). (1910), a ballet created for the centenary of Schumann’s birth, played on German Romantic ideas and the sexual charades of Commedia dell’Arte, 44 Dancing Genius and Petrouchka (1911) also resorted to the figures of (the title character), Harlequin (the Moor) and Columbine (the Ballerina) as well as the idea of puppets common to the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann – the German Romantic most adored by Russian Symbolists. The works set in Classical Antiquity (Narcisse of 1911 and Daphnis et Chloë of 1912) drew specifically from stories popular in late nineteenth-century art from Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema to Gustave Moreau. Importantly, before Jeux (1913), nothing in the repertory addressed contemporary life in any way. The settings were always retrospective: Pavillon d’Armide was set in the seventeenth century, Les Sylphides, Carnaval and Le Spectre de la Rose evoked the early nineteenth century. Even the exotic ballets were set in the past – Cléopâtre dealt with Egypt under Roman rule, Schéhérazade with eighth-century Persia, and (1912) with the India of myth. This temporal separation from the present guaranteed that the world outside the stage never intervened with the spectacle, particularly not when something potentially immoral was taking place onstage. “La rampe redevient la frontière de feu qui sépare deux royaumes. Et il nous semble vraiment que là, sur la scène, c’est un autre air qui frémit,”32 as Pierre Bonnard wrote in Le Figaro 18 June 1910. This distance from contemporary reality buttressed the safety of the theatrical experience, the Ballet as an escape from reality – the salacious and the suggestive in fiction never intruded into the real world. By this, I want to point to an essential difference between these nos- talgic works and the kind of Proustian with which the pre- war ballets are often associated (as in Goldman 1977/1978, 9, 49–50): A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) is modernist because of its literary merits and similarity to how other contemporary authors used language, not because of the sentiments of the pre-war Parisian society it illustrates. The Ballets Russes may be emblematic of the nostalgia depicted in Proust’s project but it would be a categorical error to claim the company somehow shared its modernist aspirations. In 1909, the nostalgic return in the Ballets Russes was also specifically a return to a time that considered itself as lost. Fin-de-siècle art was seeped through with ennui or Weltschmertz – a longing that stemmed from the belief that all that was great was beyond the reach of this time and place either in the distant past, in faraway lands, or in narcotic haze. In Russia, the closest approximation of this fin-de-siècle feeling was ‘тоска’ (weariness). What remained in the present was a mere shade of past glories; moder- nity had meant a decline in the intensity of life, a drabness and dullness where nothing was beautiful and nothing shocked the jaded individual (Steinberg 2008, especially 819–20; also Kean 1983, especially 107–8, An Audience for Ballet 45

147–51). Emulating a French art form (ballet) in a slightly old-fashioned style (Symbolism), the Ballets Russes made it easy for Western authors to wax nostalgic about the performances. For example, Camille Mauclair (born in 1872) made the connection between the Ballets Russes and his own youth through presenting the Russians as the heirs of the fin-de-siècle reforms dreamed of by himself, Lugné-Poë and Mallarmé (Le Courrier Musical 1 June 1912). By taking possession of the ideas now reworked in the Ballets Russes, the critic also privileged himself and his friends as the real aesthetic innovators. Similarly, when Jean-Louis Vaudoyer (in Revue de Paris 15 July 1910) imagined how the Russians would appear to famous figures from the national past, such as Théophile Gautier, he was creating a connection to French ballet and the glory days of a nation that had been humiliated in recent military conflicts. At the same time, these artists were defending their aesthetic ideals against a new generation. Paris, the city of the Revolution (in 1789, 1830 and 1848), attracted young radicals from all over Europe and became the centre of international modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century. Public opinion both in France and in England turned against native avant-garde art, which was considered politically dangerous and morally dubious: modernism indicated the corruption of ‘our’ youth by the decadent or primitive ‘others’. In the years lead- ing up to the First World War, fears about such foreign contamination increased, and diatribes against foreign artists became progressively more racist (Silver 1989, especially 8–27, 167–85). However, prior to Nijinsky’s “Cubism” of 1912–13, the Ballets Russes had rarely merited such attacks.33 The nostalgia in the reception of the early Ballets Russes seasons aligned with the conservative view, was critical of everything that was amiss in contemporary reality, so it is hardly surprising that precisely those individuals who adored the early, exotic and opulent ballets of the ballet master Mikhail Fokine grew increasingly nostalgic or even gave up on the Ballet after it turned to more contemporary topics and hard-edged modernism.34 In the aesthetics of contemporary dance, everyday modern life was commonplace, hence ugly, and hence, it had no place in art.35 For example, Arthur Applin ([1911], 18–19) described the charm of the Russians’ dancing as a reversion back in time, a return to something more vital and fundamental than contemporary urban existence:

The spirits of dead ancestors awoke and called us back to the days when men loved and fought and danced and sang and therefore 46 Dancing Genius

really lived. Perhaps for the first time we felt a harmony in life. We realised the meaning of things that had hitherto escaped our notice, the triviality of other things we thought mattered, and which, while these people danced, were being done with sweat and agony in the streets outside. [ . . . ] Now here it was, all expressed in dances men and women danced thousands of years ago: music of face and body, of muscle and brain, which stirred and sang in our hearts like wind in the trees.

Beyond explicitly linking the past with the experience of harmony that is absent from contemporary everyday life, Applin was actually reiterating a claim common in early-twentieth-century dance litera- ture (such as St.-Johnston 1906), where the status of dance as an art was justified through claims that could be read as affectively nostalgic (Järvinen 2012). There is no sweating in such dance. Amidst fears of nervous shocks and disease caused by life in the metropolis (West 1993, especially 50–1, 61–4; Pick 1996, especially 190–1, 197, 201), the flowing movements of the proper kind of dance – on stage or off – were imbued with moral principles, with ideas of what was healthy for the body, and, through the body, the spirit, the indi- vidual, the class and the nation.36 Conversely, any breach of the accept- able aesthetics of grace, whether in social dance fashions or on stage, indicated a lack of discipline, a victory for the wild, unruly, uncivilised, primordial physical body. As an art of the body, dance had the potential to tap into these resources, for better (disciplined art) or worse (thrill- seeking entertainment). As was to be expected, what was classical grace or stifling artifice, healthy savagery or dangerous regression to Barbary lay in the eye of the (expert) beholder, who judged the dancing body according to a rather limited set of aesthetic principles and appropri- ate responses: grace, nature, flow and racial vitality (ibidem). As André Lepecki (2006, 1–18) has discussed, the demand that dance be a con- tinuous flow of movement has since become an ontological premise for the art form and its modernity. Much of the rhetoric used to appraise art dance in early-twentieth- century literature denounced modernisation and turned its gaze back to the past that was lost, and deemed more ‘natural’ than urban existence. For example, for J. E. Crawford Flitch (1912, 103–4),

the modern world has lost the old graceful motions natural to man in a less artificial state. [ . . . ] The dependence upon easy means of locomotion, the resort to labour-saving appliances, the endless dull An Audience for Ballet 47

circulation through the rigid streets, the long periods of inaction inter- rupted by sudden spells of haste, have quenched the old buoyant and even rhythms. Human motion nowadays tends to be not flowing but angular, jerky, abrupt, disjointed, full of gestures not flowing imper- ceptibly one into another, but broken off midway. (Emphasis mine)

So, contemporary urban life was unnatural, ugly, unhealthy and dan- gerous. The city, characterised by easy living, formed bad habits inter- spersed with spurts of activity, which resulted in nervous tensions and disease. By contrast, dance embodied the allegedly natural rhythms of a pastoral past, a slower style of life following the turning of and physical activity associated with this healthy life. The contempo- rary body, burdened by modernity, could be relieved and cured through a new body culture, exemplified by free-form dance that evoked the allegedly eternal values of beauty and flow.37 Since the body of the indi- vidual indicated the body of the society and its diseases were the diseases of the nation (for example, Gallagher 1987, 83–91; Goering 2003, 28–34) dance could have political purpose. Yet this nostalgia was not as much conservative as dynamic: As criti- cism of modernisation and notions of progress, the status quo of urban modernity, this nostalgia was dynamic as well as conservative. In its new body culture, the ideal body would not work in a factory but dance on an Arcadian field with ‘graceful’ and ‘healthy’ movements, a flow- ing motion without angularity, strain, or fault of any kind, a joy and delight to the observer and participant alike (see, for example, Duncan 1914). The enemy of this healthy body was not, as is usually presented, ballet, but rather the racially unsanitary popular ragtime dances with syncopated rhythms and grotesque bodies. 38 The Graphic (22 February 1913) illustrated this in a cartoon titled A Distressing Case of “Reversion to Type” Illustrating our “Throw-Back” to Barbarism in the Dance, where dancing proceeded from the “Prehistoric ‘Hitchy-Koo’”, through Ancient Egypt and seventeenth-century court dances to the rag-time dances, or “Back to Where We Were in the Stone Age” (similarly, La Vie Parisienne in Blake 1999, 54). Art dance, by contrast, yearned for “a time when action was probably most pure, removed equally far from the rudeness of the savage and the inexpressiveness of the modern”, as Flitch (1912, 105) summarised. This was an art that was eternal and true and impor- tant precisely because it was not of the present. For this reason, it is crucial to understand that when reviews of the Ballets Russes discuss the Russians’ dancing as ‘realism’, they did not imply the realism or naturalism of contemporary theatre, literature or 48 Dancing Genius painting, and they certainly did not mean verisimilitude. At the time, even in contemporary drama, verisimilitude was still contested, under- stood as unpleasant and inartistic.39 For dance to be art, the imperfect and offensive physical bodies had to be perfected through aesthetic discipline. In the words of Louis Laloy (La Grande revue 25 ), the purpose of dance was to create “combinaisons inédites, plus belles et plus vraies que celles du quotidien usage”, (“novel combinations, more beautiful and true than those of everyday use”), that is: that which was better than the real. Neither awkward and ugly nor ordinary everyday movement (as in Jeux, which Laloy here attacked) were acceptable for dance that claimed to be art (see also, for example, Koritz 1994, 70; Carter 2011). But with the Russians, ‘realism’ also implied the present-day reality of Russia as imagined by Western spectators (for example, Williams 1999, especially 61). Ever since the translations of Dostoyevsky in the 1880s, Western understanding of Russians had been greatly influenced by the idea of the ‘Russian soul’ (душа), a concept that Western intellectuals used to criticise their own society, especially the ills of capitalism. In their understanding, however, the Russian soul was a retrospective idea, the preservation of and ability to tap into a distant past, not (as it was for Russians) something to be realised in time, a potential for a glorious future (Williams 1999, 11–8.) The temporal orientation is a crucial indi- cator of how Western audiences were predisposed to see the Russians as embodying something timeless and Arcadian that was threatened by modern foreign (that is, Western) influences.40 Thus, there was no contradiction in reading Russia and Russians as both vital and new and as inherently nostalgic. Petrouchka, set in St. Petersburg in the mid-1860s, was believed to illustrate a Russia not that different from the present – as The Graphic (22 February 1913) claimed, it depicted what could be seen in a Nizhni Novgorod fair today, but “it is all sufficiently fantastic, sufficiently remote from us to make the action credible” (similarly, Calvocoressi in The Musical Times 1 August 1911). In this way, escapism becomes the keynote of ballet ‘realism’ and ‘Russian realism’ whatever the author imagines Russia to be. A short semiotic analysis of the ballets Fokine choreographed would show that there were few motives for the actions of the characters other than love, lust, desire and jealousy. The stories, often written by the miriskusstniki, were of princes and princesses in exotic lands, their slaves and lovers, of puppets and magical beasts – nothing trespassing the behaviour set for different classes in the rules of classical drama, nothing as psychologically disturbing or politically flammable as Ibsen’s plays or the paintings of Russian Social Realists. As Lydia Sokolova An Audience for Ballet 49

(1998, 149) reminisced, “you can sit back and watch [ . . . Fokine’s ballets . . . ] without having to make any effort whatsoever”. Escapism, fantasy and the lack of political or social message attracted the Aesthetes and Decadents to the Ballets Russes. As aesthetic styles, these forms of Symbolism preferred the artificial, and ballet was a theatrical art that relied on the artifice of representational conven- tions, one that suggested rather than explicated, and where (as in much of fin-de-siècle art) fairy-tales, legends, myths, exotic places and distant times were more the rule than the exception. In 1913, Francis de Miomandre (pseudonym of François Durand, 1880–1959) ended his introduction to George Barbier’s drawings of Nijinsky with a tirade in the best traditions of the fin de siècle:

Elsewhere, all is old and out-of-date, elsewhere grimacing trivialities betray the painful secrets of their origin. [ . . . ] We have our despair, our sadness, out [sic] violated love and this thing, most dread of all, – the passing of the days between our hands, helpless to cherish aught they give. But in the spring, the Russian Ballets and Nijinsky return. And all is forgotten. No, not forgotten, but suspended! Ah! What poet could tell of the boon we accept from this foreign fairy with the oriental face, and weightless body? The spell of his subtle talent and his won- drous youth gives back to us, in desire without a pang, some magical illusion of our departed youth. It is as if this divine genius for defy- ing the earth’s attraction and for treading the unseen paths of the air belonged to us too a little. An enchantment holds suspended the course of our days. Nijinsky dances. (de Miomandre 1913, 7–8)

Although he discusses dancing as the self-expression of the dancer, de Miomandre preaches the superiority of the world of theatre, its artifice and illusion, over the drab reality of everyday existence. For him, in that elusive moment of theatrical performance that returns every spring, even time is suspended and youth eternal. In later reminiscences, the youth of the dancers became associated with the youth of the writers themselves: “Nous étions presqu’aussi jeune que la plupart de ces artistes”, (“We were almost as young as most of these artists”) Jean-Louis Vaudoyer (1883–1963) recollected (Vaudoyer 1929, 709; similarly, de Voisins 1930, 19). But even during the first Ballets Russes seasons, the dancers seemed to evoke the specta- tors’ nostalgia for their own lost youth. In 1911, under the pseudonym 50 Dancing Genius

‘Yves Scantrel’, André Suarès not only associated the Ballets Russes with youth, life and spring, but spoke of all these as already lost:

Le ballet, forme d’art exquise comme le désir, plus éphémère que le plai- sir, d’autant plus délicieuse qu’elle est plus vaine et plus légère. [ . . . ] C’est le jardin des corps, en fleurs de leur jeunesse. Tout est fumée, tout est le mirage d’un instant. Art du plaisir, songe du printemps, rose qui passe: et cueillie, elle est déjà passée.41

This sense of loss was essentially linked with the posited ephemerality of the art form that made dancing so well suited to fin-de-siècle aesthet- ics, where the transcendental and the magical were always just beyond the reach of the writer and therefore always-already tinged with the sense of loss. The Ballets Russes ideally suited reminiscences, since their performances could only be attended live, by being at a certain place at a certain time, and these times were few and far between. The com- pany was quickly associated with rejuvenation – the returning spring, the youth of the dancers, and Russia as a young nation – especially in France, where it returned at the end of the theatrical season in May. For de Miomandre and Suarès, Nijinsky embodied this magic of dancers that was only temporary and soon gone, like youth or spring. Similarly, The Daily Mail (20 November 1911) wrote of how Nijinsky was a dream and a vision and presaged that “a month or two after his departure from London, M. Nijinsky will simply be a myth”. Considering the importance of artistic maturity to discourses of art, this nostalgic longing for youth is quite exceptional and sometimes became quite morbid. Speaking of Nijinsky in La Nouvelle revue française (1 August 1912), André Suarès lamented:

L’immortelle jeunesse des dieux se reconnaît dans cette chair héroïque. Je ne veux plus le voir: car il mourra demain; il a déjà cessé d’avoir vingt ans; il commence de mourir. [ . . . ] Le jour où Nijinski aura perdu de sa beauté ou de sa jeunesse, je n’aurai plus un regard pour lui. Plus touchant par là, et plus vivant, si beau, d’être si éphémère.42

The sense of loss that pervades this quotation is striking: it is as if the author hopes this prodigy will indeed die so that he will never grow old. In somewhat less intense tones, Geoffrey Whitworth (1913, 103–4) expressed the same affect at the conclusion of his book on Nijinsky:

In the meantime, we may be well content. The memory of a hundred wonderful nights is enough. And if Nijinsky never danced again we An Audience for Ballet 51

should know that his fame would be safe – the fame of one who, more perhaps than any man living, has made beauty for his generation. (emphasis added)

The authors of these quotations prefer a beautiful memory that is pos- sible only through the loss of its object, which can be interpreted as reflecting the apocalyptic feelings of fin-de-siècle art, the art of a dying century (West 1993, especially 1). Fin-de-siècle art heralded a future that would turn out to be but a glorious end, the swan song of an era or a culture facing oblivion. Even when the artists involved in the Diaghilev seasons believed they were creating something new, they tended to emphasise their achievements as but a pale shadow of the greatness of past artists (see Bakst 1990, 177–80). The impression one gets is that these artists desired to make a mark in history if only so that in some distant future their art could evoke the same nostalgia as they felt for earlier masters. For example, Émile Vuillermoz (in S.I.M. Revue musicale, June 1913) discussed the Ballet with future historians in mind in a man- ner that reflects a sense of being of the past, being part of something that will be looked back upon with nostalgic longing. In the end, it is almost ironic that the belle époque of the Ballet Russes also became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the wake of the First World War. Although it is clear that nostalgia functioned to disassociate the Ballets Russes from a certain kind of (urban) modernity, this does not mean that either Diaghilev, his associates or his audience saw it as conservatism. Nostalgia, as Peter Fritzsche (2001) has noted, implies dissatisfaction with the status quo, and in the reminiscences of the central members of the pre-war Ballets Russes, it clearly functions as a reaction to notions of progress and modernisation, epitomised by the urban metropolis that we usually associate with the modern. This is hardly surprising, consid- ering that the audience of the Ballets Russes saw itself as associated with a form of dissidence that, too, stemmed from the 1890s.

Marginality

In England and in France, the trials of Oscar Wilde (1895) caused a moral panic that led many Aesthetes and Decadents to quietly remove them- selves from the public sphere (for example, Acocella 1984, 55–6, 439). By contrast, Russians quickly raised Wilde to something of a cult sta- tus as a martyr for art, representing the trials as condemnation of his aesthetic views (Bershtein 2000; Healey 2001, 237–8). In search of a Beardsley drawing, Diaghilev sought out Wilde in Paris in 1898; a dec- ade later, the Ballets Russes seemed to avenge an entire generation. The 52 Dancing Genius list of young disciples and older acquaintances of Wilde in the Diaghilev cohort ranges from André Gide and Count Robert de Montesquiou to Charles Ricketts and Gwlady’s Robinson, Marchioness of Ripon, to whom Wilde dedicated his play A Woman of No Importance (1893).43 Although this set formed only one portion of the audience, its promi- nence does explain something of the success of the Ballets Russes aes- thetic, and in particular, the stardom of Nijinsky. Another crucial element to this success was the alliance between the theatre and the salon. As Lenard Berlanstein has argued, French theatre was constructed on a kind of heteronormative pseudo-aristocratic ideal that played on the availability of the women on stage. Consequently, only men could publicly comment on theatre (Berlanstein 2001, espe- cially 7). Yet, the theatre box, like the salon, was an extension of the home, a semi-public space, a place in which to form alliances and rein- force social hierarchies. Although women had relatively little official power in contemporary society, the salons were crucial in defining who was society and who was not – and the salons were run by women of the leisure classes.44 If the Imperial support of the early seasons speaks of Diaghilev’s official ties, the prominence of salon hostesses in the audience of the Russian Ballet indicates his impressive unofficial connec- tions in society, which were often more important: it was anything but self-evident that a foreign troupe, arriving at the very end of the season, would fit into the social calendar of society, let alone repeatedly so. In 1910, three extra performances were added to the end of the season, which meant the performances ran into July, and the boulevard press wondered how unprecedented it was to have people crowd into theatres so late in the season (Le Figaro 8 July 1910). Publicity alone could not lure the society to the Ballet, and once there, the company still had to live up to the expectations of this elite, year in and year out. Because women left far fewer records of their experiences, we can only assume that the salon hostesses and other women in the audience found more in the Ballet than aesthetic pleasure – as will be discussed in Part II, some records do speak of quite breathless adulation of Nijinsky’s physical display, even a fragmentation of this body into specific parts in a manner reminiscent of sexualised descriptions of nineteenth-cen- tury ballerinas. Certainly, women also consumed the erotically tinted images of Nijinsky by artists such as George Barbier or Paul Iribe – or, indeed, Léon Bakst (pseudonym of Lev Rozenberg, 1866–1924) – and even produced erotic images of him themselves. For example, a draw- ing of Nijinsky in Narcisse (1911) by Valentine Gross depicts Nijinsky- in a transparent tunic, and although his hands protectively An Audience for Ballet 53 cover his nipples and the crouching pose hides his genitalia, a glimpse of pubic hair remains visible.45 This image is an erotic fantasy in the best traditions of Romantic ballet, where footlights revealed the contours of the ballerina’s body under her gauzy dress. That such erotic imagery created by women has been silenced in dance literature shows just how illicit women’s sexual desire has been for the past century.46 In part, the salon hostesses have not risen to prominence in literature on the Ballets Russes because another group has received overwhelm- ing attention: the figure of the male dancer also fascinated those men in the audience who preferred male partners, figures like Count de Montesquiou (allegedly the model for Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Des Esseintes and Proust’s Baron Charlus), Reynaldo Hahn, Lytton Strachey and Jean Cocteau. Seen as a ‘vindicator’ of Wilde, Diaghilev apparently became overnight the leader of the upper-class homosexual set in Paris, which, according to his prima ballerina (quoted in Buckle 1993, 146), “rather went to his head”. French law, the Code Napoleon,47 safeguarded sexual privacy, but because sexuality was crucial to the health of the class, race and nation, it was not entirely a private matter. A homosexual lifestyle was not exactly tolerated – many self-identified ‘inverts’48 married to avoid unnecessary attention – and public sexual acts of all persuasions were criminal offences. On the other hand, the threat of libel suits silenced public discussion on non- normative behaviour, and Diaghilev’s intimacy with Nijinsky was never explicitly revealed in the contemporary press – where Nijinsky danced with the company’s French impresario, Gabriel Astruc (Sem 1913, [45].) In France, where the recent cases of Oscar Wilde (1895) and Prince Eulenburg (1907) had overshadowed (upper and middle-class) male homosexual behaviour, discreet same-sex relationships became fashion- able around the time of the first Saisons Russes, and the dark, semi-pub- lic space of the theatre box offered a marvellous opportunity for flirting with danger in the relative safety of one’s peers. During the spectacles, the audience could be seduced by the atmosphere of sexual licence onstage, even partake in non-normative behaviour of their own, as long as this remained within one’s social class and within the semi-private sphere of the theatre box – for example, Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac, met her long-term partner Olga Caracciolo, Baroness de Meyer, at the Ballet (de Cossart 1978, 94–6). The Ballets Russes created a kind of privacy-in-public not unlike that of the Foyer de la Danse that had attracted the predominantly male audiences of ballet since its establishment in the 1830s. The Foyer had functioned as a promise for (physical) intimacy with the dancers that added to the allure of ballet 54 Dancing Genius even for those left outside. The Ballets Russes backstage was similarly available only to some members of the adoring public, but as with the Foyer, public reports of the existence of opportunities for intimacy (real or imagined) with the dancers added to the desirability of such encoun- ters and to the glamour of the performers on stage.49 However, imagining illicit or immoral behaviour and recording it were acts of a different order of magnitude. Much of the discussion on the unorthodox qualities of sexual attraction in the narratives of the Ballets Russes works or the heterodoxy of Nijinsky’s roles was lim- ited to intimate, domestic circles and never put in print – not even in correspondence or reminiscences (Garafola 1992, 323–4; Gadd 1976, especially 5–6). This prudence has encouraged much useless speculation and wild rumours about how depraved some people (never the narrator) actually were. Some have exaggerated the extent to which homosexual behaviour was accepted both within the company and amongst its audiences – Stravinsky’s (1963, 69n1) “homosexual Swiss guard” comes to mind. Very often, such speculation actually downplays one of the strengths of the spectacles themselves: the open-ended possibilities of interpreting various (queer) sexualities represented on stage. The Ballets Russes narratives flaunted all kinds of non-normativity, including sadomasochistic fantasies celebrated in fin-de-siècle Decadent aesthetic, but in research, these fascinating liminalities have been buried under an avalanche of stereotypical notions about gender roles. For me, this is similar to the reduction of the necessary multivarence of a star, the capacity of the same performer to embody very different parts that members of the audience can then construe into whatever they desire (discussed in Part II). Moreover, although a certain association with marginal (sexual) experience was central to the success of the Ballets Russes, the conse- quences of being associated with “perversion” were not altogether posi- tive. Reputed excess on stage and off – the former often equated with the latter – tended to alienate society’s more conservative members and those who cared more for morals than for being fashionable. In other words, being a fan of the Ballet could also contribute to social marginal- ity.50 As foreigners, the Russians were already outsiders in France, and although the association of the company with the Russian Imperial family somewhat remedied matters, their principal support came from the margins of le gratin. Thanks to Diaghilev’s French associate, Gabriel Astruc (1930, 45, 47), many of the financiers of the Ballets Russes were rich Jews: Henri de Rothschild, Isaac de Camondo, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, Otto Kahn, Arthur Raffalovich and Charles Ephrussi, amongst An Audience for Ballet 55 others. Families who subscribed to ballet boxes included the German- Jewish offspring of the Gunzburg, Oppenheim, Natanson, Gugenheim and Pourtalès families, all related to le gratin through marriages and other family alliances (Garafola 1992, especially 276–82, 304, 464– 5n7–9). In the anti-Semitic atmosphere following the Dreyfus affair (for example, Nochlin 1989a, 141–69), such support from Jews (and German Jews at that) was bound to attract malicious gossip; gossip that was often as limited to the private sphere as was discussion on the sexual indulgences and eroticism of the Ballets Russes spectacles (Huesca 2001, 166–71; Garafola 1992, 284, 476 n80; Batson 2005, 132). The pre-eminence of the Jewish Bakst amongst the designers of the Ballet was also regarded as a sign of the influence of the Jewish back- ers of the Ballet. In 1925, Paul Morand (quoted in Kirstein 1987, 275) openly claimed the fame of the Ballets Russes rested on Jewish money:

It has been said that it was a Jewish art, with its emphasis upon raw tones, its passion for gold and precious metals, its dearth of line, its nomadic origins, its Oriental sensuality, its contempt for archi- tectural construction. Bakst was, in fact, a Jew; and it was the great Israelite audiences that established the success of the Russian Ballet, that first great international success, marked by the boldness of the audience’s dress, its immodesties, extravagant coiffures, depilated bodies, cosmetics; by that mixture of all modes to the point where one could not always distinguish between the house and the stage.

This blurring of those who, in effect, were the spectacle in the thea- tre (here, see Nijinsky in La Renaissance 30 May 1914) opens another avenue to discussing the success of the pre-war Ballets Russes. In racial theories, Jews were portrayed as an effeminate and over-sexual, Oriental race, prone to excessive adaptations of the true art of others rather than any special innovation of their own.51 Bakst bore the brunt of this racism: for example, Current Opinion (November 1913) cited Martin Birnbaum’s text in an exhibition catalogue of Bakst’s paintings, where Birnbaum called Bakst an Oriental and “a Semitic barbarian”. Others spoke of Bakst as ‘Russian’ in inverted commas (E.K.R. in Harper’s Weekly 12 December 1916). ‘Race’ was such a self-evident category that for the pre-war audiences, the exotic Russianness of the Russian Ballet made its link to the Orient very concrete. Orientalism became the trade-mark of the pre-war Ballets Russes cult, which begs the question whose Orient was being staged and how. 2 Orientalism

Russians as Orientals

As Edward Said (1994a, 1994b) has shown, the Orient had acted as a setting for Western fantasies for centuries, but always a location that served to reassert the rightness of Western values. As Orientals, the Russian Ballet were excluded from the codes of decency and decorum that governed the behaviour of audience members, which allowed the Ballets Russes much leeway in both the plots of the ballets and in the manner they were performed onstage. However, as Orientals, they were subject to the audience’s Orientalism, meaning that they could find themselves quickly condemned as excessive and alien. From the Western point of view, Russia was in the East and had for a long time isolated itself – it was little known and easily incorporated into the sphere of the Orient, the non-European. It was conceived as a country the Renaissance had bypassed (as evinced, for example, by the Russians’ use of the Julian calendar). Some turn-of-the-century authors, like Havelock Ellis ([1890], 174), admired “the tenacity with which the Russian people have clung to their inborn practical instincts of commu- nism, fraternity, and sexual freedom”. To these observers, Russia consti- tuted a positive ideal or an alternative way of life not far removed from similar characteristics associated with the Orient or the exotic primitive (see, for examples, Décoret-Ahiha 2004, especially 7–10). Although both an empire and a colonialising power, Russia was seen as depend- ent on Western cultural models, money and machinery. Its political system was apparently seeped through with the kind of Oriental cruelty that was characteristic of the East – notably, the Ottoman and Chinese empires – and like these, its empire was a unified mass of land ruled by an autocrat and a small, educated elite who imitated Western manners

56 Orientalism 57 and fashions and resided in the islands of urban modernity amidst the ocean of backwardness.1 However, unlike the Ottoman and the Chinese empires, Russia was represented as a new empire that had not yet had its glory days (for example, The Illustrated London News 25 May 1912), and this is why its art still held vitality lost to ‘over-civilised’ Oriental races (for example, Dilke (1890) quoted in Kern 2000, 234.) Much like his French contemporaries differentiated between the ‘sauvage’ and the ‘primitif’ (Berliner 2002, 7), Clayton Hamilton explained for the readers of Vogue (1 April 1916):

The art of the Russian Ballet is undeniably barbaric; but, having granted this, it becomes necessary to think about the word. There are two kinds of barbarism – first, the barbarism of a people ascending to civilization, and, second, the barbarism of a people descending from civilization. The descending sort of barbarism is decadent; the ascending sort is vigorous with pristine power.

Hamilton classified the Orientals as people who had had a civilisation from which they were now degenerated, whereas barbarians and sav- ages had never attained civilisation. For him, the Russians obviously belonged to the latter group: “Of this disease of super-civilization these Russians are empathically free. [ . . . ] They are pagan, with the pure, untroubled paganism of a healthy child.” (Ibidem; similarly, for example, Alexandre 1972, 17.) The metaphor of Russians as children was neither original nor coincidental: it asserts the power relation- ship between the self-governing adult (West) and the subjugated child in need of guidance (East). It echoes Haeckel’s recapitulation theory,2 whereby individuals went through all the stages of evolution during their development – consequently, lower races were like the children of higher races. Notably, like Orientalism, the idolisation of the healthy barbarian Other as a new civilisation on the rise is a discourse of power through which the West defines itself: the danger of challengers to Western hegemony was and is central in racist rhetoric and practices.3 Having said this, early twentieth-century racism rested on the firm belief that race was a natural and neutral category, the inherent bio- logical difference that produced distinct cultures. It was the biological determinant of the nation, the principal justification for imperialism, and a major scholarly category in academic work in the arts, humani- ties, social studies, anthropology, medicine and so on. Race established and explained the pre-eminence of the empire-builders through their historical triumphs, cultural achievements and successful colonisation 58 Dancing Genius of large parts of the globe, all considered indicators of moral superiority and biological excellence.4 By the end of the nineteenth century, scien- tific racism had divided the world not only into major races according to skin colour (white, black, yellow) but into an intricate system of naturalised national and historical stereotypes that effectively resulted in there being not one but several white races. The Russians, therefore, were Slavs, and the Irish Celts, and though superficially white, both these races were below those of the Latin French or the Anglo-Saxon English. The Teutonic Germans were situated somewhere in between these extremes (unless, of course, one asked the Germans themselves). As Richard Dyer (1997, especially 18–81) has discussed, the multiplicity of ‘whiteness’ as a racial category distinguished the ‘white’ races from the ‘coloured’ by creating an illusion of complexity that further but- tressed the hegemonic position of the white vis-à-vis the non-white. Although by the end of the nineteenth century, belief in humanity’s unilinear progress from the primitive towards the modern was quite suspect, positivism still influenced how societies were conceived as biological organisms. History was structured by the rise, development, heyday and eventual decline of civilisations, and the fear of Occidental empires was that they had passed their apex. Since the size of the empire was a major factor not only in contemporary economic theories but in proving one’s cultural supremacy, empire builders competed over who had the largest colonies, most industrial production, biggest popu- lation, the vastest natural resources and so on (for example, Kern 2000, especially 164–6, 224–40). By 1900, there was little ‘virgin land’ left on the globe and major imperialist powers could only seize new land by conquering it from previous conquerors, which increased the possibility of war between empires (Hobsbawm 1987, 56–83). Moreover, since all races were believed to aspire to the highest possible level of civilisation through any means possible, nations needed to control the indirect attempts by the racial Others to usurp the dominant role, notably through miscegenation and immigration (Gould 1984, especially 115, 157–8, 231–2; Pick 1996, especially 215–16). Imperialism had contributed to the unprecedented ease of life for the turn-of-the-century leisure classes, but this was a mixed blessing: con- temporary science seemed to prove that without the need for physical and mental exertion hereditary deterioration in physical and mental abilities would soon set in, as had happened in Ancient Rome and the old Oriental civilisations (Said 1994a, especially 232–3; Ledger & Luckhurst 2000, especially 2). When challenges were no longer available at home, the imperialist hero had to overcome obstacles in the savage Orientalism 59 colonies in order to stop degeneration from seeping into the class body and the race. The ideology is illustrated in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan stories that began publication in 1912: the hero is not only a white man amongst black, superstitious and/or stupid savages, but has also saved his blood from the degenerating effects of modern, urban existence. Of course, such popularisations further naturalised the scien- tific assumptions of the degeneration theorists and social Darwinists, indoctrinating generations to come to believe in the supremacy of the white race(s).5 The Orient reflected both the desire for that which was excluded from the home and fears of what might be happening were this other to be embraced or its example followed (Said 1994a; Lewis 1996, espe- cially 16–22, 239). Much of the turn-of-the-century Orientalist fashion was due to the availability of exotic goods at reasonable prices, the fruits reaped from successful colonialisation of large parts of the world. Theatre, as Edward Ziter (2003, especially 2–3) has argued, was focal in this popular constitution of the Orient. Russian products, including the Ballets Russes, not only benefited from this fashion but were also its direct consequence: as an empire amongst empires, Russia, too, partook of the exploitation of exotic colonies, and Russians shared many of the cultural prejudices of their Western contemporaries regarding “the East”, by which they meant the Caucasian colonies of the Russian empire as well as Egypt, Persia, India, China and Japan.6 The Russian Ballet did not simply imitate an Occidental fashion for the Orient; it created its own version of an existing Russian Orientalism which, as Balme and Teibler (1997, 129) note, shared many of the clichés of the genre. However, in the West, this Russian Orientalism was not read as a parallel development to Western appropriation of the Orient – rather, it became a sign of authenticity, a mark of Russians not as Orientalists but as Orientals, not as representing the East but being it. Although Western reviews made no terminological differentiation between ‘Oriental’ and ‘Orientalist’, the Russians were clearly understood as having an authen- tic Orientality: “The stage settings were incomparable, and the Oriental or semi-Oriental dances brought out the full measure of the Orientalism which underlies true Russian life and art”, claimed Musical Courier (16 March 1916). In contrast, the work of performers like Ruth St. Denis or Maud Allan tended to get represented as Western experts on the art of the Orient, regardless of whether they had spent days or years learning particular forms.7 After all, in Orientalism, the authenticity of cultural representation was never an issue: the salon painter never had to leave his studio to paint ‘authentic’ scenes of the Orient and scientific interest 60 Dancing Genius in the culture and languages of the East prescribed to the Western scien- tist the sole authority for speaking the ‘truth’ of the East and its culture.8 Therefore, Orientalist dances embodied the essence of the Orient, the expert’s “object, far more comprehensive than an imitation or repro- duction of specific dances, of interpreting the Oriental spirit” (Kinney & Kinney s.a. 221.) At the same time, the real Orient was inaesthetic; its “true spirit” was always a Western re-interpretation (see Koritz 1994, 70). Therefore, the use of Western compositional norms or the ballet idiom was not incon- gruous with the authenticity of the Orientalist representation – on the contrary:

As the painter Bakst [ . . . ] while preserving recognisable national character in his scenes and costumes, does not scruple to subordinate historical facts to his motives, so does the romantic ballet- master disregard the natural limitations of folk-dances that he may choose to employ in his composition. If it suited the dramatic intention of M. Fokine to bring an Arabian dancer on to the point, or to introduce into her work a pure pirouette, it is fairly safe to assume that he would do so, despite the fact that Arabic dancing itself knows no such devices. [ . . . Even so, . . . ] his product would express as forcibly the qual- ity of Orientalism as would any dance to be found in Bagdad. (Kinney & Kinney s.a. 264, emphasis mine)

Although the Kinneys here discuss Bakst and Fokine as Orientalists rather than as Orientals, they had earlier lumped together Russia, Persia, the and Egypt as a sort of geographical continuum suitable for the Ballet’s repertory (op. cit., 249; also Acocella 1984, 327, 374–5n59). In other words, although the Russians revealed the ‘true spirit’ of the Orient, their capacity to authentically represent it stemmed from their own Orientality – their Orient was a representation of who they really were. Unlike the objective, scientific knowledge of the Occidental expert, their knowledge of the East was the intimate, lived knowledge of the body inaccessible to their Western contemporaries. No matter how laudable, the true Oriental Other was always-already distinct from the Occidental observer. In a typical account of the 1910 season, Abel Bonnard lamented:

Nous ne savons plus qu’est la danse. Nous ne sommes plus assez sau- vages. Nous sommes des gens trop civilisés, trop policés, trop effacés: nous avons perdu l’habitude d’exprimer notre sentiment par tout Orientalism 61

notre corps; à peine si nous le laissons se produire sur notre visage et transparaître dans nos paroles; et il ne lui reste bientôt plus que nos yeux où se réfugier. Nos gestes mêmes sont appauvris, limités, réduits et tombent de nous comme les branches d’un arbre qu’on émonde. Nous sommes tout en tête. Notre corps est pour ainsi dire abandonné; nous ne l’habitons plus,9 and so on, one paragraph after another. As the author makes very clear in the rest of the text, the divide between us (nous, les Occidentaux) and them (ils, les Russes) is both biological and temporal: the Russians are a race who have revived the past; they have a primitive vitality irrev- ocably lost to the civilised Western audiences who can only mourn for their lost bodies. Notably, like his contemporaries, Bonnard never sug- gested that the lost bodies of the Western spectators could be recovered if only they took up dancing. Rather, the Russians are constructed into an atavistic race whose engagement in danced spectacle was a rever- sion to type that was also a (nostalgic) reversion in time (similarly, for example, Touchard in La Nouvelle revue 15 July 1912; Cocteau 1918, 65). Spatially, temporally and ideologically separated from the West, Russia became a place somewhere beyond civilisation, or preceding it. Jean-Louis Vaudoyer wrote in Revue de Paris (15 July 1910):

Restés barbares dans une Europe qui est, si l’on peut dire, civilisée jusqu’à la corde, les Russes sont au moment le plus fécond, le plus beau, de leur développement intérieur. Très neufs, avides et sincères comme des enfants, ils se donnent tout entiers et se cherchent avec fièvre. Ils ne sont pas entravés comme nous par les formules, et l’incrédulité ne les a pas énervés; ils ignorent la satiété occidentale. Ils n’ont pas encore rien usé. Mais tous nos raffinements, toutes nos complications parviennent chez ces débutants; ils les accueillent avec empressement, et les rénovent aussitôt par l’ardeur toute primitive qu’ils mettent à les adopter.10

In this quotation and scores of others like it, the Russians have remained in the past whilst the rest of Europe has become over-civilised. Like Bonnard, Vaudoyer represents this cultural atavism as a positive char- acteristic: the Russians have preserved their authentic racial qualities, including a vitality that centuries of civilisation had sapped from their Western contemporaries. Russians, he argued, had only now reached “c’est ce qui s’est passé au XVe siècle en Italie” (“that which took place in sixteenth-century Italy”) – the Renaissance. 62 Dancing Genius

Even if the art of the Russians could and should not be emulated, the experience of the Russian Ballet could act as an invigorating tonic to a weary spectator. Their art revivified, because it evoked the eternal truths in a primitive form, pure of all conventions and moral scruples that hindered Western artists. Hermine Edelstein (in Musical America 9 September 1916) justified the fashion for Bakst’s barbaric colours thus:

the return of is not so much to the “barbaric,” the “primitive,” as we like to call it, but rather to the vital, the funda- mental, for we had become weak, anæmic, degenerate in our art. We needed to be stirred, shocked!

Russians were particularly well suited to this shocking because they, like other uncivilised people (and women), relied not on reason and thought but on instincts and emotions. As Arthur Symons (1923, 287) explained:

The primitive and myth-making imagination of the Russians shows a tendency to regard metaphors as real and to share these tenden- cies with the savage, that is to say with the savagery that is in them, dependent as they are on rudimentary emotions. Other races, too long civilized, have accustomed themselves to the soul, to mystery. Russia, with centuries of savagery behind it, still feels the earth about its roots, and the thirst in it of the primitive animal. It has lost none of its instincts, and it has just discovered the soul.

Once again, Russians were lumped together with animals, children, sav- ages and the non-Western. They are guardians of mystical memories of primitive ancestors (to cite Le Figaro 27 May 1909), “the virile impulses of an untamed race” (Johnson 1913, 161). Their dance was the atavistic expression of intense emotions that contemporary dance history linked with the origin of the art form prior to any civilisation.11 The excessive emotionalism of the Russians, as illustrated by Symons, explained why so many of the Ballets Russes spectacles turned on sex and violence: these were, after all, precisely the atavistic, animal-like qualities expected of the savage. Moreover, dancing was a perfect means for expressing physical emotions and instincts as it was an art of the body, unmediated by the thinking mind. Dancing was frequently asso- ciated with savages, bodies that had not been subjected to the civilising process – even ballroom dancing had been admonished for evoking Orientalism 63 such primitive instincts (St.-Johnston 1906, [7]). Yet, as Arnold Bennett explained to the readers of The English Review (January 1911):

London might be horribly scared by one-quarter of the audacity shown in Cleopatra, but it will not be scared by the whole of that audacity. An overdose of a fatal drug is itself an antidote. The fact is, that the spectacle was saved by a sort of moral nudity, and by a naive assurance of its own beauty. [ . . . ] With a vengeance it was a return to nature and a recommencement. It was brutally direct. It was beast- like; but the incomparable tiger is a beast. It was not perverse. It was too fresh, too zealous, and alive to be perverse.

Regardless of his somewhat strange views on medicine, Bennett’s argu- mentation recalls how unashamed nakedness and (non-normative) sexuality had figured prominently in representations of non-Western Others since early colonial days (Levine 2008; also Schiebinger 1993, especially 158–61), and that such discourses could always be read in various, even directly opposite ways. The Russians could not show signs of perversion because they were only revealing their nature on stage, nor could their works be degeneration since there had been no moder- nity for them from which to degenerate. As a special, semi-European case that had lagged behind European progress and modernity, Russian dancers could be seen as admirably vital and virile and naturally inclined to the kind of erotic cruelty that was the hallmark of the pre-war works from Le Pavillon d’Armide (1909) to La Légende de Joseph (1914). The lasting popularity of the Danses Polovtsiennes12 attests to how in the Russian Ballet, too, vitality, virility and (national) strength were the masculine domain that con- trasted the non-normative sexuality of the Orientalist femmes fatales and their male slaves within narratives that, in the end, reaffirmed the shaky gender roles of the age (for example, Hewitt 2005, 163; also West 1993, 86–102). Whenever a male character (almost always danced by Nijinsky) behaved in non-normative ways, they simultaneously indulged in precisely the kind of dancing associated with the male sav- age: impressive, large gestures, leaps and other virtuosic exhibitions of strength that encompassed and took charge of the space. Male erotic desire portrayed in the narratives similarly strengthened the impression of normative, heterosexual virility (as well as the excessive emotionality of the cultural Other). In comparison, although the female characters may have taken liber- ties with their desires, they tended to pay the price for their behaviour 64 Dancing Genius by being cursed in one way or another: both Armida and Thamar (in the 1912 ballet of the same name) end where they begin, forced to repeat their actions with the next victim; the Sultana of Schéhérazade kills herself before her husband does; and the audience knew in advance the fates of Cleopatra and Salome.13 Many of these fatal women – fatal to themselves as well as the men they pursued – were also Oriental women, twice removed from the male European norm. This explains something of their popularity with female performers: the Oriental femme fatale offered a female part that, although still determined by her (nega- tive, fatal) relationship to men, had some level of self-sufficiency and independence within the safe confines of cultural Otherness. Like the equally popular dying operatic heroines from La Dame aux Camélias (1851) to Carmen (1875), these fatal women gave opportunities for great displays of acting out emotion and built the reputation of many a diva (Apter 1996; McReynolds 2003, 127–8; also Koritz 1994, 73.) Of course, Orientalism also allowed for licentious costumes and movements, and sex sold tickets, then as now.

The consequences of Orientalism

Although the rhetoric of barbarism meant that Russian art was more ‘true’ and ‘sincere’ than what their Western colleagues could produce, it also precluded individuality and modernity in ways that restricted the Ballet to a certain aesthetic and particular topics. More importantly, however, it hampered the emergence of critical, analytical discourse on dance. The art of the primitives (local or foreign) was collective and unindividuated, it had no history, and it did not progress or evolve. Contemporary forms were eternal; the art had no canon and could not be placed into one. The indigenous forms themselves were perceived to be expressions of a collective spirit that needed to be translated into true art by a professional artist using Western compositional norms. Sometimes, the proof of this lack of individuality lay in the apparent incapability of these indigenous people to produce an individual artist- genius attributed with the unique product, and at other times in the primitive’s desire and failure to imitate the more ‘progressed’ forms of Western art.14 Used of the Ballets Russes, this rhetoric stressed how their works expressed authentic and eternal racial truths where no develop- ment was possible. Their relatively uniform aesthetic style, including the predominance of Fokine’s choreographies in the repertory, seemed to confirm this – which is one of the reasons why Nijinsky’s very differ- ent choreographic style proved such a shock in 1912. Orientalism 65

Three consequences of this Orientalist discourse should be pointed out as particularly significant. The first is that as long as the Russians were seen as doing what came to them naturally, what they did need not really be analysed at all, because analysis would not explain nature. Dance was not only a silent art form but an art that transcended words; it was beyond the critics’ power to write about it; it was a thing to be seen and experienced in the here-and-now (for example The Daily Telegraph 28 June 1911; Bie s.a., 2). Appraisals of the Russian dancers as racially different and ‘naturally’ inclined to dancing had appeared in French papers since the first ballet season: “Leur superiorité [ . . . ] vient d’une particularité des peuples slaves: chacun d’eux a conservé dans ses mœurs la danse comme un élément primordial”15 wrote Brussel in Le Figaro 20 May 1909 (similarly, de Chevigné in Le Courrier Musical 1 July 1909). The British commentators, too, found the Russians “more natu- rally a dancing nation than the English” (London correspondent of the Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, December 1913). Precisely through notions of dance as racially inherent, Russian prominence in ballet could also be understood as the exception to the rule whereby Russia was backward in all things: “It is something of a revelation to find that in a country like Russia, where the civilised arts and sciences are supposed to make slow headway, the art of the dancer has reached its apotheosis” (Urlin 1912, 161 citing Morning Leader). The desire to see Russian dancing as a ‘natural’ means of expression for the dancers and the dancers as embodying a lost Arcadia influenced the way in which the Ballets Russes have ever since been presented as ahistorical, as a group of aesthetic trendsetters existing wholly apart from contem- porary changes in culture, politics or ideology. This belief in the Russians’ dance as an expression of their nature reduced the importance of choreographic composition to critical reception:

The detailed movements of this tribal dance [Danses Polovtsiennes] are of no great moment. What is of interest is the robust expression which they give to the virile impulses of an untamed race, not yet sapped by civilisation of its vigour. The movements, violent in them- selves, are executed with a vehemence and energy significant in its savage spontaneity. (Johnson 1913, 161)

Here, A. E. Johnson explicitly dismisses formal description of the dance because he sees it as spontaneous self-expression on the part of the ‘naturally’ dancing Russian savages rather than as something composed 66 Dancing Genius for a specific purpose or staged effect. For some critics subscribing to this view, the Russians not simply expressed themselves through dancing; they danced because they could not help it: “Ils dansaient, parce qu’ils ne pouvaient faire autrement, qu’il fallait traduire en mouvements la violence neuve de leurs émotions.”16 Although dance aficionados argued for the return to the body as some- thing healthy, even crucial to the salvation of Western civilisation, the old association of dance with the body – with emotions and irrationality – had curious consequences for the emerging discourse. An art that directly engaged emotions and (corporeal) senses seemed to call for a discourse that did not appear too intellectual or analytical and an ontology that excluded words from this art form. What the dancers did on stage receded to the background in texts that focused on the emotional impact of the total work of art, the finished product that magically appeared at each performance. Consequently, the labour that went into the actual creation of these spectacles was very rarely addressed: in one contemporary source, the ‘natural’ capacities of the Russian dancers even precluded rehearsals necessary for Western troupes (The New York Herald 9 April 1916). Despite all the praise, the Ballets Russes was, in effect, positioned not as a model to be copied or emulated – not even in ballet. The for- mer ballet master of the Opéra, Léo Staats (1877–1952), accused the audience of praising in Nijinsky what they would never tolerate in a French dancer (Le Mondé illustré 15 July 1911). Others went out of their way to prove that the establishment of a ‘Ballets Français’ was impos- sible: “nous ne saurions guère l’imiter. Il serait ridicule, impossible, de constituer un ballet, sur la scène de l’Opéra, avec les danses populaires françaises (telles que la bourrée! . . .)”17 claimed the critic of La Revue musicale (1 July 1909). Marcel Prévost (in Le Figaro 13 June 1909) went as far as claiming a similar troupe was impossible in a democracy, equating the Ballets Russes with the (Oriental) autocracy of Russia (see Lauchlan 2001, 76–8). Similarly, some English and American critics lauding the Russians argued any local application of a total work of art simply had to take place in a field other than that of dance (Applin [1911], 12; Henry Adams Bellows in The Bellman 4 March 1913). This brings me to the second notable consequence of the Orientalist discourse: any admiration of the Other tends to turn against itself (Hall 2002, 238, 262–4). In the case of the Russian Ballet, critics quickly began to doubt whether what the Russians were doing was actually ‘healthy’ or ‘revitalising’. The heady atmosphere of sex and violence of the Orientalist works did not suit turn-of-the-century ideas of physi- cal, mental or cultural health, and since what the Russians performed Orientalism 67 was their own nature, this cast doubt on their project on the long run (Boyle Lawrence in Magazine, September 1913; Harper’s Weekly 12 December 1916). After the scandals associated with Nijinsky’s cho- reographic works, Western critics quickly found that the impertinence of the Russians really had gone too far:

C’est la culture qui fait la véritable supériorité. Si les animaux pei- gnaient et dansaient, nul doute qu’ils ne composassent des ballets com- parables à ceux des Russes. [ . . . ] le premier moment de surprise passé, nous voyons bien que nous n’avons pas de leçons à leur demander.18

It is significant that this hostility surfaced in conjunction with a politi- cal development – by 1911, a major war between European empires was inevitable – as well as an aesthetic that challenged the earlier Orientalist reading of the company. The reception of Nijinsky’s choreographies also exemplifies the third consequence of the Orientaist discourse; how it aesthetically restricted what was appropriate in dance as an art form, and in Russian Ballet in particular. To once more quote J. E. Crawford Flitch (1912, 24, see also 15–17), dancing

can contribute neither message nor criticism. It seeks not to reform us but only to please. It recalls us to the joy of life which the other arts had almost persuaded us to forget. It has but a single purpose – to quicken our pulses with beauty and to renew our life with its own untiring ecstasy.

Although his tone is entirely positive, Flitch here manages to define the purpose of dancing in terms that had been used to oppose the claim that dance could even be considered art: something that sought to please was entertainment, lacking in intellectual or profound expres- sive or emotional content. If dance could not have any other function, dance could never rise to being on a par with art forms like music that had established discourses and practices of research and criticism. Aside from noting how such arguments further encouraged critics to escape rationalising and analysing dance, it is particularly important that in this chain of thought dance was restricted to the production of a certain set of feelings, notably joy and delight. As André Suarès professed:

La danse est une révélation de la joie. [ . . . ] On ne peut concevoir la belle danse sans la gloire joyeuse des corps; et sans le don de la 68 Dancing Genius

jeunesse, on ne l’imagine pas. Des êtres laids qui dansent, sont un affreux blasphème. La beauté fait la joie.19

Because dance equated only the trinity of joy, youth and beauty, anything that failed to fit into these characteristics was not dance but, as Suarès claims in the above quote, blasphemy (similarly, Duncan 1977, 57). This was an aesthetic limitation dependent on the definition of beauty through the physical features (youth) of dancers as well as the produc- tion of the aforementioned set of invigorating affects. Hence, verisimilitude had nothing to do with dancing. Russian bar- barism had to be beautiful and graceful, because it was, in effect, an expression of an ideal nature:

[Dance] has ever been the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, of the health and happiness of a virile people. [ . . . ] As an expression of the joy of life, the glory of existence and the beauty of the human body the work of the Russian dancers is perfect, claimed Arthur Applin ([1911], 12–13) in his book on Russian ballet. What is crucial, here, is that particular aesthetic qualities, especially the ‘natural’ flowing lines of the dancers, indicated (and proved) that their dancing stemmed from natural instincts – the ideal nature was theirs to express, because they expressed their own nature. But this also led more critical reviewers to doubt whether the Russians were able to do anything else. As W.R.T[itterton]. observed in Pall Mall Gazette (24 June 1912):

the Russians are fine in concerted dances only when they are sav- age, at full tilt, and grotesque. The aesthetic formula of ‘Cléopatre,’ ‘Scheherazade,’ and ‘Thamar’ is after all the formula of a barbarian.

Besides limiting the movement qualities of the dancers and the affective responses of the audience, this discourse also severely limited the narra- tive settings of the Ballets Russes works. Life in a contemporary metrop- olis or other aspects of modernity were criticised as unsuitable topics for the Russians, since they were not ‘authentically’ Russian – whereas works set in ancient Egypt or Persia apparently were. Although contem- porary modernity only became an issue with Nijinsky’s Jeux (1913), hos- tile reactions towards his choreographic work, particularly from critics who had adored his dancing, speak worlds of what was understood as ‘dance’ as well as the functions of the review in the discourse. Orientalism 69

Although we would think it silly to discuss opera as the words uttered by the singers with no attention given to the fact that they sing, the reviews of the Ballets Russes saw it as a merit that the drama and mim- icry of the ballets were so great that “nous font constamment oublier qu’elles dansent” (“we constantly forget that they dance”) like Camille Mauclair (in Le Courrier Musical 1 June 1912) claimed. Two factors in the productions served to create this impression: the total work of art ideal and the emphasis on character dancing in the productions. Both have also blurred the distinction between the audience and the performers to the extent that the Ballets Russes has been represented as deliberately realising the expectations of the audience.

The total work of theatre

Although the Ballets Russes may have succeeded in Paris because they were exactly what the audience wanted, Orientalism could not act as a self-image: there is an obvious gap between what the Russians thought they were doing and what they were perceived to be doing, of which more will be said in Part III. What has obscured this gap is the compa- ny’s subscription to a central tenet of Symbolist theatre: the total work of art. Simply put, this means a performance that strives to be a seamless unity of the different arts that go into its making. Contemporary aes- thetics traced this ideal to Ancient Athens, where the social significance of theatre was believed to have emerged from a genuine synthesis of the arts in performance. Consequently, it was believed that rediscover- ing this lost unity would elevate the social prestige of (theatrical) arts in contemporary society (for example, Deak 1993, especially 13–16). Symbolists advocated that the total work of art would facilitate tran- scendental experiences through synaesthesia, the mixing of sensory perceptions (hearing colours, for example), and correspondences where one thing stood for another.20 In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Arts and Crafts movement spread this ideal of unity to all arts: paintings were set in individually designed frames; the binding and illustration of books became an art form; buildings were designed with architectural features and interior decoration forming a harmonious whole. This movement’s Russian version attracted Diaghilev and his miriskusstniki friends to the principles of collaboration and joint creation, first in their arts exhibi- tions and journal, and then in the Russian Seasons. In contrast to this ideal of collaboration between colleagues, the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–83) advocated the dominance 70 Dancing Genius of one creative individual – the artist-genius – over the entire produc- tion. In his opinion, only the singular vision of a true genius could har- monise individual arts into a pleasing whole, the ‘Gesammtkunstwerk’ (his spelling – see Wagner 1895, 182–94). Research literature has embraced this idea, because it allows for Diaghilev to be attributed with artistic (rather than merely commercial) genius and simplifies the com- plexities of crediting authorship of works performed by the constantly changing company called the Ballets Russes. Unfortunately, regardless of what Diaghilev or his collaborators thought of Wagner’s music, there is little evidence that the Ballets Russes ever functioned as a Wagnerian Gesammtkunstwerk – on the contrary (for example, Rosenthal 1984, especially 209). That Wagner’s principles were incompatible with Symbolist ideas of correspondences (Deak 1993, 101–10) further explains the importance of this collaborative aspect of the Russians’ productions in the French cultural discourse, where, as Garafola (1992, 286) notes, the troupe provided something of an alternative to Wagner and German influence. From the first, the Ballets Russes transformed the entire auditorium into a continuum of the spectacle in a way that emphasised the social function of theatre-going but also, for better or worse, blurred or threat- ened to blur the distinction between the spectators and the performers. In 1909, the Ballets Russes season took place in the Théâtre du Châtelet, a variety theatre (Rampa i akter 17/30 May 1909; Les Annales du théatre 1909, 362), which Diaghilev ordered to be redecorated on the excuse that the orchestra pit was too small for the Russian orchestra. The expansion of the pit necessitated doing away with the first few rows of the auditorium, after which the rest was reupholstered. As noted in Comœdia (11 May 1909) and Le Figaro (18 May 1909), the redecora- tion served to sever the link to variety entertainment, pointed to the Russians’ concern over the comfort of their audience, and guaranteed good advance publicity for the season. It also surrounded the audience with the luxury seen onstage and in the programmes, and thus included the audience in the total work of art to a greater extent than before. For the first performance of 1909, the French impresario Astruc (1930, 45–6) designed a “corbeille”: he placed beautiful demi-mondaines in the front row, extending the concern with decorativeness into the auditorium, subtly reiterating the sexual allure of nineteenth-century ballet, and explicating that the Russian Ballet was the chic thing to go see and be seen so doing. Although explicit manipulation of the audience to this extent was rare, the implicit connection between the stage and the auditorium Orientalism 71 gradually grew stronger as the spectacles influenced the society taste, and vice versa – the success of certain works clearly affected the compa- ny’s repertory. Even today, the pre-war Ballet is inextricably linked with the effective designs of Bakst, who, in contrast to the illusionistic designs of contemporary French theatre, swathed large, flat expanses of canvas in bright, jewel-like colours in sharply contrasting tones. Although there was no lack of innovative stage design in the West, amidst the con- temporary fashion of pastel shades, the colours used by Bakst and his colleagues shocked the eye (for example, Vaudoyer in Art et decoration February 1911). These colours and the simplicity of the designs were read as indications of barbarism (de Chevigné in Le Courrier Musical 1 July 1909). Bakst became particularly famous for the Orientalist spectacles he designed, such as Schéhérazade (1910), where pillows and rugs covered the floor and the stage was enveloped in low-hanging curtains. The luxurious materials – velvet and silk – used in the décor and costumes were reminiscent of the boudoir, and one may speculate that when the house lights were dimmed, this familiar material intimacy assisted in turning the theatre box into a space of private fantasy where every- thing was possible.21 Certainly, Bakst’s designs were quickly adopted for interior decoration and spread like wildfire into the fashionable salons of Paris – the decorator even made a short foray into fashion design in 1912–1913 (Brillant 1930, 96fn; Davis 2010, 25, 172–80). However, although Bakst’s name has become synonymous with the kind of Orientalism in vogue, he was by no means alone in creating Orientalist designs for salon society. The fashion designer Paul Poiret (1879–1944), who would become one of the key instigators of the new style, had already made his name with Orientalist fashion items, and instigated a veritable fashion for Orientalist fêtes.22 With the renewed fashion for the Orient, even the fragrance of the era changed:

Strong and exotic perfumes, like sandalwood and patchouli, which had been the mark of the cocotte, were now bought by women of fashion. Poiret was the first couturier to sell scents, and he gave them Eastern names like Maharajah.23

In the era of consumerism, the middle classes quickly adopted these influences (Pearsall 1979, 89–92), and in dance research, Bakst has been represented as a major inspiration for the dress reform that led to the corset being abandoned in everyday female dress.24 Certainly, some contemporary magazines implied there was some kind of a relation 72 Dancing Genius between the Russian Ballet and changes in women’s fashions (for exam- ple, 14 July 1912), but this is still an exaggeration – corsets and the dress reform were not mutually exclusive and women continued wearing corsets even after the Second World War (Steele 2001, 143–76). The dress reforms of the English Arts and Crafts move- ment further advocated by Oscar Wilde (see, for example, Montague 1994) or the Bohemian dress fashionable in the Vienna (Wagener 1990) could hardly have been unfamiliar to Bakst, who had been raised in an atmosphere where these were extolled (Durst 2001). On stage, Isadora Duncan had already made a less restrained ‘Greek’ costume a fashion in dance (Kendall 1984, 87; also Thomas 1995, 50–2 on American dress reform). More importantly, as Valerie Steele (2001, 76) has argued, dress reforms were not feminism avant-le-mot: “Attacks on the corset were often linked to ideological campaigns in favor of motherhood, reflect- ing fears that if women broke away from their domestic sphere, the entire social order would be threatened.” Dress reformists did not advocate women should educate themselves or work outside the home; rather, they veered towards degeneration rhetoric (Steele 2001, 59–85, 137–41). Many of the arguments for the ’natural’ female body used by Duncan of her dance were direct descendants of these conservative notions about gender roles (see Duncan 1977, especially 61; Duncan quoted in Daly 1994, 25). In contrast, suffragettes tended to follow the latest fashions (Burt 2010); and advocates of the ‘modern’ functional dress in the 1920s argued for the corporeal disciplines of exercise and diet in their efforts to internalise the corset.25 The influence of stage costumes on contemporary high fashion and vice versa has also blurred our view of what was and was not appropri- ate in 1910. Although the stage influenced fashion, and increasingly so, time lapsed before something ‘stagey’ could be adopted in real life, if it ever was.26 The erotic, Orientalist Ballets Russes costumes were at best fit for costume balls, and in one contemporary history of dance Isadora Duncan’s ‘Greek’ tunic was characterised as: “The costume probably was as surprising on the stage then as it would be in a ballroom now” (Kinney & Kinney s.a., 244, emphasis added.) Vuillermoz (in S.I.M. Revue musicale June 1913) severely criticised contemporary fashion as too stage-like and speaking of Bakst’s designs, one male observer noted: “I am not sure that I can see my own sister in any of them; but I should love to see somebody else’s” (The Bystander 23 July 1913.) A few years later, Musical America (12 February 1916 and 19 February 1916) defended the Ballets Russes against American censors by noting how celebrated Bostonian Orientalism 73 artists amongst the spectators were more naked than the dancers – after all, the dancers’ limbs were covered in leotards so as to only appear naked (Woodcock 2010, especially 143). Regardless of superficial similarities between fashionably dressed women in the audience and the designs on stage, it was quite incon- ceivable for the audience members to (publicly) identify with the nar- ratives or the performers. In fact, the performers appeared as if from another planet, as exemplified by how Robby (in Comœdia 9 June 1910) compared the Ballet’s rehearsal to the Martians of H. G. Wells’s science fiction story The War of the Worlds (1898). Contemporary reviews make it apparent how the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ was firmly in place:

Cette petite troupe d’hommes n’a pas été entamée. Ils ont vécu, au milieu de nous, comme au milieu d’un [sic] steppe. L’air qu’ils res- pirent n’est pas le même. Ce ne sont pas les mêmes idées qui naissent dans leur cerveau. Entre eux et nous il y a la distance d’une race à une autre.27

Here, the Russians are a different race, untamed and breathing a differ- ent air. The statement is the more striking when one remembers how its author, Jacques Rivière, has been portrayed as the sole critic who really understood the Russian modernism of Le Sacre du Printemps (in for example, Kirstein 1975, 144, 164–8; Garafola 1992, 69–70) – in itself a remarkably Orientalist claim, considering the lengthy analyses of the work in the Russian press by authorities as diverse as Andrei (André) Levinson (in Rech 25 June/8 July 1913), Sergei Volkonsky (in Apollon 6/1913), Nikolai Minsky (in Utro Rossii 30 May/12 June 1913) and Anatoli Lunacharsky (in Teatr i iskusstvo 9/22 June 1913)! Indeed, upon closer inspection, Rivière’s reading of Sacre explicitly posits that the Russians could only create total works of art because of their inherent racial ability of melding their souls:

S’il leur est impossible de communiquer avec nous, lorsqu’ils sont entre eux, ils ont une extraordinaire faculté de mêler leurs âmes, de sentir et de penser la même chose à plusieurs. Leur race est trop jeune encore pour que se soient construites en chaque être ces milles petites différences, ces délicates réserves personnelles, ces légères mais infranchissables défenses qui abritent le seuil d’un esprit cultivé. L’originalité n’est pas en eux cette balance fragile de sentiments hétérogènes qu’elle est en nous. Elle a quelque chose de plus libre, de plus rude, de moins facile à endommager. C’est 74 Dancing Genius

pourquoi elle peut s’engager et se perdre un instant dans les autres.28 (Rivière in La Nouvelle revue française August 1913)

Rivière not only uses the familiar juxtaposition of us and them (nous, les Occidentaux vs. eux, les Russes) but explicitly rests his appraisal of the new work on this presumed biological difference. For Rivière, as for several of his colleagues disappointed with Symbolist efforts, the total work of art could not be achieved by individual artists but only by a col- lective, atavistic genius, determined by race (Bullard 1971, i:especially 183–4). As a young (primitive) race, the Russians were particularly able to think the same thing simultaneously like some kind of a hive mind (see also Ghéon in La Nouvelle revue française August 1910; Marnold in Mercure de France 1 October 1913). The same racist justification for the Russians’ success in creating the total work of art can also be found in English sources: “The real truth about the Russians is that they are expressing themselves, so that we get a sincerity and a unity of purpose hardly possible under the usual operatic conditions in this country. This is specially true of the ballets”, wrote The Graphic (12 July 1913). A few years earlier, The Lady (20 July 1911) had found this self to be the “ element” (likewise, The Graphic 13 July 1912), a misperception that would have been particularly insulting to Russians (and was, see Wolkonsky 2012, i:236), as Ta(r)tars were Muslim descendants of the Mongol invaders who had occupied Russia until the fifteenth century. The position of the self-proclaimed Western expert knowing the truth of the Oriental other also explains how the positive appraisals could be reversed virtually overnight to accuse Nijinsky’s unconventional choreog- raphies of the wrong kind of barbarism. The fine line between the normal and the pathological, West and East, civilisation and Barbary, was writ in water, and as the Russians began to recirculate their most successful concepts, their repertory became excessive, indicative of their Otherness:

[Thamar] is a terrible dream of Eastern lust, a barbaric swirl of music, colour, and life. Its effect is undeniable; it intoxicates; yet in a way it is somewhat repugnant to a Christian Englishman, as if with some subtle Eastern drug. [ . . . ] One is oppressed by the endlessness of this orgy of perverted desire. [ . . . ] And why are all the dramas of Bakst pitched on the same note? Why is there always this inhuman delight in kisses with a taste of blood? It argues a poverty of invention, or an unwholesome delight in ugly things. (W.R.T[itterton]. in Pall Mall Gazette 13 June 1912, emphasis mine) Orientalism 75

Regardless of how accurate, aesthetically speaking, this evaluation actu- ally was, the connection made here between the fin-de-siècle idiom of Oriental femme fatale and the Russian Jew Bakst, and the contrast created between these and “the Christian Englishman” (the author) is very telling. Even in positive reviews, the Russians were often conceived as an untamed and uncontrollable mass that could sweep away Western civilisation. The Graphic (17 June 1911) not only called its introduction to the Ballet “The Invasion of Covent Garden by the Imperial Russian Ballet” but started the piece with a long description of Muscovites as louts, drunkards and brutes, from the Reverend Patrick Gordon’s Geography Anatomiz’d of 1754. The function of the quotation was to show how this novelty (ballet) was still indicative of these presumably eternal racial qualities – Russians, in other words, had not essentially changed in two and a half centuries. In fact, the need to see the Russians as Orientals was so central to the reception of the Ballets Russes that Oriental themes were seen even in works with European settings. André Édouard Marty wrote of how Le Pavilion d’Armide “nous introduit dans un XVIIIe siècle de rêve, Oriental et pervers, rappelant plus Birdsley [sic] que Watteau”.29 Notably, the perverse Oriental is here associated with the Decadent English (that is, foreign) artist, Beardsley, geographically distinct from the refined French tradition. Similarly, Boyle Lawrence thought that Le Spectre de la Rose was “Beauty that Disguises Brutality”, and discussed it with terms usually associated with reactions to the wild orgies of Schéhérazade:

The exquisite comprehension of all the arts expressed during the sea- son of Russian ballet at Drury Lane threw into the shade the animalistic basis of all the aesthetically perfect interpretation and the pagan primi- tiveness of the passion portrayed. [ . . . T]heir beautiful and fascinating art was used to cloak Rabelaisian or even more obvious debauchery. So lovely were the music, dancing and pictorial setting that the brutality never intruded upon the senses at the time – one was lost in the joy of the grace of movement, melody and colour. Karsavina and Nijinsky were generally depicting some kind of unhallowed passion or another, but the movement of their limbs, the pose of their bodies, the sheer loveliness of their abandonment or their most austere miming robbed the material they were using of its grossness – at the moment. [ . . . ] Nevertheless, the grossness was there – and the memory of it recurs. (Pall Mall Magazine, September 1913, emphasis added)

Notably, Lawrence associates violent sexual excess with the Medieval French (that is, pre-modern and foreign) author, Rabelais, as well as with 76 Dancing Genius the more typical characterisations recurring in reviews of the Russians (pagans, primitives, animals; illicit sex and violence). He continued by asking that the Russians consider more wholesome themes, such as biblical stories, without any further elaboration as to what had been so gross and debauched in Spectre. Judging from the manner in which he speaks of the company as the underlying cause – “the animalistic basis” – of the end result, one might suggest it was the fact that the dancers were Russian. Certainly, this reasoning was applied to the other elements of the total work of art: the colours of the stage decorators and the use of music in the spectacles. If Rivière attributed the Russian total work of art to atavistic qualities, Hermine Edelstein (in Musical America 9 September 1916) described the work of the Russian stage designers in evolutionary terms:

But as man climbs higher in mental and artistic development, he will find an appeal in gradations of tone, color and form that he could not have perceived before. The delicate pastel shades will appeal to him. [ . . . ] Primitive man, with unrefined sensibilities, needs the colors that stimulate, excite, perhaps clash, colors and shades of a sinister or sensuous character, to be moved.

Contemporary colour theory explained much of the choice of bril- liant colours in the Ballets Russes décors, because “[u]ndeveloped taste likes red and orange; people grow to like violet” (Kinney & Kinney s.a., 313; also The Craftsman 12/1915; Nordau 1993, 27–9). As a primi- tive people, the Russians had to like primitive things: after all, why else would they be so talented in creating theatrical spectacles? In a wonderfully circular argument, the Russians were barbarians because their aesthetic preferences revealed that they liked primitive, barbar- ian things, and they liked such things because they were barbarians. As in the paintings of the Fauves (‘wild beasts’), the strong colours used in the designs were a visible sign of difference, a warning that these Others would also lack proper Western virtues and morality, as attested by their wild behaviour on stage (Wollen 1987, especially 8, 27). Fashionable salons could attempt to tame the stage in the home in the form of interior decoration, but for the most ardent moralists of the period, fashion was deplorable precisely because it was subject to such fickle influences and existed in the moment, soon abandoned for the next new thing.30 This circular rhetoric also figured prominently in the discussion on the music used in the Ballets Russes. Once again, the Russians broke rules and went too far, and this was at first seen as a positive Orientalism 77 development. The Ballets Russes utilised concert music and specifically Russian concert music for many of the 1909–1910 works, and the recep- tion was generally favourable in part because this was not the formulaic stuff familiar from Western ballet stages.31 Dancing to music originally composed for other purposes was not a novelty as such – free-form dancers like Isadora Duncan and Loïe Fuller had been using concert music for a decade before the Ballets Russes. However, as with these free-form dancers, most music critics found the solution unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, they claimed that the danced events went against the programme of the music and hence, the intention of the composer. Second, they pointed to how the nature of the particular piece had been ruined by the changes instigated in the process of using the music for the dancing, notably in the orchestration of the score. As an example of the former, in Schéhérazade (1910), the orgy took place to music describing Sinbad at sea, which went against the intention of the com- poser (Rimsky-Korsakov) and the ‘rules’ of how music signified (that is, that certain harmonic means or timbres signified specific elements of nature, or expressed specific things rather than just created moods).32 As an example of the latter, the orchestrations (by other composers) of small, intimate pieces, such as Chopin’s piano works used in Les Sylphides (1909), distorted the qualities of the music and therefore also went against the authority of the composer.33 The same could not be said of the original ballet score, the commis- sioning of which became one of the biggest draws of the pre-war Ballets Russes. In picking the composers, Diaghilev certainly went for the best available: Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloë, 1912), (Jeux, his only completed ballet score, in 1913), Richard Strauss (La Légende de Joseph, 1914) and, of course, the up-and-coming young Russian, Igor Stravinsky (L’Oiseau de Feu of 1910, Petrouchka of 1911, and Le Sacre du Printemps of 1913). Employing contemporary composers may have been a strategy to distance the Ballet from the Orientalist rhetoric, but it did not quite work: the commissions from artists who were not Russian was seen as endangering the Russianness of the Russian Ballet, defined by Camille Mauclair (in Le Courrier Musical 1 June 1912) as:

La sensualité enragée qui, par instants, convulse l’ordonnance des miniatures persanes animées par la magie asiatique, la puérilité, la cruauté, le luxe barbare, la souplesse féline des organismes, l’étran- geté des gestes et des faces, la violente bizarrerie chromatique des parures, le caractère spasmodique de certaines agrégations de cette foule ocellée qui sursaute et se distend en folie, tout cela devra rester le propre du ballet russe.34 78 Dancing Genius

Stravinsky’s music was evaluated with criteria like those used of the Russian stage decorators or performers, particularly outside trade jour- nals. For example, the critic of The Lady (13 February 1913) wrote of Petrouchka that:

The music has been much praised. It is certainly wonderfully descrip- tive, but it may be doubted whether the realistic imitation of sounds such as the droning of mouth-organs and the creaking of the wooden joints of marionettes is the proper business of an orchestra.

For some critics, Stravinsky was so excessive in his verisimilitude that the end result could only be used in theatre (The Illustrated London News 15 February 1913; Whitworth 1913, 97). As with ballet music for variety stages, what Stravinsky did was illustration of the visual spectacle, inseparable from it: “such scores are practically impossible without the stage action. They become meaningless if performed as absolute music”, wrote an American music critic (The New York Sun 23 April 1916) after Stravinsky’s scores had already been performed in concert. Notably, this bias against Stravinsky’s excessive realism was not indicative of a general bias against descriptive or programme music (that is, music written with a specific story or distinct events in mind) or even against music for the stage, but against the separation of this music from staged action. The turn of the century was the time of great operatic composers such as Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss, and even compositions we would think of as ‘abstract’ included a clearly audible programme for the audiences.35 One may therefore ask if the reactions to Stravinsky’s scores speak more of the Orientalist expectations of the critics than of any aesthetic preferences or qualities. By contrast, since the total work of art rested on the racial capacities of the people creating the unity, non-Russian music automatically con- stituted a breach in their aesthetic, a kind of artistic miscegenation (see Jacques Parès in La Critique independante 15 May 1911). Therefore, critics grew uneasy as the troupe introduced music by Western composers – Schumann (for Carnaval), Adam (for Giselle), Grieg and Sinding (for ) in 1910; Weber (Le Spectre de la Rose) in 1911; Hahn (Le Dieu Bleu), Ravel (Daphnis et Chloë) and Debussy (L’Après-midi d’un Faune) in 1912.36 In 1912–13, this constituted a major argument against the two works Nijinsky made to the music of Debussy, Faune and Jeux (see Järvinen 2009a; 2009b). Nijinsky’s choreographies brought to the fore how strongly the Russianness of the Russian Ballet affected what was and was not seen as appropriate for the troupe, and how the praise Orientalism 79 directed at their works was conditioned by notions about an inher- ent difference between those doing the watching and those doing the performing. At the same time, these choreographies were so significant only because the Russians had been inscribed with immense cultural importance, and the young author-figure of these novelties was pre- cisely the unique individual whose person had been used to bridge the gap between the unity that was the racially defined total work of art, and the need for an individualised author for an art work. This page intentionally left blank Part II The Silent Body of a Genius This page intentionally left blank 3 The Unique Genius

Virtuosity, stardom and genius

This chapter revolves around three terms that were used to set Nijinsky apart from his colleagues: virtuoso, star and genius. The modalities of each of these terms varied and, for Nijinsky’s contemporaries, each signified different, often contradictory, characteristics. For example, ‘genius’ encompassed instinct and knowledge, intuition and intelligence, uniqueness and universalism, barbarism and taste, nature and refine- ment. Yet, despite the multivarence of ‘genius’, ‘star’ or ‘virtuoso’, there was surprisingly little confusion about what each term implied: a set of interrelated and historically defined meanings, all drawn into the logic whereby certain things and actions were taken to be indicative of them in certain people, but not in others. Notably, both stardom and virtuosity had, by the end of the nineteenth century, acquired negative connota- tions of anti-genius, without which defining genius, particularly in a per- forming art, was quite impossible. In the following, I explain how these three terms together functioned in the discourse of the Ballets Russes to create in Nijinsky a dancing genius. Here, ‘genius’ is not a natural category but a rhetorical device, a spe- cific form of what Foucault (2001, 820–37) called ‘the author function’. The word has a dual meaning: it is both a mysterious quality that lies in works of art, and the author of such works. The author-genius pro- duces superior masterworks, outstanding examples of human creativity that go beyond individual experience, including the experience of the author. The evocation of genius prescribes certain individuals and their work as worthy of exceptional attention, imposing a value-judgement that indicates appropriate reaction. As such, it serves cultural hierar- chies where genius is opposed to ‘mere’ skill, and true art is separated

83 84 Dancing Genius from ‘mere’ entertainment. Although judging a work the product of genius does not necessitate liking it, the discursive power of genius was and is acted out every time the name of the person crowned with the laurels of genius gets evoked. It is due to this discursive power of genius that the name ‘Nijinsky’ still produces the reaction it does. Taking genius as a form of the author function draws attention to how power functions in the discourse of art, to the pecking order called ‘canon’, where individual art works get placed in relation to a desired model of aesthetic development, and where the past forms an imagined future for the art form (see, for example, DeNora 1995, 5–8, 186–91). Experts perpetuate the canon and the notion of artistic genius. Their value-judgements whereby something becomes indicative of genius are neither objective nor eternally true although usually voiced as if they were (Becker 1978, especially 21–31; Murray 1989a). Any value given to a work of art is defined on historically and culturally specific grounds that can (and will) change as historical circumstances change, and art experts constantly reinterpret masterworks to fit them into current aes- thetic ideals (Bourdieu 1995, especially 106–10). What is truly fascinating, here, is that genius always suppresses analy- sis of itself: genius is, as Drummond Bone (1989, 113) notes, a lexical set deficient in its powers of explanation. Although the attributes of genius are inextricable from cultural expectations that everyone (including the promoted genius) has of what geniuses are supposed to do and be like, evoking ‘genius’ always-already implies that description will be insuffi- cient and definitions fail. But when inevitable changes take place in the criteria by which works are judged as products of genius in a particular art form, the characteristics attributed to a historical individual attrib- uted with genius must also change. In the following, I especially want to draw attention to how, in the performing arts, the evocation of genius tends to bolster the differentia- tion made between the work and its execution, between the author and the performer. For me, the dancer’s physical body reveals the order of the discourse, moving in directions that constantly seem to open new critical questions about authorship and canonisation, stardom and vir- tuosity, success and failure – questions that still haunt the discourse of dance. Historical distance and difference serve my purpose by making strange that which we usually take for granted. In the first decades of the twentieth century, dance as an art form seemed particularly ill suited to contemporary rhetoric of genius because the dancers were present in and creating the art work at one moment in time, and only at that moment. Dance was associated with The Unique Genius 85 moving bodies, with the materiality of physical action, with women in skimpy clothes representing subjects that usually did not even pretend to inspire thought. Intellectual discussion on dance was considered an oxymoron, since dancers’ brains were believed to be in their feet, the critic’s slightly higher in his body (Dodd 1991, 6). The rhetoric of genius had to be turned into loops to fit it into the figure of a 20-year-old youth in a visiting Russian company – so why was this done? Certainly, the predominance of female dancers on Western stages for the past half a century made the audiences of 1909 susceptible to accepting the first famous man as a genius – genius was, after all, a male quality. But there were male dancers on Parisian stages well before Nijinsky and throughout his career, and many Russian men in the same company in which he danced. In the 1909 repertory, Nijinsky was only one of several stars and he had but one leading (premier danseur) role, that of the Poet in Les Sylphides. From our perspective, a likelier candi- date for genius would have been Mikhail Fokine, who not only danced many of the leading roles but who was also the principal ballet master, that is, we credit him for most of the choreography of the first four seasons of the Ballets Russes. But in contemporary reviews, the role of the choreographer is curiously absent: the ballet master’s art was almost never discussed in detail.1 Our tendency to separate the choreographer’s authorship from the dancer’s execution (for example, Thomas 2004, 42) indicates our present reliance on the idealist model of artistic creation: for us, the authors of dance are the choreographers, who materialise their great ideas in the artwork then performed and re-performed by dancers who can never quite reproduce the idea of the choreography perfectly (or else all performances would be exactly alike). This model is idealist because in it the work of art becomes entirely immaterial, an abstrac- tion in the head of the choreographer that can never quite be fixed, not even notated. This is how music is understood in formalist musicology, and as in music, it has been used to downplay the individuality of a performing star, the corporeality of the dancer, and the physicality of dancing as an art form (McClary 1995 on music; Monni 2007, 39–43 on dance.) Formalist criticism silences problematic changes that the ideal abstraction undergoes in each performance – the fact that Le Lac des Cygnes danced by the Mariinsky company and by the American Ballet Theater the same year differ in several respects (including both plot and music) although both claim to be ‘originals’ of the same work of art.2 The full implications of the idealist model to the epistemology of dance fall outside the scope of the present text. However, realising that 86 Dancing Genius the person spoken of as the genius of dance in the early Ballets Russes reviews was the dancer rather than the choreographer required me to rethink genius in relation to two other notions that were (and are) used as its Other: virtuosity and stardom. In contemporary materials, these notions were used to distinguish certain forms of dance as art and cer- tain others as not-art, to rhetorically separate dance as art from dance as social practice or popular entertainment. The virtuoso was someone with inborn talent or skill who had honed this to perfection, and who attained fame through exhibiting (performing) this virtuosity. In the second half of the eighteenth cen- tury, virtuosity was conceptually separated from virtue and genius, and began to be represented as mere technical prowess – as instrumental to art, not as artistry. As Barbara Maria Stafford (1999, especially 5–13) and Gabriele Brandstetter (2007) have discussed, this change parallels the emergence of a new kind of professional science that shunned the aesthetics of display and spectacular effect favoured earlier. In the wake of the first professional virtuoso, Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840, see Schonberg 1988, 104–19), virtuosity acquired a derogatory con- notation of someone merely imitating ‘true’, that is, creative genius. ‘Virtuosity’ began to be associated with charlatanism and un-gentle- manly behaviour. In the same nineteenth-century discourse, the genius came to signify a nobleman of talent, an aristocrat of art. Since Romanticism, art had been the creative expression of an individual artist’s inner feelings and imaginings that reflected his exceptional access to the transcendent. When originality became a reflection of the unique individual artist’s personality, authenticity and sincerity began to be valued as hallmarks of creativity. However, because the transcendental expressed by the genius was truth, and as truth, universal, the genius was supposed to go beyond personality and personal experience in his art. Only in over- coming the imperfect self did the genius find that which is universal and defies rhetoric – autobiographical immediacy could temporarily make up for poetic skill, but it would not sustain an artist throughout his career (Currie 1974, especially 39–46; Bone 1989.) In contrast, virtuosity was a cult of personality, inextricable from the performer, and the term came to connote the borderline between passing popular success and lasting artistic worth. The virtuoso’s techni- cal prowess and spectacular presentation fooled only the uninitiated (the masses), not the real connoisseur, who evaluated the spiritual, lasting merits of a work. Whereas genius was the spiritual incarnate, pure ideal- ism, truth that overcame any obstacles (including those of the human The Unique Genius 87 body), the virtuoso came to embody the material and commercial aspects of performance art: pretty surface glitter without content, muta- bility or lack of commitment and ideals, greed and egotism combined with the incessant seeking of public approval over artistic quality.3 Because virtuosity was essentially performative, construing the difference between a virtuoso and a genius in a performing art was complicated. In music, the first half of the nineteenth century wit- nessed the rise of the author-genius (composer) in the form of the canonisation of old masterpieces, interest in works by dead composers, and the gradual disappearance of free improvisation, the hallmark of the virtuoso, from concert practice.4 Most nineteenth-century argu- ments against virtuosity fall back on critical monism and/or inten- tionalism, and virtuosi were repeatedly attacked for ‘distorting’ the authorial intention of the composer (see Wagner 1898, especially 111; Bernstein 1998, especially 78–93). The denigration of virtuosity was less marked in dramatic theatre, but as, for example, Lawrence W. Levine (1988, especially 33–6, 70–81) has argued, increasing attention was given to the ‘accuracy’ of the performance tradition, to the ‘appropri- ate’ venue, and the ‘sanctity’ of the canon. Certain works and authors were now deemed the property of the ruling classes, who guarded and controlled the ‘integrity’ of the field in a complicated peer review process involving the artists, their audiences, the venues and their pro- prietors, the press, and the law. As with the composer of the written musical score (Citron 1995, especially 37–41, 108–11), the composer of the written dramatic text was revered as the genius of the art form over and above the performers of such texts, and the director, like the conductor, gradually became a substitute guardian of the canonised author’s alleged intention (Chinoy 1973). In Russian theatre, this also had interesting gendered consequences (Schuler 1996, especially 1–2). Dance came relatively late to this discourse for three interlinked rea- sons: corporeality, notions of originality and discursive tradition. As a physical art form, audiences of dance retained the affinity with virtuosity and the worship of star performers that were marked ‘low’ (philistine) reactions in arts like music, where critical discourse downplayed the cor- poreal creation of musical performance in favour of the notated score. Dance was also often performed as an adjunct to theatre or opera, or as entertainment on the ‘low’ stages of variety theatre: it functioned as a divertissement, something that entertained and took attention away from the serious concerns of art (compare with DeNora 1995, especially 2–4 on the emergence of the idea of ‘serious music’). Moreover, theatri- cal dancing did not meet the criteria of originality: many ballets of the 88 Dancing Genius period were danced adaptations of successful works of theatre (Faust), opera (Robert le Diable) and/or literature (, Esmeralda). The importance of original music and original libretto composed around the specific demands of dance as a physical art form is reflected even in what nineteenth-century works are nowadays revered in the canon of the art form and on what grounds (Smith 2000a; Arkin & Smith 1997.) Most importantly, however, the discourse of art dance was rela- tively underdeveloped. Dance was ephemeral in a very concrete sense: few potential dance authors (principal dancers or dance masters) wrote extensively about their own art in a manner that would have guaranteed their author-function for later generations. Beyond disap- pearing works or the difficulties of notation, few important figures of nineteenth-century theatrical dancing published autobiographies of themselves or treatises on their principles of dance as an art form. Although exceptions exist, most late nineteenth-century books on dance were pedagogical manuals for social dancing or libretti published as programme notes. Only with the emergence of new forms of art dance – skirt dancing and free-form dance – did the focus of published books shift to the principles of the art form, the criteria by which con- temporary dance could be evaluated as art. Texts with this kind of focus, such as St.-Johnston’s A History of Dancing (1906) helped to formulate a particular critical discourse and spread the influence of the profession- als being discussed to audiences who might never have attended their performances. Importantly, this discourse of art dance emerged outside the hegem- onic form of art dance, ballet, and was established prior to the first appearance of the Ballets Russes. In it, the Russians quickly came to signify tradition transformed by modernity, ballet as modern dance. As noted, explaining the Russian Ballet as inspired by Western free-form dancers enabled a conceptual separation of this company from ballet, in Russia and elsewhere. But the Ballets Russes also served to effectively counter the other reasons for the low status of dance in contemporary discourse of art: the company representatives actively denigrated formu- laic ballets and virtuosity for its own sake (for example, Karsavina in Je sais tout November 1912) and their works fulfilled the requirements of originality (for example, Huntly Carter in The New Age 29 June 1911). Somewhat paradoxically, the star dancer was central to both arguments, which requires a foray into the logic of stardom and into how this parallels the rhetoric of genius. Although stars could be virtuosi and vice versa, the star never needed to perfect a specific talent or skill; rather, the star’s stardom went beyond The Unique Genius 89 a particular role, beyond virtuosic abilities or performance. The virtuoso was a virtuoso in something, but the star was always a star. As genius was dependent on the connoisseur’s recognition of genius, so stardom relied on a similar but less exclusive logic, that of fandom – a star was a star because she/he had fan(atic follower)s and she/he had fans because she/ he was a star. However, whereas artistic connoisseurship was acquired through an elitist peer review process, fandom required neither the inborn qualities claimed by connoisseurs nor their social status or eco- nomic resources. Consequently, fandom has particular class implications that have caused fans of ‘high’ culture (such as opera) exclude their fan- dom from this discourse (Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington 2007, especially 6–10; Tulloch 2007; Pearson 2007) although in reality it was difficult to tell apart the Stendhal syndrome5 from the behaviour of a fan. Whereas connoisseurs mediated between money and artistic genius, fandom was actively fed by the industry that produced saleable prod- ucts in the form of the stars (see, for example, Sennett 1993, 288–92). In the discourse of art, “star-struck” fans were denigrated as rather simple-minded and fickle, manipulated into serving the commercial interests of the entertainment industry. Since the star’s stardom was a matter of public adoration, the star was to genius like the songs in the music hall were to symphonic music: of lower class and of passing significance, although adored by larger audiences. In many of the nine- teenth- and early-twentieth-century theatrical theories, from Richard Wagner (especially 1898) to Edward Gordon Craig (1977, 37-57 (origi- nally 1908)), the star performer was an abomination like the virtuoso: the star refused to subject her/his personality to the guiding light of the genius, and thus always performed herself/himself rather than the genius of the work and its author. Yet, by the early twentieth century, stars were increasingly nominated with a mysterious quality like that of genius, variously called charisma, magnetism, or, in modern parlance, sex appeal. Unlike the mysterious quality of the genius, this mystery of the star was intimately tied to the physical body of the performer: the specific form of attention given to the star was always attention to the corporeal body, during performance and outside of it. In the 1900s and 1910s, the private lives of star performers received increasing media cov- erage, particularly with the first film stars, even if much of this ‘private life’ was a publicity construct.6 Previous research has given little analytical attention to the similari- ties between Nijinsky’s stardom and the cult of early movie stars, or the fact that his admirers behaved much like the fans of the popular stars of the variety stage or of cinema. Yet the early hegemonic interpretation 90 Dancing Genius of the Ballets Russes placed much stress on this kind of behaviour: as noted, Nijinsky’s wife and her cohort used it to justify Nijinsky’s signifi- cance to his art form, whereas the ‘expert opinion’ used it to discredit his fans (including his wife) as people duped by the publicity focused on this one dancer – a strategy that simultaneously implied the connois- seurship of the writer who saw through the popular idol. In the early hegemonic discourse, Nijinsky’s virtuosity was actively used to prove he could never have been a true genius, since his dancing was merely the execution of the steps created by the new author-genius of dance, the choreographer. Paradoxically, Nijinsky himself had brought about this new role in his vociferous defence of his compositions in 1912–1913 and demands that the dancers merely execute each minute gesture he had choreographed (Järvinen 2009a). Distinctions between virtuosi, stars and geniuses were made to set genius apart from the two other notions, and to serve the status of the authorities defining genius: academic experts, self-appointed connois- seurs, critics of prominent newspapers favoured by the well-to-do. Since genius required a rarefied form of connoisseurship, the rhetoric used of genius required a creative forgetting of those aspects of the process of attribution that were disturbingly similar to how stars or virtuosi were discussed. The eccentricities of artists of genius interested the public and sold the papers just like the caprices of star performers or other celebri- ties did, and the success of any performer relied on such publicity. During the nineteenth century, ‘genius’ had been increasingly defined as an intellectual or spiritual quality that transcended all material con- straints. Genius survived in the artwork with the body of the genius in absentia, whereas both the virtuosity of the virtuoso and the stardom of the star were corporeal and performative. Virtuosity was transitory because other virtuosi would surpass what once were considered dev- ilishly difficult feats. Prior to film, stardom was similarly transitory, because a star’s stardom was only remembered as long as those who had witnessed her/his (live) performances were keeping this reputation alive. In contrast, genius belonged to faith alone: since the final evalu- ation of genius was only to be found in retrospect, absolute certainty about whether someone was a genius required historical distance.7 In dance, this faith in the genius had to be particularly strong: it had to carry the work beyond the body of the performer, so that the genius could remain as the measuring-stick of subsequent generations. As I will discuss, in the creation of the dancing genius in Nijinsky, the performative excellence of the virtuoso and the popularity of the star were excluded through stressing the spiritual, intellectual quality of The Unique Genius 91 the genius. Through separating the performance from the work and by stressing the genius over the performer, the adoption of the rhetoric of genius to dance excluded, silenced, marked as unwanted the corpo- real body doing the dancing whilst paradoxically constantly returning to this body in order to assert presumptions about the superiority of the invisible mind. For the connoisseurs seeking to establish dance as an art, Nijinsky’s body kept disturbing the order of the discourse of genius.

The dancing prodigy

In the histories of the Ballets Russes, it has been commonplace to note we would probably have never heard of Nijinsky were it not for Diaghilev. However, the converse is equally true, at least when it comes to Diaghilev’s reputation as an impresario of ballet. Although Diaghilev’s decision to export ballet in 1909 was hardly surprising con- sidering that he had already tried promoting everything else in Russian arts, continuing as a ballet impresario after the initial season was not simply due to artistic philanthropy or a desire to reclaim the lost status of the art form. Diaghilev did not share the cultural affinity with ballet as an art form that many of his stage decorators did, since he, unlike many of the miriskusstniki, came from provincial Russian gentry. An obvious reason for his taking to ballet was, in the words of Benois (1945, 303), Nijinsky, whose profession made Diaghilev “personally interested in the success of the ballet”. From the first, Diaghilev spared no effort into turning Nijinsky into the brightest star of his firmament. In Paris, friends of the impresario spread gossip about the dancer well in advance:

In Paris it became plain what an important place Nijinsky was to occupy in all our enterprises and to what extent the ‘director’ was infatuated with him. Diaghilev at once instituted an advertising campaign for the unknown artist and, before there had been any performance, my Paris friends used to say to me: ‘Il parait que vous avez parmi vos danseurs un prodige, un garçon d’un talent formidable.’ [‘It appears you have amongst your dancers a prodigy, a boy with formidable talent.’] This talk was of course about Nijinsky. Nobody asked anything about Pavlova, whose portraits were displayed all over Paris [in Serov’s poster advertising the season], nor did anyone inquire in the same vein about Fokine. (Benois 1945, 288) 92 Dancing Genius

Here, Benois’s claim that Nijinsky would have been an “unknown art- ist” in St. Petersburg is very revealing of the kind of rewriting of history at which the early hegemonic interpretation excelled (similarly, Lieven 1973, 48–9), and which has since been uncritically repeated in research on the troupe (for example, Haskell 1955, 254; Kirstein 1975, 51). Benois’s comment fitted Nijinsky’s career into a familiar ‘discovery’ nar- rative, where the unknown artist ‘makes it’ in the metropolis and the rare connoisseur recognises their artistry (compare with Benois 1988, 142–3 ‘discovering’ Zucchi). By contrast, in 1909, Parisian papers faithfully reported the contem- porary Russian opinion that there had not been a dancer like Nijinsky in Russia for decades (Le Figaro 15 May 1909; Comœdia 20 May 1909; Le Théatre 1 May 1909). As Nijinsky (1999, 118) himself noted in his Diary, he was a child prodigy, whose future stardom was ensured before he graduated from the Ballet School in the spring of 1907. The promi- nent Russian theatrical paper, Teatr i iskusstvo, witnessing a full audito- rium at a student performance in 1906, concluded:

Лучше того, какъ танцуетъ воспитанникъ Нижинскій, – требовать нельзя; можно толко опасаться, что онъ утратитъ свой природный феноменал- ный баллонъ, если станетъ злоупотреблятъ гротесками. Пока-же, – это ̪ классическій танцовщикъ чистаго стиля и рьдкихъ природныхъ данныхъ. ̪ Остается пожальть, что балетная бюрократія собирается продержать до ̪ будущаго года въ стьнахъ школы Нижинского.8

Three years before Diaghilev’s Parisian season, Russian critics were well aware of Nijinsky’s reputation, but blaming Imperial bureau- cracy for not allowing him to graduate was slightly off the mark. Nijinsky’s graduation had been delayed because of a near-fatal prank his schoolmates had played on him in 1901 – after falling in a rigged high-jumping contest, Nijinsky lay in a coma for several days and was forced to undergo a long period of convalescence, during which he fell behind in his studies (Nijinska 1992, 99–103). In 1906, when most of his classmates graduated, the Imperial Theatres actually offered to hire Nijinsky for the company provided he finished his studies in general subjects, but Nijinsky’s mother refused to give her consent, keeping the prodigy at school (Nijinska 1992, 156–7). On 25 May/7 June 1907, when Nijinsky’s application for a position as an Artist of the Imperial Theatres was accepted, he was immediately granted the rank of coryphé (one below soloist), and an increased salary of 780 roubles a year.9 The Unique Genius 93

Despite his official rank, during his first year in the company, Nijinsky danced premier danseur roles (such as Prince Charming in La Belle au Bois Dormant) with leading ballerinas, including the prima ballerina assoluta Mathilda Kshesinskaia (Ezhegodniki Imperatorskikh Teatrov 1907–1908, ii:23, henceforth Ezhegodnic(i)). The Mariinsky also commissioned sets of souvenir postcards of Nijinsky in Le Roi Candaule (1906), Eunice (1907) and Armide (1908). By 1910, he was one of the best-paid dancers in St. Petersburg, earning 960 roubles a year without any other obligations than dancing.10 Nijinsky’s lifestyle also changed to reflect his status: from 1908, he lived with his mother and sister in a large (at least seven rooms and a kitchen) apartment at 13 Bolshaia Koniushennaia Ulitsa, a very good neighbourhood north of Nevsky Prospekt, less than half a mile from the Hermitage (Nijinska 1992, 243–4). Abroad, he lived in expensive hotels – with or without Diaghilev (see Fraser 1982, 156–60.) Considering his status, it is likely that Nijinsky would have been selected to represent his art form abroad sooner or later – Diaghilev was not even the first to suggest this. In 1908, Nijinsky had been meant to partner Kshesinskaia in Paris, but she eventually chose to take her regular partner, Nikolai (Nicolas) Legat (1869–1937) (Romanovsky- Krassinsky 2005, 107; Nijinska 1992, especially 232–5; also Le Temps 17 February 1909). Having said this, Diaghilev was responsible for turn- ing Nijinsky into an unprecedented phenomenon. Nijinsky was given an exceptional position in the advance publicity of the 1909 season: he was the only male dancer of whom biographical stories appeared prior to the season (for example, Comœdia 11 May 1909; L’Illustration 22 May 1909) and his figure graced the illustrations of Parisian papers not only in photographs but in drawings – again, a form of attention usually reserved for leading ballerinas.11 In the publicity Nijinsky was compared to the great French dancers, Gaetano (1729–1808) and Auguste Vestris (1760–1842), and nicknamed after the latter “le Dieu de la danse”,12 the God of the Dance. By the third performance of the first programme, French reporters were calling Nijinsky’s performance his habitual tri- umph (Comœdia 26 May 1909). Although public status usually depends on seniority, virtuosity favours youth. As a prodigy, Nijinsky was set apart from the rest of the com- pany, the other (older) male dancers including the ballet master Fokine. Nijinsky’s youth stressed the theme, noted above, of the Ballet and its young dancers as a rejuvenating influence on Western culture. Over the years, this reputation was carefully cultivated in the publicity for the company: reports of Nijinsky even exaggerated his youth (for example, L’Intransigeant 17 May 1913), and Nijinsky (1999, 19) noted in his Diary 94 Dancing Genius that he was actually older than people thought. This kind of public attention singled Nijinsky out, and turned him into something excep- tional and unique – characteristics expected of both a star and a genius. The media had always followed famous virtuosi and good looks had never done harm to the success of professional performers but, dur- ing the nineteenth century, the physical characteristics of a performer became increasingly important. Audiences grew as theatres and concert halls grew in size, and the sheer number of reviews increased as both performers and members of the audience travelled with the speed of cars and steamships, and news was transmitted through the telegraph. Presumably, this is why reviewers started paying more attention to per- formative description, using present-tense narratives, interviews, and discussing audience reactions and the experience of ‘being there’. By the 1900s, the new illustrated press – the product of pulp paper, rotary press and cheap techniques for the reproduction of (photo)graphic images – had made the physical appearance of public figures available to larger audiences than ever before.13 Photography, the telegraph, and new picture journalism offered a rapid means of making the Ballets Russes known to people around the world who had not yet seen the works ‘live’. As one such photogra- pher, Baron Adolph de Meyer, noted in Vanity Fair (November 1916), American audiences had been familiar with the company and its aes- thetics for years before the company first appeared on the continent. Photojournalism expanded not only the audience of a celebrated per- former but their image, taking it beyond the stage through images of stars in rehearsal or in private life. As Jacques-Émile Blanche (in Revue de Paris 1 December 1913) noted, people who had never seen Nijinsky dance could still recognise him off stage because they had seen him in the papers. Although the extent of this public exposure was, by today’s standards, modest and not very invasive of the private life of the celeb- rity, it was also a novelty. Jane Molineau (in The Bellman 30 December 1916) described how the dancer was recognised in the customs hall waiting to board the ocean liner bound for America:

The rumor had gone down the line that here was the greatest dancer in the world, and after his exit the officials kept the rest waiting while they discussed him, and questioned me as to the truth of the tales of his greatness. Did he really get four thousand, or was it forty thousand, francs, a performance? Had I seen him dance, and where? How long could he dance? How often, etc.? The Unique Genius 95

The questions brought up in this anecdote also reflect the interests of the media. For example, matters of money intrigued Nijinsky’s American audiences, as one satirical commentator noted:

Curious – is it not? – to see the space even the most prominent of our daily papers devote to the question as to how much Nijinsky, the star of the Russian Ballet, gets per performance. They have figured it out even to what he earns per second of time. (Mephisto’s Musings in Musical America 6 May 1916)

Unlike this author believed, this was not just because Americans were intent upon knowing the cost of things. Rather, a performer’s success was measured as much by how much they earned as by the quality of their performance. Because the salary a performer could fetch placed them in a hierarchy of value on the marketplace of art, good reviews became a justification for both the pay of the artist and the price of admission, which placed increasing pressure on public relations, includ- ing public recognisability (see C.L.G. in The Spectator 16 December 1911 on all of these factors). A performer who did well with the media usually attracted larger audiences and could demand a larger salary. (Schonberg 1988, especially 21–8; Braudy 1986, especially 510, 570–2; Garafola 1992, 194–5.) Gossip and scandals, spontaneous or planned, made for free publicity (for example, Musical America 22 April 1916 on Flora Revalles). Backstage, impresarios and press agents handled the economics of stardom, since publicity did not come easy or cheap, par- ticularly not in the arts capital of the world (see NYPLDC Astruc Papers, especially 28 June 1909 for Astruc’s listed expenses). Sophia Fedorova (O~едорова), a Muscovite ballerina interviewed for Utro Rossii (14/27 July 1910), claimed that Parisian theatrical papers charged 1,000 francs for a picture on the cover, less for a less prominent location – which explains why illustrations in contemporary theatrical papers often had little to do with the stories they accompanied. Although successful publicity could guarantee a good box office (and sometimes even a position in the canon of the art form), Nijinsky’s fame was but one part of the campaign to manipulate public opinion in order to turn the Ballets Russes as a whole into a fashionable phenomenon. An important factor in the success of the 1909 ballet performances was opera, which lent prestige to ballet and attracted an audience not com- monly seen at ballet performances.14 The lists of illustrious audience members that accompanied the reviews of the performances, and the private engagements of individual Russian dancers at various society 96 Dancing Genius events – widely publicised, of course – moved the Ballets Russes from the theatrical pages to the news section. Indicators of exclusivity, luxury and desirability surrounded the troupe from the advertisements of luxury products (such as automobiles and couture) in the programmes of the seasons15 to the materials used in stage decoration and costumes of the actual works. Charity galas added a further level of philanthropy to the brand, creating the impression of ballet as a ‘high’ art form similar to opera (for example, Le Figaro 13 June 1909; Femina 15 July 1910; Musical America 15 January 1916), and free tickets to the Ballets Russes performances were sometimes spread about in a rather lavish manner: Garafola notes that in the répétition générale of Giselle in 1910 only 203 of the 1,967 spectators actually paid for their seats.16 Importantly, aligning the Ballet with charitable patronage or philanthropy also contributed to separating the Ballet from the dubious morals of dancing girls that had contributed to the downfall of ballet in the nineteenth century. The impresarios of the Russian Seasons produced photographs of forthcoming novelties and coloured lithographs of costume designs that were then distributed to the papers. The designs themselves became col- lectables, as is evident from the collection of “Mme la comtesse René de Béarn” reproduced in Art et decoration (February 1911). Simultaneously, images of older works still in the repertory reminded audiences of past successes and counterbalanced the critics’ focus on novelties. Sometimes, as with La Péri, works that never materialised were effectively used to market the company.17 The impresarios disseminated information to major newspapers, newspaper syndicates and press agencies. From the first, Gabriel Astruc kept a list of papers (now mostly at NYPLDC Astruc Papers) that had accepted the stories fed to them about the dancers, their background, the new works of the season and so on. As a rule of thumb, during the 1909 season, the less a paper diverged from the official publicity coined in Astruc’s office with the help of Diaghilev and his coterie, the more the reports focused on the young generation of star dancers: Nijinsky, Karsavina, Pavlova and Fokine. In contrast, the papers that followed the programme notes gave the names of the official stars of the season (particularly Karalli and Gerdt), although they, too, tended to pick out Nijinsky from the rest (for example, Annales du théatre 1910). The impresarios also fostered their ties with the most important local critics, ‘bribing’ them with invitations to rehearsals and dinners with the stars to guarantee their good graces and favourable reviews for the performances (Lieven 1973, 95). They even commissioned articles for major newspapers and, as a last resort, wrote letters to the editor The Unique Genius 97 correcting the journalists’ ‘mistakes’, as with Diaghilev’s letter to the editor of The Times (10 March 1911) in response to criticism (of 21 February 1911) about the repertory of the company (similarly, Robert Brussel to Novaia Vremia 6/19 January 1910, probably at Diaghilev’s behest). However, it is only with Nijinsky’s choreographic works that members of the public begin to send in their opinions in earnest (see, for example, La Plume 15 July 1912; Pall Mall Gazette 11 July 1913; The Times 9 August 1913), which indicates that members of the audience disagreed with the critical reception. Having the artists visit important patrons and sign pictures of themselves for their fans off stage (some- times for publicity purposes: Blanche 1938, 257; Kirstein 1975, 47) was also part and parcel of these public relations: the performers’ attention cultivated the sense of elitism, of being somehow special, in members of the audience who were not necessarily in the position to finance the enterprise, but would buy programmes and postcards as well as tickets. In 1909, the scope of the public’s attention to Nijinsky was the more remarkable for the parts he danced: as noted, his only principal role was one of the four principals (albeit the only male role of The Poet) in Les Sylphides, and this was also the only traditional premier danseur role he had in the season. In addition, he was the Slave of Armide in Pavillon d’Armide; in Le Festin he danced in two numbers, La Lesghinka and the Blue Bird (from La Belle au Bois Dormant) renamed L’Oiseau d’Or; and he had another role as a slave in Cléopâtre. He did not dance in Danses Polovtsiennes from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor, which was perhaps the most celebrated of the ballets of the season both because of its associ- ation with opera and because it fitted the stereotypical views of Russians as barbarians (for example, Le Temps 22 May 1909; Comœdia Illustré 1 June 1909; or Johnson 1913, 155–161). The fact that the dancers were actually representing the wild and anything-but-Russian Polovtsy tribe escaped most reviewers. Nijinsky’s dancing in Pavillon d’Armide com- manded the most critical attention in the French press, perhaps because Armide’s period setting allowed the writers to reminisce on French eight- eenth-century male dancers, and solidified the link between the original Dieu de la danse, Vestris, and the new “Russian Vestris”, Nijinsky (for example, Le Temps 22 May 1909; L’Illustration 5 June 1909). None of Nijinsky’s 1909 roles had much scope for the kind of danc- ing with which his name is identified today: the virtuosic, sexually excessive Oriental kind, epitomised principally by one role, that of the Golden Slave, the lecherous, wild negro18 in Schéhérazade (1910). Nijinsky did dance the slave of Cleopatra in Cléopâtre, but was appar- ently not photographed in this role, nor did it inspire critics to write 98 Dancing Genius about it. He was photographed in his oriental, Caucasian dance of La Lesghinka from Le Festin, and this role was mentioned more often in the papers but, in it, Nijinsky wore a moustache, possibly making it incon- gruous with the stress laid on the performer’s youth in the publicity. By far the most popular illustrations of Nijinsky in the press in 1909 were of him as the slave of Armida and as the golden bird of Le Festin. The costumes of both roles were Orientalist fantasies: in the Orientalist style of eighteenth-century ballets in the former and a stylised version of a Siamese dancer’s garb (see Misler 1988) in the latter. In both instances, the character was bedecked with a turban-like headdress and earrings. The demi-caractère parts of Oriental slaves and magical birds allowed Nijinsky to both dazzle audiences with his virtuosic leaps as well as use his skills in make-up (Nijinska 1992, 55) and mime in ways that were not possible in more straightforwardly classical roles that he danced at the Mariinsky such as Langfroid in Le Prince Jardinier (Принц-садовник, 1906) or Colin in La Fille Mal Gardée (Тщетная предосторожность, 1789), (Ezhegodnik 1907–1908, ii:23) or, indeed, the role of the Poet in Les Sylphides (Шопениана, 1907), (Ezhegodnik 1910, Repertuar: 66). The lat- ter role was thought to portray the composer of the music, Frédérick Chopin (hence, the Russian title), which associated Nijinsky with Romanticism and notions of genius (for example, Terry 1913, 28 made a connection to Alfred de Musset.) It also presaged the male lead of Albrecht in Giselle (1841), which Nijinsky danced in Paris in 1910 and, scandalously, in St. Petersburg in 1911 (see Chapter 8). Both works were represented in the press by images that recalled the French Romantic ballet in its Gothic incarnation – what André Levinson later called “ballet blanc” (Smith 2007, 33, 44) – the principal male dancer chasing after evanescent ballerina-spirits in white tulle skirts. Notably, although works from earlier seasons rarely received critical attention, the popular- ity of these roles as illustrations of the dancer increased after Nijinsky’s reputation as a genius had been established. They both influenced the public through representing the male dancer as a Romantic genius, and were used to justify the said dancer’s genius. After the initial season, plots of new works placed Nijinsky increas- ingly in the spotlight in roles tailor-made to utilise his particular strengths as a dancer. During the 1911 season, the first of Diaghilev’s private enterprise, Nijinsky finally came to occupy the position that the ballerina had held in nineteenth-century ballet: Le Spectre de la Rose (1911) was the first ballet in which the male dancer was constantly in focus while the female role was the supportive one. No doubt the popu- larity of this ballet amongst the audiences of the company had to do with this reversal: women could not easily identify with the traditional The Unique Genius 99 male protagonists of ballet (Burt 1995, especially 74–5.) Nijinsky also danced the title part in two other novelties of the season, Narcisse and Petrouchka. After 1912, when Nijinsky was taking an ever-increasing share of the applause by choreographing, Diaghilev enticed his princi- pal female dancer Karsavina with ballets for her without Nijinsky, such as Thamar (1912) and La Tragédie de Salomé (1913). Karsavina was very smart: she never quit the Mariinsky for Diaghilev and thus had both the freedom to choose her engagements and a stranglehold on the impresa- rio if her terms were not met. Yet, Karsavina’s success was less remarkable than Nijinsky’s simply because the star ballerina was not a new phenomenon in ballet. The existing repertory for leading female dancers was extensive and many variety theatres included ballets as one attraction. In the wake of the Ballets Russes the demand for Russian ballerinas in particular was great: as soon as Karsavina had made her debut, offers from other impresa- rios started to lure her away from Diaghilev, and she performed quite a few times on Western stages outside the Ballets Russes.19 Although Karsavina, too, benefited from Diaghilev’s choice to promote her over Pavlova (for whom both L’Oiseau de Feu and Giselle had been planned in 1910), her stardom was in accordance with the dominant trend in ballet and art dancing in general – the focus on the female over the male dancer. However, her career does show how, women had to compete for the leading roles in the Ballets Russes. By engaging several ballerinas from Russia for his seasons Diaghilev subtly undermined the domi- nance of women in dancing and made the Russian Ballet more synony- mous with its leading male star, Nijinsky.20 Such favouritism obviously contributed to the decisions of female stars like Anna Pavlova and Ida Rubinstein to quit the company.21 As regards canonisation of the Ballets Russes, a remarkably brilliant move on Diaghilev’s part was to encourage and commission art works of the company and its stars. The resulting collection of paintings, draw- ings, photographs and statues is amazing, and not only in quantity: just the artists who depicted Nijinsky range from to Una Troubridge, from Baron de Meyer to Karl Struss, from Jacques-Émile Blanche and John Singer Sargent to Marc Chagall, Wyndham Lewis, Gustav Klimt and Oscar Kokoschka (see, for example, Pourvoyeur 1992, 52–5). In 1914, there was even an exhibition at the Fine Arts Society in London with Nijinsky as its theme (The Daily Telegraph 12 March 1914; Beaumont 1951, 83). Many of these works were used for publicity for the company: some were reproduced in the programmes or in the press, some appeared in print in books, and some were displayed in galleries and theatre foyers.22 100 Dancing Genius

Dance historians have chosen to represent these works as examples of Diaghilev’s friendship with contemporary artists, which downplays just how much of an enterprise the Ballets Russes actually was. Artists made a living with their art, and painting, sculpting and photographing famous people paid well (even though such sordid matters were not publicly discussed). Moreover, the predominantly upper-class fans of the Ballets Russes were a lucrative market for art objects. For Diaghilev, art works were a means to attract both funding and prestige: associating with artists, especially the established darlings of society, aided in creating an air of philanthropy around the company and separating it from the commercial interests of the variety stage. This social prestige, in turn, created future working opportunities, both for the company and for those representing it. By emphasising that making art has an economic as well as an aes- thetic aspect, I want to draw attention to the importance of the public relations’ success of the Ballets Russes to the central position the com- pany has come to occupy in dance history. Since the Ballets Russes did not rely on box-office income, it could produce spectacles on a scale impossible for other contemporary dance companies. Together with the relative permanence (twenty years) of a touring company, this ensured press coverage in all the major European languages on three continents – again something impossible even for established institutions like the Paris Opéra. However, in terms of creating a discourse of dance that would discuss dance as a performance art, the influence of the Ballet was not always positive – and this goes for contemporary reviews as much as for reminiscences. Illustrious patrons not only guaranteed funding and prestige for the company, but they also functioned to silence most critical observations about the content and style of the productions. The publicity campaign deliberately distorted facts to make the company seem more innovative, its artists greater and its stars brighter, but the scarcity of actual discussion on the merits and failures of the Ballets Russes was not up to the impresarios. In terms of dance historiography, moreover, the attention given to the Ballets Russes and the position certain individuals have gained in the discourse through this attention has hindered the emergence of a critical discourse of early-twentieth-century dance.

Writing dancing

The critical focus of the Ballets Russes reviews differed in several ways from what we, today, would expect of a dance review. For one, the total work of art principle discussed in Part I undermined any need The Unique Genius 101 to attribute singular authorship to theatrical spectacles. Terminology about theatrical professions was often slightly hazy: the French ‘artiste chorégraphique’ referred to the dancer as well as to the choreographer; and the person we would call the choreographer of most of the pre-war spectacles, Mikhail Fokine, was most often called ‘maître de ballet’, or ‘ballet master’, a term associated with everything to do with directing dancers during dance class (which is why was also called a ‘maître de ballet’) and from rehearsing the troupe (usually the job of the régisseur such as Sergei Grigoriev) to composing dances for the stage. The latter function was mixed with that of a ‘metteur en scène’, a term used of Fokine almost as often as it was used of the designer of the scenery and costumes (particularly when this was Léon Bakst) – thus Fokine is often attributed with the “scenery” in Anglo-American sources (for example, Pall Mall Gazette 10 February 1913; Current Opinion September 1913) whilst Bakst is sometimes given credit for the dances (Flitch 1912, 146). Mixing in what we would understand as the jobs of the dramaturge or the stage manager, in contemporary parlance ‘chore- ography’ meant “the proper harmonising” of “dancing, miming, music and scenic effect, including [ . . . ] the costumes and colour-schemes, as well as the actual ‘scenery’ and lighting” (Perugini 1915, 21.) To confuse matters still further, the Ballets Russes programme notes followed the Russian practice of attributing authorship of a piece to the composers of the libretto and the musical score.23 As noted, the star dancers and Nijinsky, in particular, were often ascribed with creative design of the works:

Il faut, d’ailleurs, confondre dans un même éloge, tous ces virtuoses de la danse qui ont noms Nijinski, le rénovateur de l’art chorégra- phique russe, tour à tour Narcisse et Arlequin étonnants de souplesse et de vie profonde,24 wrote Comœdia (7 June 1911), effectively assigning the authorship of his roles to the dancer. Petrouchka, particularly, was attributed to Nijinsky,25 which explains why Camille Mauclair (Le Courrier Musical 15 June 1912) would discuss Nijinsky’s Faune as his “latest creation” rather than as his first choreography. All this indicates how dance was not understood as the art of the choreographer in the same sense that we tend to speak of it in the wake of the formalist aesthetics of the mid-twentieth century. Indeed, choreographic composition almost never entered the critical discourse on the Ballets Russes prior to Nijinsky’s Faune, Jeux and Sacre, and even 102 Dancing Genius description (let alone analysis) of formal features such as particular gestures, step sequences or groupings of dancers on stage was rare.26 It would be too simplistic to dismiss this different critical focus as igno- rance of dance as an art form – it is still common for dance reviews not to discuss such fine points as choreographic structure. Although critics did emphasise what interested them (or their presumed readers) the most – a music critic would focus on the music, an art critic on the set designs – this does not imply that they simply did not know how to discuss the qualities of good and bad dancing.27 Rather, the critics seem to have thought such details would not interest the public, or considered such discussion stylistically inappropriate: “User de la terminologie consa- crée semblerait vain et déplaisant pour d’aussi irréelles images.” (“To use the appropriate terminology seems vain and unpleasant for such unreal images,” Le Figaro 20 May 1909.) This stylistic concern reflected what was seen as important in dance: had the compositional elements of step sequences been important to the critics, they would have found other, less specialised terms with which to discuss them. Moreover, it was not only critics who were uninterested in discussing dancing and choreography: when Fokine finally got to explain his cho- reographic practice (Gil Blas 4 June 1912), he spoke only of costumes and period art as his “method” for transferring Longus’s story into Daphnis et Chloë (1912). The choreographer’s emphasis on the narrative events and pictorial effects rather than how they were composed or conveyed draws attention to how narratives were construed in contemporary theatre through two self-evident conventions: mimicry and stage pictures. The dancers’ gestures and acting did more than express emotional states or reactions – they also replaced words.28 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Western forms of theatrical expression and repre- sentation of emotion were still believed to be universal, which meant gestures – even the gestures of alleged Others like Russians – acted as a universal language, immediately comprehensible to all spectators. Since a gesture always had a meaning (rather than a multitude of pos- sible implications), gestures had rules like a language and, if performed correctly, could be ‘read’ correctly, conveying authorial and narrative meaning. In an interview with The Literary Digest (10 February 1912), Mikhail Mordkin exemplified how this language of gesture worked to express the sentence “You have done me a grievous wrong and I hate you!”, which Mordkin deemed a very difficult exercise:

First, the quality of hate is analyzed by master and pupil. [ . . . ] Hate is the direct opposite of love [ . . . Love . . . ] means exhilaration. The Unique Genius 103

When love exhilarates, the body and the feet feel light. [ . . . ] Now, hate, being the opposite of love, must make heavy feet. [ . . . But . . . ] hatred projects back into his head a spirit of strength in himself, and his body takes on upright rigidity.

And so on. In this manner, the symbolic language of the old ballet was replaced by a language of the whole body that was just as dependent on a presumed universality of human emotions, their codified expres- sions, and the re-presentation of these expressions on stage. Despite his later claims to having created “the first abstract ballet” in Les Sylphides, Fokine (1961, especially 133, 154, 178) fully shared this bias against non-narrative “dance for the sake of dancing”. His Western audience tended to agree: for example, Les Sylphides was praised despite its lack of story (for example, Gil Blas 5 June 1909) and the danced sections of Giselle were considered boring, even ridiculed (as in The Bystander 1 November 1911).29 Since much has been made of how the new ballet pantomime was ‘natural’ in comparison to the cryptic gestures of the old ballet, it is crucial to notice that ‘natural’ movements on stage did not aim at veri- similitude. The purpose of any stage gestures was to convey emotional impact even for members of the audience sitting in the back row. Early silent films give an inclination of what ‘natural’ gestures and mimicry meant for turn-of-the-century audiences – we see these expressions as excessive, even histrionic. As Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs (1997, espe- cially 81–108) have discussed, the particular concerns of the cinematic stage space (especially the close-up shot and larger-than-life screens) induced reduced gesturing by heightening the visibility of the smallest detail. This new, cinematic acting style gradually became the standard by which we evaluate gestures as ‘natural’. The stage was improved reality, so staged expressions had to be aesthet- ically pleasing. Contemporary critics’ concern with ‘grace’ and ‘plastique’ actually limited what was allowed on stage. Fokine (1961, especially 251–4) thought awkwardness was always the result of poor training, hence unnatural, and hence ugly and suited only for sideshow material (Nelson 1984, 8), which casts some doubt on his claims (Fokine 1961, especially 193) about choreographing every gesture of Petrouchka where a leading character utilises precisely these characteristics.30 Fokine was by no means alone in his views: for Isadora Duncan, ‘natural movements’ were

movements whose execution are [sic] possible by a normal body without special training. From this it does not follow that uncultivated 104 Dancing Genius

movements would be acceptable. [ . . . To attain perfection . . . ] a Duncanite would need to put in just as much time and thought as a ballet student, standards of grace being equal. (Kinney & Kinney s.a., 243, emphasis added)

In other words, it was self-evident that the natural body had to be learned (Duncan 1977, especially 79). Only the cultured ‘natural’ body expressed emotion directly, without ambivalence. In such a discourse, ‘dance’ signified graceful motion, beauty that was supposedly universal and unchanging, and the bias against anything ungraceful was also a moral statement. According to Duncan (quoted in Flitch 1912, 107), “All gestures have a moral resonance, and thus can directly express every possible moral state.”31 In Russia, the emphasis on learned behaviour was doubly important. As Irina Sirotkina (2010, 135–9) has discussed, Russian distinguishes танец (rule-bound dance art) from пляс (natural, spontaneous dancing). Although she presents this break as more absolute and theoretical than contemporary sources show it to be, to qualify Duncan with the latter equated her with nature and Dionysian ecstasy rather than the regimen of art, thus emphasising the difference between her kind of dance to that of Imperial ballet (see also Yushkova 2009, especially 37–8, 48–52, 78–80.) To complicate this further, in the interview to Gil Blas (4 June 1912) mentioned above, Fokine specifically emphasised that “Chaque mouve- ment est une suite d’attitudes” (“Every movement is a result of poses”) although he also said that in choosing these poses, he did not strictly imitate the art works he had just discussed. As Brewster and Jacobs (1997, especially 19–29, 34–8, 48–74) have shown, together with the division of the piece into acts and scenes, stage pictures or tableaux and situations structured what was shown on stage, making the action comprehensible to the spectator and emphasising certain aspects of the plot. Whereas larger temporal and narrative divisions often involved changes in the set (one meaning for ‘stage picture’), tableaux would also punctuate the action, stress and/or prolong the dramatic situation, and sometimes also give allegorical or abstract significance to the events (emphasising the morality of the play, for example). A rudimentary stage picture comprised a short pause in the action that directed atten- tion to a specific part of the stage and to the particular character(s) about to do or experience something of importance (ibidem.; also Singer 2001, 41–2.) The pause effectively emphasised the importance of the action that followed.32 For example, just before the Sultana stabs herself The Unique Genius 105 in Schéhérazade (1910), she would have adopted a pose and the other dancers on stage would have frozen in poses indicating horror just long enough for the audience to gasp for breath at her impending doom. Like the ‘language’ of mime, tableaux were a self-evident and com- monplace convention, virtually invisible for contemporary audiences. Therefore, reviews of the Ballets Russes do not directly refer to their exist- ence any more than contemporary theatre or cinema reviews do – that is, beyond describing a specifically striking tableau. Yet, clearly the Ballets Russes spectacles used these conventional pauses both because critics appraised certain dancers, such as Ida Rubinstein, for their effective poses (for example, Astray in La Nouvelle revue 1 July 1913), and because when what was shown departed from the convention, it caused confu- sion and provoked much commentary in the press (see Järvinen 2009a). Knowing this, Fokine’s above-quoted interview actually does explicate a crucial element of his choreographic composition method: using art works as models for poses on stage. Together with the emphasis on narrative mime, the tableaux blurred the difference of the Ballets Russes works to dramatic theatre and directed critics to discuss these works as wordless plays, mimodra- mas, or pantomimes.33 But true to Symbolist aesthetics, dancing still left much to the imagination, suggesting rather than miming action: sexual acts were hidden, as in Cléopâtre, or a dance stood for sex, as in Schéhérazade (Acocella 1984, especially 227–32). One reason critics rarely wrote of what they saw in terms of movement or choreography was because analysing what went on in the magical world beyond the proscenium arch – how special effects were created, for example – was aesthetically inappropriate as it destroyed the illusion of magic. To remark that Karsavina, as , ‘flew’ only because she was attached to a wire would have been to remark that this was done so badly that no suspension of disbelief was possible.34 Since technol- ogy was anything but natural, bringing it up would have jarred with accolades of escapist works that were designated as the natural self- expression of a barbarian Other. Because of their reliance on conventions, although many critics praised the Russian dancers for their interpretative skills and acting, what these interpreters actually did received very little attention.35 The Graphic (22 February 1913) could spend several paragraphs describing the plot of Petrouchka and then dismiss the dancing with: “Of the perfor- mance nothing need to be said.” Prior to Nijinsky’s unconventional cho- reographies, although individual (star) dancers were appraised for their talents, what exactly they did was generally not described or analysed 106 Dancing Genius in the review. Thus, The Times (4 November 1911) addressed Nijinsky’s dancing in one of the classical excerpts of the season as follows:

M. Nijinsky has long since succeeded in setting the law of gravitation at defiance, and he makes one exit here which rivals his final one in Le Spectre de la Rose. His dancing, too, has new elements in it, wonderful, rhythmic patterns of the body which he has not shown us elsewhere.

Yet, although this was far more than was usually said, nothing followed to tell the reader what the new elements of Nijinsky’s dancing actually were. The almost unanimous decision to exclude technical description points to how the critics clearly thought it sufficed that Nijinsky pre- sented new and unique expressions of the dancer’s creativity (similarly, for example, The World: A Journal for Men and Women 2 July 1912). That he did so was more important than what he did. In the absence of contemporary descriptions of dance technique and specificities of particular performances, researchers have created unfounded claims about the Ballets Russes choreographies and the capabilities of particular dancers – notably Nijinsky, who, in the light of contemporary reviews, seems practically superhuman.36 Even in reminiscences, describing music (available as scores), costume and set designs or plotlines (published in the company’s programmes) was simply easier that relying on vague recollections of something wit- nessed perhaps only once several years ago. In contemporary materials, extensive use of the readily available programme notes (see, for exam- ple, Rhythm July 1912) is shown in the ways in which different critics described the spectacles in almost identical words, particularly when writing for the next morning’s issue. Perhaps because yearbook editors had more time to contemplate the matter, Les Annales du théatre (for example, 1911, 18–21) made some efforts at analysing specific choreo- graphic devices, like the importance of turning movements, although these were not directly attributed to the choreographer. However, since the 1880s and 1890s, various new forms of art dance as well as the proliferation of social dances had also affected how the Ballets Russes was discussed. The new forms received press coverage in the same papers as the Ballets Russes, even by some of the same critics and sometimes in the same review (for example, Gil Blas 20 May 1909), which proves that at least some members of the Ballets Russes audi- ence followed dance more generally.37 The new forms of art dance had The Unique Genius 107 also stressed dancing as a form of creative expression, raising questions about the status of dance as an art. Many of the pioneers in the new forms created their own dances, and much of the new dance comprised small solo pieces that both drew attention to dance as something com- posed and made it difficult to separate this composition from the per- sonal expression of the dancer, as J. E. Crawford Flitch (1912, 10) noted. Perhaps because critics thought it inappropriate to point attention to small failures in largely successful works, reviews extremely infre- quently refer to Nijinsky or any of the star dancers faltering in their steps. A rare example is in Richard Capell’s review in The Daily Mail (20 November 1911): “M. Nijinsky made a trifling slip in his first solo dance in ‘Armida’ on Saturday. To compensate, as it were, for this he danced afterwards more astoundingly than ever.” Capell further com- pensated for his honesty by following this with a tirade of praise for Nijinsky, as if to neutralise any possible harm done to the dancer’s image. Yet, from our perspective, such cracks in what otherwise emerges as an icon of perfection actually give these ‘lost’ performances a sense of performativity. The recorded failure of the ‘god of the dance’ offers us a glimpse of the excitement that live performance still offers of things unknown, of events not going according to plan, and of the presence of human beings in the always unique theatrical encounter. It also leads me to ask whether the contemporary critics actually disliked discussing failures in the Russian Ballet for aesthetic reasons, from sheer politeness, or because the occasional failure threatened to make the performers seem too human, and too little like exotic freaks. This is to return to my point that ideological as well as stylistic reasons contributed to how the Ballets Russes was discussed. Of particular rel- evance was the belief that the Russians were somehow ‘natural’ dancers, a race apart, a people more attuned to their physical bodies and more capable of expressing their emotions with their bodies. Consequently, if the manner in which they designed the staged effects came into focus, it led to a host of unwelcome questions about the nature of dance as an art form and of the Russian Ballet as art. Instead of analysis one should “give oneself up entirely to the joy of not attempting to understand [the performance]” (Alexandre 1972, 4). Technical aspects of dancing were not only excluded from the space of the review – they were also downplayed in the discourse of Nijinsky as a genius. Nijinsky’s prodigy was proof of this ideology of naturally dancing Russians and, consequently, his physical labour in the rehearsal room as well as on stage had to remain invisible. The 108 Dancing Genius function of the genius was to assert that what the Russians did was truly art – that despite their presumed racial qualities or Orientalist ideas about their ‘nature’, the Ballets Russes was not simply sexu- ally suggestive entertainment for the upper classes. Nijinsky’s youth allowed his dancing to be discussed as a gift of nature, as something essentially unlearned, as an inborn and thus inexplicable quality. This set his dancing apart from the learned skills of the virtuoso, and of the manufactured glory of the star. In short, Nijinsky’s youth was proof of his genius, and his genius, then again, proved the Ballets Russes was art, and as art, above moral scruples. It set the company – and its audiences – in opposition to similar spectacles on the variety stages, creating in dance an opposition between the ‘highbrow’ Ballets Russes and the ‘lowbrow’ dance in the music hall. Importantly, this opposi- tion was thoroughly gendered to favour the male over the female free-form one.

The leap of the virtuoso

Between 1909–1911 Nijinsky was, increasingly, given a place above other dancers in the publicity of the Ballets Russes through attrib- uting him with unique individuality. One strategy for this was to contrast Nijinsky with other dancers past and present. When Victor Debay (in Le Courrier Musical 15 July 1910) saw Volinine and Geltser as having “une virtuosité incomparable mais dépourvue d’originalité” (“an incomparable virtuosity deprived of originality”), he did so to discern Nijinsky: “et au prodigieux Nijinski de nous apparaître sous une forme nouvelle et toujours personnelle” (“and the prodigious Nijinsky appears to us in a new and always personal form”. For all his virtuosic feats, Nijinsky was always represented as something more than a virtuoso – whether he imbued the dance with his unique per- sonality or whether his dancing was capable of conveying a spiritual message, his mind was what made him singular, unique, and a genius (for example Ghéon in La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1910). According to Applin’s ([1911], 23) introduction to his Stories of the Russian Ballet:

The Imperial School of Dancing in Russia has sent out many great male dancers, among them Kosloff, the first to visit these shores and startle us with his fine work, quickly followed by Michael Mordkin; but it has been stated, and by a Russian, that it has pro- duced only one Nijinsky. The Unique Genius 109

However, virtuosity was not altogether excluded from genius – the genius was simply more than mere virtuosity:

Il ne faudrait pas en conclure que le célèbre danseur Nijinsky ne soit pas un virtuose; mais dans un ballet russe il est une unité parmi d’autres unités. Et quelle unité! Rarement un danseur homme a pu accaparer l’attention, l’enthousiasme d’un public comme l’a fait Nijinsky dans ses diverses apparitions à Paris. Nijinsky mérite du reste qu’on s’attarde à parler de lui.38

Here, the critic first attests Nijinsky is a virtuoso but only amidst a com- pany of virtuosi, a part of a greater whole. Then he immediately distin- guishes him again as the only dancer actually meriting special attention. These quotes exemplify why and how aspects of Nijinsky’s dancing could be transformed into signs of creative genius rather than discussed as virtuosity. For one, Nijinsky could not have been attributed with genius had his dancing not been seen as creative (self-)expression. This creative expression, in turn, had to be safeguarded from the materiality of dance as physical labour (virtuosity) through stressing the spiritual and mental aspects of both the creation process and the reception of the transcendent work of art. Contemporary sources employ two key strategies for differentiating Nijinsky from other dancers: first, they downplay the physical demands and actual labour of dance in favour of abstract, spiritual or intellectual qualities; second, they gender the genius’s body as natural, feminine matter controlled by the masculine intellect of the genius. In this discourse, one factor quite literally surpassed all others: from the first reviews onwards, Nijinsky’s leap was presented as something of profound significance. In 1909, in the very first performance of the Russian Ballet in Paris, instead of walking off the stage as was customary and as Fokine had (allegedly) choreographed, Nijinsky executed a spec- tacular jumping exit after his variation in the pas-de-trois, and immedi- ately became the talk of the town. Henry Gauthier-Villars reported for Comœdia (20 May 1909):

je ne devais, sur toute chose, crier mon admiration pour le dan- seur Nijinski, merveille des merveilles, détenteur de record de l’entrechat … Hier, quand il s’élança avec une lenteur élégante, sui- vant une trajectoire de 4 mètres 50 pour retomber dans la coulisse, mollement, un ah! de stupeur éblouie s’échappa des poitrines de femmes.39 110 Dancing Genius

The ‘leap to fame’ imagery became dominant in all subsequent descrip- tions of Nijinsky’s first appearance, even his entire career.40 As noted in the Introduction, what is crucial about the leap for the Nijinsky myth is the lack of documentary images (moving or still) of Nijinsky in the air: the absence provides a space for fantasy and desire. Without pictures, there remains no way of ascertaining what exactly this prodigal feat looked like, nor how it looked in comparison to the feats of his contemporaries. Hence, in dance literature, Nijinsky’s leap has become something lost and therefore proof of his transcendence, just like Nijinsky has become an unattainable object of desire (Brandstetter 1998a.) The lost leap has been turned from a symbol of aerial transcend- ence into a sign of Nijinsky’s own transcendence as a dancer, of the supe- riority of his dancing skill, the “Olympic record for others to aim at”, as Lincoln Kirstein (1983, 317) put it. But like his leap, Nijinsky’s reputation quickly became an impassable record, as those who had seen Nijinsky were never ready to admit the legend had been superseded (which frus- trated entire generations of male dancers) and the more dancers trained their physique the more physical stamina and brilliant technique have become the norm and the less likely any dancer is to achieve that singu- lar position above the rest that was and is the hallmark of genius. Because Nijinsky’s leap has figured so prominently in his legend, countless attempts at measuring it have tried to explain it and (in nega- tive terms) how the audiences were duped into believing that this dancer could execute superhuman feats. Above, Gauthier-Villars estimated that Nijinsky would have leaped at least four and a half metres across the stage, and elsewhere, Gabriel Astruc (1930, 44) stated this famous jump reached “presque d’un metre” (“almost one metre”). Since this does not sound particularly superhuman, much has been made of how Fokine’s choreographies and the stage conditions assisted in creating an illusion of height, width and speed in Nijinsky’s dancing.41 Certainly, there is some truth in this. Fokine preferred diagonal and circular floor-patterns that emphasised the three-dimensionality of the stage and also skilfully utilised the corps de ballet to emphasise the principals, even in works mistakenly read as ensemble efforts, such as Les Danses Polovtsiennes.42 The effect shows in a review in The Lady (3 August 1911):

I remember a circular movement, many figures running round and rising high in the air, and from their centre, as from the middle of a bright, glittering flower in the wind, a man rising head and shoulders above them, pirouetting in the air, resting on the air, a creature who has defied gravitation’s laws – Nijinsky! The Unique Genius 111

Moreover, most of the European stages on which the Ballets Russes performed had a rake, and on a raked stage, any leaps towards the audience would have taken on an accelerated quality, whilst in any rapid movements away from the audience, the rake augmented the sense of distance (Turocy 2001, 203; Brewster & Jacobs 1997, 147–63, 161n27–8). Hence, Nijinsky’s jumps away from the audience (as in his famous exit in Spectre) seemed even longer and higher on a raked stage. Besides stories of springs in his slippers and other obvious fabrications, some implausible anecdotes also place a mattress behind the stage for Nijinsky to crash into or to land on (for example, Kirstein 1983, 7). This sounds like an extremely dangerous idea, even if the story may have originated in theatres that lacked sufficient offstage room in the wings. But even such fascination with Nijinsky’s leap does little to explain this feat’s prominence in the contemporary discourse. Rather than the physical act, what mattered was that leaping, soaring in the air, became a metaphor for the transcendence of spirit over matter. For the dancing genius, particularly a ‘naturally’ dancing Russian, the leap was proof that the genius could embody transcendence and defy the laws of nature that limited other dancers. Nijinsky’s leap paralleled the spirit of the genius, who overcame the material restrictions imposed by his body and by the laws of physics. As André Levinson (1982, 87) remarked,

You can put the most run-of-the-mill danseur on a trampoline and it will throw him much higher than Nijinsky, but it would be a mechanical stunt, whereas Nijinsky’s jump is a miracle of strength, harmony, self-control and music.

The leap signified because it qualitatively surpassed virtuosic stunts – the purely technical, mechanical non-art of spectacle. It is hardly coincidental that the most famous example of Nijinsky’s leap (duplicated from his ‘leap to fame’ at the end of his solo in Armide) came in Le Spectre de la Rose, that is, in a narrative where he embodied a spirit – of a recently deceased rose, but a spirit nonetheless. Although Nijinsky was seen as the original of many of the roles in which he became famous, the Spirit of the Rose quickly became the one deemed impossible for other dancers (for example, Johnson 1913, 8). Pall Mall Gazette (24 June 1912) used it to prove how genius necessitated singular talent, an inimitable quality to which other men could only aspire:

It may be that here we have a confession: the Russians are no use save in a savage whirl at full tilt. Yet is the confession true? What of 112 Dancing Genius

‘Le Spectre de la Rose’? The answer to me is obvious. ‘The Spectre’ is the private personal triumph of Nijinsky. Imagine the deadliness of the story in any other hands! [ . . . ] In the hands of Nijinsky it is a stimulating and gracious fancy. [ . . . ] And the whole exquisite brief pas de deux is a protest against much for which the Russians most definitely stand – against that barbaric whirl of sound and col- our, against that surrender of dignity and beauty for the sake of the intoxicated brain and the leaping pulse.

Here, Spectre and its narrative difference to other ‘barbaric’ ballets in the repertory were attributed to the dancer’s personal genius, and, moreover, written as this genius’s protest against what the Russians were generally famous for doing so well. Characteristically, Tamara Karsavina, who partnered Nijinsky in this work, is not mentioned at all: only the male genius becomes an advocate of moderation in a company prone to Oriental excess. Yet, just as the choreographic composition assisted in creating the appearance of transcendence, the prevalent movement qualities in the dancing style of the Ballets Russes strengthened the metaphorical con- nection between Nijinsky’s dance and the rhetoric of genius. Dance was aerial and flowing, graceful, effortless and elegant: “Dancing is not, on the other hand, a matter of leaping in the air, but a matter of annihilat- ing weight and giving one the impression of spirit”, wrote Montrose J. (in The Bellman 29 January 1916), claiming that other danc- ers did not let one forget their corporeality. However, this demand for effortlessness tied Nijinsky’s dancing to a certain aesthetic of beauty and grace: in this conjuction, it is notable how often Nijinsky is shown smil- ing in his roles, because his male contemporaries rarely smile. Smiling indicates the ease with which Nijinsky executed each prodigal feat, which proved he surpassed mere virtuosity. André Levinson (1982, 87) described Nijinsky’s dancing as: “Without obvious preparation, without the deep squat of a plié, he would suddenly and lightly soar, as if hover- ing for an instant in the air, and then come down almost noiselessly.” (Similarly, Chantavoine in Gil Blas 5 July 1910.) For many of Levinson’s Western colleagues, however, the reason for Nijinsky’s exceptional dancing was incorporeal and inexplicable:

There is something more than the mere accomplished dancer in that remarkable personality. Others there may be (though one doubts it) as graceful, as agile, as versed in all the nuances of the dancer’s art; but over and above his technical perfections Nijinsky possesses a The Unique Genius 113

selective intelligence. His is not a merely imitative instinct; he draws inspiration from sources of his own seeking, and that to which he gives bodily expression is the product of his own original genius working under that afflatus. (Johnson 1913, 166)

In this paragraph, A. E. Johnson first sets Nijinsky’s dancing apart from dance technique and skill by emphasising his personality, the original and authentic self that cannot be acquired through technical training. But Johnson then claims this personality is also more than a star’s magnetism because it relies on Nijinsky’s “selective intelligence”, inspired by sources outside himself – in marked contrast to how many contemporary free-form dancers defined their practice as an introspec- tive, instinctive search for ‘natural’ movement.43 For Johnson, the inspired combination of outside sources with personal expression made Nijinsky a genius, and genius always-already elevates his art above both technical skill (virtuosity) and expression of personality (stardom). This, then, is originality, doubly important in a performing art like dance that, as a theatrical art akin to acting, was associated with taking a role, of momentarily becoming someone else. In the age of mechanical reproduction, what Hillel Schwartz (2000) has called “the culture of the copy”, imitation and (formulaic) repetition were strongly associated with those cultural products that were not art – technical reproductions like photography and cinema – and with groups of people incapable of true creativity and originality – entertainers, women, “lower” classes and races.

The gender of the genius

Descriptions of Nijinsky as a genius relied on a complex and fine-tuned rhetoric that distinguished this dancer from virtuosi and stars. The Romantic rhetoric of genius had created very particular dichotomies in which one word signified genius and another, almost synonymous, its opposite. Thus, ‘talent’ was set apart from ‘genius’, ‘beautiful’ became the opposite of ‘the sublime’, ‘fancy’ was a derogative version of ‘imagi- nation’, and so on. Notably, as Christine Battersby (1989, especially 4–5, 108–13, 144–5) has discussed, these notions were also explicitly gendered to reinforce the aesthetic and professional hierarchy between the transcendent male genius and material female artist. In view of the importance of dilettantism and aristocratic privilege to Diaghilev’s coterie, it is crucial that genius was also rhetorically opposed to the commercial, material world of the philistines, the 114 Dancing Genius department store, its female customers and industrially reproduced goods (for example, Currie 1974, especially 10–1; Braudy 1986, espe- cially 476–82.) Nineteenth-century scientists went to great lengths to prove the mental and physical inferiority and intellectual and moral weakness of women: evidence from skeletal differences (Schiebinger 1987) to brain size (Gould 1984, especially 26, 103–6) attested that man was to woman like the original was to a copy, and that women’s crea- tivity was reproductive in the same way as their wombs were merely the soil for male seed.44 Critics could easily turn this against female free-form dancers: “Above all, Duncan’s art is reproductive: it is sound turned into motion”, wrote André Levinson (1982, 31; see also Daly 1992, especially 240–3). More often, ideas of women’s incapability for genius were phrased in ways that seemingly flattered women whilst actually relegating them to the role of inferior beings. For Havelock Ellis ([1890], 10–1), for example, women could indeed be as intelligent as men, but there was a qualitative difference to this intellect:

Women are comparatively free from “genius.” [ . . . ] The most important mental sexual difference lies in the relative and absolute preponderance in women of the lower, that is, the more important and fundamental nervous centers.

These ‘lower’ centres were, of course, primitive and sexual: woman was slave to Nature, controlled by her biology, and in need of male guid- ance. She was incapable of greatness, particularly of genius (Lombroso [1910], 137–9; also Hawkins 1997, 249–54; Bederman 1995, 108.) As women became increasingly visible in both formerly male and entirely new professions, and as women began to demand political and legal equality very publicly (even violently), bastions of male power reacted with hostility and derision. Successful, professional women artists were described as at best imitators of genius and at worst sexual perverts, ‘surrogate males’ who were ugly and lesbian.45 By contrast, a woman’s virtuosic performance could be lauded, especially when this reproduced or imitated the work of the male genius. Suitable artistic preoccupations for women included (household) crafts, acting and (operatic) singing, and increasingly, dancing (for example, Rath 1914, especially 186–90; Caffin & Caffin 1912, especially 296). With fears of degeneration on the rise, dancing was also considered suitable exercise for women, excluded from most sports.46 The Unique Genius 115

In England, where the separation of stage from society was not as tinted with sexual fantasies as in France (Berlanstein 2001, especially 106–7), society women had turned from social dancing to dance recitals since the 1890s, when men left the ballroom for the greener pastures of bachelorhood (Buckland 2011a, especially 118–38, 170–81). Even though becoming a professional in the theatre was considered daring, amateur theatrical dancing, (particularly for some philanthrophic purpose – see Ina Garvey in The Punch 26 March 1913) compensated for women’s lost control over who were society (Buckland 2011a, especially 111–17). Certain kinds of danced performance became increasingly acceptable, as evinced by the upward social mobility of some dancers (see, for exam- ple, Hindson 2007, 70). Some commentators feared this proliferation of danced performance would reflect badly on professional dancers (for example, Flitch 1912, 77, 119). Hence, the strategies used to set apart the dilettante from the professional free-form dancer were essentially the same as those used of Nijinsky. In England in particular, dancing women were discussed as spiritual beings, able to express their soul and to move the soul of the spectator (Allan [1908], 66; Caffin & Caffin 1912, 15, 54–9; Walkowitz 2003, especially 349–55). But at a time when dancing was generally discussed as apparently spontaneous, ‘inspired’, emotional reaction to music (as opposed to carefully composed design to a musical accompaniment aiming at specific intellectual and affec- tive responses), dance that lacked the support of systematic training regimes and centuries of tradition was easily dismissed as expressions of personality – and thus as virtuosity or stardom rather than as genius.47 The amateur fashion for free-form dance in salon society meant that by no means all who performed these new dances had dance training or were skilful (let alone creative) at what they did. Those who wanted to succeed had to ruthlessly weed out competition: Loïe Fuller went as far as suing those she called her imitators (Albright 2007, especially 27–8, 38) and accusing others of stealing her inventions (Fuller 1913, espe- cially 25–42, 53–7). Because the dance critic was presumably male and heterosexual, any praise directed at a female performer could be inter- preted as due more to her physical graces than to the artistic value of her performance (Foster 2001, especially 151–4, 162–3). Consequently, in aesthetic forms of dancing, women competed predominantly against other women for the favour of the male spectator (the critic). The rhetorical undermining of the female dancer was often subtle and reliant on the aforementioned discourse of genius. Writing for the ‘thick journal’ La Nouvelle Revue Française, Henri Ghéon (pseudonym of 116 Dancing Genius

Henri Vangeon, 1875–1944) assured his readers that Isadora Duncan’s dancing was not art, even as he acknowledged its importance as a phenomenon:

Le public a raison de saluer de sa faveur un spectacle de beauté, intermittente je l’accorde, mais authentique; de beauté, je ne dis point d’art. Mais il a tort de prendre pour de l’art, pour un art d’avenir, en progrès, en croissance, un jeu naturel, spontané – plus spontané qu’il ne paraît – et dont il n’est pas permis de prévoir le développe- ment possible. [ . . . ] N’exprimer rien! voilà précisément sa qualité essentielle. [ . . . ] Ne dût-elle jamais compliquer ses moyens ni perfec- tionner ses rythmes, nous continuerons d’applaudir Isadora Duncan sans arrière-pensée, comme un spectacle naturel.48

Here, the of Duncan’s art was expression of nature and of her nature in what seemed spontaneous, improvised dances.49 Spontaneity and improvisation were, as noted, marks of the virtuoso, but as defenders of the Russian Ballet often pointed out, the free-form dancers actually lacked the codified technique and years of training and discipline also expected of virtuosi.50 Moreover, only the male genius had the intellectual capacity to con- trol his body as an instrument for the creative process. J. E. Crawford Flitch (1912, 156) explained:

Nijinsky’s gestures mimic nothing. They are not the result of a dou- ble translation of idea into words, and words into dumb show. They are the mood itself. His limbs possess a faculty of speech. [ . . . ] His genius consists in a singular pliancy of the body to the spirit. (emphasis added)

Nijinsky’s genius lay in his capacity for danced mimesis: what made him unique was that he could express in dance what others could only in speech, and his body was always controlled by a “keen intellect” (New York Tribune 30 April 1916). In this manner, the dancing genius became a mental quality, the genius controlling the matter that was the (male) dancer’s body to the extent of making it “almost immaterial” (Terry 1913, 20). To cite another article by Ghéon (La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1910) for whom Nijinsky was the quintessential dancer:

[Nijinsky] justifie la place du jeune homme dans le ballet, de sa grâce plus pleine, plus diverse et plus intellectuelle, au milieu de The Unique Genius 117

l’enchantement féminin. Si l’excitation sexuelle y perd, l’art en s’élargissant y gagne,51 he claimed, clearly alluding to his own earlier comment on the pre- eminence of female dancers in French ballet as proof of degeneration. Nijinsky’s maleness automatically lifted his body onstage above the base instincts that tarnished the critical review of the dancing woman. Louis Laloy (in La Grande revue 10 June 1909) wrote of how Nijinsky:

il est virginal. Ici c’est une beauté sans attirance; c’est la beauté de l’homme, dont les femmes ne sont, pour l’ordinaire, ni capables, ni ambitieuses. L’art s’accorde avec la morale pour l’estimer la plus élevée.52

The virginal, asexual Nijinsky represents an art that is morally appro- priate, whereas the dancing woman remains a sexual object of desire. Identifying his view with the performers’ intention, Laloy claimed male superiority on the grounds that female performers are not usually capable of sublimating their beauty. André Suarès (in La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1912) elaborated this same argument:

Aucune femme n’approche de Nijinski. Nijinski a toute l’intelligence de son instinct. [ . . . ] il a de grâce dans la force [ . . . ] Sa beauté est pure de toute séduction sexuelle. Je parle , qui suis homme. [ . . . ] Dans la plus belle femme, on ne peut pourtant pas oublier la femme. Et plus on est sensible au charme féminin, plus le désir s’intrigue à l’admiration. Avec Nijinski, l’admiration est sans mélange. [ . . . ] Peu de sentiments nous porte- raient plus haut dans la découverte de la perfection morale.53

In this perfect example of rhetorical exclusion of women from the sphere of art, Nijinsky is elevated into an asexual and transcendental ideal that rescues the male spectator from the stigma of homosexuality and dance in general of accusations of indecency. Nijinsky’s art is art because even his instincts are intellectualised and, consequently, his body can be forgotten in a way that the female dancer’s body can never be. Thanks to this intellectualisation, the (male) critic can gaze at the male dancer at will without being suspected of sexual perversion. As noted, in Nijinsky’s case, women’s adoration of the male body for itself was a novelty. Most women writing of Nijinsky probably adopted the rhetoric of his dancing as somehow transcending the corporeal 118 Dancing Genius body simply to be taken seriously as critics. Thus, for Elizabeth Dryden (in The Trend, NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings), Nijinsky “personifies the virility, the nobility of an art, of which the woman embodies but the beauty”. Somewhat more moderately, the actress Ellen Terry (1913, 12) wrote that “the free and noble plastic of the male dancers in the Russian ballet has influenced the plastic of the women, making it far less sexual and far more beautiful”. Yet, for Terry, too, Nijinsky was unique in mak- ing dance transcend the body:

There are many young men in the Russian ballet who dance excel- lently with their bodies, even if they cannot leap as high as Nijinsky, but what really separates him from them is the fact that he dances not only with his body, but with his soul. (Terry 1913, 18)

Once more, Nijinsky becomes the exception, now from normative staged masculinity, through his immaterial soul. Notably, as a dancing genius Nijinsky also had to overcome the belief that dancing was only suited to atavistic or primitive people, who had mysteriously retained their connection to corporeal expression. Nijinsky’s individuality, like the individuality of the exceptional asexual female dancer, became a metaphoric transcendence over his nature as an Oriental man.54 Fortunately, the racial truth of the atavistic Oriental was completely reconcilable with the ideas of genius, since the truly exceptional individual would naturally be the leader of his people.

Interlude: dancing nation

In the nineteenth-century aesthetics, especially German Romanticism, the purpose of art was to express the collective ‘genius’ or ‘spirit’ of the people (Volksgeist, душа). Nation, as defined by Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), was a cultural unity of common language and shared customs that manifested itself in the rituals, crafts, music and dance of common peasants. Herder utopistically thought that once all cultures had reached political independence and geographical coherence in the nation state, expansionist politics and the state itself would become redundant. In reality, nationalism quickly became the leading justification for chau- vinist and imperialist politics, and the cultural characteristics of ’the peo- ple’ became biological truths of ’the race’ (for example, Hobsbawm 1987, 142–64, 252–6; Collotti 1990, 83; also Hall 1996b, 291–9.) In nationalist art, the common people and their creations were eternal and, as such, lacked history – folk culture did not transform or evolve, The Unique Genius 119 had no authors and could not be placed in a canon. Hence, as with the ‘primitive’ artefacts of non-European people, the productions of ‘the people’ were merely an inspiration and a starting point for true art, created by the professional artist according to academic compositional norms. The nationalist genius was of the national spirit, but appreciation of this national heritage had to be learned – neither the upper-class cosmopolites nor the uneducated common people understood the value of their native language and traditions. The peas- ants in particular were simple-minded and too willing to abandon their national heritage for mass-produced goods and urban entertainment. (Wilson 1973, especially 824; also Swift 2002, especially 77–9, 94–7.) Hence, the need for the individual artist-genius, the Messianic figure, a mediator who instinctively understood the common people and translated their truth for upper-class audiences. Expressing himself with uncultured directness, the genius refined the national language into poetry, turned the simple folk songs into music, depicted the life of peasants in salon painting, elevated the crude forms of local artefacts into sufficiently refined expressions of national, collective genius.55 National Romanticism, as this movement came to be known, tended towards retrospectivism and conservativism: any sign of urban moder- nity, any indication of change, or any trace of “inappropriate” or “for- eign” representational or performative modes were suspect, and treated as signs of the feared degeneration of the spirit of the people. Collectors of folk art and music subjected what they found to pre-existing ideas of harmony and excluded urban forms altogether as a threat to the ‘authenticity’ of the ‘eternal’ folk tradition (for example, Burke 1978, especially 19–22; Taruskin 1996, 723–35). As an expression of the physical health of the common people, folk dancing was an important part of this nation building. In some con- temporary discourses, dance was even used as an example or an indica- tor of the cultural level of progress and of biological degeneration.56 However, ethnographers did not as avidly collect folk dances as they did the more easily transcribable folk stories and folk music. In part, this was because the actual manner in which common people danced was unruly, even chaotic – a far cry from the academic tradition of ballet or the polite forms of nineteenth-century social dances. Consequently, in Northern Europe, including Russia, folk dancing came to mean an invented tradition of aesthetically “appropriate” forms of geometric regularity, simplified quadrilles and other society dances imposed upon the common people as a rational recreation that taught them manners and decorum (Hoppu 2011.) Paradoxically, for some Western authors 120 Dancing Genius

(for example, Flitch 1912, 123), Russians were particularly admirable for having preserved a national dance tradition threatened by foreign upper-class social dances like quadrilles. Against this nationalist significance of genius, Nijinsky’s racial origin could be reconciled with contemporary ideas about individual genius: genius had a dark quality that was deeply racialised, the more so when- ever the genius was seen as someone above conventional morality (Tanner 1989, 132–8; Klein 1992, 200–8; Currie 1974, 45–55). At the turn of the century, the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso ([1910]) had popularised the idea of genius as a special form of degeneracy, a throwback to barbarism (Battersby 1994, especially 170, 174). Nijinsky soon became the quintessential Russian – the artist whose physical art work simultaneously signified his racial sincerity and transcended it by making the physical act something spiritual, even if only a few could really perceive the transcendence in his dancing over the shocking sub- ject matter of his erotically subversive roles. Moreover, as I will discuss in the following chapter, the national characteristics of Russians justi- fied the excessive physicality of Nijinsky’s art, whilst his individuality took his dancing beyond the natural expression of his colleagues. Once more, this body was inscribed with qualities that perhaps speak more of cultural expectations and stereotypes than of the experiences of the Russian doing the dancing. In the Russian context, it was this national romantic interpretation of genius that really guaranteed that Nijinsky’s dancing could become indicative of genius. 4 Male Beauty

The spiritual androgyny of genius

To briefly reiterate the issues raised above, for the discourse of genius, Nijinsky’s biggest asset was being a man. To contrast the performativity of the virtuoso and the star, Nijinsky’s admirers placed much emphasis on how his dancing was creative, intellectual and asexual – all definitely male qualities (Battersby 1994, especially 4–5, 144–5). Although the profession of dancing was perceived as a feminine (collective, imitative) activity, in the discourse of genius (male, creative, individual) this femi- ninity became the factor that separated the unique Nijinsky from other dancers, both male and female. It might seem paradoxical that this effect was achieved by making Nijinsky’s image more feminine, rather than less so. As I will discuss in this chapter, the feminine qualities of the dancing genius were necessary to downplay the physical demands of dancing and the excess of masculinity in the barbarian Other. Both of these qualities were inaesthetic, ugly and unseemly – and had been associated with other male dancers at least since Romanticism (Burt 1995, especially 22–8; also McCarren 1998, 84–92). During the nineteenth century, the rise of the ‘new aristocracy’ of inherited wealth and bought titles had changed the emphasis placed on individual and appearance in an increasingly secular society. Contemporary discourses of the body were fraught with contra- dictions. On the one hand, the body was simply the natural truth that would automatically reveal any moral depravity of the individual – in sciences like eugenics, the pervert was always visibly different, just like the criminal was immediately recognisable from physiological features.1 On the other hand, aesthetes, moralists, pedagogues and advocates of physical culture and sports all appraised the body as malleable, as

121 122 Dancing Genius something that could be willed to improve. Beliefs about how the physical body corresponded to intellectual abilities and mental acuity increased interest in rhetorical techniques, etiquette, sport and other means of moulding one’s looks and behaviour.2 The body became a means for ascertaining the social status of an individual. Social mobility was seen as proof of the superiority of the bourgeois capitalist social system, but true class showed in refined understatement – knowing what to wear and how to behave, both when and where (see Nead 2005, 62–73). Excessive displays of wealth or emotion became signs of country bumpkins and the nouveaux riches (Wouters 1995a; Perrot & Martin-Fugier 1990, especially 208.) Although the public sphere was one of constant observation and evaluation, dance placed the body on display in a manner unsuited to the bour- geois man-about-town. The male ballet dancer, as noted, represented an aristocratic manliness, outmoded and non-normative, but particularly reproachful for displaying the body for itself, not as an instrument for a purpose other than itself (Adams 2005, 70–7; also Hatt 1999; Smith 1996, especially 119–20). Towards the end of the nineteenth century, views on culture rested on an ‘organic’ idea of history where each culture had a ‘natural’ life-span and was bound to be overtaken by a younger and fresher culture (as in Spengler 1926, especially 205–7; see White 1975, 15–16). Although by no means all who wrote of culture shared this view, with the end of the century in sight, members of the ruling classes of Europe were preoc- cupied with the possibility that their hegemony might be at an end. Shifts in the economic and social roles of genders and classes, changing cultural norms, fears of degeneration and racial decline all influenced how bodies could be represented and what these representations were interpreted to mean, so that what was acceptable for one gender or social group was excessive or degenerate for another. Art works became indicative of biological ‘truths’ as well as social and aesthetic conven- tions (as in Nordau 1993; Spengler 1926; see also note 1 above). As Michael Hatt (1999) has argued, in turn-of-the-century Britain, particularly amongst the upper classes, musculature was considered a sign of degeneration unless it was married with the right contours, with a grace and elegance that disavowed the sexual through appeal to aesthetics. Writing of Rodin’s art, Hermine Edelstein (in Musical America 9 September 1916) remarked that “his wonderful ‘Thinker’ is the physi- cal embodiment of what is coarse, brutish and unlovely in man”. Of course, the contradiction between the theme of the sculpture (thinking) and this coarse physicality was what made the work a masterpiece, but Male Beauty 123

Edelstein’s association of muscles with both ugliness and lack of refine- ment is typical of the period. In dance, too, the muscular male body had to be ‘feminised’ enough to fit the physical mass of muscles into the mould of contemporary aesthetic ideals. Similarly, a less muscular body could avoid the derivative implications of being too sexual if it portrayed enough health, virility and masculine purpose – in short, as long as the body seemed an instrument rather than an object on display (Hatt 1999, especially 253; Smith 1996, 119–20, 173–85, 216–19). In depictions of the male body, there was a fine line between effemi- nate youth and classical repose on the one hand and between virile maleness and morbid interest in anatomy on the other. Both extremes had positive connotations of the healthy culture that had existed before the vices of urban modernity (that is, in Ancient Greece and Rome) as well as negative ones linked with Asiatic barbarity and degenerative (sexual) excess (Hatt 1999; Smith 1996, 173–85; Breward 1999, espe- cially 244–53). Much of the aesthetic adopted in depictions of Nijinsky, perhaps even his style of dancing (his port de bras in particular) can be explained as a balance between these excesses. On one hand, the images we have of Nijinsky illustrate how dancing required a lot from the male body: this body attests to muscles devel- oped through use, not through weight training. The muscles blend into one another instead of being clearly defined lumps like the muscles of body-builders today because the joints are equally well muscled, guarding them from injury. As with turn-of-the-century muscle men, the middle of his body was barrel-like, his legs like tree trunks, and his neck very thick. Similarly, his chest was rather flat and his arms, though muscular, were indeed thin, particularly in comparison to his thighs. His was a body obviously suited to lifting heavy loads, but it does not correspond to our ideals of physical beauty, nor, indeed, would it have been beautiful for Nijinsky’s contemporaries. However, Nijinsky’s con- temporaries evaluated this body and representations of it very differ- ently from our mediatised perception. Instead of discussing the physical contours of the dancer’s body, apparent in photographs, they stressed how that body appeared in action – and they also evaluated images of the dancer based on how well they conveyed this sense of movement. The most complete series of photographs of Nijinsky in movement were taken by Eugène Druet in June 1910, of the Danse Siamoise of Les Orientales. Jacques-Émile Blanche used several of these for his series of paintings (c. 1910–13, see Pourvoyeur 1992). The differences between the photographs and the painted portraits are slight but telling: in the latter, Nijinsky tends to be subtly feminised through slight changes in 124 Dancing Genius the tilt of his head, emphasis on the details of his clothing, and the addition of appropriate background. Other photographs of the dancer were retouched to add to their apparent sense of movement: Nijinsky was often made to look as if he were leaping or running rather than standing in a pose for the camera.3 With a dancer, what mattered was what the body became and expressed in performance: some descrip- tions and many reminiscences of Nijinsky dancing stress how he could “hide” his muscles onstage and how he would “become” graceful when he moved,4 which seems to indicate a dissatisfaction with the overtly physical and still photographs of the dancer. This concern for grace shows particularly well whenever Nijinsky’s dance technique and the sheer physical strength that went into hid- ing the effort of his dancing are discussed, as in Geoffrey Whitworth’s (1913, 25–6) book on Nijinsky:

Now, one of the principal marks of genius is the combination in one and the same person of talents, common enough in themselves, but rarely found together. Nijinsky’s art is full of such combinations. One of them, for example, is that union of strength with lightness which is, perhaps, the most obvious feature of his style. Apart from the muscular development of hip and thigh, Nijinsky gives one the impression of being very slight in build. His body is slim as boy’s. His arms are delicate. His wrists and ankles almost dainty. While watch- ing him dance it may not seem strange that a being so agile should be able to lift and hold, a hair’s-breadth from the ground, another being like unto himself but frailer even than he – one of those Sylphides, perhaps, that sway like river-reeds in the breeze or hover like thistledown. Yet, thinking it over, you have to realise that after all it was a grown woman he held there, and that only the apparent ease with which he held her cheated you into the belief that she was light as air. Try for yourself a similar feat, and you will know how much of physical strength is needed to perform it even clumsily. And Nijinsky is nothing if not graceful. And graceful strength is strength twice over.

In this detailed description of Nijinsky’s physicality, the illusion of lightness onstage covers that which is brutal, grotesque and unseemly – the strength of the muscular body of the male dancer. His strength becomes admirable because it is invisible, hidden from view. However, the aesthetic concern for male beauty was not the sole impetus for Whitworth to illustrate Nijinsky’s body in this manner. The Male Beauty 125 depiction effectively turns Nijinsky into an embodiment of the rhetoric whereby the genius was a male with feminine characteristics – in this case, the muscular but graceful body is almost a metaphor for the spir- itual androgyny of genius. The genius was paradoxical in that he was a man with qualities nega- tive in everyone else. Intuition, emotion, imagination and other ‘femi- nine’ qualities were a requirement for the genius but detrimental in an ordinary person (regardless of their sex). In his introduction to Robert Montenegro’s series of drawings of Nijinsky, Cyril Beaumont ([1913]) wrote:

For Nijinsky is not a man in the true, robust sense of the word. [ . . . ] An examination of his rôles will show that none are allied with the physical strength and beauty of Manhood. The youth in love with his own image in ‘Narcisse’; the rose-coloured sprite in ‘Le Spectre de la Rose’; the lissom Oriental of the ‘Danse Siamoise’. These are not parts for the descendants of Mars and Hercules! Contrast him for instance with M. Adolf Bolm, the true embodi- ment of manlike vigour and masculine virility. How well we remem- ber that XIIth Century picture, the Ballet ‘Prince Igor!’ [ . . . ] Rôles such as these are impossible to Nijinsky, for always: ‘He impresses us as of another essence from ourselves.’ His characters are never those of a human being; they are all prod- ucts of Fairy Stories, ancient Folk Lore or Mythological Legends. That is why Nijinsky is unique in the history of Dancing.

Such rants about Nijinsky’s lack of masculinity always speak of this lack as a transcendental, superhuman quality. Genius effectively excluded the female sex, and the feminine characteristics of genius were absolutely necessary – they did not make him effeminate or female. Taken out of this context, Beaumont’s argument has been used as proof of Nijinsky’s homosexuality and/or mental abnormality and/ or incapability of dancing human characters.5 However, the notion of effeminacy does not rest on homophobia but on misogyny: only a firm belief that women are inferior to men makes men that adopt feminine mannerisms (or other ‘feminine’ characteristics in a particular culture) inferior as men. As Alan Sinfield (1994, vii, 26–7) has shown, before the Wilde trials effeminacy did not imply same-sex passions as much as excessive emotionality caused by too frequent association with women (see also Trumbach 1989, 133–40); and Nijinsky would also have been 126 Dancing Genius perceived as feminine because of his Orientality (Said 1994a, especially 206–8; Lewis 1996, 17–18). For Beaumont, however, Nijinsky was “not a man” in the sense of not being quite human, and he was not quite human because he was a genius. Nijinsky’s apparent lack of masculinity, the (staged) embodiment of graceful strength, was proof of a greater, more natural essence that was unique amongst Russian dancers. In the true connoisseur, this could evoke something transcendent. Any connoisseur in the audience would also have associated the figure of genius with the figure of the androgyne that was prominent in Symbolist aesthetics. Following Plato’s Symposium,6 the Romantics had wrought the androgyne into a representation of the Messianic truth of genius and, like the genius, the figure quickly acquired distinctly male genitals and a female soul (Busst 1967, especially 1–37; Battersby 1994, 10–13; West 1993, 71–84). Visualising the androgyne as an ephebe – a pre-pubescent boy, passive and vexed with questions of innocence and sexual desire – became extremely popular amongst Symbolist artists of the late nineteenth century. Symbolists gave spiritual justification for androgyny through occult mysticism, and stripped its representation of all sexual connotations through aesthetics. Yet androgyny also functioned as a positive prototype for the ‘third sex’, or ‘Uranism’ – the argument in contemporary sexology whereby same-sex attraction was indicative of biological difference, the homosexual being someone between male and female but not quite either.7 Considering that the Ballets Russes essen- tially revived fin-de-siècle themes, it is hardly surprising that Nijinsky became an embodiment of the androgyne. For example, Levinson (1982, 87) wrote of how in Nijinsky: “Elemental male strength is tamed by the effortless, matchless grace of an ephebe.” Since male strength was ani- mal-like, brutal and unseemly, only the grace of an asexual youth could save the male dancer from the stigma of physical effort. In many of Nijinsky’s most popular roles his costume emphasised his androgyny. Designers bedecked him with long hair, soft, colourful and luxurious fabrics, and jewellery. Something of this feminisation can be seen in contemporary illustrations of these roles, as in the portrait by John Singer Sargent of Nijinsky as the slave in Le Pavillon d’Armide.8 Here, Nijinsky’s make-up and accessories (the turban, the necklace enhancing his elongated neck, the large pearl earrings) emphasise his joyful laughter – decidedly un-masculine behaviour that, as Berliner (2002, 14–15) notes, was used to emasculate the black Other (see also Wouters 1995a and b). As noted, Nijinsky often smiled in photographs, some of which also represent him in poses traditionally reserved for women: in several photographs (in the Danse Siamoise of Les Orientales, Male Beauty 127 in Schéhérazade and in Le Spectre de la Rose, for example), Nijinsky is depicted looking demurely to the side or over his shoulder.9 I have not encountered other male dancers of the period depicted in such poses – not even in roles Nijinsky made famous. Bakst’s illustrations of Nijinsky’s costumes (as well as the costumes themselves) played their part in the creation of the dancer’s androgy- nous image. True to contemporary notions about the Orient, Bakst festooned all his Oriental characters with mixed gender markers: loose trousers, turbans, wide sashes and jewellery decorated his designs for both male and female dancers. In terms of displaying the body, how- ever, Nijinsky’s costumes were in a class of their own. The body-stocking in Le Spectre de la Rose not only made Nijinsky look positively naked but the cut recalls a woman’s décolleté (as The New York Times 13 April 1916 noted). The Golden Slave in Schéhérazade wore an elaborate bras- siere. The Faun’s costume was interpreted as nudity, his maleness amply emphasised by a strategically placed wreath of leaves (The Sketch 26 June 1912; Järvinen 2009a, 33). In one contemporary drawing, Nijinsky is illustrated in Karsavina’s costume for the Firebird (Femina 1 December 1911). Such explicit display of the male body for no other purpose than itself was dangerous, because it drew attention to the desirability of the male body and to the male dancer as a feminised object of (women’s) desire (Burt 1995, especially 16–28; also, Adams 2005). Because the gendering of manners, gestures and habitus as ‘mascu- line’ or ‘feminine’ is always in the eye of the beholder, it is unsurprising that most of the decidedly negative references to Nijinsky’s dancing as ‘effeminate’ or ‘mannered’ come from American newspapers in 1916, when the Ballets Russes fled war-torn Europe across the . In the United States, the ideal male was a rugged pioneer type specifically construed against the Old World, the former colonialising power. Ballet epitomised the feminine and aristocratic Europeanness unwelcome in American art. European men in general and European artists in par- ticular were represented as effeminate and decadent dandies, whose art would be overcome by Americans’ pioneering masculinity.10 Elsewhere, I have discussed the significance of this to how the Russian Ballet failed to conquer America (Järvinen 2010), but will here focus on two inter- esting changes of emphasis in Nijinsky’s American image: the stress on the effeminacy of his dancing roles; and the emphasis of his decidedly ‘un-starlike’ off-stage appearance. These discursive representations were mutually dependent. The former was used to argue for the need to support American art and American artists rather than importing decadent European culture at 128 Dancing Genius great expense. The latter then explained the first, and attested that Nijinsky’s effeminate behaviour was merely “European affectations” (Ted Shawn in The New York Dramatic Mirror 13 May 1916) – staged, not real. In other words, Nijinsky was represented as completely normal except on stage, or normal despite the European aesthetic conventions of ballet.11 In the contemporary European press, Nijinsky was never made ‘homely’ or familiar in this way: even off the stage, he remained apart from the norm, racially Other and a genius. In these discourses, his non-normative characteristics became proof of his Otherness and, as such, the rule rather than the aberration; in America the rever was true Also the role of contemporary art was different in European and American discourses of shared culture, in their creation of an ’imagined community’, to use Benedict Anderson’s (2006, especially 5–7) term. In Europe, contemporary forms of art evoked fears of degeneration and loss of cultural and political status. Americans, by contrast, saw the United States as a ‘new’ and ‘vital’ nation, destined for future greatness. In a former colony populated by immigrants, the purpose of eugenics (immigration and race laws) was to guarantee this manifest destiny, including the supremacy of the white (that is, the Anglo-Saxon) over the coloured – not, as in Europe, to eliminate existing undesirable ele- ments (Bederman 1995, especially 4–5, 10–23, 105–6; also Hawkins 1997, 184–248). Although Americans shared many European prejudices about Russia and Russians, the argument that the Ballets Russes was necessary for the revitalisation of contemporary culture was entirely a Western European one – Americans had vitality to spare. Europeans, in contrast, saw Americans as barbarians and embarrassing louts (for example, Huesca 2001, 172–3). Keeping these local differences in mind, many of Nijinsky’s roles were of a kind that in Western companies would have been danced by female travesty dancers: youths or superhuman creatures. As Lenard R. Berlanstein (1996, especially 351–6) has argued, one reason why female travesty performers outlasted the male ones in the turn-of-the-century music hall was that these women never performed as men – they were boys or youths or women in disguise. The same was true in ballet (Smith 2007, especially 51fn44; Gutsche-Miller 2010, 272–3). In hegemonic dance history, however, travesty performance has functioned as proof of the alleged decline in ballet as an art form – ballet prior to the “mas- culinising” influence of the Ballets Russes, the epitome of the modern (twentieth-century) art form where men were ‘real’ men. In the early hegemonic narrative about the Ballets Russes, Nijinsky’s androgyny and travesty-like roles connote both ‘effeminate’ and ‘queer’, making Male Beauty 129

Nijinsky compete not with the allegedly ‘real’ male leads of subsequent generations but with a culturally waning representational practice: thanks to European anxieties about degeneration, between 1880 and 1920 male impersonators all but disappeared from theatres (Berlanstein 1996, especially 358–61) except in Russia (McReynolds 2003, especially 151–2). For the same reason, recent attempts at queering Nijinsky by emphasising his androgyny tend to disappoint in their essentialism and compliance to the hegemonic narrative.12 What has confused previous research is that the Ballets Russes was actively censored only in the United States, apparently because the Faun was lewd and Schéhérazade encouraged miscegenation (Järvinen 2010, 84–5, 94). This has obscured the reality of racism in the European dis- course, where the danger of degeneration arose from within, from the nearly-alike (for example, Pick 1996, especially 39–43; Dyer 1997, 35, 48–60). Similarly, focus on sexual acts represented (or not) on stage has moved attention away from equally important issues of gender and class. In the hegemonic interpretation, Beaumont’s above-quoted appraisal of Nijinsky’s lack of masculinity, particularly in combination with American views from 1916, has become ‘proof’ of Nijinsky’s incapacity to dance the roles of ‘real’ men (whatever that means) and, as such, evidence of his homosexuality. This conflates the stage role with the person of the performer, and underestimates the power of the heteronormative matrix, the star’s allure, and the extent to which such allusions to non-normative sexuality could have appeared in print prior to the First World War. Most importantly, however, it makes Nijinsky the scapegoat for later (post-war) interpretations of male (ballet) dancing as an ’effeminate’ practice, and an excuse for not thinking through other plausible explanations for this development, such as changing gender roles in the wake of the War (Burt 1998a, 12–13; Hapuli 1995; Scott 1984; Humphries 2010). In contemporary sources, negative allusions to Nijinsky’s dancing as too feminine appear mostly in the Anglo-American press and centre on one role in particular, that of Narcissus in Narcisse (1911). This Ballets Russes production was criticised for being in bad taste,13 and ‘effemi- nacy’ may have been a means to verbalise what was at fault in the production. The Daily Mail (10 July 1912) complained that Nijinsky’s characterisation of Narcissus was “curious and wonderful. But he seemed less a simple narcissus than an odd orchid.” Similarly, the critic of The New York Sun (23 April 1916) remarked how the role

seemed to be congenial to Mr Nijinsky, who robed it in feminine graces, leaving one with that women delighted him 130 Dancing Genius

not. One could hardly help repeating Gilbert’s line ‘What a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be.’

The self-love of Narcissus had been established as perverse in late- nineteenth-century art, because the perfect human being the youth finds is a man – himself. The allusion is also clear in the citation used above of Reginald Bunthorne’s line in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience or Bunthorne’s Bride (1881) (Gilbert 1994, 165). Masturbatory narcissism was bad enough, since masturbation was believed to cause idiocy and degeneration, but contemporary sexology also represented masturba- tion and self-love as symptomatic of ‘sexual inversion’, homosexuality. Since Ancient Greece was also a frequent setting for homosexual erotica (as in the photographs of Wilhelm von Gloeden, or in the homosexual rights publication Der Eigene), the association made between mirror- gazing (well, pond-gazing) and same-sex desire in Narcissus would have been stronger than usual for the educated, upper-class audiences of the Ballets Russes (Dyer 1991, especially 67; Dyer 1993b, 25–9). Of all possible Greek legends, the choice of Narcissus as a theme of a ballet must have therefore raised some eyebrows amongst those mem- bers of the audience aware of Diaghilev’s relationship with Nijinsky. But it deserves to be asked how widely Nijinsky’s relationship with Diaghilev was actually known: it would have made little sense to adver- tise this off-stage relationship at a time when male homosexual acts were criminalised in most of the countries in which the Ballets Russes toured. Discretion was necessary also because the male dancer’s body so obviously attracted a new group of paying customers for whom the respectability of the enterprise was still imperative – women. A star’s success requires that fans can construct different imaginary personas for the star in the same role and thus have the star respond to their individual desires. This was – and is – clearly part of Nijinsky’s appeal: each of his roles could be read in different, even directly con- trasting ways. His most successful roles were so successful precisely because they could be interpreted in multiple ways, because they could evoke different desires, and be turned to work for different (aesthetic, political) agendas. Unlike Adolf Bolm, whose fierce warrior in Danses Polovtsiennes was widely praised, or Fokine’s traditional hero-prince in L’Oiseau de Feu, Nijinsky’s roles were predominantly unorthodox and emphasised his ‘otherness’ – either as other from civilisation (as with the Golden Slave of Schéhérazade), from normative male behav- iour (as in Narcisse) or from humanity in general (as with Petrouchka). Consequently, a given commentator’s selection of the roles used to Male Beauty 131 create an image of who Nijinsky ‘really’ was off stage tells more of their agendas than it does of Nijinsky. An imaginary ‘Nijinsky’ created upon the roles of, for example, Petrouchka, the Faun, and the young man in Jeux would not conform to the popular ‘effeminate’ image construed around ballets like Narcisse or, more famously, Le Spectre de la Rose. Unlike Narcissus, the role of the Spirit of the Rose, a transcendental essence of the symbol for beauty, was one of Nijinsky’s most popular roles. As noted, this role has become identified with Nijinsky’s super- human qualities, a symbol of Nijinsky’s dancing genius. But it has also been imbued with the idea of effeminate male dancing, in part because a costume of pink rose petals is incongruous with our notions of mas- culinity. Curiously enough, Bakst’s design for Nijinsky’s costume was in silver and bluish purple,14 which may indicate concern with how the costume was to function in the coloured lights typical of the Ballets Russes productions.15 Although in 1911 pink or lavender did not signify male homosexuality (green did),16 reading the colour of Nijinsky’s cos- tume as “gay” has greatly influenced later interpretations of the dancer, once again identified with his role. For contemporary audiences, too, Spectre was somewhat excessive, but more so because it effectively revolved around the dancing body of the male star. However, the fault for this excess lay not with the dancer or even the costume but the ‘irrational’ reception of this semi-naked danc- ing body by the philistine audiences:

Car le danseur Nijinski est son idole; il [c’est-à-dire: le snob] trans- porte sur lui le culte qu’en d’autre temps il eût voué à la première danseuse de l’Opéra [. . . mais . . .] il n’a pas encore compris que le jeune danseur valait par sa grâce virile, sans équivoque, sans fadeur, qu’il apportait dans le ballet un élément nettement masculin. Il l’applaudit comme une femme; son applaudissement l’effémine,17 claimed Henri Ghéon. By constructing a difference between the Aesthete connoisseur who came to the ballet for its transcendental values from the snob or the philistine, Ghéon attested that the audience – not the designer, librettist, choreographer or the dancer – was responsible for any signs of effeminacy in the male dancer. This assumes that the normative gaze of the presumed average member of the audience, who was male and heterosexual, could in effect, through a false process of appreciation, impose itself on the male genius as if he were a female star. The misguided authoritative gaze would therefore turn the male dancer into an effeminate dancer: that is, it would place him in the position of 132 Dancing Genius an object, passive and feminine, rather than read him as a subject, as an active creator of his art form (see Dyer 1993a, especially 112). Ghéon’s neat rhetorical trick contrasts Nijinsky not with other male dancers of the period but with female stars of former years. In this way, stardom gets associated with the non-connoisseur and the dancing woman as an object of his (sexual) appreciation, the genius with the connoisseur and the unique (asexual) male dancer. In such a frame- work, professing to see signs of effeminacy on stage effectively con- noted that the speaker was a philistine without the ability to see genius. Simultaneously, the association of effeminacy with lack of connoisseur- ship safeguarded Nijinsky from disparaging remarks that had to do with effeminacy, commercialism and (feminine) excess in the display of his body on stage.

The dancer observed

In works like Le Spectre de la Rose, Nijinsky’s virtuosity became genius because, rather than in spite of, the feminine characteristics of the genius. Relatively few contemporary images stress the difference between the unseemly muscular body required of the dancer’s craft and the graceful dancing genius on stage, although this constructs the back-stage as the ‘truth’ available only to the selected few. A famous caricature by Cocteau shows Nijinsky in the wings after a performance of Spectre. In it, Nijinsky sits on the right, still dressed in his costume of rose petals, physically exhausted and groomed by Diaghilev’s valet like a boxer between rounds, while Diaghilev, Misia, Sert and Bakst hover nearby as if the situation were life-threatening.18 As Ramsay Burt (1995, 79–82) has noted, this image exemplifies how Nijinsky’s contemporar- ies could see Spectre as display of masculine strength: the ballet was a long pas-de-deux, which allowed Nijinsky to use the whole expanse of the stage and to show off his physical prowess. Cocteau’s characteristic exaggeration of Nijinsky’s musculature emphasises this, perhaps point- ing to the artist’s own desire for the objectified male body. The obvious physical strength of the dancer indicated his barbarian virility and safeguarded his image from accusations of effeminacy and (urban) degeneration, but barbarity alone was inartistic. Consequently, most representations of Nijinsky conflated suggestions of action with submission and passivity, allowing multiple readings to coexist of the images and of the roles that inspired them. Two images of Nijinsky and Ida Rubinstein in Schéhérazade suffice to illustrate how subtly this was achieved. In one, Barbier (1913, plate viii) has depicted the Sultana Male Beauty 133 lying on her back, holding a red rose in full bloom (a symbol of sexual love) to her nose as the slave crouches on top of her, touching her naked breast. His lithe, boyish body, the dark colour of his skin, and his tentative gesture clearly posit him in the subjugated position of a slave, despite his apparent activity and her apparent passivity, lying prone on the ground. The implications of ‘lower’ senses of touch and smell further link the image to contemporary ideas about intimate, feminine, private sensuality (Classen 1998, especially 6–7; Corbin 1986, 6–8, 81–2, 186–8.) In a more famous portrayal of the Sultana and her favourite by Barbier (1913, plate vii), the slave is kneeling at her feet. She stands dominant, allowing him to fondle her naked midriff. Once more, she is not quite looking at him. However, the possibilities of movement and action are now reversed: she can move at will, he cannot, or not as freely. In both instances, the male slave is pleasing a female subject, but the absence of any signs of love or desire on her part designate that she is a femme fatale – fatal to him and to herself. Simultaneously, in both, he is the stereotypical sex-obsessed non-white man desiring a white woman – a racist figure par excellence.19 Although today Oriental imagery is the kind most often associated with Nijinsky, most of the existing photographs of Nijinsky in the pre- mier danseur parts evoke other aspects of the late-nineteenth-century aesthetic of the Ballets Russes. In Giselle, for example, Nijinsky was posed reclining at the feet of Karsavina’s Giselle (see Kahane 2000, 136). The pose is reminiscent of (neo-)classical male nudes, or the languid males of Decadent art, such as those in Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings. Corresponding these pictures with those of the Ballets Russes female dancers, the difference is striking: few of these women look passive and helpless. Ballerinas tend to stand firmly in virtuoso poses, most certainly neither swooning nor languid, and often dominating the picture space. Again, this reflected the plots of the ballets: of the heroines of Fokine’s choreographies, only the Firebird (see Taruskin 1996, 552–74, 638) was even remotely ‘tamed’ – mostly, the leading women played with the emotions of men and, in Orientalist works in particular, chose suicide over submission. This reversal of gender roles in part explains why the Diaghilev bal- let attracted women – in contemporary society, even salon hostesses could rarely take the position of the subject, let alone a dominant one. Contemporary notions about female desire are of crucial importance in understanding Nijinsky’s reputation, for he was one of the first men whose body per se could be publicly adored by women. At the turn of the century, male desirability was believed to stem from his personality 134 Dancing Genius and social standing, not his body or how he treated women. Women’s erotic feelings were subjected to the medical gaze of male doctors and deemed either immoral, degenerate or insane. Proper upper-class women simply had no sexual appetites, as they had been cultivated into artificial chastity. Texts by male authorities (such as Freud (1997; Freud 2000, especially 93–5, 100–1)) defining what was ‘normal’ reveal how they refused to acknowledge the possibility that women would priori- tise not the social standing of a partner but their physical or emotional characteristics (Corbin 1990, especially 629–33; Hansen 1998, 274–5; also Fee 1980.) On-stage and in the explicitly sexual roles of a silent new art, Nijinsky was the object of all sorts of desires omitted from written accounts, as frank discussion on why (or what in) the male body was desirable was quite impossible. Countess Anna de Noailles (1930, 5) reminisced:

Nijinsky, figurant la perfection et l’inouï, suscitait les sentiments passionnés les plus divers. “Je voudrais qu’il fût !” s’écria, un soir, auprès de moi, en croisant ses deux mains sur son corsage dans un geste religieux, une vieille dame, jusque là raisonnable, qui regardait avec une félicité maternelle Nijinsky bondir, s’épanouir au-dessus du tumulte et des massacres de la cour fastueuse des Mille et une Nuits.20

In conjunction with the licentious Schéhérazade, this kind of maternal sentiment can be read as a delicate hint at stronger passions in (younger) women. Certainly, some of the detailed descriptions of Nijinsky’s danc- ing body by female reporters can be read as indicating such feelings (for example, Molineau in The Bellman 30 December 1916). After depicting the different aspects of the total work of art in the Russian Ballet for her American readers, Elizabeth Dryden (in The Trend, NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings [c. 1911]) ended her article with several paragraphs of breath- less adulation of Nijinsky’s body that she deemed was the greatest thing the Ballets Russes had to offer. The tone of such articles is reminiscent of articles on early film stars, where the male star was endowed with all sorts of physical and emotional characteristics (deCordova 2001, especially 72–3, 87). Both film and dance were silent art forms that displayed the body as simultaneously both the instrument and the end-result of expression, and left much of the inter- pretation to the spectator. The muteness of dance and cinema allowed both to encompass more than that which could be said aloud – censorship and the barriers of language might have stopped similar imagery in both Male Beauty 135 theatre and writing (Studlar 1995, 107–8). Simultaneously, these bodies on display were often construed in ways that allowed multiple interpreta- tions, particularly in the safe darkness of the theatre. Although it would be tenuous to claim that Nijinsky was a direct prec- edent to male stars like Rudolph Valentino, their fame indicates the new importance of women as desirable and desiring consumers. Valentino’s stardom has been seen as a product of the movie industry that realised women had sexual desires that could be capitalised upon, and his pub- lic image shared many of the characteristics of Nijinsky’s stage roles: Valentino was a male ‘vamp’ – playing seductive roles in Orientalist settings, his body offered as an object of desire for female spectators on screen and off. Also like Nijinsky, Valentino was usually set semi-naked in exotic and luxurious surroundings that enticed fantasies of being able to possess not only the luxury of the set but the rare treasure that was the star’s body (Hansen 1998; also Trimborn 2000.) Curiously, in a job application for Universal Studios, Valentino claimed to have given Nijinsky a tango lesson (Leider 2003, 59) and, in 1923, his second wife Natasha Rambova, who had seen Nijinsky in New York (Bernays 1965, 105), persuaded him to pose as Nijinsky’s Faun (Trimborn 2000, 20; Leider 2003, 185–6). Such impersonations of Nijinsky, either on the variety stage (see 1912 review of A vos souhaits) or in private parties (The Times 5 March 1914; Garafola 1992, 322), attest to his status as a celebrity. However, it is equally important that many of Nijinsky’s roles were in works that had strong female characters that allowed for a reading that did not focus on the male as a subject of the ballet. Whereas in classical ballet, such as La Sylphide (1832), it is the man pursuing the ethereal girl, in Spectre it is the girl’s fancy that propels the narrative – the dance both begins and ends with her actions. This was a dominant trend in the Ballets Russes: works like Cléopâtre could also be read as the story of a woman (Ta-Hor, originally danced by Anna Pavlova) attempt- ing to save her faithless lover (Amoun, performed by Fokine) from the clutches of the evil femme fatale (Cleopatra, famously portrayed by Ida Rubinstein). The actions of principal women also lead the stories in Schéhérazade and Thamar, even if neither the Sultanan or the Princess gain any permanent happiness in the process. In contrast to these strong subjects, Nijinsky was cast like the ballerinas of the nineteenth- century ballets and objectified through the narrative. Many of his roles had him play the victim of predatory women but always a most willing victim; or they reiterated the ballerina’s role as the love interest of the principal character – either ethereal (as in Spectre), or in need of gentle ‘taming’ (as in Schéhérazade). 136 Dancing Genius

So, what did female spectators think of these works and of Nijinsky’s roles in particular? Frankly, it is hard to tell. Because connoisseurship was framed as an ‘objective’ male discourse, much of the research on the Ballets Russes has focused on reminiscences and reviews by male authors, for whom women were fans to be derided for their attraction to the physical appearance of the genius. Particularly, later reminiscences allocate those characteristics excluded from the ‘objective’ male view- point to anonymous female spectators, fans whose silly desires were then actively used to ‘prove’ Nijinsky nothing but a star whose stardom faded when he left the stage. In contemporary discourses, the articula- tion of desire by a woman – especially a woman in a prominent social position – was dangerous to the way society was ordered. Hence, it is vir- tually impossible to find women stating their desire aloud, even through distancing it by speaking of other women in the audience. Few of the women who regularly attended the Ballets Russes performances wrote about their experiences, or wrote of it only decades later, and most of them spoke more of what the men did than of their own role, let alone of how they might have felt about the spectacles (for example, Noailles 1930; Morrell 1963). For all the obvious reasons, few women became professional artists (Nochlin 1989b, especially 145–58) and assumptions about ‘proper’ gender roles affected the roles women played in journal- ism as well: female journalists rarely reviewed performances, whereas their male colleagues also wrote society news, portraits and interviews – the genres to which most of the articles by women belong.21 Deducing affective responses from descriptions of performances is tricky because, regardless of sex or gender, desire is not straightforward or easily articulated, and its object is always-already unattainable. Nijinsky was not a normative kind of man both because he was an exotic star and because he was attributed with genius, and his ‘gender- bending’ roles complicated matters still further. When reminiscences speak of reversed gender roles in the adoration of Nijinsky – women who kissed his hand, for example (Bourman 1938, 205) – they are sus- pect, since they fit the intentional feminisation of Nijinsky too well. However, as voicing same-sex desire was even more hazardous to one’s social standing than voicing female desire, it is possible Nijinsky could have acted as a ‘surrogate woman’ in lesbian readings of the Ballets Russes narratives. For example, Romola de Pulzsky’s infatuation with Nijinsky’s feminised image, especially the figure of the Spectre of the Rose, is rather obvious (Nijinsky 1980, especially i:247, 430), although following her husband’s institutionalisation, she only seems to have engaged in lesbian relationships (Ostwald 1991, 87; Nijinsky Male Beauty 137

1991b, especially 240–50, 402–5, 410–16). However, regardless of gen- der preferences, lesbian women both made and consumed images of the star dancer: Una Troubridge (see Newton 1989, 291–3) made a sculpture of Nijinsky and Winnaretta de Polignac bought a portrait of him by Blanche (de Cossart 1978, 102). Because of the scarcity of contemporary accounts by women, and because of social expectations regarding appropriate female behaviour, what remains of women’s desire is stories that frame this desire in nega- tive terms.22 Male connoisseurs, whose articles on the Ballets Russes are still cited as exemplary, construed female (heterosexual) desire as the opposite to their own sublime aesthetic pleasure. Like nineteenth-century opera and ballet reviews (Henson 2007, 8), the critics associate women’s experiences with fandom and the popular stage, the cult of virtuosity rather than their own (male) connoisseurship. Sometimes this gender- ing takes place under humorous guise, as in Le Rire (1 July 1911) where excited “snobinettes” contemplate Nijinsky’s antics with glazed eyes and force the dancer to leap to safety. Women are used to express emotional responses to the man dancing as when Nijinsky leaps and women gasp in surprised amazement (Comœdia 20 May 1909, quoted above). When physical (sexual) desire for the male dancer was written off as women’s silly infatuation (see Le Rire 25 June 1910), the dangers of female desire also were curtailed. Interestingly, it was only after Nijinsky’s choreographies shocked the previously well-disposed male critics that the excessive female behaviour began to affect the dancer’s reputation:

Je suis allé voir Nijinsky hier soir au Châtelet. Il est sublime. Mais je l’ai trouvé un peu changé. Il y a dans certaines de ses attitudes un je ne sais quoi de solennel et même de hiératique que l’on ne remar- quait pas au début de la saison. On a dû lui dire qu’il était en train de fonder une religion, et comme cette aventure n’est arrivée jusqu’ici à aucun danseur, il en éprouve visiblement un mélange d’orgueil et d’embarras. Il se rend compte qu’il a charge d’âmes, et que du bond qu’il va faire ou de la pose qu’il va prendre dépend peut-être le salut de toutes les jeunes femmes groupées au balcon, à l’orchestre, dans les loges, et dont les regards fixés sur lui implorent le frisson sacré. Quelle responsabilité pour un danseur et que de choses nous avons mises dans le danse, que M. Jourdain ne soupçonnait pas!23

Notably, Nijinsky the dancer is here explicitly depicted as the sex-object of foolish girls. Although this was not the first instance when Nijinsky’s audience was presented as including fashionable snobs who came to see 138 Dancing Genius the spectacles because they were sexually titillating or simply entertain- ing, it was the first time Nijinsky was portrayed as wanting to please this particular audience – behaving in a manner unworthy of a great artist. Women’s desire can often be deduced from a marked absence in the text. When a male critic spoke of Nijinsky’s dancing as pure of sexual seduction and then underlined that he was speaking as a man (André Suarès in La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1912, qouted above) it is likely he did this to allow for the possibility that Nijinsky was indeed a sexual object for those in the audience who were not men (that is, women) – or perhaps not ‘real’ men like himself (that is, sexual inverts). Since we do not know how many members of the audience knew of Nijinsky’s intimate relationship with his impresario, it would be haz- ardous to read too much into such sources. Homosexuality, especially upper class ‘sexual inversion’, where a person both looked and behaved like a member of the opposite sex, was a form of degeneration of the species, and associated both with the decadent Orient (where men lazed about in skirts) and with the excessive ease of contemporary urban life. Notably, although Russians were Orientals, they were supposedly free of such affectations, since their race had not yet had a civilisation from which to decline (see, for example, Hawkins 1997, 196). As noted, Russian representations of sex and violence were justified through this argument about racial vitality, their fundamental ‘health’ as a people. Inversion and androgyny figured prominently in the aesthetic theo- ries of late nineteenth-century Decadents, since both could be thought of as supreme forms of artifice, and artifice was superior to nature. In this discourse, instead of being decorative and superficial, ballet could become true art because it was artificial and about formal qualities. The same qualities also came together in the figure of the dandy, that master of elegance who never showed his true self to anyone. The Romantic period, to which Decadence owed so much, had seen the emergence of the dandy in figures like Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (who cited Beau Brummel, the Regency dandy-avant-le-mot, as his forebear) and Charles Baudelaire. The dandy, as Baudelaire (1992, 419–22) defined him in 1863, was an aristocrat of taste, a man “who has no profession other than elegance”, especially no profession that would necessitate dealing with the sordid material aspects of life.24 Hence, the mark of the truest dandy was refined understatement (Baudelaire 1992, 420; also Braudy 1986, 478–9). During the nineteenth century, the great masculine renunciation – the increasing similarity in the cut and colour of male attire – meant that true connoisseurship in male fashion became increasingly difficult. In both economic and social terms, male finery was an important part of nineteenth-century Male Beauty 139 consumer culture. However, male fashion consisted of small details and sophisticated accents – the quality of the fit, of the stitch and the cloth, the tie of one’s cravatte (Harvey 1996, especially 29–32; Breward 1999, especially 87–8, 170–1). Consumerism was generally understood as excessive and feminine, characteristic of women’s lack of self-restraint. Even though the dandy was excessive in the amount of attention he placed on his outer appearance, nothing in his tailored outfit smelled of the department store.25 But the dandy was also dangerous. In making one’s life a work of art and claiming that Nature, in fact, imitated Art and not vice versa, the dandy threatened to reverse moral values of right and wrong. The empha- sis on surface, be it artistic form or personal attire, denied the superiority of core and content and upset the hierarchy whereby the true and valu- able natural givens lay beneath the culturally constructed appearance. If surface and form were all there was, an individual would lack the self integral to moral judgement, the ability to distinguish between good and evil that in turn was integral to a civilised society.26 Similarly, if the artificial were as real as the real, inborn biological givens such as class and race would no longer predetermine the individual’s place in the social system and justify the bourgeois claim to power. In this man- ner, despite the dandy’s claims to aristocratic aloofness from politics, the figure of the dandy was, in a manner of speaking, at the epicentre of the insecurities of the ruling classes.27 The Wilde trials created a strong connection between the dandy, his claims of the superiority of artifice, and same-sex sexual preference (for example, Breward 1999, especially 171–3) – a connection Diaghilev would certainly have known, even if Russian dandyism followed a slightly different set of rules (see Vainshtein 2002). Diaghilev took great care of the way he appeared,28 because he had to look aristocratic as well as claim to be a nobleman. It is hardly surprising that, writing after his conversion to Tolstoyanism, Nijinsky scolded Diaghilev’s vanity: he claims Diaghilev dyed his hair black with the exception of his charac- teristic white lock, and that he wore his monocle just to impress people (Nijinsky 1999, 110). To a degree, Diaghilev’s attraction to ballet can also be explained through his dandyism, for if the dandy made life theatre, that is, artifi- cial, ballet made theatre artificial. Originating in aristocratic courts, the movements of ballet were graceful and polished but far removed from everyday movements. Since ballet used mime and meaningful gestures rather than words to communicate its narrative, it created a world of its own, more perfect than the real. Simultaneously, the discipline and exertion needed for the execution of the gestures to appear natural and 140 Dancing Genius for the steps to seem effortless created a falsity that paralleled the falsity in the dandy’s carefully cultivated aloofness. The dandy’s audience, like the ballet’s audience, had to know what effort and skill went into the seemingly easy performance for them to appreciate the performance. But what of Nijinsky? His dancing roles were reminiscent of the opu- lent fantasies of the fin de siècle: his make-up, costume, and the luxuri- ous settings of the Oriental works in particular turned his onstage person into a glittering artificial being. Outside the stage, and even before his time with Diaghilev, Nijinsky seems to have been quite particular about his attire: contemporary portraits attest to tailored coats, changing hairstyles, and elegant rings and cufflinks, and his Diary also includes Tolstoyan condemnations of his own youthful vanity (Nijinsky 1999, 110). Nijinsky was quite aware of his position as a celebrity, and the con- sequent media attention to his off-stage appearance. Many of the photo- graphs of him in street clothes were either taken for publicity purposes or used as such. Sometimes, the poses were carefully staged: in a portrait taken by Stravinsky and published in Comœdia 18 April 1912, the impec- cably dressed Nijinsky is gazing into a mirror, which doubles his image. His pose imitates representations of thought in fine art, notably Rodin’s Le Penseur (first exhibited in 1904), but if eyes mirror the soul, we see the eyes of this genius only in reflection, just as the transcendent that the genius knows is unknowable to us except in reflection, in his work of art. However, whereas his well-nigh constant companion, Diaghilev – “mentor aimable et polyglotte” (“lovable mentor and polyglot”, Comœdia 25 April 1911) – fitted into the figure of the dandified aris- tocratic arts patron, and his exaggerated manner suited expectations about Russians, Nijinsky’s dandification blurred his exotic Otherness. The dandy may have been a spectacle unto himself but this was a decid- edly Western surface, chosen by the dandy to exemplify his subjecthood. Furthermore, with Nijinsky, people were constantly undermining the dandy’s emphasis on surface and appearance by looking for a ‘wild’ core, a ‘barbarian’ essence underneath the off-stage public figure. On stage, in a role, Nijinsky’s alleged genius provoked a similar search for the ‘natural’ core of his genius, and this need for the natural went against the superiority of artifice lauded by fin-de-siècle Decadents. With good reason, it can therefore be asked whether Nijinsky’s onstage figure was dandified at all, since Orientals were, as noted above, prone to all sorts of excess, including excess in luxurious costume. Fortunately for us, this interest in the body of the genius and its significance meant that contemporary authors actually said a lot about Nijinsky’s body, which allows us to turn next to the corporeality of the genius. 5 Corporeality

Otherness inscribed on the body of the genius

This chapter evokes those disturbing qualities of the body that kept reappearing when the Russian male dancer was discussed as a genius: the fact that dancing was always the work of physical bodies, the labour of muscles that had to be trained to perform to perfection. By looking at the qualities associated with the dancing genius, I offer some reasons why this trained body has been relatively absent from the Nijinsky myth. In particular, I want to emphasise that the materiality of the dancing body may not be as opposed to writing as is often claimed – its absence simply requires implementation of different methods of source criticism. As Elizabeth Grosz (1994, especially vii–xi) has noted, the physical body always brings into focus desires, practices and identities of the experiencing subject, who is always a sexed/gendered subject. But how can one bring historicity into this equation and discuss the experiences of and by subjects in the past? To a degree, cultural expectations regard- ing male and female behaviour in contemporary society condition how maleness and femaleness are performed on stage. But as illustrated above, any performances of gender exist in complex interplay with the person of the performer and her/his audiences, mediated in whatever records remain. Since the purpose of a description is to influence the opinion formed based on what is said (or left unsaid) and how, cultural notions of what were acceptable and unacceptable modes of represent- ing gender on stage are echoed in the expressions chosen for the pub- lished record of what the performer was like, on and off stage. In an art of the body, the body becomes a special locus for genius; and any features of the body become marks of the inexplicable truth of

141 142 Dancing Genius genius, which, as already noted, was deeply racialised. In contemporary accounts, Nijinsky’s body became a pre-determined, gendered marker of both racial difference and genius verified through visual, linguistic and even physical contiguity. Descriptions that have been read as truths about, of and by a historical body actually sought to validate current notions of what ethnic Others and geniuses had in common: the marks of Otherness were specifically inscribed (Grosz 1994, especially 140–4) on Nijinsky’s body in order to make this body fit the discursive forma- tion, and provide concrete evidence for an abstract truth whereby the corporeal body of the dancer carried the signs of the inherent Otherness of genius. The most common characteristics attached to Nijinsky’s appearance were his allegedly ‘Mongolian’ features – his high cheekbones, and in particular his slanted, almond-shaped eyes emphasised by many Western artists. Considering that the eyes were believed to mirror the soul within, this Orientalisation of Nijinsky’s eyes points to how his physical features were construed as proof of a presupposed racial differ- ence: “With a dead complexion, lank, dun-coloured hair, high cheek- bones, long and somewhat obliquely set eyes, Nijinsky has the racial characteristics of the Slav” (Flitch 1912, 155.) Such characteristics were seen because a racial difference was assumed to exist: it is hard to find them in photographs of Nijinsky unless one has grown to expect them. Notably, whereas the Other’s representations of the self were always ridiculous and inaccurate, the self’s representation of the Other was always accurate and truthful. Thus, Russians, too, represented themselves as uniquely capable of representing, even embodying other races (for example, Bourman 1938, especially 7). At the turn of the century, people were still accustomed to reading from each other’s appearance facts about the other’s social status, profession and national origin. A laundress dressed, spoke and acted differently to a bourgeois housewife; a German took different things for granted to a Spaniard. Notably, these perceived differences were attributed to biological rather than cultural or social causes and naturalised as stereo- types, presumed characteristics of race, class and gender.1 In a textual form, where such visual and aural signs were lost, jour- nalists regularly recreated them as telling characteristics of their sub- ject. Interviews with or reports of Nijinsky and other members of the Ballets Russes as well as reports on Russian audience members generally emphasise the Russians’ mode of speech, their gesturing and their attire. The characteristics that strengthened stereotypical notions of Russians as barbarian Others became emphasised, and similarities were explained Corporeality 143 as superficial covers for the ‘truth’ beneath (for example, La Revue musi- cale 1 July 1909). Popular assumptions affected what was recounted and how: the Other was expected to be naïve in the ways of the world and incapable of lying convincingly (for example, Hall 2002, 244–51; Classen 1998, especially 66–8), so the Russians’ affective difference and child-like qualities were exaggerated in both contemporary descriptions and later reminiscences. Because the genius was also attributed with sincerity, it is hardly surprising that Nijinsky was presented as speaking childishly, gesticulating wildly, or being ‘about to leap’ into dancing, taking recourse to his most ‘natural’ form of expression. “Même au repos il avait l’air de danser imperceptiblement comme ces voitures sensibles qu’on appelait autrefois des huit-ressorts”,2 claimed Claudel (1959, 128) in a rather strange objectification of the dancer (the meta- phor was probably meant to evoke elastic and smooth motion across uneven surfaces, but it still equated the dancer with a vehicle). Descriptions like these served to reinforce the distance that separated the Western spectator from the dancing Russian. They asserted that Otherness willed out: Nijinsky is often portrayed as awkward whenever he was dressed in a suit (that is, like a Western man) in contrast to his natural ease when in stage costume, performing the Other on stage. References to his civil outer appearance were also frequently juxtaposed with factors indicating a ‘wild’ core, a true ‘barbarian’ essence:

this quiet little gentleman in immaculate English clothes, can it – can it really be Nijinsky? He is not tall enough, surely – and his hair looks so sleek and dark and normal. Not till later on, when you have had time to notice the fine and subtle modelling of the cheek, the narrow, flickering eyes, the clean but rounded lips, will you begin to realise that this must be he. And after a while, when the first hesita- tion of his manner gives way to vivacity, when the whole face bright- ens with the thought that is a little difficult to express in a foreign tongue, then at last you come to know that all is indeed well. For here is a man who is intensely, sincerely, nervously alive. He has a brain – there is no doubt of it. And you feel you would like to know what he thinks about everything. (Whitworth 1913, 32–3.)

Nijinsky’s apparent likeness to Western man is here revealed to be but a suit of clothes he wears, like a mask over his true face, which is viva- cious and foreign. Yet such accounts tell us much about what people expected of Nijinsky: the truth of this extraordinary being could not be in his overtly ordinary Western appearance. Nijinsky’s suits never fitted 144 Dancing Genius him no matter how well tailored they were because, for the audience, they always collided with his presumed nature. In this conjunction, it is good to remember that although Russians were considered somewhat exotic, they were nonetheless treated as a white, semi-European people, unlike the ‘primitives’ of colonised ter- ritories exhibited in zoos, world fairs and museums of natural history.3 But ballet is a deforming practice: its training produces a particular (abnormal) musculature and body (Stoneley 2007, 9, 12–15). Taken together with the interest in the Other, the star dancer’s body was described in detail that stressed the atypical and the abnormal in ways that effectively made Nijinsky into a freak. The body of the freak, like the body of the colonialised native, was a spectacle in itself, to be gazed at (for a price, on stage) at will (for example, Stallybrass & White 1986, especially 39–42; Schwartz 2000, 50). Henri Ghéon (in La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1910) found that

Des jambes et des cuisses pleines, aux muscles anormalement déve- loppés, soutiennent fermement, emportent, selon la miraculeuse élasticité de leurs bonds, un torse jeune, des bras souples, une large et haute encolure, un visage grave et riant, puéril et pensive, le visage même de la race slave. Les pommettes saillantes, les joues en plan droit, les lèvres fortes …4

Although Ghéon went on to explain that “Nijinsky n’a jamais que le visage de ses rôles et derrière son personnage il s’efface, modestement” (“Nijinsky only has the face of his roles and behind them he effaces his character, modestly”), his description fragmented the dancer’s body and thus justified his own and his readers’ interest in this body (similarly, Van Vechten 1917, 161–2). The strategy is familiar from nineteenth- century descriptions of ballerinas and other performing women, but unlike these dissections of beautiful female bodies, Nijinsky’s con- temporaries emphasised the ugliness and monstrosity of his body and his transformation of this body on stage, in movement. Jacques-Émile Blanche characterised him as: “un gamin assez laid, haut comme une botte, presque monstrueux par le développement de ses muscles, cependant beau comme Apollon quand le transfigurait son art”.5 The mysterious transformation of ugliness into beauty, freakishness into art, paralleled the secret of the genius and the secret of art itself, which the privileged observer here offered as proof of his connoisseurship. Actually, primary sources exaggerate the otherness of Nijinsky to the extent that it becomes impossible to decipher whether he really was Corporeality 145 behaving in a way different from his contemporaries or fellow country- men of whom we have far fewer descriptions. In accounts postdating Nijinsky’s mental illness, any anecdote could also be used as ‘proof’ of his madness, the representation of Otherness becoming symptomatic of actual difference. But what was true of the madman was also, para- doxically, true of the genius: in the discourse on genius, anything could be proof of genius, including madness, and although the truth of the genius was in his art, the need to explain genius attracted attention to the genius in private life and to his physical body. Hence the prominence of anecdotes about Nijinsky as being very dif- ferent offstage to the roles he danced onstage. As a star, Nijinsky was not only identified with the roles he danced but expected to live a life accordingly. As a genius, however, the opposite was true: the genius was expected to be utterly dedicated to his art and shun all worldly con- cerns. Lady Ottoline Morrell (1963, 227) remembered how:

There were at this time fantastic fables about him [that is, Nijinsky]: that he was very debauched, that he had girdles of emeralds and dia- monds given him by an Indian prince; but on the contrary, I found that he disliked any possessions or anything that hampered him or diverted him from his art.

Yet, because Nijinsky’s art required displaying his body on stage, many members of the audience probably expected him to be as dashing outside the stage as on it. A note of disappointment can be noted in contemporary reports of Nijinsky in private life, particularly in the American accounts from 1916–1917, when journalists who had imbibed European accolades of Nijinsky’s unearthly dancing genius encoun- tered the man himself. In one unattributed press clipping (in NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings, unattributed [1916]), the reporter jokingly professes uncertainty about whether her typewriter can take the shock of spelling Nijinsky’s name on paper, so great was the dancer’s fame. The cultural expectations of American audiences regarding a European star make it difficult to know how much these reporters actually stressed Nijinsky to be an unassuming, modest, and down-to-earth ordinary person so as to fit him into local ideals of democracy and the cult of the self-made man.6 Certainly, similar examples can be found in European sources, particularly Russian ones discussed in Part III. Yet Nijinsky’s American image as a homely fellow was equally fabricated for publicity, as is evident from stories like “World’s Greatest Dancer Walks Broadway Unnoticed” (The Modern Dance Magazine, December 1916/January 146 Dancing Genius

1917). The report stressed how Nijinsky looked quite ordinary, more like a shop assistant than a celebrity figure. These were positive features in a European star of his magnitude, more so because they contrasted the heady stories that circulated in the wake of his ‘debauched’ choreo- graphic work that had been front-page news even in America (for exam- ple, The World 17 May 1913). Yet no shop assistant could have afforded the tailored suit and “fur-lined coat” Nijinsky is described wearing. In the rhetoric of dancing genius, the behaviour of the genius in pri- vate gained special significance: anecdotes separate the stage, where the body became an object of feminine consumption and the effeminising gaze of the audience, from the normal, masculine private person, who was the genius. In a manner of speaking, the off-stage person showed how the genius overcame the (feminising) obstacles of his chosen medium. Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (1978, 210–11) remembers he was asked to translate for Nijinsky in 1909, when the dancer went shopping for a bathing kit:

In the choice of a bathing-suit, he showed himself as exacting as if it had been a stage costume. He had to be taken into a fitting-room, and tried several on before finding a fit which satisfied him. The attendant’s reminders that the fabric would shrink when wet were so much waste of breath. I had to continue my interpreting in the fitting-room, and was amazed to see how powerful and harmoni- ous Nijinsky was in build. Although his muscles were on the big side, his body suggested that of a Greek athlete, reposeful as well as strong, and in sharp contrast with the mobile, monkeyish face. It had none of the almost feminine grace which he so often showed when appearing in stage costume – in Armide, for instance, and later in Le Spectre de la Rose.

Such intimacy with the renowned dancer was, of course, the pleasure of the very few, which explains why Calvocoressi would include such an anecdote in his book of reminiscences – it emphasises that he is inti- mate with and thus knows the truth of the dancer. This private, exclu- sive truth contradicts the public impression of Nijinsky as an Oriental (“almost feminine”) figure in several interesting ways. Nijinsky as a masculine ideal (the Greek athlete) and his masculine (exacting) behav- iour are explicitly contrasted with what the rest of the world would see of him on stage. Both Nijinsky’s physique and his behaviour are repre- sented as proof of Nijinsky’s mind controlling his body (another male quality). At the same time, the pointing to his animality (his monkeyish Corporeality 147 face) marks him as Other, pointing to his ‘natural’ expressivity and to the ‘naturalness’ of the offstage situation. And of course, Nijinsky is, once again, subjected to the normative gaze of the authoritative (French) author. Yet, unlike the aforementioned American depictions of Nijinsky off- stage, Calvocoressi keeps stressing the dancer’s extraordinariness. His description of Nijinsky’s face brings to mind the frequent association of this dancer with animals – with both nature and danger. As discussed in Chapter 2, associations with nature, children, animals and savages were generally used to attest to the exotic, Oriental quality of the Russians’ dancing, but with Nijinsky, the comparison extended to everything he did, on and off the stage. Anna de Noailles (1930, 5) reminisced:

Qui ne l’a pas vu ignorera toujours ce qu’est un adolescent puis- sant, ivre de force rythmique, terrifiant par le ressort des muscles, comme l’est, pour un enfant dans la prairie, la sauterelle faisait jouer la coudure altière de sa jambe d’acier. [ . . . ] Lui seul eut cette dure et brutale légèreté qui tenait du fauve et de l’oiseau affolé, qui ren- contre, en s’élançant, la toiture de la cage, obstacle invisible pour les spectateurs.7

The work that evoked this association with wild beasts and crazed birds was none other than the decorous Spectre. Now, compare this with Camille Claudel’s (1959, 128) description of his meeting with the dancer in 1917:

Il marchait à la manière des tigres, ce n’était pas le transport d’un aplomb sur un autre aplomb d’une charge inerte, mais la complicité élastique avec le poids comme celle de l’aile avec l’air de tout cet appareil musculaire et nerveux, d’un corps qui n’est pas un tronc ou une statue, mais l’organe tout entier de la puissance et du mouve- ment. Il n’y avait pas un geste si petit comme par exemple quand il tournait vers nous le menton, quand la petite tête virait subitement sur ce long cou, que Nijinsky n’accomplît dans la gloire, dans une vivacité à la fois féroce et suave et dans une autorité foudroyante!8

Were it not for the context, this could be an illustration of Nijinsky dancing. Animal metaphors were extremely popular in descriptions of Nijinsky. To Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, Nijinsky was “onduleux et brillant comme un reptile” (“undulating and brilliant like a reptile”, Revue de 148 Dancing Genius

Paris 15 July 1910) and Judith Gautier (in Femina 1 December 1911) saw him as

le monstre inquiétant et charmant en qui la grâce se mêle à la force; qui voile des muscles d’acier sous une forme gracile et des souplesses de chatte avec des envolements d’oiseau et des bondissements de tigre.9

In contemporary art, the animals with which Nijinsky is here associated – cats and snakes – were frequently used to illustrate the erotic danger of the femme fatale (Dijkstra 1986, 285, 288–97, 306–13.) Here, these predatory creatures stood for the elasticity of movement perceived as integral to graceful dancing, even if the association with dangerous animal desire came close second. After all, barbarians and women both had animal natures that were prone to sexual excess and violence, which made images of wild, untamed predators particularly allusive to a Russian male dancer performing in Paris. It is almost as if the beast- like ‘natural’ elasticity of Nijinsky’s movements became indicative of his barbarian Otherness, his reversion to type. In a genius and in a star such qualities formed part of the ‘truth’ accessible to the few connoisseurs, the ‘core’ that lay underneath what was apparent on stage. Even so, the day-to-day life of the genius was barely worth a mention in either contemporary materials or later reminiscences.

Everyday life

Nijinsky was hardly living an ordinary life – as a dancer, his everyday routines were very different from those of most people who saw him dance.10 Yet few (auto)biographies of dancers address daily routines or everyday experiences that were different from (or surprisingly similar to) the everyday experiences of their contemporaries. Dance history also shuns the topic: few discussions of dancers’ lives or the dancing profession illustrate in any way the vast majority of their professional life – the rehearsal room and professional concerns informing choices of diet and pastimes – and this cannot be simply for the lack of source materials, since dance pedagogy has always focused on these routines. Once again, the manner in which New History emphasises non-textual sources (Prins 2001; Gaskell 2001) and the historicity of the senses (for example, Classen 1998), gestures (Burke 1997, 60–76), or affects (Corbin 1986) helped me focus on the professional dancer’s profession; and brought to the fore how our view of past individuals tends towards Corporeality 149 timelessness, where changes in the everyday conditions of lived experi- ence are given little consideration and even major changes in lifestyle can go unnoted. The rarity of anecdotes about Nijinsky’s professional life outside the stage adds to their relative value because the common, the everyday, the of-course are the first to disappear from the annals of history. One of the few descriptions of Nijinsky’s daily schedule therefore deserves to be discussed in detail. This comes from Jane Molineau (in The Bellman 30 December 1916), who travelled with Nijinsky on an ocean liner to New York:

His daily life is one of absolute simplicity. He is puzzled that it should merit a question. One just lives, sanely, temperately, because that is the satisfactory and agreeable way to live. He rises early, unless after a performance, when he must recuperate by a little additional rest. His first breakfast is almost nothing, a cup of tea and possibly an egg. Luncheon is his most important meal, the night repast being very simple. He follows no special régime because he is a dancer, but eats the things that seem to him agreeable and natural. He rarely touches wine, and never spirits. A glass of wine would make him ill, he assures you, and preclude his thinking clearly and normally. “And always must one think true, if one would be an artist.” Neither does he smoke. That is a picturesque and graceful habit which he admires in others, but for which he has no natural taste. Tea is his favourite beverage. “For you know I am Russian, and in Russia we drink much tea. I take a cup of tea as another man does a cigarette. It soothes and stimulates me.” Yet even his tea-drinking is moderate. He loves fresh air and sunshine and out-of-doors, swims like a fish, and is passionately interested in mechanics. [ . . . ] During the sea voyage, the extremely rough weather interfered with Nijinsky’s practice the first few days, and he was forced to content himself with walking the deck. But with moderate seas he got in two hours of exercises each morning in the children’s room, or on the upper deck, when the weather permitted. This practice had to be adapted as best he could to the small space, a ceiling beamed at different heights, and a floor that pitched and rolled at unexpected moments. He explains that, in the actual dance, conditions or obsta- cles mean nothing. One danced on or even over a table or a chair and in any sort of clothing. But the daily exercise practice is a sort of religion with a dancer, and strictest attention is given that every movement may be executed to perfection. 150 Dancing Genius

The beginning of this passage attests that Nijinsky thought of his exer- cises and diet as an ‘of course’ – that is, he assumed they would not interest his audiences. This is certainly one reason why so little informa- tion of the dancer’s everyday life remains in the source materials. Yet diet and exercise routines were professional concerns for a dancer, and bodily functions also play a significant role in Nijinsky’s Diary (Nijinsky 1999, especially 3, 21, 26, 132, 134, 185–7, 191), although in research literature they have been taken as signs of his mental abnormality (for example, Ostwald 1991). No doubt Nijinsky learned what constituted ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ living at the Imperial Theatrical Schools, since similar opinions were voiced by some of his colleagues.11 Obviously, intoxication was pro- fessionally dangerous, but Nijinsky’s emphasis on a dancer’s need to think clearly is still unusual in contemporary discourse on dance. Furthermore, his opinions show how, in 1916, cigarettes bore no threat of illness in themselves as they nowadays do: Nijinsky associates them with the refreshening qualities of his own favourite drink, tea, a love that he asserts is a Russian characteristic. Later on, influenced Tolstoy’s aesthetic and religious teachings, Nijinsky’s belief in a modest, sensible diet as integral to healthy life led him to adopt vegetarianism (Nijinsky 1999, especially 21, 26, 132, 134, 185). More of what constituted “agree- able and natural” could be surmised from contemporary popular medi- cal literature and materials still rarely used in dance historiography (see Carter 2004, 16). In the interview Nijinsky comments on how an ocean liner hardly provided the ideal place for the dancer’s exercises, but he also compares these routines with religion, indicating a deep commitment that some of his contemporaries report as quite exceptional.12 In part, this may be because Nijinsky was five feet four inches tall (Ostwald 1991, 15, 20) and some of the ballerinas of the company were quite a bit taller than he was, which meant he had to acquire extra muscle to compensate for his stature. Following the advice of Mikhail Obukhov (1879–1914), his teacher at the Imperial Ballet School, Nijinsky regularly exercised in a gym, in addition to daily dance practice (Nijinska 1992, 139, also 400–1). Like Nijinsky’s interest in sports, this kind of training was hardly as self- evident a part of practice as it is now – rather, it was widely believed any other movement practice than dancing was injurous to a dancer. As Ethel Urlin (1912, 149–50) pointed out:

A première danseuse must practise constant self-denial. She can never indulge in sports, because any exercise except walking and dancing Corporeality 151

is injurious to a dancer’s muscles. Mdlle. Genée practises two hours a day, and rarely takes a holiday, because even two weeks’ abstinence from practice hardens the muscles, and causes excruciating pain when dancing is resumed.

Most dancers today would laugh at only two hours of daily practice. The little that is said of Nijinsky’s diet and exercise routines in pri- mary source materials reveals the danger of reading into his private life the practices of dancers today, but, conversely, the practical fact that very little was said in public of the backstage routines contributed to the construction of Nijinsky’s public image as an otherworldly creature who could defy the laws of nature at will. Perhaps because male dancing in particular had suffered from associations with physical labour, or because geniuses were supposedly born great (Becker 1978, especially 77–81), a dancer’s constant need for training the body appears but rarely in the Nijinsky myth, and contemporary allusions to hard work tend to receive rather outlandish explanations. Karsavina (1981, 236) remembers how in 1909:

Somebody was asking Nijinsky if it was difficult to stay in the air as he did while jumping; he did not understand at first, and then very obligingly: ‘No! No! not difficult. You have to just go up and then pause a little up there.’ (Emphasis mine)

It is certainly implausible, as usually presented in conjunction with this anecdote, that Nijinsky would have been unaware of the technical demands of his leap (see Laws 1986, especially 1–3, 7–8 on illusions of tarrying in the air). Of course leaping like a prodigy was difficult – as in Molineau’s interview quoted above, Nijinsky seems to have been “puzzled that it should merit a question”. If read in conjunction with Nijinsky’s published views (for example, according to Rivière in La Nouvelle revue française August 1913) and the Russian dance discourse discussed in Part III, the anecdote can be read as indicative of the dancer’s condescending attitude towards (Western) reporters. However, in later interpretations, Nijinsky’s ironic tone was lost because geniuses were supposed to be honest and sincere, respecting the interest of the audience rather than ridiculing their stupid questions. Regardless of their content, stories of Nijinsky’s life always evince how any story told of the genius only makes sense when told of the genius. Like stories of Nijinsky mistaking Newton as discovering elec- tricity (rather than gravity) or believing his children should be able to 152 Dancing Genius fly (for example, Ansermet quoted in Haskell 1955, 271; Sandoz 1954, 68) that are told both to prove him stupid or insane and as examples of the mind of genius not working like that of ordinary people, what would have been forgotten as meaningless in another person acquired profound significance when told of the genius. However, assuming that a genius is omniscient or prescient indicates a belief in genius as a natu- ral category, and it is important to remember that our temporal distance and education affect what we consider signs of knowledge or ignorance in past materials: in 1919, Nijinsky (1999, 17–18, 30–1, 40) was by no means alone in disbelieving Darwin’s views on evolution – even today, a century and a half, after On the Origin of Species (1859) a vociferous fundamentalist lobby shares this view. Unlike Diaghilev and his coterie, Nijinsky had not had a university education, nor much time to spend self-educating himself during his active career. This certainly shows in what he says and writes, but it does not make him abnormal, far from it. In comparison to starring in a ballet company of a major opera house, Nijinsky’s career kept him on tour almost incessantly from 1911 until the First World War, and again in 1916–1917 after he was released from internment in Hungary. Life on tour was physically strenuous. For one, the conditions of performance were constantly changing: stages varied in size, technology and the angle of the rake, and dancers had to adapt their practice to fit whatever awaited them in each new thea- tre, usually in a matter of hours. In one interview, Nijinsky explained that since the stage at Covent Garden was not raked, he “kept falling forwards” (Nijinsky in Flitch 1912, 157) in his landings for a few days, until he could adjust his technique to compensate. Costume changes that included make-up and wigs had to be completed in mere minutes (Nijinsky quoted in Wiley 1979/1980, 244; Sokolova 1960, 54) and adopting a different role sometimes as many as three times the same evening lends little credence to stories about Nijinsky being “carried away” by his roles.13 For the company to remain cost-effective, off- season holidays were spent in planning and rehearsing new works to appease audiences, but old favourites also had to be kept in the reper- tory as a safety measure since novelties had not yet established their value as crowd pullers. In 1911 (April to December), the number of per- formances by the company more than tripled from the previous years (Pritchard 2009, 112–19). In view of such constant physical challenges, it is remarkable how rarely any of the dancers of the company were reported as or recollect injuring themselves (see Chapter 8). Diaghilev’s private ballet company placed Nijinsky in a special posi- tion. As the major star, he had to perform practically every night in Corporeality 153 every new city – if he did not, complaints would arise, which would endanger future engagements. An audience that only had the opportu- nity of seeing the star a few times a year at most could not comprehend that the star was performing to other audiences who were similarly demanding throughout the rest of the year. Their demands did not end with the closing of the curtain on stage: Nijinsky had to be available as the public face of the company. With a celebrity, everything was news (see Pierre Plessis in L’Intransigeant 17 May 1913), reporters crowded the backstage area in search of a story and complained if they could not get one (Deflin in Gil Blas 20 May 1913). Diaghilev’s valet and Nijinsky’s dresser, Vasili Zuikov, tried giving the dancer some degree of privacy, ending up in the papers himself:

The rather noisy demonstration last evening at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées unnerved Nijinsky. After Schéhérazade he returned to his dressing room and barred the door. His friends who wished to parley with him had to slide little pieces of paper through the key hole; as for the others, they tried in vain to negotiate. Should they knock timidly? The door opened a crack, and the dancer’s faithful valet poked out his nose, and then, without even waiting for an explanation, he shouted a good loud “NOOOO!” and stuck out his tongue! (La France 4 June 1913 quoted in Bullard 1971, ii:100, iii:86)

Whether the reputed “friends” of the dancer were in the service of the press is not, of course, mentioned. Although meant as a humorous lit- tle anecdote about eccentric foreigners – the diva and his ill-mannered servant – the story also speaks of the reality back-stage, where complete strangers relentlessly pursued the star. When given the opportunity, Nijinsky could be brutally honest about what his life was like:

Dans un perpétuelle hâte, nous vivons un peu comme le juif errant ... un juif errant qui voyagerait en wagon-lit, se déguiserait de diverses manières, et qui souvent devrait changer sa complainte! A peine a-t-on débarqué sur le quai de la gare et serré quelques mains amies, qu’il faut se dérober aux redoutables interviews. Puis, en automobile, rapidement, on traverse une partie de la ville, pour atteindre l’hôtel ... On aperçoit tour à tour, une cathédrale qu’on ignore ou qu’on voudrait revoir, un palais, une vieille maison, un fleuve aux berges pittoresques, une physionomie de rue. La foule paraît différente de celle qu’on a quittée la veille ... Alors vous vous 154 Dancing Genius

promettez que, dès le lendemain vous irez visiter la ville ... mais tout bas, goguenarde, votre expérience vous dit que c’est un souhait superflu et que demain n’existera pas! Il y a aussi le palace: un grand hall, un ascenseur, des portes numé- rotées. Londonien ou italien c’est le même. Les laquais et les chas- seurs sont polis, glabres, discrets et il est impossible de reconnaitre celui à qui vous venez de faire une recommandation ... Et, toujours des gens qu’on ne connaît pas vous serrent la main avec effusion! L’année dernière, chaque fois que j’arrivais dans une ville à l’hôtel, je remarquais qu’une grosse dame se précipitait vers moi et me cou- vrait de compliments. Au bout de la troisième fois, intriqué, je m’informai de son nom et je le notai. A la ville suivante je revis la grosse dame; elle me félicita; mais elle ne s’appelait plus comme précédemment, c’était une autre grosse dame. Chaque palace avait sa grosse dame louangeuse.14

This rare description of a life on tour indicates the pressure of a public life where total strangers act as if they were intimates, friends cannot be greeted before reporters press for “dreaded interviews”, and one face blurs into the next. Everything and everywhere is fundamentally the same because there is no time to reflect on the experience of travel: the narrator is constantly swept from one place to the next by train or by automobile, and curiosity struggles in vain as the voice of experience tells tomorrow will be exactly as yesterday. In the last two paragraphs, Nijinsky’s audience, previously reported as an over-friendly crowd, get personified in a recurring fat lady profusely complementing the star – obviously with platitudes as the dancer mistakes her for another. This lends some credence to Haskell’s (1955, 254) suggestion that Nijinsky may have disliked the open manner in which women (and men) courted him – by 1912 when this was published, Nijinsky was obvi- ously tired of being titled “Homme l’Oiseau” (“Bird-man”) by people who claimed his feet never touched the ground when he danced (as in Flitch 1912, 153; Musical America 22 April 1916; Ricketts 1939, 175). Lady Ottoline Morrell (1963, 227) reminisced that: “Such ballets as Le Spectre de la Rose did not interest him; he said it was trop joli and was rather annoyed when people admired it.” In the contemporary press, the primary function of the interview and the portrait formats (see Hammergren 2004, 28) was to construe a rela- tionship between the star and her/his public. Having the dancer ‘speak’ of his everyday life was to familiarise him, to turn him into someone human – discreetly enough to preserve the mysterious aura surrounding Corporeality 155 the star. This is why such an interview of Nijinsky’s private life would appear in a gossipy paper ( Je sais tout) whilst trade papers like Comœdia focused on his professional, artistic work. Professional interviews were turning Nijinsky into the first genius of his art form, an image in which the non-glamorous everyday life was of no consequence. The genius of the genius, as noted above, could not be explained through recourse to his personality because true genius transcended personality (for example, Battersby 1994, 155). In other words: as long as Nijinsky was labelled a dancing genius, it was relatively insignificant what he did beyond dancing on stage, even how he rehearsed his body for his art. Genius was a destiny, a natural quality that emerged in spite of, even directly against, institutional forms of training, and the physical exercises of a dancer were there- fore unimportant to his genius. The rhetorical modes used to set apart Nijinsky’s art from the technical demands of his medium culminate in the figure of the virtuoso.

The anti-virtuoso

In a characteristic discussion on the apparent decline in dance in the nineteenth century, J. E. Crawford Flitch (1912, 22) claimed the art form had deteriorated to mere technical bravado:

Soulless dancing has as little power to move the spectator as the feats of a clever acrobat. There can be no great dancing without emotion. Unless the dancer has the capacity for unusual emotion, and is also gifted with the power of emotional expression, which is the begin- ning and end of all great dancing, the performance never rises to anything more inspiring than a dreary and unpleasing display of mechanical accomplishment.

Here, virtuosity was linked with acrobatic feats and mechanical repetition – the body as a machine that endlessly repeated tiresome tasks, one body just alike another. The epitome of such dancing was the synchronised, uniform movement of the chorus line – from the nineteenth-century corps de ballet to the twentieth-century Tiller Girls (Burt 1998a, especially 84–100; Walkowitz 2003, 352). To elaborate Gabriele Brandstetter’s (2007, 185–9) discussion on Carlo Blasis, the systematic training methods of nineteenth-century ballet masters, sys- tems of choreographic notation, the invention of movement analysis and chronophotograpy15 had all contributed to public awareness of 156 Dancing Genius the ‘mechanical’ qualities of movement. The association of mechani- cal movement with factory machines and the labour of the industrial worker was also used by free-form dancers, particularly when justifying their ‘natural’ and anti-virtuosic aesthetic vis-à-vis the institutionalised and codified forms of ballet – the virtuosic and therefore mechanical art form. The association of machines and industry with both modernity and virtuosity, then again, recalls my earlier argument on nostalgia as crucial to the success of the Ballets Russes (see Chapter 1). In the Russian Ballet, as was to be expected, such acrobatics were not only shunned but became the borderline between the Fokine works and what had been ballet in the nineteenth century, exemplified by the geo- metric rigidity of the corps de ballet and the virtuosic feats of visiting star dancers in the productions of the Imperial Theatres.16 In dance, this denigration of virtuosity had first appeared in the eighteenth century, when ballet had become a theatrical spectacle performed by profession- als and lost its significance as a form of social display to simpler forms of social dance. Critics and dance masters began to justify their art of choice though emphasising its ‘civilised’ moderation by disassociat- ing the art of ballet from acrobats and boulevard theatre performers who were setting new standards to what the trained body could do. In particular after the Revolution of 1789 this, together with the elitist status of the institutions that produced these highly trained bodies for the stage, helped to attract the new bourgeois audience to the formerly aristocratic art form (for example, Foster 1998, especially 76–7). However, dance is but one example of the general denigration of virtuosity in the Romantic aesthetic, where the authentic, wild and sublime nature of genius should not be restrained by academic book- learning. Academic technique was seen as potentially harmful to the artist, whose originality and expressivity would be stifled by academic formulas. In the Russian Ballet, anti-virtuosity was similarly linked to anti-academicism: the ‘natural’ expressivity of the Russians had to be guarded by a de-emphasis on their academic training, epitomised by the Imperial Theatres. At the same time, as knowledge of a dancer’s profes- sional education also acted as proof of expertise about the art form, the benefits of the Russian training system (entrance examinations, com- prehensive education, something even of sleeping arrangements at the Imperial Theatrical Schools) were generally noted in longer introduc- tory articles and books on the Ballets Russes.17 Similarly, dance rehearsals functioned as a privileged space mentioned by contemporary authors as proof of their connoisseurship (for example, Flitch 1912, 155). Jean-Louis Vaudoyer (La Revue de Paris 15 July 1910) Corporeality 157 even went as far as claiming Nijinsky’s dancing should really be seen with- out the distractions of costume or décor. Yet, like analysis of step sequences in the space of the dance review, describing Nijinsky as having to work for the desired effect on stage was not desirable – or stylistically appropriate – because genius was supposedly a natural, unlearned quality. In one of its first reviews, Comœdia (20 May 1909) attested that for Nijinsky:

les difficultés techniques n’étaient que jeux pour lui, et il n’avait même que rarement l’occasion de déployer toutes les ressources de sa virtuosité fort supérieure à ce que comportaient la plupart des danses traditionnelles.18

As will be seen, this claim that Nijinsky did less on stage than in the rehearsal room keeps resurfacing for a reason. In the discourse of the dancing genius, virtuosic dancing was fit for the genius only when he desired to show off how easy virtuosity was to him. As Andrew Hewitt (2005, 25–6) has noted, with formalism, the idealist discourse of cho- reographic authorship further erased the materiality of dance as labour, which explains why so few of the myriad volumes on the Ballets Russes address practicalities like dance rehearsals. In contemporary discourse, Nijinsky’s daily dance practice and the particular skills required of seemingly effortless performance were taken for granted. As de Miomandre (1913) noted:

It needs an effort to perceive that this accomplished mime, this mighty actor leaves nothing to caprice and follows every turn and twist of his rôle with an attention at once scrupulous and wonder- ful. And so natural does it all appear that we almost forget to let him have the credit. Perhaps, there is no rarer homage one can pay an artist, than to exact that we shall tell our fancy not that he plays but that he lives, and that we shall expect every thing from him as in life – yea, even the mortal spasm.

Here, the fact that Nijinsky’s dancing was not just self-expression became a mark of the connoisseur, who observed this secret labour in performances that explicitly encouraged one to think of dance as merely natural. Less morbidly, Carl Van Vechten (1915, 77–8) stressed how Nijinsky was a virtuosic dancer precisely because his technical skill was invisible, controlled and limited by the dancer:

He never seems to be doing anything difficult, and yet his command of technique is incredible. He always seems spontaneous, and yet 158 Dancing Genius

I have been told that, like Olive Fremstad,19 he does not make the slightest movement of a finger which has not been carefully thought out. [ . . . Nijinsky’s . . . ] leaps are triumphs of dexterity, grace of motion, and thrill, and he does not waste them.

In other words, critics who wrote of the Ballets Russes clearly did under- stand that technique was essential to the execution of the dance, but, in a way, this technique had to remain invisible on the level of the review for the dancing to become an art (the product of genius) rather than a mere virtuosic display of acrobatics. Although lack of virtuosic dancing was a fault,20 its presence should not be noticeable nor dominate the spectacle. As the critic of The Times (24 June 1911) noted,

technique is no more the source of the highest pleasure in dancing than it is in painting, in music, or any other of the arts. It is a chan- nel of communication; it is the means by which the artistic idea comes from the mind of the creator to the senses of the spectator.

Hence, technique by itself could not explain the success of the Russian Ballet. Rather, the Russians had used their technical excellence to raise ballet to new heights of expressive dancing (for example, Femina 1 December 1911). Technical qualities of dance were thought not to be of interest to the public, which explains why the technical side of the Ballets Russes productions (that is, lighting, make-up, use of stage machinery, and the like) was rarely mentioned and never analysed in reviews (however, see Comœdia 25 April 1911 and The Dancing Times July 1911 on Nijinsky’s Japanese blue paint). Audiences knew well that theatre as an art form relied on tricks, but the end product could be enjoyed as a fantasy world superior to everyday reality only as long as the illusion was persuasive enough. In reviews, stress was therefore placed on the plausibility of the overall effect, and technical matters cropped up only when they had inconvenienced the critic’s immersion in the spectacle – for example, when a stage effect was deemed in bad taste (for example, Terry 1913, 52 on the flower at the end of Narcisse) or an effect failed (The New York Times 18 January 1916). This was in direct contrast to how reviews of variety stage spectacles tended to focus on the special effects.21 What separated the virtuoso from the genius was not technique but that which surpassed it. Virtuosi had been discussed specifically through the techniques they used, whereas the primary focus within the rhetoric of genius had to do with immeasurable qualities like expressivity, Corporeality 159

creativity and originality (Metzner 1998, 132–3, 140–2, 245, 254–5, 260, 294). Thus, when it came to the genius, the technique necessary for the creative act was pushed away from the limelight, into the back- ground of the phenomenon that was Nijinsky:

In a corner in the shadows at the back of the stage is a little man of unusual build, dressed in a soft shirt and short pants. His behaviour is strange. With arms outstretched he jumps, up and down, without stopping, and always on the same place. Then suddenly he will com- mence some fresh mechanical movement. Standing on one leg he will raise the other, moving it forward, sideward, and backward. This operation he will repeat with the other leg, and so he goes on, first on one leg then the other. This is Nijinsky at exercise. The perspira- tion falls like hailstones from his pale, slightly Mongolian face, and as you watch him going through these movements with such exactness and precision you are not quite certain whether you are looking at a clockwork doll or a human being. (Lieven 1973, 353, emphasis added)

In this particular case, the observer seems to shine the light upon that which is in the shadows, the daily routine of practice and the sheer physical labour necessary for the perfect execution of the illusion onstage. The anecdote also suggests something else was necessary for this illusion – the mechanical, inhuman technique has yet to be trans- formed into a thing of life and beauty. Importantly, the opposition between the old-fashioned, mechanical, unnatural ballet on one hand and the noteworthy new thing in dance on the other was also typical in the rhetoric of the free-form danc- ers, who used it to justify their new styles. For many of these dancers, the Ballets Russes was still very much the same old thing – ballet. For example, Ted Shawn (in The New York Dramatic Mirror 13 May 1916) viciously attacked Nijinsky as representing “the decadent, the freak- ish, the feverish” in dance, suitable perhaps to blasé Paris, but not to healthy America, and of the Russians as simply “the swan song of bal- let”, destined for oblivion with the ascendancy of American modern dance. Certainly, this critique had a point: in several regards, the Ballet was just what it professed not to be, and became even more so over the years. The spectacular feats of Nijinsky’s dancing did prove a means to attract the audiences and commentary in the papers, and consequently, affected the predominant dancing style of the group: when no–one would comment on subtle nuances, greater emphasis was placed on vir- tuosity, especially in the performance of the stars. Despite their protests 160 Dancing Genius against acrobatics,22 Nijinsky ended his part in Fokine’s choreography of Schéhérazade (1910) by spinning on his head (Morand 1952, 251; Beaumont 1951, 36). Together with the predominance of Nijinsky’s leap in all contem- porary characterisations of his dancing, the contradictions between the rhetoric used of the spectacles and the virtuosity displayed therein quickly attracted satirical inversion. One jocular commentator (Miguel Zamacoïs in Le Figaro 12 June 1913) assured that in the near future, Nijinsky would be portrayed in a mechanically leaping statue; whilst Sem (Georges Goursat, 1863–1934) had depicted Nijinsky as Astruc’s kangaroo leaping through a hoop in his costume of rose-petals (L’Excelsior 17 May 1912). The humour of the Nijinsky Kangaroo not only turns the ’high’ art of the Ballets Russes into a ‘low’ one – circus – but it depicts the French impresario of the company, Gabriel Astruc (1864–1938), as the man holding the hoop. This indicates an Orientalist reading of the Ballet as exotic entertainment, and points attention to how important a position Astruc actually occupied in the company’s public image in France. By turning Nijinsky into an animal moving with leaps and bounds, the image also emphasised how, for a Russian, dancing was something instinctive and unlearned. However, contemporary authors also rhetorically turned Nijinsky’s dance technique and training into something exceptional, the mark of an artist capable of virtuosity but choosing to pursue higher aims. Speaking of Nijinsky in rehearsal with Tamara Karsavina, J. E. Crawford Flitch (1912, 155) wrote:

For the young dancer, however, it [that is, the exercise] was not a mechanical routine, but a kind of play, into which he entered with a certain smiling gaiety. If he found that he was executing a move- ment imperfectly, he stopped short in the middle of it with a gesture of half-amused vexation and repeated it over and over again until he had made it faultless. The actual mastery of the technique appeared to him to be in itself a delight, and not, as with many dancers, a painful task-work. In his practice I found that the turns of his pirouettes and the cuts of his entrechats were more numerous than in actual perfor- mance, for he never perverts the intention of the dance by introduc- ing into it acrobatic feats merely for the sake of dazzling the spectator.

Do note how, in a relatively short space, Flitch manages to sepa- rate Nijinsky from other dancers in his favour by pointing to how extraordinarily dedicated this one individual is to dance. Unlike these Corporeality 161 anonymous others, Nijinsky searches for perfection, takes delight in what these others find a painful routine, and – most importantly – never shows off his actual virtuosity in performance (Nijinska 1992, 221; also Nijinsky 1999, 25). In this way, dance technique becomes secondary to the genius of Nijinsky: Nijinsky, in effect, becomes the anti-virtuoso, who neither needs nor desires to use acrobatics for daz- zling the spectator. Although this choice may explain why Nijinsky could sustain a seem- ingly effortless and graceful quality through a physically strenuous performance on stage, it is very significant that his strategy was publi- cised. Together with Nijinsky’s marked hostility towards the music hall and the circus, this anti-virtuosity explicitly contrasted him with the virtuosi, represented as always going for the most difficult, spectacular trick in their performances. Nijinsky also told Flitch (1912, 157) that:

One thing I am determined not to do, and that is to go on the music- hall stage. I have had several tempting offers; but after all what is money? I think more of art than of money, and I refuse to be sand- wiched between performing dogs and acrobats.

Variety theatres meant spectacular acrobatics in the service of business; conversely, the virtuosic was a mark of lowbrow interest in spectacle over and above artistic merit. Like the performing dog, the acrobat and the virtuoso were but trained animals, whose skill could entertain but had no content, could not move the soul of the spectator. Hence, Nijinsky’s anti-virtuosic stance was part of a larger project of aligning the Ballets Russes with “high” culture and connoisseurship. Similarily, the emphasis placed on the dancing prodigy as capable of far more virtuosic movements than he showed on stage derives from the belief that limiting and restricting technical bravado actually func- tioned to increase rather than decrease the aesthetic value of perfor- mance. What mattered to the genius was not that he could leap higher or spin longer than anyone else but that he always gave the impression that he was capable of far more – that he could, indeed, defy the laws of nature. Backstage anecdotes about Nijinsky’s actual virtuosity func- tioned to bolster this belief to the extent that they have become essen- tial elements of the Nijinsky myth. However, the rhetorical efforts to counteract Nijinsky’s very obvious vir- tuosity also included turning his dancing into an inborn, natural quality that would have emerged, as genius was wont to, despite or even against institutional forms of training. “From the first there had been evident in 162 Dancing Genius his dancing that promise of genius which no technical skill can simulate, but which through technical skill alone can blossom into its finest flower”, explained Geoffrey Whitworth (1913, 16) who, in his book-length study of Nijinsky, spent no more time analysing step-sequences than any of his contemporaries. This is to say that Nijinsky’s technical mastery was always linked with his reputation as a dancing prodigy, a genius whose unavoid- able destiny simply benefited from the Russian training system. Comœdia (15 June 1910) had similarly claimed that “sa virtuosité [ . . . ] n’apparaît jamais que comme un moyen d’exprimer son rêve, comme une messagère ailée de son désir”.23 On the level of the rhetoric used, Nijinsky’s dance technique actually became a sign of how this genius surpassed all expla- nations: the academic system of the Imperial Theatres, associated with Russian autocracy, simply could not explain the greatness of the Ballets Russes or the brightest star in its firmament, Nijinsky – no, the Russians had to be ‘natural’ dancers, and the most natural of them all was the child prodigy, Nijinsky. In this way, dance technique and dance training became inadequate explanations of the Russians’ art on the whole. When contemporary papers revealed that Nijinsky could execute technical feats other dancers could not (such as an entrechat-dix), they made sure to emphasise these were but an indication of his superiority, not the reason for his genius (Comœdia 20 May 1909). For example, Comœdia Illustré (1 June 1909) reported Nijinsky’s technical feats as sec- ondary to “la grâce exquise de ses attitudes, la distinction de sa démarche et de son geste” (“the exquisite grace of his poses, the distinction of his approach and gesture”) capable of astonishing the ultra-blasé audience of Paris. Nijinsky was almost as often described as an incomparable actor and mime as a superior dancer. Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote to Richard Strauss (8 March 1912 in Hofmannsthal & Strauss 1954, 147) that Nijinsky was “dem größten Genie der Mimik, das die heutige Bühne kennt” (“the greatest genius of mime that is known to today’s stage”), and he was by no means alone to think so (de Miomandre 1913, 4; Johnson 1913, especially 7–8, 33). In particular, contemporary papers praised his impersonation of the tragic puppet Petrouchka in the 1911 ballet of the same name (Pall Mall Gazette 10 February 1913; Musical Times 1 March 1913; Les Annales du théatre 1913, 332). Yet the inhuman roles Nijinsky danced predisposed others against call- ing Nijinsky an actor at all – for Ellen Terry (1913, 22), mimesis excluded the fantastic and the unreal:

But actors express emotions; it is generally their duty to realize, in fact, to recall a man. Nijinsky never recalls human experience, never Corporeality 163

suggests the passions of mankind. [ . . . ] I could never call Nijinsky a good actor. I can, and do, call him a great dancer.

In contrast, the American critic Carl Van Vechten called Petrouchka proof that Nijinsky was the greatest of contemporary stage artists, and followed this by describing his drama critic friend “who sits stolidly through performances by all the great tragedians, burst into tears” in seeing Nijinsky’s Faune (Van Vechten 1915, 77–9). Although Van Vechten and Terry clearly disagreed in what expressed emotions and whose emotions at that, they agreed that the expression of emotions epitomised the actor’s craft. This means that the emphasis on the acting skills of the Russian danc- ers was closely linked to notions of appropriate mimesis: the mimesis of traditional ballet dancing was implausible or insufficient for holding the audience’s attention (for example, Caffin & Caffin 1912, 140–5). The ‘naturalness’ of gestures and mime – meaning their correspondence with what audiences thought of as appropriate theatrical mimesis – set the Ballets Russes apart from Western ballet companies and dance troupes; simultaneously, the twofold representation of Otherness in these spectacles – the Russians’ representation of the Oriental Other for the Occidental Other – became simplified as part of this ‘natural’ mimesis. Hence, the performer was equated with the role and analysis of the principles of mimesis became unnecessary (Taussig 1993, espe- cially 72–87, 238–40.) The significance of this emphasis on expressive, ‘natural’ dancing shows best in reviews from the 1911 autumn season in London, when Diaghilev chose to present several Russian ballerinas in classical parts. Although Kshesinskaia’s jewels received far more attention than her dancing or that of her colleagues, some critics engaged in telling com- parisons between how different dancers danced:

But she [Kshesinskaia] is not a heaven-born dancer like Pavlova, and she has not the dramatic instinct of Karsavina. Her technique is admirable. It must have been nervousness that caused her to be a little uncertain in her ‘pas de deux’ with Nijinsky. But she does all the old ballet tricks in the ugly way. She does not transform them into things of beauty, as Nijinsky does, for example. (The Lady 23 November 1911)

The critic went on to note that when Nijinsky danced with Pavlova nobody needed to pay heed to the qualities of music or choreography 164 Dancing Genius in the ballet, as they did whenever they wished to excuse Kshesinskaia’s dancing. However, considering the extreme gendering of ballet’s tech- nique, it is significant that this critic nonetheless construed the male dancer as the norm – the one transforming the ballet tricks into beauty. This may be precisely because the male dancer’s virtuosity was more obvious and something less often seen on Western stages.24 Virtuosity was something that rested on ‘mere’ talent honed to per- fection, but for this technical talent to become indicative of genius, learning had to be succumbed to the rarefied, instinctive and innate quality that was genius. When the affective qualities of Nijinsky’s dancing were deemed ‘natural’, as unlearned and indicative of his true essence, Nijinsky’s body became a sign of a higher truth and dance his natural destiny – Nijinsky became a born dancer for whom technique was a means of self-expression25. As such, his body became the locus for questions about what the material was that the dancer shaped and how this shaping was different from the virtuosity of the virtuoso. Yet, in this discourse, the creative author of the dance spectacle was still the dancer, not the ballet master/choreographer.

Stardom

The exclusive audience of the Ballets Russes may have classified the organisation as high art, but this did not exclude Nijinsky from being treated like a popular culture star by this very audience. The star, unlike the genius, is by definition a performing artist: a star’s stardom lies in her/his body, which was quite secondary in the rhetoric of genius. Yet the star, too, has a mysterious immaterial quality, a personal charisma that cannot be pinned down to any one element. In contrast to the genius, the sincerity and authenticity of the on-stage person of the star is verified in the personal history of the star off-stage – their charac- ter, their humanness, their truth. The uncovering of the ‘real’ person behind the public image, the ‘truth’ of the star, is necessary for the star to help us make sense of the world, even as a star is always a public representation. The body of the star is proof of her/his sincerity, an external manifestation of an inner self, on a level quite distinct from the body of the genius.26 The star’s stardom is their personality, present in their performance of stardom on and off stage. In contrast, the truth of the genius is transcendent and visible not in the person of the genius but in the artwork, which makes genius something that transcended personality. Because stardom, like genius, is built on a hierarchy whereby true things lie behind and underneath the public image, knowledge of who Corporeality 165

Nijinsky was and how he was backstage was absolutely necessary for his stardom. Every new morsel of information about the star intrigued people because nothing was quite enough to explain the charisma, the allure, of the star. Yet, with Nijinsky, the contrast between the on-stage figure and the ordinary-looking and unprepossessing off-stage fellow perplexed his fans, because in the discourse of stardom, such contrast endangered the sincerity of the star. For the same reason, emphasis on this difference was crucial to defining Nijinsky a genius whose sincerity lay only in his art. The process of transforming oneself into a character on stage has rarely caused as much speculation as in the case of Nijinsky: some of the most ludicrous explanations of his dancing – such as that his bones were hollow, like those of a bird (Nijinsky 1980, i:342) – have been taken as fact (Reiss 1960, 37–8; Philp & Whitney 1977, 55). In contem- porary materials I have not come across reporters looking for springs in Nijinsky’s shoes or mechanical gadgets on stage, although some descrip- tions do suggest an interest in the secret of his dancing skill:

Lorsque, sans le moindre effort, il se détache du sol, on cherche le tremplin d’où il paraît bondir comme l’on guette inutilement les tra- pèzes au bâton desquels il donne l’impression de prendre un invisible et léger point d’appui. En le voyant passer, monter et demeurer plusieurs secondes au sommet de sa trajectoire, suspendu, immobile en un oblique allongement, jambes réunies et talons collés, je le croyais, de bonne foi, sorti d’un canon, projectile humain, et en route pour la lune.27

Although it is clear that the writer does not expect to find the trampo- line or the cannon that shoots Nijinsky towards the sky or the trapeze on which he could hang, the endearing, astonished evocation of these devices – all reminiscent of the circus and of special effects in contem- porary theatre – draws attention to how contemporary spectators were aware of theatre as dependent on tricks and illusions, on the suspension of disbelief (for example, Brewster & Jacobs 1997, 142–63; Steinmeyer 2005, especially 180; Crary 1999, especially 132–6). It was the true mar- vel of Nijinsky’s dancing that no suspension of disbelief was necessary. Just as the discourse of genius was gendered male, the discourse of stardom was most definitely female. Not only were fans usually repre- sented as female, fandom was anti-intellectual, related to the star’s body and its sex appeal and associated with ‘low’ popular culture and enter- tainment (such as cinema) rather than the ‘high’ ideals of art: a star was adored for herself/himself, regardless of the aesthetic value of the work in which she/he starred. Consequently, in the discourse of stardom, 166 Dancing Genius

Nijinsky was adored no matter what he danced or how, utterly inde- pendent of the artistic quality of a performance or the specific qualities of the choreographic work. Rambert (1983, 56) remembers sitting with Diaghilev at a rehearsal of Narcisse:

He said, almost under his breath, ‘What beauty!’ and turning to me, ‘Isn’t he at his most perfect in this?’

‘What about Spectre?’ ‘Of course, of course.’ ‘What about Sylphides?...’ And so we went on, all through Nijinsky’s repertoire.

Although the story may be an exaggeration, it suffices to illustrate Nijinsky’s special position in the eyes of his admirers. Contemporary sources include similar lists written in exaltation of Nijinsky’s versa- tility, another characteristic that was used to set him apart from his contemporaries.28 In view of the complex process of a spectator’s identification with a character within a narrative (Stacey 1998, 149–61), it is also significant that the majority of the characters Nijinsky danced ended up in less- than-happy relationships: Albrecht pined on the grave of Giselle, the Golden Slave was killed for touching the Sultana, Petrouchka never even got that far. As such, Nijinsky’s figure remained ‘available’ on the level of the narrative, which may have influenced the fantasies and expectations his audience had both of his star-person and his private life. Years later, reality – the fact that Nijinsky went mad after a decid- edly heterosexual marriage – provided the means for the tragic roles to be seen as presaging Nijinsky’s “destiny”. The roles Nijinsky danced also emphasised qualities expected of a dancing genius. Even during the first season, Nijinsky danced a Poet (presumably Chopin) in Les Sylphides, which evoked Romantic imagery of the supernatural in dressing the ballerinas as white spirites who danced aerially on toe with and around the male subject. As the years passed, Nijinsky’s roles began to have more and more of the supernatural and transcendent in them. The rose-spirit in Spectre was not merely inhu- man but superhuman. Narcissus (1911) elects the reflection of beauty over the physical being and turns into beauty incarnate – a flower. Although some critics saw Petrouchka as not sufficiently virtuosic (Lalo in Le Temps 20 June 1911), this is partly why the role became identified with Nijinsky:29 the suffering doll was in effect the story of the martyred Corporeality 167 genius – misunderstood and suffering for love, the puppet is killed but his essence survives. In Le Dieu Bleu (1912), Nijinsky was finally elevated into a godhead, an Orientalised representation of his famous nickname. Although it is difficult to say whether these roles were conceived because of Nijinsky’s reputation as a genius, or if the roles influenced the identification of Nijinsky as a genius because of the supernatural elements, both are likely to be true. In reminiscences, Nijinsky became something not-quite-human, a dancer incapable of dancing a human role, as exemplified by the many post-factum judgements of Nijinsky’s classical roles (such as Buckle 1998, 163–4, 253; Kopelson 1997, 89–91). This identification of Nijinsky’s genius with superhuman roles is interest- ing because it also aligns his image with stardom. A star is a very particular kind of idol – people want a certain kind of experience when they go to see a particular star. The need for a star to fulfil the audience’s expectations is built into the idea of stardom in a manner quite different from the rhetoric of genius. To an extent, stardom is an extension of the ‘stock characters’ of theatre – a star never successfully does things that alienate the audience from the identification. The star’s persona is perceived to be a continuous self, but a self dependent on the repetition of certain roles. This self is then explained through the body performing these roles (DeCordova 2001, especially 9–12, 23–4, 112–14.) Since Nijinsky’s roles had a range atypical for male dancers of the period, his star persona was equated with what was similar in most (but not all) of these roles: his physical prowess, identified with his leap. The narrative correspondence of certain parts with what was expected of this dancer explain why certain of his roles were (and are) more popular as signs of his ‘inner self’ than others. Since the star’s sincerity was based on the ‘truth’ of her/his body and in her/his personal life, the fans needed to somehow assert their connection to the star – preferably with some physical evidence of hav- ing met the star. At the beginning of nineteenth century, the signature had become the mark of the individual and proof of her/his existence, and signatures of geniuses and stars alike became mementos from which one could perhaps glimpse something of the nature of the par- ticular genius or star. Whereas the principal significance for the genius’s signature was in ascertaining authorship, it also formed an intimate connection with the great individual that could be analysed for signs of personality, and the same could be said of the star’s signature (Schwartz 2000, 219.) A signature in a guest book or an autographed photograph was definite proof of having been in the presence of greatness (see Nijinsky 1980, i:12; Rambert 1975; Reiss 1960, 168; Buckle 1998, 259) and, later, these traces have become collector’s items (Winest ein 2009). 168 Dancing Genius

Nijinsky could also be collected in the form of postcards, porcelain figurines and gossipy articles as well as books and art works – and he was: forms of Nijinsky kitsch greatly outnumber the artworks, men- tioned above, that have occupied a prominent place in Nijinsky-themed exhibitions. Aside from newspapers and magazines for which he was regularly interviewed and photographed, contemporary books about Nijinsky included both works of art (de Meyer’s pictures of Faune, Cocteau’s 1910 verse book with Iribe’s drawings) and discussions of his dancing (Whitworth 1913). Even the fact that he was being portrayed in works of art was newsworthy, at least in the case of John Singer Sargent, who had sworn he would not paint any more portraits but recanted when asked to paint Nijinsky (The New York Times 27 January 1912). With a star, every little detail held meaning as a material sign of the star’s stardom – using the soap that your idol advertised gave you a concrete link to the magic glow that surrounded the star. As such, it is important that unlike some of his Russian contemporaries (such as Pavlova, who advertised soap in The Lady 17 July 1913) Nijinsky never sold his image or his name for product marketing.30 This facilitated the exclusion of his figure into the sphere of ‘high’ culture, as opposed to the material and market-oriented popular stage. When Nijinsky became a star and a figurehead of the Ballets Russes, his personal life gained a significance that made privacy a luxury. Members of the audience invaded his dressing room and it is said people tried to buy the petals off the Spectre costume, or to steal his underwear.31 Spectators wished to get ever closer to his body, to ascertain he really existed, preferably by touching him. In a letter to the dancer’s wife, Oskar Kokoschka (30 November 1973, quoted in Nectoux 1990, 44) speaks of conniving a scheme to do this:

I was invited to dinner with the Diaghilev company, and was seated next to Nijinsky because I sought to study him closely. His face was still almost childlike, and his upper body as graceful as that of an ephebe. I deliberately dropped my napkin, and in retrieving it touched his thigh; I could well believe that it belonged to a centaur rather than a man, for he had muscles of steel. But even that fell short of explain- ing the hidden essence of his being; it did not unravel the secret of the weightless human being I had watched at his work. (emphasis added)

As was to be expected, this hands-on assertion of the dancer’s leg simply worked to assert the physical body was not by itself enough – the hid- den essence of ‘Nijinsky’ lay elsewhere. Corporeality 169

In his Diary, Nijinsky comments in passing of having been afraid he would be recognised in the street (Nijinsky 1999, 20), and it seems he quickly developed a public persona to cope with this lack of privacy. In 1913, after Le Spectre de la Rose, Valentine Gross found Nijinsky back- stage curled up on the floor, alone “like a bird fallen from its nest”:

He was like a crumpled rose in pain, and there was no one near him. I was so touched that I left him alone and said nothing. Then he saw me and sprang up like a child taken by surprise and came smiling towards me. As he stood beside me in his leotard sewn with damp purplish petals, he seemed a kind of St Sebastian, flayed alive and bleeding from innumerable wounds. In halting but quite accurate French he began to tell me how pleased he was with some pastels I had made of Jeux and to thank me for the article I had written to go with them in Comœdia Illustré. I was almost the only person to appreciate his choreography. When I said good-bye he took my hand in both of his in such a charming way that for the rest of the evening I kept glancing down at it in wonder – this hand which had been covered in dew on contact with the miraculous dancer. (Gross in Buckle 1993, 256–7, emphasis mine)

Aside from the writer’s obvious adoration of the dancer and emphasis on her own special affinity with the genius (Gross was by no means the only one to like Nijinsky’s choreography), the anecdote actually describes stardom as a public role: even backstage, Nijinsky pulls him- self together as soon as he becomes aware of the presence of a stranger and smiles and initiates a discussion. Although Gross transforms post- performance exhaustion into the metaphor of the genius as a martyr (St. Sebastian),32 the changes she describes in Nijinsky’s behaviour indi- cate his awareness of the constant need to uphold a particular image of his stardom and/or genius for the public. Consequently, reading such records, one should also always keep in mind that Nijinsky was being depicted in the way people wanted him to be as a star (or as a genius). Even gossip about the dancer was made to fit the aims of a particular audience: an American newspaper reported a (probably apocryphal) story about an American millionaire who was humiliated when Nijinsky, asked to dine downstairs with the servants, also danced for them, as he was accustomed to dining with those he entertained.33 The story obviously catered to the egalitarian values of the American middle-class reading public by imbuing the Russian dancer with a high sense of what this audience would have considered just. 170 Dancing Genius

For a fan, watching a rehearsal or a performance from the wings was a special privilege that brought the observer closer to the star:

One feels all this as one sits in one’s stall. One felt it far more intensely, seated in that quiet corner of the stage, next to the pro- scenium, where one could hear the swish of Karsavina’s skirts as she tripped past, and could see even the shadow of a shade on Nijinsky’s tortured face, and hear his heavy breathing in the outbursts of long- ing, ecstasy, and despair. (Pall Mall Gazette 10 February 1913)

Once again, with Nijinsky, his “heavy breathing” that results from physical strain is written as his deliberate emotional expression. Besides being vivid descriptions of the actual conditions of a performance, such stories emphasise the privileged position of the author – most members of the audience could never get this close to the dancers they admired. As Cyril Beaumont (1951, 39) reminisced:

The public of those days had, too, little or no knowledge of the dancers, save their stage personalities, and [ . . . ] to catch a passing glimpse of Karsavina or Nijinsky walking down a street was consid- ered a piece of rare good fortune, a precious moment to be re-lived and re-enjoyed over and over again.

This distance between the star and his audience created a sense of mys- tery around the star that also allowed for fantasies about crossing the distance and possessing the star in one way or another. In later reminis- cences, intimacy with the dancer became a claim to authority; knowing the star meaning knowing the truth about the star. One explanation for why so few people ever became intimate with Nijinsky (despite so many who tried) was that Diaghilev jealously guarded his lover/star. This narrative trope plays with the powerful motif of sexual scandal that has since become crucial to Nijinsky’s repu- tation. Jacques-Émile Blanche (1949, 430) reminisced:

Le belluaire et sa bête couchaient dans la même cage (leurs chambres, au Savoy Hotel), lunchaient ensemble au grill-room. L’entourage, les balletomanes, le monde londonien avaient reconnu comme sous bénéfice d’inventaire le genre d’amitié qui unissait l’un à l’autre. Personne n’eût songé à inviter Nijinsky sans Diaghilew.34

Aside from portraying Diaghilev as Nijinsky’s jailer and tamer (an inter- esting metaphor considering the manner in which Nijinsky’s name was Corporeality 171 associated with powerful and dangerous animals during his career), this anecdote reflects the unwritten etiquette of how same-sex relationships were acknowledged even when they were never openly discussed.35 Diaghilev may not have been Nijinsky’s jailer in the literal sense, but he seems to have been quite aware of his star’s charm: both Rambert (1979) and Piltz (according to Krasovskaya 1979, 268) recollect how Nijinsky was never left alone with them for long; and it is evident that men like Cocteau and Strachey, who went after their idol with more than an autograph in mind, never got very far (Steegmuller 1986, 73–8; Holroyd 1995, 278, 291). No wonder, then, that Romola Nijinsky’s 1933 tale of how she overcame these obstacles to win the rose-spirit for her own has become so important: it played on the strings of romance that melodramas and the movie industry had established. In addition, her book confirmed the idea that a genius should be isolated from the world by some mediating ‘buffer’ who also explains the genius to the general public – in Nijinsky’s case, this is either Diaghilev or Romola. This trope can be traced back to Rousseau and a number of nineteenth-century philosophers, who all claimed that the rarefied soul of the genius was threatened by reality and had to be sheltered from the distractions of mundane matters (Battersby 1994, especially 135). However, Nijinsky’s institutionalisation and the abrupt end of his career increased the importance of such stories as the actual dancer became una- vailable for further analysis. Who Nijinsky “really” was came to rest on representations of the star’s body – a body forcibly silenced to serve what- ever aims the expert who has never seen this body desires it to have had:

[We reach] the inescapable suggestion that the dancer Nijinsky and his character portrayed in Faune share remarkably similar, almost parallel, lives. The more familiar we become with his human per- sona, the closer we get to potentially understanding Nijinsky’s artis- tic intention and its realization on the stage, especially in the final pose at Faune’s premiere. (Hellman 1994, 15)

All these stories of Nijinsky “really” being one of his roles (most often Petrouchka) not only reproduce the manner in which ‘picture person- alities’ of the 1900–1910s were identified with their film roles,36 but they also rest on a misconception of what art is:

the naïve idea that art is the direct, personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. Art is almost never that, great art never is. The making of art involves 172 Dancing Genius

a self-consistent language of form, more or less dependent upon, or free from, given temporally defined conventions, schemata, or systems of notation, which have to be learned or worked out, either through teaching, apprenticeship, or a long period of individual experimentation. The language of art [ . . . ] is neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper.

As Linda Nochlin (1989b, 149) here argues, although there is a personal element in the making of art, this personal element is never independ- ent of society that produces both the individual and contemporary ideas on what is and is not art, the institutional controls, moral codes, cultural prejudices, and such that define who and what gets canonised and when. Artists themselves are quite aware of what artists should be like – or, as Virginia Woolf (1973, 58) put it, “it is the nature of the art- ist to mind excessively what is said about him”. Therefore, to reduce an artwork either to its formal qualities or to the author’s personal life is to seriously limit the possibilities of signification in art, and consequently, to disable all discussion on what makes a particular work meaningful to its audiences (Moxey 1994, especially 101–2.) However, the focus on Nijinsky being his roles also illustrates how his stardom could not uphold itself with the body in absentia. The people admiring Nijinsky became, with the loss of the star’s body, mere ballet fans, equivalent to the popular within the high art. According to the critical discourse of connoisseurs, the fans lacked the connoisseurship necessary for ‘real’ or ‘sincere’ admiration of the art form. They focused on spectacular feats and not on the totality of the performance, and believed in what advertisers said of the stars. Yet the stardom of a star, like the genius of the genius, is finally dependent on the audience. Nijinsky’s dancing genius could thus have retained its significance in the discourse had the focus of dance remained in the dancer. However, when the creative aspect of dance was credited to the choreographer, the dancer became mere material for the genius of someone not necessarily physically present on stage. Although properly the subject of another volume, it should be noted that Nijinsky’s own vociferous defence of his authorship as a choreographer, particularly in conjunction with Le Sacre du Printemps of 1913, contributed to this shift. Later, the discrepancies between the various ‘Nijinskys’ that different members of the audience had constructed took on a life of their own, as Nijinsky’s self became the subject for other discourses of power, namely those of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. 6 The Mad Genius

Genius and language

Perhaps the most characteristic feature in the hegemonic interpreta- tions of Nijinsky relates to language, or rather, the lack of it. Most reminiscences, even those by people with whom he collaborated, depict Nijinsky as reticent, inarticulate and shy (for example, Karsavina 1998, 92–3; Rambert 1998, 110, 115). In the company of his seniors and social superiors, as in meetings with Diaghilev’s collaborators, he tended to stay silent, which made some think him meditative and others slow-witted and dull (for example, Benois 1945, 289; Stravinsky 1975, 27–8). Nijinsky’s Diary has been used as proof of his inability to express himself verbally and the great pains he took to overcome this handicap: for example, Peter Ostwald (especially xviii–xxi) claims it proves Nijinsky was a highly specialised genius who replaced speaking with movement, as evinced by his total inability to express himself in words. Rather alarmingly, Christian Dumais-Lvowski, the translator of the ‘unexpurged’ Diary version, shares this view (in Snow 1996, 34, 36). Any self-respecting scholar should disbelieve a narrative mode that turns the genius into his art form like this. Even in 1910, Jean Chantavoine claimed that Nijinsky “est le mouvement même” (“is the movement itself”) and that “son mouvement est son être même” (“his movement is his very being”, Gil Blas 5 July 1910). Silence – of the dancers and of the spectators – neatly separated danced art from social dancing, and, by marking rapt attention, aligned theatrical dance with bourgeois notions about disciplined art.1 In the wake of twentieth-century formal- ism, the notion that the essence of dance is silence and that dance has been culturally silenced (particularly in academia) because the body is non-verbal and its experience cannot be articulated has acquired almost

173 174 Dancing Genius mythical proportions.2 Resting on the categorical error that sensory experiences in and about dance would be different from sensory experi- ence in general, this chain of argumentation actually silences the uses of power in the discourse of art dance, such as the persistence of ontological idealism (Monni 2007, 39–43) or mobility (Lepecki 2006). Silence aligns Nijinsky with the notion that true genius cannot be articulated, that genius and works of genius that reflect the transcen- dental truth also transcend words. Genius is a discourse of words that fail, which shows itself in descriptions of Nijinsky’s dance as indescrib- able (for example, Terry 1913, 38; Van Vechten 1915, 80). If Nijinsky never spoke, his figure can be utilised for different, even directly con- tradictory purposes: a quintessential mad genius, a sex object, a pseu- donym for Diaghilev, an unsurpassed perfect dancer embodying the impossibility to explain art. But historical facts are never this neat and tidy, this convenient for experts assuming authority over past events. Upon closer inspection, Nijinsky’s muteness is revealed to characterise Foucault’s (2005, especially 113, 133) maxim that silence and secrecy shelter power by hiding how it operates. Regardless of why Nijinsky’s silence is evoked, it paradoxically invokes his voice. For example, John Drummond (1998, 64) claims that at a dinner party:

Nijinsky had made almost the only remark anyone could attribute to him. They were playing a sort of charades game in which people were compared to animals. What did Lady Ripon resemble? ‘Vous, madame, chameau,’ [‘You, madame, camel’] Nijinsky volunteered.

In reproducing this anecdote by Stravinsky (in Stravinsky & Craft 1960, 35–6), Drummond frames Nijinsky’s statement as an exception to his silence – the three words are “almost the only remark anyone could attribute to him”. Whereas Stravinsky and Craft (1960, 37–8) follow this by reproducing a translation of Nijinsky’s long letter (26 November/ 9 December 1913 quoted in Stravinsky 1997, ii:181–2), in Drummond’s collection of interviews, Nijinsky’s lack of voice marks him outside the realm of experts, defined by their presence in the collection, their words as recorded by the editor, himself an expert of dance. Also, the choice of anecdote is curious. In an earlier version (in Nijinsky 1980, i:189), Nijinsky calls Lady Morrell a giraffe, and then, unaware of his gaffe,3 insists that a giraffe is a beautiful animal. Again, Nijinsky’s statement acquires special significance, now as a mark of the sincerity of genius indifferent to the rules of society. The Mad Genius 175

Different versions of the same incident prompt the question as to which of the stories is true. Mme Nijinsky (and, following her, Sandoz 1954, 64) was clearly repeating hearsay, and Drummond’s refusal to reveal who exactly recalled the story points to similar unreliability, even if his source was probably Stravinsky’s anything-but-factually-correct (and equally hearsay) reminiscences (see Stravinsky 1969, 63). However, a third version of the story exists: Lady Juliet Duff recollected to Richard Buckle (1998, 308) that Nijinsky called her mother, Lady Ripon, a parrot (she did have a prominent nose), and her mother retorted it was lucky he did not call her ‘un chameau’. What makes Lady Duff’s version the most plausible is not only her actual presence at the dinner in question but the irrelevance of the story: the anecdote places no special signifi- cance to Nijinsky’s words or to the occasion – Nijinsky is incidental to Lady Ripon’s wit. Anecdotes about genius perpetuate the attitudes they subsume: as these versions of the same story illustrate, events become meaning- ful only as manifestations of genius (Nochlin 1989b, 154–5.) We never hear of the mediocre musician who had been a Wunderkind or of the high-IQ prodigy who never made a single scientific contribution – or rather, we hear psychologists wondering what such people lacked despite matching the “template for genius” (Ludwig 1995, 11; similarly, Simonton 1994). These ‘scientific’ studies assume genius is a natural category and, consequently, fail to see the ‘templates’ as collections of unquestioned prejudices and assumptions that the notion of genius immediately brings up. In anecdotes, everyday events are transformed into evidence, imbued with special significance visible through hindsight. Although equally fictional, it is sometimes useful to try to strip away this layer of special significance. For example, Tamara Karsavina (1981, 177) recollects first seeing Nijinsky dance as a student:

One morning I came up earlier than usual; the boys were just finish- ing their practice. I glanced casually, and could not believe my eyes; one boy in a leap rose far above the heads of the others and seemed to tarry in the air. ‘Who is this?’ I asked Mikhail Obukov [sic], his master. ‘It is Nijinsky; the little devil never comes down with the music.’ He then called Nijinsky forward by himself and made him show me some steps. A prodigy was before my eyes. He stopped dancing, and I felt it was all unreal and could not have been; the boy looked quite unconscious of his achievement, prosy and even backward. ‘Shut your mouth,’ were his master’s parting words. ‘You 176 Dancing Genius

fly-swallower.’ ‘Off with you all now.’ Like peas falling out of a bag, the boys rushed off, their patter a hollow repercussion in the vaulted passage. In utter amazement I asked Mikhail why nobody spoke of this remarkable boy, and he about to finish. ‘They will soon,’ chuck- led Mikhail. ‘Don’t you worry.’

Instead of reading this passage as evidence of Nijinsky’s ‘natural’ danc- ing skill or his mental problems (as in Krasovskaya 1979, 61; Ostwald 1991, 11–15), focus on how it reflects the relationship of the rehearsal room and the stage. Obviously proud of his pupil, Obukhov reprimands Nijinsky when he breaks the required homogeneity (unisono) of the group by leaping too high; then singles him out to show the visiting ballerina “some steps” (a solo) in addition to regular classwork; and finally tells him off anew in front of his waiting (and quite possibly envious) classmates when the boy, after all this dancing, gasps for breath. Because the class is a rehearsal for the stage where, according to current ballet aesthetics, the dancer should never show signs of physical effort, breathing with one’s mouth open was in bad form. Having just been publicly scolded – twice – by his teacher, a dutiful pupil would hardly have shown pride in his accomplishment. However, this reading also goes against the grain of how the Ballets Russes are represented as a company. In the discourse of dancing genius, Nijinsky’s silence has rendered his labour as a dancer inexplicable and secondary to moments of creative revelation. In his reminiscences, Alexandre Benois (1945, 289–90) claimed:

The fact that Nijinsky’s metamorphosis was predominantly subcon- scious is in my opinion, the very proof of his genius. Only a genius – that is to say, a phenomenon that has no adequate natural explanation – could incarnate the “choreographic essence of the rococo period” as did Nijinsky in Le Pavillon d’Armide – especially in the Paris version of my ballet. Only a genius could have given so authentic an image of the youth pining for his dead beloved in Giselle. His interpretations of the strange being who dances with the Sylphides, of the Spectre de la Rose, of the negro in Schéhérazade and of Petrouchka were equally manifestations of genius. (emphasis added)

In the hegemonic interpretation, Benois’s theme of subconscious and instantaneous creation, also prominent in theories of genius as men- tal pathology (Becker 1978, especially 77–81), has become a powerful The Mad Genius 177 motive, for it also downplays the importance of dancers and dancing to the story of the Ballets Russes. As inexplicable, dancing need not be ana- lysed as labour or skill, since its corporeal expertise requires no conscious effort or preparation. Conveniently, this upholds the old dichotomy of the thinking mind versus the feeling body, sense versus sensation; and eliminates the need to analyse dance as a form of knowledge. It effec- tively silences the dancers’ expertise, their professional (somatic) knowl- edge crucial for actual performance practice. De Miomandre (1913, 3) explicated this when he wrote: “But before Nijinsky, we think neither of merit nor of travail, neither of obstacles surmounted nor of nature’s imperfections, for we cease to think” (emphasis added). Frankly, some early researchers seem to have taken de Miomandre quite literally. Perhaps the most fascinating transformation has taken place in the story of Nijinsky failing in academic subjects at the Imperial Theatrical School, flunking, being exempted, and/or being given the questions for his final examinations in order to graduate at all.4 As noted, Nijinsky’s near-fatal fall in a rigged high-jumping contest in 1901 delayed his studies by a year, which meant he graduated a year later than most of his class (Nijinska 1992, 99–103). However, stories of Nijinsky’s late graduation first appear in 1909, when Le Figaro (15 May 1909), as part of the advance publicity given to the dancer, ridiculed the idea that, in Russia, a failure in an exam on religious history actu- ally mattered to the career of such a prodigy. Given as an example of how conservative and despotic the Imperial system was, the story reiterated the aforementioned narrative of the true genius as a ‘natural talent’ manifesting itself independently of external encouragement and even against the institutionalised forms of training (see Nochlin 1989b, 153–5 of similar stories told of famous painters). This rhetoric became extremely useful in 1911, when Diaghilev’s private enterprise had to be set apart from its Imperial roots. Dancers, whose talent was physical and whose careers required that they dedicate most of their time to exercising their bodies, were gener- ally not encouraged in intellectual pursuits during their training and, consequently, dancers were believed to be unintelligent, even foolish. Although the Imperial Theatrical School gave all its pupils a basic education, its main concern was creating professionals. Many danc- ers also came from families where success in life was not measured by philosophical erudition, and where professional success was a means for upward social mobility. If such people travelled, they did so out of professional necessity, not for leisure or cultural education in the man- ner of the upper-class grands tours. 178 Dancing Genius

Retrospectively, it is also very difficult to discern linguistic proficiency from social bias. Diaghilev had had a hard time convincing his refined Petersburgian friends of his worth (see, for example, Benois 1930, 22–7) because even within the same social class, acquired sophistication was a question of power and its usage: many of Diaghilev’s close associates, like Benois, were sceptical or even downright hostile towards ideas that did not reproduce their view of the world. In addition, they were prone to dismissing Nijinsky as childish because of his age – he was seventeen years younger than his lover; Stravinsky, closest to his own age in the core group of artists, was still seven years his senior. By the time the eighteen-year-old Nijinsky entered this social circle its members had established national reputations in their respective fields or were close to doing so. Unsurprisingly, Nijinsky’s sister claims Nijinsky became timid in the company of Diaghilev’s friends (Nijinska 1992, 306–7; Nijinska quoted in Parker 1988, 47), and Nijinsky (1999, 89) com- plained in his Diary that he was dismissed because of his youth. The age gap also explains much of the sense of distance in the recollections of Nijinsky written by Diaghilev’s Russian associates, who seem baffled at the thought of Diaghilev seeing something special in this quiet boy (see, for example, Stravinsky 1975, 27–8 for (Nouvel’s) depiction of Nijinsky). Moreover, Nijinsky was also Polish, and thus inorodts.5 Russian was his second language, and even when writing his Diary he worried over spelling mistakes (Nijinsky 1999, 35, compare with 35n*; and Fitz-Lyon 1999, l). It seems Nijinsky always retained some Polish characteristics in his Russian, even if his Russian was better than his Polish (Nijinska 1992, especially 158; also Nijinsky 1999, especially 34fn, 35fn, 235fn). had a bad reputation because of the many Polish insurrections and their association with the assassination of Alexander II, and Nijinsky’s Polish lilt (for example, Stravinsky & Craft 1960, 34) may have influenced how he was bullied at school (Nijinska 1992, especially 99–103, 123–6; Bourman 1938, 26–95). This is to say that various processes of translation also figure in inter- preting contemporary source materials on Nijinsky. Although Nijinsky had to study some French at the Imperial Theatrical School, he would not have been fluent in this language in 1909. Yet, as with most of the Diaghilev troupe, his French gradually improved with use, and even if he never completely mastered the language he used it to write letters and explicitly objected in his Diary to people thinking he could not speak it (Nijinsky 1999, 74–6, 83). Nijinsky did not speak English, but according to a 1919 medical record (quoted in Ostwald 1991, 236–7) he taught himself some German. The Mad Genius 179

In view of the wealth of contemporary materials, it is rather surprising how consistently what Nijinsky was reported as saying is discredited in the hegemonic interpretation. Much has been made, for example, of the remarks in some interviews of either Diaghilev or Romola Nijinsky speaking in Nijinsky’s name. It is true Romola Nijinsky spoke both French and English but her Russian was halting at best, and she had her own opinions of what kind of a star her husband should be. Her opinions are relatively easily discerned from those by Nijinsky simply because they do not correlate with his other interviews or his letters. It is more difficult to know the extent to which reporters or publicists put words into the dancer’s mouth, and there are certain examples where an anonymous reporter has invented the entire text attributed to Nijinsky. For example, “Muscle Control as a Fine Art by Waslav Nijinsky” (in Physical Culture, April 1916, NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings) included long quotations from American books on dance that Nijinsky, who never spoke or read English, could not have referenced. However, the same is true of some interviews with Diaghilev (for example, in The Graphic 20 July 1929). Even taking this into account, such texts can be used in part if they correspond with more reliable interview materials, and to do so does not require a degree in history as much as a critical attitude towards the media, past and present. As for Diaghilev, he was fluent in French, although he seems to have found it more convenient to appear as if he did not know English (Bernays 1965, 110; Haskell 1955, 233; Beaumont 1998, 128), and he sometimes acted as Nijinsky’s interpreter, as in the two interviews by Ch[arles]. Tenroc in Comœdia (25 April 1911 and 18 April 1912). However, on some occasions Diaghilev was explicitly not present: for example, L’Intransigeant (13 June 1912) sneaked backstage to interview Nijinsky with their own translator in an attempt to get to the man behind the public image.6 Also, Diaghilev was not a dance professional, so it is unlikely he would have spoken of the topics Nijinsky seems to have been interested in – and again, the views of the two on what dancing should be diverged, particularly after 1913. Moreover, as the impresario, Diaghilev would have been concerned with the company’s public image and would never have made some of the remarks his star dancer divulged – such as his musings on fat women in Je sais tout (November 1912) quoted above. Certainly, reporters also often rephrased interviews or paraphrased what was said – they still do, because meaning is construed differently in writing than in oral telling (Chartier 1989, especially 159–67). But reporters also liked to cite Nijinsky to prove they knew of his published 180 Dancing Genius views: “sans sauce” (“without sauce”), that Eksteins (1989, 50) calls a “typically Gallic analogy” in Jacques Rivière’s text (in La Nouvelle revue française November 1913) was a quote from Nijinsky (in Daily Mail 14 July 1913). In historiography, plausibility requires extensive knowledge of contemporary context, and primary sources are regarded trustworthy when the same information is found in several, unrelated sources. In dance history, hegemonic presuppositions distort this process: When the reporter of The New York Times (8 April 1916) shortened what was said at the press conference held upon Nijinsky’s arrival in the United States in 1916 with “The gist of what they [that is, Nijinsky and his wife] said”, it is true that the newspaper story became the reporter’s inter- pretation (Macdonald 1975, 169–70). However, The New York Herald (6 April 1916) gave a more detailed account of the same press confer- ence, including a preamble on the problems of interpretation (see also Musical America 15 April 1916). It is emblematic of hegemony that dance research quotes the less exact account, which is easier to access – The New York Times has had a continuous run, is one of the few newspapers with an official index, and its old issues are available on the Internet. More importantly, its version fits the existing belief that Nijinsky never actually said much, which conveniently makes a cursory look in the direction of the archives suffice for research. In contrast to the predominant view in the reminiscences and research literature, Nijinsky was by no means incapable of verbalising his thoughts. Neither Russian nor Western reports presented Nijinsky as inarticulate, in the manner of the old hegemonic sources – rather, they stress he used gestures as well as words to get his meaning across and spoke remarkably good French for his age (for example, Le Figaro 15 May 1909; Comœdia 25 April 1911; L’Intransigeant 17 May 1913; The Times 25 February 1914). Sometimes interviewers also got in the way of the interview – in La Renaissance 30 May 1914, Marcel Boulenger reported witnessing Nijinsky lose his temper when the translator, Serge Popoff, repeatedly insulted him. In general, contemporary sources stress Nijinsky’s youth and his modesty as positive qualities in a star of his magnitude. For example, when the reporter for Peterburgskaia Gazeta (quoted in Krasovskaya 1979, 122) says of Nijinsky that “He speaks just like a child”, this relates not to Nijinsky’s linguistic skills but to the reporter wishing to present the young star as honest, innocent, and, most importantly, uncorrupted by Paris, “that contemporary Babylon”. Nijinsky is also described as “dressed modestly”, “shy”, “boyish”, and blushing as if “embarrassed by his celebrity” – all means to extrapolate the moral superiority of the young Russian dancer to the debauched The Mad Genius 181

West. Besides, legally speaking, Nijinsky was still a minor in 1909 (Engelstein 1992, 90). This same rhetoric was used by other Russian writers to characterise the dancer as unaffected by the praise he received from critics and placing aesthetic considerations above his personal ones (for example, Novaia Vremia 28 January/10 February 1911). It also surfaces in con- temporary Western depictions of Nijinsky, although the image of this “modest” or “unspoiled” young man is sometimes directly contradicted by what this allegedly modest young man is reported as saying (as in Comœdia 25 April 1911). Nijinsky’s self-effacement and modesty even became a means to stress his stardom as when Algernon St. John-Brenon (in New Jersey Telegraph 9 August 1911 in NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings) introduced the Russian Ballet to Americans: “These are the stars of the ballet, though Nijinsky says he is not a star, but only a centrepiece of a great mosaic.” Here, St. John-Brenon’s phrasing actually worked to emphasise the fact that the only quoted artist, Nijinsky, indeed was the centre of public attention. As Ellen Terry (1913, 16) noted, citing this view, “in his case it is a very big ‘only’”. Perhaps the most comprehensive description of Nijinsky’s manner of speaking French is to be found in the interview Jane Molineau con- ducted with the dancer during his voyage to America in 1916:

His voice is of rhythmic cadence, as though he spoke blank verse. His French has a thick Russian quality, and the rhythm of his speech is not the natural rhythm of the French language, but a personal expression of harmony of which he is totally unconscious. He is a good listener and a good talker. When he listens he looks directly at the speaker, and appears to be listening to the speaker’s thoughts, rather than his words. His mind is as nimble as his feet, his reply ready before the question is well asked. [ . . . ] He is not adversely critical of the world, or of his world. His answer is quick and sure on any question of art or action. One does or one does not do a thing. When he differs from general opinion or precedent he qualifies his own opinion with a broad and clear understanding of the other point of view. (The Bellman 30 December 1916)

Although Nijinsky’s attentiveness and charm may have depended on the interviewer – Nijinsky seems to have had little tolerance for stu- pid questions – Molineau proves herself a good listener as well. The “Russian cadence” she mentions was also noted in Diaghilev (Debussy quoted in Orledge 1985, 152) and Stravinsky (Taruskin 1996, 878fn73), 182 Dancing Genius and Fokine (1961, 195) admitted he did not understand French. Yet, this has never caused anyone to claim these men to be inarticulate or doubt their intellectual faculties. Even had he been very shy, Nijinsky lived most of his life outside his native country and in the public eye. During his career, he must have become more accustomed to being interviewed, even if the initiative may have come from reporters. Even if he disliked “redoutables inter- views” (“dreaded interviews”, Je Sais Tout November 1912), Nijinsky clearly could get his message through, and the more secure he became in his artistic position within the Ballets Russes, the more assertive his statements became and the more often he voiced downright arrogant remarks. It is also obvious he kept track of who agreed with his ideas – Rivière recollected that:

A quelqu’un qui lui demandait, avant la première, ce que c’était que le Sacre du Printemps: “Oh! répondit-il, vous n’aimerez pas ça non plus” et, esquissant avec les bras ce geste latéral et ankylosé que nous avons appris à connaître par le Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune: “Il y aura encore du comme ça!”7

Yet, the elements that plague the hegemonic interpretation are also evident in this anecdote. Nijinsky’s recourse to gesture relegates speech a secondary role as a means of expression: his gesture, his body were impossible to record in words and, hence, become proof of the impos- sibility of translating either genius or dance into text. Later, after Nijinsky’s institutionalisation, this story became evidence of Nijinsky’s highly specialised genius of the body, his incapacity of expressing him- self by any other means than gesture. When the dancer was written off as incapable of expressing himself except through his body, Nijinsky was silenced, reduced to his body and the truth of this body in sexuality, as discovered through psychoanalysis.

Search for the core

Nijinsky is a prime example of how canons of art are created by art experts – the first of these being the author-genius – through authorita- tive statements and written text as well as the lasting (reputation of) works of art. Yet Nijinsky’s position as an author and an authority on his art form is peculiar because early in 1919, before he turned thirty, he agreed to enter a mental sanatorium and was institutionalised for the rest of his life. This buried what he had said of his work under the The Mad Genius 183 weight of more ‘sane’ authorities, allowed others to take the credit for his already notorious achievements, and ended his career in a manner that made his life proof of the mystical connection between true genius and (mental) pathology. As a mad genius, Nijinsky became incarcerated in the nexus of aes- thetic and medical discourses. In the former, his madness ‘proved’ his genius was true whilst simultaneously making it unattainable. In the latter, the silence of the insane, “the absence of œuvre” that Foucault (2001, especially 445–6) calls characteristic of psychoanalysis, fused ideas of the silent art form, dance, with its presumably mad genius, displacing the power to analyse from the genius to the medical expert. In both discourses, the abrupt end of a fabulous career in mental ill- ness was far more fitting to narratives of genius than Nijinsky’s own plan of gradually retiring from dancing and founding a school.8 In actuality, any individual lauded as a genius during their lifetime can be overthrown when new developments cause art experts to re-evaluate earlier judgments. But rhetorically, because genius is an inherent qual- ity, it cannot fade over time; genius can only be disabled by fate: death or insanity (preferably at the “peak” of the career) attests to the dan- gerous power of the transcendent and the tragedy of true genius able to perceive it (Tanner 1989; Braudy 1986, especially 417–22, 424–6). Nijinsky’s madness thus explained his dancing genius precisely by mak- ing it inexplicable, dependent on a mind that was abnormal and insane: “the explanation of Nijinsky’s uniqueness is to be found in his curious mental make-up, which also led to the tragedy that cut short his career so prematurely” (Borodin 1952, 93). Although mental pathology is notoriously specific to cultural and historical conditions,9 with Nijinsky’s madness, everything anyone had ever said about Nijinsky became Nijinsky and, as such, admissible as a basis for diagnosis. Most absurd stories became facts, the claims of oth- ers the dancer’s doing. Everyday events in a dancer’s life acquired a new kind of significance that was more than the significance given to the actions of genius: they became admissible as clinical evidence of pathol- ogy. For example, Nijinsky’s cooling-down exercises were turned into a pathological incapability to stop dancing (Dunning 1983, 20). Because his parents were dancers, Nijinsky’s exceptional skills were attributed to the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics,10 which has recently re-surfaced as ‘emergenesis’ (the naturalisation of genius as due to genetic anomalies: Lykken 1998, especially 28–30). For the discourses of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the mad genius is a privileged object under scrutiny, an unsolved mystery on which 184 Dancing Genius new science (in the form of the latest expert) can shed some light. Needless to say, this project has not been successful, because neither madness nor genius are scientifically quantifiable – they cannot be evaluated according to the criteria of objectivity as defined in the natu- ral sciences (for example, Becker 1978, especially 119–21). However, particularly since the 1960s, psychoanalytical theories by Freud and Lacan (and their feminist critics) have played an important role as research methods in the arts and humanities, removed from the clini- cal setting and clinical qualifications (see, for example, Burke 2001, 16–17 on psychohistory). Offered as explanations of how the mind works, psychoanalysis finds its truth in sexuality, which perfectly par- allels how fandom searches for the ‘truth’ about the star. As Richard deCordova (2001, 143) writes in his discussion on the stars of the early cinema:

the star system engages us in the very processes through which our society constitutes sexuality as an object of knowledge and fasci- nation. The dynamic of secrecy and confession, concealment and revelation that supports discourse on sexuality supports discourse on stars as well.

The allure of psychoanalysis similarly lies in how it enables the expert to speak the truth about the elusive private person ‘behind’ the public figure. Moreover, since (chronological) causality has no bearing on the analysis, the results are always-already predetermined by the truth of the method. When psychoanalysis is applied to a past subject, the ana- lyst can pick whatever suits the desired result from any set of materials without concerns over representativeness, factuality or cultural bias.11 With Nijinsky, the self of the dancer is collapsed with the roles he danced on stage: “Petrushka epitomizes Nijinsky’s own condition, not only in the more obvious manifestation – his relationship with Diaghilev – but also in his very attitude towards life in his innermost self” (Snow 1983, 90). Or, to quote a more famous expert: “Jeux, the second installment of Nijinsky’s erotic autobiography, reveals, no less urgently than Faune, the power of desire, the ambiguity of sexual iden- tity, and his aversion to intercourse itself” (Garafola 1992, 63, following Kirstein 1971, 199, emphasis mine). Here, Nijinsky’s roles – fictional characters – are turned into psychological truths of the star’s self; this self is equated with sexuality and interpreted as manifesting itself in full in the (fictional) roles. In short, Nijinsky was a rotten actor who was merely being himself on stage. The Mad Genius 185

Experts of the psyche have been no less vulgar in their interpreta- tions. Diagnoses of Nijinsky are legion, and they are usually based on the edited version of the Diary (Nijinsky 1991a) and on the ‘intimate’ biography also produced by Romola Nijinsky (1980) (for example, Ansbacher 1981; Simonton 1994, 286–7). They invariably indulge in a creative reinterpretation of historical documents and anecdotes, where everything ever said of Nijinsky or by him is interpreted to fit the symp- toms of a particular mental illness suitable for this genius and ultimately explained through Nijinsky’s perverse body and especially his perverse sexuality.12 The desire to diagnose overwhelms both ethical concerns and standard clinical practice: for example, Dr. Peter Ostwald (1991, 201) criticises doctors who actually treated Nijinsky on the grounds that “it is hazardous to make a psychiatric diagnosis on the basis of written documents”, when he himself relies solely on such documentation for his own diagnosis. This need to explain Nijinsky’s special position in the canon of his art form as something determined by the genius’s psyche reveals a lack of trust in aesthetics. In the wake of positivism, divine grace or transcend- ence no longer sufficed as explanations for genius and, in the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries, a new science of genius emerged to explain genius as a tangible (biological) characteristic, determined through sexuality, madness, criminality and race. In the “hallmark writings” (Ludwig 1995, 17) of Sir Francis Galton, genius became a bio- logical characteristic and, as such, was governed by the same rules of heredity as race or criminality. In The Hereditary Genius (1869, Galton 1900), Galton observed that geniuses were related and tended to emerge from certain families in the upper crust of contemporary society. To cul- tivate future genius, Galton designed a new science, eugenics: in posi- tive eugenics, positive qualities were encouraged; in negative eugenics, individuals with undesirable qualities were eliminated – an idea taken to its logical conclusion in the Third Reich (for example, Battersby 1994, 181–3; Gould 1984, 75–7; Pearsall 1973, 143–51). However, many of Galton’s contemporaries thought eugenics would be insufficient to guarantee the emergence of genius. In The Man of Genius (Uomo di genio 1863, translated 1891), Cesare Lombroso ([1910], especially 353–5) sought to prove all geniuses of the past had some abnormalities and that criminality and genius were essentially two halves of the same coin. Other contemporary theories explained the apparent creativity and sophistication of the Chinese and Japanese as indicative of what uncultivated genius could amount to when lacking proper Christian morality, or, like Otto Weininger, posited that the 186 Dancing Genius

Jews were racially incapable of genius (Gilman 1995, especially 77–86; Battersby 1994, especially 163–9). Ancient Greek texts were misquoted as proof that a connection between genius and madness existed, and numerous studies were made on the correlation between artistic fame and insanity.13 With his institutionalisation, Nijinsky finally fit all the characteristics required of genius in this new science of genius. Conversely, the sci- ence made any further inquiries unnecessary. Since both genius and madness were hereditary conditions, Nijinsky was destined for mad- ness: “Nijinsky carried it in him from the start”, claimed Arnold Haskell (1955, 248–9):

I have asked several well-known psychiatrists about this particular form of insanity, dementia præcox [ . . . ] It is possibly glandular in origin, possibly mental [ . . . ] One thing is certain – people do not go insane through certain unfortunate or harrowing circumstances unless they already have the seeds of insanity in them. (similarly, Lifar 1945, 148n19)

The particular illness Haskell attributes to Nijinsky, dementia prae- cox, was a form of schizophrenia – a term coined in 1908 by Eugen Bleurer who diagnosed Nijinsky in 1919 and had him to the Bellevue sanatorium as a schizophrenic – and as such, specifically a cog- nitive disorder (Ostwald 1991, 193). Conveniently, this also explained the stories of Nijinsky’s silence and academic failures, whilst retaining the possibility that he was a dancing genius. Notably, Nijinsky’s madness could also be used to safeguard the expertise of people who could not understand his choreographic work. Although Millicent Hodson (1996, xix) predetermines madness as Nijinsky’s destiny, she also observes that the metaphor of madness attached to Nijinsky’s Sacre began as a figure of speech at the time of the première but became, thanks to Nijinsky’s illness, “an anachronistic diagnosis of his mental state when he was choreographing [this work]” (Hodson 1996, x–xii.) As the babblings of a madman, Nijinsky’s uncon- ventional choreographies were justly dropped from the repertory and condemned to oblivion – like their choreographer who was destined for madness, they were destined to become inconsequential to dance as an art form. All in all, Nijinsky’s madness was very timely. It admirably suited the post-war nostalgia for the belle époque: the loss of Nijinsky’s prodigious dancing, itself inscribed with the notions of youth and ephemerality, The Mad Genius 187 became symbolic of the loss of an entire way of life. Nijinsky’s madness became the madness of an entire generation slaughtered on the bat- tlefields (Cocteau 1918, 63; Blanche 1916, 258–9, 278–80). Moreover, Nijinsky’s insanity medicalised his ‘abnormal’ sexuality, allowing pub- lic discussion on the scandalous innuendos of the Ballets Russes.14 Although Cesare Lombroso ([1910], 353–8) gave homosexuality as one example of the degeneration he believed integral to genius, and a number of contemporary theories even lauded male same-sex affection as the ideal (though usually asexual ) form of love (West 1993, 71–80), homosexuality was also a mental pathology, a disease the prevalence of which seemed to be on the rise (see, for example, Krafft-Ebing quoted in Ledger & Luckhurst 2000, 298). This is why some reminiscences claim Diaghilev was to blame for Nijinsky’s madness and even go as far as claiming Diaghilev was aware of this. For example, Jacques-Émile Blanche (1949, 430) claimed he had heard Bakst warning Diaghilev that his demands were “killing” Nijinsky, which Blanche took as meaning their homosexual lifestyle, although the company’s touring schedule would have been a likelier candidate. Thanks to the psychoanalytical equation of a person’s self with her/his sexuality, histories of the Ballets Russes have sidetracked into obsessive (and lurid) speculation about what ‘really’ transpired in bed between Nijinsky and Diaghilev, which is then used to explain their careers.15 These speculations usually pay no heed to how sexual prac- tices and preferences are historically changing, dependent on culturally specific ideas about feminine and masculine behaviour, on notions of right and wrong, purity and danger, and a host of other norms that condition how we perceive our bodies and actions. However, Nijinsky, too, was aware of this science of genius. He started writing his so-called Diary because he realised others thought he was insane, and most of the authors to whom he refers either went mad (such as Nietzsche: Nijinsky 1999, 17) or dealt extensively with the madness of geniuses (such as Lombroso: Nijinsky 1999, 96–7). His wife’s views, evident in the differences in the edited version (Nijinsky 1991), also influenced his thinking. Nijinsky’s Diary is compelling precisely because it so clearly emulates our notions about genius: a familiarity that arises not from some transcendental truth about geniuses but from Nijinsky’s own understanding of how he was supposed to be writing about himself as a genius – after all, he was writing the Diary for publica- tion (Nijinsky 1999, 46–7, 174, 216). Nijinsky’s image as a dancer essentially depended on his presence in the theatre space as an object of desire. His private persona, which 188 Dancing Genius lacked the androgyny and exotic qualities of his stage persona, made people question the process by which Nijinsky created a role, and ascribe his body with signs pointing towards a similarity between the dancer and the person. This search for truth in the body of the star derived from the nineteenth-century understanding of genius and especially of sexuality as the truth within a person, a search that only intensified as the body of the star/dancer was lost to his audiences. Because the premises of how to write (as well as what to write) about Nijinsky have gone unquestioned, it is imperative now to return to the contemporary materials, and to the differences between the Western understanding of Diaghilev’s troupe and the cultural position this organisation held in contemporary Russia. Here, we shall also encounter a very different Nijinsky. Part III A Russian Russian Ballet? 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Ballet and Russian nationalism ̪ О Нижинскомъ всь газеты ̪ Всь Парижеские эстеты ̪ Пьли гимны и сонеты А портреты?! О, портреты ̪ Были центромъ всьхъ витринъ! ̪ Боже мой! Въ теченье льта Триста тридцать три портрета ̪ Звьздъ россійскаго балета!... Сколько стоило все это – Знаетъ Дягилевъ одинъ!1

This satirical poem from the theatrical paper Rampa i zhizn characterises the Russian attitude towards the Ballets Russes. The second to last line, “Сколько стоило все это”, could also be translated as “How much did all this cost?”, a jibe at how Diaghilev spent extravagant sums to persuade Paris of Nijinsky’s stardom. Quite a few Russian reviews shared this tone – Russian theatrical papers in particular published scathing pieces of criticism of Diaghilev’s enterprise, the works performed, the star dancers and their reception. Diaghilev was a favourite for cartoonists’ wishing to scold the Ballets Russes for having forfeited tradition to popular suc- cess, artistry to circus entertainment, and decency to Western European decadence. Yet underneath the mockery lay both genuine pride at the suc- cess of the Russian dancers and a fear for the empire’s image in the West. Considering how few historians of the company have familiarised themselves with these Russian materials, some surprising similarities can be detected between them and the hegemonic view of the Ballets

191 192 Dancing Genius

Russes. For example, the Russian opinion that Western critics of the Ballets Russes did not really discuss the dancing in the spectacles also appears in Western research literature, although with the difference that the latter also represents Russian critics as conservative support- ers of classical ballet who could not recognise the vanguard greatness of Diaghilev’s troupe. We owe such similarities mostly to Russian bal- let experts promoting Diaghilev’s company, most notably Valerian Svetlov’s (pseudonym of Valerian Iakovlevich Ivchenko, 1860–1935) eulogy to the Ballets Russes, Le Ballet contemporain (Svétlow 1912). Married to the ballerina Vera Trefilova, who had first performed in Diaghilev’s troupe in 1909 (Buckle 1998, 506), Svetlov was cited as an authority on ballet in the West as well (see, for example, Le Figaro 18 May 1909) and later helped to formulate the early hegemonic view of the vanguard Diaghilev and his revolutionary followers in his articles to The Dancing Times and other Anglo-American trade papers. Most Western accounts that represent ballet in Russia as conserva- tive, virtuosic and rather boring do so to contrast this ballet with the Ballets Russes. This view has been buttressed with selective transla- tions of Russian dance criticism, notably Andrei (André) Levinson’s (1887–1933) 1918 collection of reviews, The Old and the New Ballet (Levinson 1982). A prominent critic in Paris in the 1920s, Levinson was an advocate of classical ballet in the Petipa tradition and as much an opponent of Diaghilev’s coterie as Svetlov was its admirer. Yet both men wrote for the most prestigious ballet publication in Russia, the Ezhegodnik Imperatorskikh Teatrov, the Yearbook of the Imperial Theatres, and around their work lies a heterodox and little-known field of Russian dance criticism. Many of the daily papers in St. Petersburg and Moscow regularly pub- lished reviews of ballet performances, and Russia also had several prom- inent trade papers that also discussed ballet, such as Teatr i iskusstvo (Theatre and art) and Rampa i zhizn (Footlights and life). Regardless of what they thought of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of ballet, Russian dance critics had a lot to say about the Ballets Russes, and most of it concerning aspects of the works rarely addressed in contemporary Western reviews, let alone in subsequent research. Some Western critics had Russian (such as Calvocoressi) and some read the French-language Russian newspaper Journal de St.-Pétersbourg (such as Schneider, see Chapter 8, note 18), but most merely listened to Diaghilev’s propaganda. This chapter will focus on three issues voiced by several (if not all) of the Russian critics: the questions of what was Russian about the Russian Ballet (nationalism), what was the relationship of Diaghilev’s company to Russian theatrical The Old and the New Ballet 193 reforms (modernism), and whether what the company did was art (aesthetics). However, in order to discuss the particular challenge the Ballets Russes offered in the Russian discourse, something has to be said of ballet’s special status in Imperial Russia, which also explains much about Diaghilev’s attitudes as an impresario and of Nijinsky’s choices as a dancer and choreographer. The social position of ballet in Russia was simultaneously very similar to and very different from that of ballet in France. In Russia, secular art had always existed in close conjunction with politics, even more so than in the West (see, for example, Kean 1983, especially xviii). Much like opera and dramatic theatre, ballet was an import: foreign touring companies first introduced the art form to Russia during the reign of Emperor Alexei (reigned 1645–76), the father of Peter I the Great (reigned 1682–1725). Russian aristocrats soon trained their serfs to form their own companies of ballet, opera and theatre – three arts that were close enough for artists to move quite freely from one to another (Borovsky 1999a, 7–8; Frame 2006, especially 163; also Roslavleva 1966, especially 20–3). According to tradition, Empress Anna (reigned 1730–40) issued an Imperial Decree for the dancing school of the French ballet master Jean-Baptiste Landé (or Landet, ?–1748) on 4 May 1738. Empress Elizabeth (reigned 1741–1762) had the Imperial Theatres and the adjoining Schools built in St. Petersburg (Slonim 1961, 25, 27–8; Frame 2000, 8–10). From the outset, Russian ballet was a composite of imported techni- cal elements taught by foreign ballet masters (Scholl 1994, 1–3, 17–18; Surits 1998, 11–16). The art form was associated with the court and spe- cifically with the social reforms of Peter the Great, who had imported Western goods, laws and customs in his effort to modernise Russia. Peter and his ‘enlightened’ successors advocated Western art, manners and languages as signs of civilisation and refinement. In a country already divided between the rulers and the ruled, the Petrine reforms split the upper classes between the followers of Peter, the zapadniki or Westernizers, and their opponents (Lappalainen 1986, 152–6.) In the nineteenth century, the Petrine split became romanticised as two distinct aesthetic traditions, the zapadnik and the slavophile. The zapadniki were identified with the new capital of St. Petersburg, its Empire Classicism and horizontal skyline opening to the sea, and the court and ministries ruling the country. They were seen as harbingers of a new, urban and modern Russia, and as conservative supporters of the autocracy – particularly after 1833, when Sergei Uvarov coined the official nationalism of Nicholas I’s reign, Russia as the Third Rome, according to which the autocrat was the defender of the Orthodox 194 Dancing Genius faith of the true Russian people (Hobsbawm 1994, 59–60; Jussila 1986, 220–4; Kirichenko 2001, 32–43). Slavophilia, by contrast, idealised pre- Petrine Russia as an ‘authentic’ national past, identified with the medi- eval capital, Moscow, the brick walls and onion domes of the Kremlin, with the and the merchant estate.2 For slavophiles, true Russian culture was about spiritual communality (соборность), not about rationality, individualism, and other “imported” values (Jussila 1986, 223; Carmichael 1968, especially 145–56; Hoogen 1997, 22–8.) At the beginning of the twentieth century, slavophilia’s union with the official nationalism spawned Eurasianism, an original conservative ide- ology that stressed Russia’s “Asiatic” heritage, autocracy and irrational- ism (Pursiainen 1999, 82–4; Lieven 2000, 219–20). Even if the division between the aristocratic and European St. Petersburg and the Asiatic merchant Moscow was fictional, it greatly affected the popular Russian imagination at the turn of the century (for example, Kean 1983, 1–32; Peuranen 1995), particularly as national- ism swept through the upper classes. Despite the Great Reforms of the 1860s,3 Imperial society in its last fifty years was extremely hierarchic: citizens were divided according to their hereditary estate, their civil rights depending on property and rank in the Civil Service (for example, Juntunen 1986, 168–73; Luntinen 1986a, 273–7). However, after the Decembrist uprising of 1825, intellectual life had started to shift to a new group, the raznochintsy (разночинцый). Perhaps best defined as the outsiders to Russian society, raznochintsy were literally ‘people of diverse origins’, those not belonging to any of the five hereditary estates – the sons and daughters of non-hereditary nobility, members of the lower ranks in the civil and military services. They were free, non-noble people with some economic independence, but not a class conscious of their joint interests. By no means were all of them intellectuals, but the rise of a non-noble radical intelligentsia4 in the nineteenth century was effectively due to the lack of political and social status for the raznochintsy (Wirtschafter 1992, especially 337–9; also Bradley 2002.) The association of raznochintsy intellectuals with demands for social change and with the assassination of the monarch (1881) explains something of why civic associations and intellectual activities were sus- pect and purges in the universities were common.5 The raznochintsy were particularly associated with one form of nationalism and its specific aesthetic demands, Populism or народниче- ство, which defined the entire cultural life of Russia in the 1860s and (in some ways) the rest of the tsarist era. Hailing from German Romantic thought, Populism claimed that the common people (народ) guarded The Old and the New Ballet 195 the mysterious ’Russian soul’ (душа) – a form of ‘Volksgeist’ popularised by Dostoyevsky – that could revitalise Russia and realise its messianic task as a nation.6 Because they strove for constitutional reforms, even outright political revolution, many Populists, including Diaghilev’s aunt Anna Filosofova (Nesteev 1999, 31–2), spent time in jail or exile. The revolutionary tendencies of Populism also provoked something of a counter-reaction in Pan-Slavism, an imperialist ideology according to which all Slavic people should be united under Russian leadership, and inorodtsy should be forcefully Russified (Carmichael 1968, 206–7; Owen 1981, 82–3, 89–95). Yet in its chauvinist and xenophobic way, pan-Slavism argued against the persistent tendency of the cultural elite to represent Russia as belated in its social, economic or artistic development.7 All these nationalisms defined ‘Russianness’ against the West – even the zapadniki advocated a Russia that did not imitate the West but integrated that which was useful and continued on its own path (Mikkeli 1999, 149–55; Vihavainen 1999, 168–9; Williams 1999, 3–18, especially 11.) For the zapadniki, ballet was one of these ‘improved imports’: it had been ‘Russified’, its essence changed for the better by the inclusion of ‘native’ elements – Russian dancers and Russian ballets, most notably those composed by Tchaikovsky. Although ballet’s fortunes waned in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s, this had little to do with moral concerns over ‘the dancing girl’ or the ‘effeminacy’ of male dancers (for example, Petrov 1992, 41–2). The Western discourse had to do with the shifting patronage of ballet as an art form: the bourgeois claim to power rested on sexuality, heredity and health that needed to be guarded against undesirable elements. In aristocratic Russia, neither the raznochintsy nor the merchant estate formed a bourgeoisie – or were even classes in this sense (Kochan 1966, especially 75–8; Owen 1981, especially 144–6). Rather, the fortunes of ballet related to the political concerns of the raznochintsy and the rise of new nationalist ideologies in the wake of the Great Reforms. After the final dismissal of Didelot8 in 1838, ballet and opera had opted for the safety of Imperial patronage. Unlike , who had had good personal relations with the leading intellectuals of his time, including Decembrists,9 his followers (notably Marius Petipa10) were officers of the court, who detached themselves from political reform movements.11 The Populist ‘generation of the 1860s’ saw ballet as a for- eign import that lacked any relevance to the pressing issues of Russian cultural revitalisation. As the social concerns and nationalism typical of other Russian arts bypassed the art form, ballet became isolated from 196 Dancing Genius the grand currents of Russian intellectual life and regained its popularity only with the period of cultural repression and increased state censor- ship following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. This period saw the move, in 1885, of the St. Petersburg ballet company to the , and the first collaborations of Petipa and Tchaikovsky (Wiley 1985, especially xiv, 10–16; Taruskin 1996, 536–8.) Between 1827–1882, the five Imperial Theatres had a monopoly of theatre in St. Petersburg and Moscow, although this was circumscribed by private soirées, dramatic societies and the like (Slonim 1961, 84–5; Frame 2006, especially 86–93). Until the 1917 Revolution, the court remained the principal sponsor of arts institutions, and the state financed the most prominent institutions of art, including the Imperial Theatres and the adjoining boarding schools for future dancers, actors and musicians.12 Previous histories of ballet in Russia have tended to ignore all other stages, either assuming that no alternative to the Imperial Theatres existed because only members of the court were interested in ballet; and/or that no viable working opportunities existed outside the Imperial system, as private patronage for ballet was scarce or non-existent (for example, Roslavleva 1966, 190; Goldman 1977/1978, 17; Lee 2002, 215). Yet there is ample evidence to the contrary, even in Nijinsky’s well-known family history: both of his parents were profes- sional ballet dancers, although neither had been trained in the Imperial Theatrical Schools nor performed in the Imperial companies. Their son’s first stage appearance was in , dancing a , a Ukrainian folk dance, and their touring careers would have given Nijinsky a particu- larly Russian view of ballet as a profession.13 In an ethnically diverse and largely illiterate rural Russia, ballet could cross at least some social divides. Besides provincial permanent compa- nies such as the ballet of the Wielki Theatre, circuses, pleasure gardens and private touring companies performed ballet, often in con- junction with operatic or dramatic episodes, folk dances, circus acts and acrobatics.14 Since touring troupes were not drama companies perform- ing in a permanent theatre, they could even circumvent the theatrical monopoly in the capitals. As Nijinska (1992, 48–9) and Benois (1988, 142–3) recollect, many of the famous Italian ballerinas first performed in St. Petersburg theatres like the Arcadia where also the Nijinskys worked for a time (see also Swift 2002, especially 136; McReynolds 2003, especially 225.) The contracts of the Artists of the Imperial Theatres were exclusive only during the season (from 30 August to late April, with breaks and holidays during Christmas and Lent). During the breaks, the artists often toured the provinces and performed on The Old and the New Ballet 197 commercial stages for fame and extra income (Byckling 2009, especially 18–20, 132, 164). As McReynolds (2003, 54) has noted, most Russian stars had this touring system and the extensive circulation of theatrical papers to thank for their nationwide reputations. In sharp contrast to this heterodox cultural marketplace, the Imperial Ballet’s audience was exclusive and elitist. During the reign of Alexander III (reigned 1881–94), the Imperial Ballet had become propaganda for the absolutist monarchy, a representation of the myth of Russia as the con- servative nobility wished it to be: an orderly, hierarchical procession that, despite its vast scale, functioned smoothly to the most minute detail (Volkov 1996, 283; Bartlett 1995, 90). Russian opera and ballet sang the praise of the Emperor: every season at the Mariinsky began with the same opera, Glinka’s Un Vie pour le Tsar (Жизнь за царя 1836).15 In St. Petersburg during the 1890s, ballet was given regularly in the Mariinsky Theatre, twice a week during the season. Evening-long pro- ductions dominated the repertory, but short, one-act works were given in benefits16 and to fill in shorter programmes. Of the approximately fifty ballet performances during the season, four out of five were by subscription only. Since seats were inherited and speculation on free tickets was rife, getting to see the Imperial Ballet was neither easy nor cheap (Frame 2000, 66–70). Whereas bourgeois theatre experience is characterised by anon- ymous disconnectedness ( Johnson 1995, especially 188–92), the Imperial form of theatre spectatorship was typically aristocratic in that many of the regulars knew each other, and came as much to be seen (and heard) as to watch (Telyakovsky 1991, especially 27–8; Frame 2000, 75–83; Wiley 1985, especially 10–16). The predominant political conservatism of this audience was reflected in what was permitted on stage in terms of dress and behaviour. The Imperial ballet companies had large budgets and could hire illustrious foreign stars, including the famous nineteenth-century ballerinas Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler and Carlotta Grisi, as well as some of the best male virtuosi of the era, such as the Italian Enrico Cecchetti (Чекеттиъ), one of the dancers for whom the Blue Bird role in La Belle au Bois Dormant was created (Roslavleva 1966, 58–65, 118; Poesio 1994, especially 123–7.) Russia attracted foreign ballet masters, many of whom stayed as teachers – in fact, so many did that at the turn of the century the dearth of Russian teachers at the Imperial Ballet School was noticeable. In other art forms, such lack of native talent attracted the nationalist reformers of the 1860s (Taruskin 1996, 23–75; Rosenthal 1984, 200), but this never happened with ballet. 198 Dancing Genius

One sign of the social prestige of the art form is that the ballet pro- ductions of the Imperial Theatres were regularly reviewed in all the major newspapers of the two capitals. Written by critics who had seen many of the ballets danced year in and year out by different casts and with varying choreographies, the reviews focused on the composition and quality of the dancing. The space allotted to ballet reviews was not necessarily larger than in France or England but the texts were aimed at balletomanes: they assumed a knowledgeable reader, well versed in dance vocabulary. Tradition had narrowed the focus and con- densed expression in ballet reviews, so that an experienced critic like Tugenkhold (in Apollon 7/1912) could, in one sentence, characterise four ballerinas (Astafieva, Rubinstein, Karsavina and Nijinska) in two works (Schéhérazade and Petrouchka), criticise the opinion of a French critic (Lalo), argue that Danses Polovtsiennes was not really a ballet, and give us his opinion on Spectre, in order to note that the six Ballets Russes spectacles he had mentioned had been reincarnated as the new season’s four so-called novelties. Russian dance journalism generally treated star dancers much less kindly than Western reviews of the Ballets Russes did, and gossip about Artists of the Imperial Theatres regularly appeared in theatrical papers. It could be said that in the West, Nijinsky was treated as a god and represented as infallible in every work every single night. In Russia, he was only as good as his latest performance (see, for example, Krasovskaya 1979, 126–7, 356n14–17).

Ballet patronage and social class

Nijinsky’s career was, in many ways, a typical one. Being a ballet dancer, particularly in one of the Imperial companies, was considered a respect- able profession: a contract with the Imperial Theatres guaranteed a secure if not a luxurious life, with regular pay and a pension upon retirement.17 Most pupils in the Imperial Ballet Schools were either children of dancers or musicians, or of relatively poor backgrounds, seeking upward social mobility in and through the arts: during the approximately eight years of schooling, the pupils received a formal education and graduated with the rank of Cadet in the Civil Service. Admission was through strict screening – Nijinsky is said to have been one of twelve accepted out of over a hundred candidates, and allowed to continue only after a second screening the following year (Legat 1931, 126; compare with Nijinska 1992, 74–9, 83). Nijinsky’s career also reveals how artistic success and aspirations to social prominence can never be entirely separated. His actions The Old and the New Ballet 199 were conditioned, to a greater extent than usually presented, by his social class and profession. One means for rapid advancement in the ranks was personal patronage from a wealthy member of the audi- ence. Characteristic of aristocratic theatres, these relationships were sometimes intimate, as attested by their illegitimate offspring (also a prominent group in the roster of students of the Theatrical Schools).18 An extreme example of the patronage system was the fabulous off-stage career of the prima ballerina assoluta Mathilda Kshesinskaia: the daugh- ter of a court musician, she was the one-time mistress of the Tsarevich Nikolai (later Nicholas II), and subsequently of two Grand Dukes (simul- taneously), although it took two revolutions and a world war for her to marry a Romanov (Romanovsky-Krassinsky 2005.) As Nijinsky’s reputation and status grew, he found himself approached by dancers wishing to further their careers by attaching themselves to his person – after all, male dancers tended to marry women of their own profession.19 However, the Mariinsky Wednesdays and the Cinizelli circus were haunts for homosexual encounters (Healey 2001, 248), and it was not uncommon for a male dancer to become involved with his patron. During his last school year, Nijinsky attached himself to Prince Pavel Dmitrievich Lvov, secretary to the Minister of Transport and Communications. A member of one of Russia’s oldest noble families, Lvov was somewhat of a dandy, which probably inspired Nijinsky’s interest – visible in contemporary photographs – in the way he looked.20 The Director of the Imperial Theatres, Vladimir Teliakovsky (1861–1924) wrote in his diary 29 May 1908:

It transpires that our young dancer Nijinsky has grown fantastically rich. He’s rented a big apartment and he’s all dressed up in diamonds and precious stones. And he is very friendly with M.[itia] Benkendorf and Prince P.[avel] Lvov. People say that’s where he gets his money from. Nijinsky’s present situation is inspiring a lot of rumors among the ballet artists.21

Later in life, Nijinsky (1999, 161–2) justified his actions by stating that those who lacked an influential patron ended up dancing in the corps de ballet. Describing his break with Lvov, Nijinsky (1999, 163) complained:

He loved me as a man does a boy. I loved him because I knew that he wished me well. [ . . . ] I wanted to live with him always because I loved him. He forced me to be unfaithful to him with Diaghilev 200 Dancing Genius

because he thought that Diaghilev would be useful to me. I was intro- duced to Diaghilev by telephone. I knew that Lvov did not love me, and therefore I left him. Pavel Lvov wanted to continue his friend- ship with me, but I realized that it was dishonest to be unfaithful.

Obviously, this version of the events is coloured by Nijinsky’s reading of Tolstoy (1904 – see his notes in Krasovskaya 1979, 326, 336), who, in Resurrection (1899), had associated male homosexual behaviour and its decriminalisation efforts with corruption and the decline of reli- gious morality (Karlinsky 1989, 349). By presenting himself as a ‘male prostitute’, Nijinsky excluded both moral depravity and mental illness as explanatory factors for his behaviour. In the Western discourse, only upper-class ‘inverts’ were associated with the mental illness that alarmed him at the time of writing (Weeks 1989; Sinfield 1994, espe- cially 94–7); whereas in the Russian context, his lovers had committed the greater sin by seducing him with promises of money and social prominence (Healey 2001). At the same time, Nijinsky distanced him- self from prostitution by stressing his emotional commitment to one lover at a time in emulation of heterosexual monogamy. However, as Arnold Haskell (1955, 253) pointed out, “Nijinsky was no child; he fully realized the immense advantages that were to be had in exchanging Prince L[vov]. for Diaghileff.” Lvov may have been interested in male dancers, but he was not a prominent figure in the arts circles of St. Petersburg, nor was he exporting Russian arts. Nijinsky wanted to be an internationally known star. At the very latest, Nijinsky had met Diaghilev after the première of Le Pavillon d’Armide in 1907, and by the following winter, the two were lovers – this while Diaghilev was still involved with his ‘private secretary’, Alexei Mavrine, and Nijinsky with Lvov. Although Nijinska (1992, 231) initially disbelieved rumours of her brother’s relationship with Lvov, she attests that after Diaghilev began to visit, the family saw less of Lvov, and her mother told her that Diaghilev had put pressure on Lvov to leave Nijinsky (Nijinska 1992, 261–2). In the Russian context, it would be hazardous to define Nijinsky as ‘a homosexual’ just because he had sex with his male patrons: there was nothing extraordinary about his behaviour. Not only was sexual patronage common in the theatrical professions (Schuler 1996, 26–30), in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian discourse of gender roles and of sexual acts was predominantly one of morality and sin, not of medicine and biological truths – perversion and immoral- ity were repented, not cured. The criminalisation of certain sexual The Old and the New Ballet 201 practices (such as prostitution or sex between men) came relatively late into Russian legislation, and the laws were never enforced very strictly, particularly not against prominent citizens.22 Moreover, the Russian horizon of expectations about cultural practices, gender roles or class behaviour was quite simply different from the contemporary Western equivalents, resulting in sometimes startling differences of opinion (see, for example, Vucinich 1998 on the Russian re-interpretation of Darwin). If the English middle-class preoccupation with manliness incarcerated boys in public schools where same-sex relations flourished (for example, Dellamora 1990, 197–8, 208–9; Sinfield 1994, 64–7), Russians preferred private tutoring and intellectual hobbies (that is, aristocratic privilege) over sports and games.23 When sexual behaviour did not threaten one’s class, ‘degen- eration’ was at best a vague concept,24 linked with a given author’s nationalist, societal and moral views rather than with biology (Goering 2003, 35–46). Consequently, the rhetoric of female passion as danger- ous surfaced very late, making the femmes fatales of the Ballets Russes works something of a novelty for Russian spectators – at least in bal- let. Yet, although Alexander II’s educational reforms had opened sec- ondary education to women and many upper class women obtained university degrees or made their career in the arts, Russia remained a deeply patriarchal society, where the Orthodox Church had a great deal of power over intellectual discourse.25 After the relaxation of censorship in the wake of the 1905 Revolution, the Russian discourse on sexual practices and representations of non- normative sexual acts got hopelessly entangled with political ideology, religious values and aesthetic agendas. ‘Sexuality’ – the idea that sexual acts constituted an individual’s personality – was associated with the principles of liberalism and constitutional democracy, and was either embraced or shunned as ‘foreign’. Consequently, both conservative nationalists and Russian political radicals eschewed liberalism, including notions of sexuality and women’s rights as alien to ‘true’ Russianness. Although Western discourses that pathologised sexual behaviour gained momentum in early-twentieth-century Russia, for certain artists, this mixture of public and private, personal, political and aesthetic, became almost an art in and of itself.26 Professional concerns thus coalesced with the private lives of both Nijinsky and Diaghilev in a manner that dissolves the public/private dichotomy. For the dancer, his relationship with Diaghilev actualised another major choice in his life: in 1910, after the first Parisian season dedicated solely to ballet, Diaghilev began to plan a private touring 202 Dancing Genius company, the Ballets Russes. This company would create a very par- ticular kind of Russian ballet for export, and its star would be Nijinsky.

Diaghilev, Mir iskusstva, and nationalist art

As noted, ballet in Russia was associated with a specific kind of nation- alism that glorified the autocracy and its seat of power, St. Petersburg. It was this city that also brought about the movement that, once com- bined with ballet, resulted in the Ballets Russes – Sergei Diaghilev’s arts journal Mir iskusstva (World of art) and the exhibition society of the same name.27 In previous histories of the Russian Ballet, the miriskusst- niki have been all too often represented as artistic revolutionaries who, unable to continue their theatrical reforms in Russia, went to Paris and conquered the world. Much of the pre-war visual style of the Ballets Russes did reflect the interests of certain key members of the World of Art circle – their concern with decorativeness and effect, with form rather than content, and art as something transcendental, separate from everyday reality – but it is useful to complicate this ‘revolutionary narrative’ a little. For one thing, most of the early collaborators in the movement were St. Petersburg raznochintsy and/or inorodtsy. Alexandre Benois was the scion of a French-Italian family of architects and artists; Dmitry Filosofov’s (1872–1940) home was a central salon for the intelligent- sia; Konstantin Somov (1869–1939) was the son of the curator of the Hermitage Museum; and Léon Bakst, who joined the group in 1890, was Jewish. Of the central editors of the new magazine, only Somov, Filosofov and his country cousin Sergei Diaghilev came from the Russian gentry.28 The key figures were also dilettantes with little academic art training – Bakst had been expelled from the Academy, Benois left it voluntarily, and the leading critics (Diaghilev, Filosofov, Walter Nouvel, Alfred Nurok (1863–1919) and Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1866–1941)) were mostly graduates from the Faculty of Law.29 The miriskusstniki were the first Russian group to consciously model themselves according to Western secessionists, even if they were not the first to exhibit art outside government institutions or to publish an arts journal.30 In Russia where, despite political differ- ences, the intelligentsia had shared a project of cultural development and an idea of cultural unity of the nation, (Read 1979, especially 1–8; Neuberger 1998, especially 7–12, 42–3), the kind of stylistic and ideological heterodoxy that the Mir iskusstva adopted appeared dan- gerous and provoked attacks from bastions of artistic power. The most The Old and the New Ballet 203 notable of these came from Vladimir Stasov (1824–1906), the Populist inventor of the Russian nationalist schools in music (могучая кучка, ‘the (Mighty) Five’ or kuchkist composers)31 and painting (the Society of Travelling Exhibitions, known as peredvizhniki or Wanderers)32 (Stasov 2001). Despite Stasov’s vehement attacks against Mir iskusstva, it would be absurd to create a break between these artists of the ‘Silver Age’ and those of the ‘Golden Age’ of Realism, as both groups participated in the project of nation building, projecting a certain kind of interpreta- tion of Russianness (an imagined community based on Russian history, language, landscape, and characteristics of Russian people). Diaghilev and his collaborators built their reputations on the work of the ‘gen- eration of the 1860s’, who had established Russian as the language of the intelligentsia and taught most of the artists of the younger genera- tion.33 They even catered to the same upper-class demand for glorified scenes of Russian history or fantastic fairy-tales, and were financed by many of the same patrons. Many of the younger peredvizhniki paint- ers (such as Korovin or Vrubel) had no scruples about exhibiting with the miriskusstniki who shared their interest in colour, stylisation and formal simplification as well as an interest in many different media, including graphic design (Bowlt 1982, especially 24–6; Petrov 1991, 44, 70–4, 154–62). However, Mir iskusstva also acted as a forum for ideas that became central to the emergence of Russian modernism and to a new critical discourse on art, even if the editors lacked the social connections to put any of their reforms to practice.34 The journal popularised current Western aesthetic ideas, including those forbidden by the Censor – almost every issue included blacklisted material.35 At the same time, they re-appropriated Russian notions, such as spiritual communal- ity (соборность), with a decidedly individualistic, decadent twist (for example, Read 1979, 31). Diaghilev quickly became the leading voice for new art in Russia because the style and content of his art criticism stood out from the encyclopaedic descriptions by his contemporaries. Even those modernists, such as Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935), who otherwise derided the group, used the new critical vocabulary they introduced.36 The miriskusstniki’s interest in stylistic and medial diversity and decorativeness contributed to the ease with which they turned to stage decoration. However, our view of how this came about has rested on the opinions of people such as Benois and Nouvel – inorodtsy whose backgrounds made them less than sympathetic to Russian nationalism 204 Dancing Genius outside the zapadniki interest in St. Petersburg. Benois (1945, 150) reminisced:

The majority of us – Nouvel, Lanceray, Bakst, Nourok, Birlé and myself – had no Russian blood in us. And if it is true that Somov and Filosofov belonged to the old Russian gentry, their upbringing and personal incli- nations were impregnated through and through with western culture. The most Russian of us all was perhaps Diaghilev, and it was just this “Russian side” of Diaghilev that aroused our antagonism – all the more because his characteristically Russian qualities were, from a universal point of view, the least acceptable.

Benois’s reminiscences about his illustrious friend read like a recon- stitution of the Petrine schism: the rift between Petersburgians and Muscovites, between Europe and Asia, between the zapadniki and the slavophiles. For Benois (1945, 182–3), “much that was characteristi- cally Russian annoyed us by its coarseness, triviality and unattractive barbarism”. Diaghilev’s ideas on Russianness stemmed from a different soil, a fusion of different nationalist traditions. His aunt, Anna Filosofova, was a true ‘woman of the 1860s’; his stepbrother Yuri and his wife were passionately involved in the revival of the kustari (peasant manufac- tures, Salmond 1996, 72, 122–4). Diaghilev’s upbringing in provincial Perm would also have given him a different view of Russia from that of the urban Petersburgians. Like the zapadniki, he believed that the true Russianness of Pushkin, Turgenev or Tchaikovsky could not be erased by any amount of Western influence, and that these artists had understood themselves (and Russia) only through seeing themselves through the eyes of others. But Diaghilev also thought Russian new art had to emerge, as in the Arts and Crafts movement, ‘naturally’ from the national heritage – lubki,37 icons, peasant artefacts and folk music. Diaghilev defended Surikov, Repin and Vasnetsov – older peredvizhniki artists derided by Benois and Nouvel (see Nouvel quoted in Haskell 1955, 110–11) – because he saw in them the beginnings of a new national style.38 All of Diaghilev’s enterprises brought to the public what he thought of as important examples of neo-nationalist art. Diaghilev’s first plans for Mir iskusstva already included the promotion of the Russian Arts and Crafts movement, which explains why Princess Mariia Tenisheva (1867–1928)39 and Savva Mamontov (1841–1918) would finance it.40 The journal prominently promoted artist-enhanced kustarnichestvo,41 The Old and the New Ballet 205 especially the wares of Tenisheva’s Talashkino estate and those of Abramtsevo’s artist colony, led by Elisaveta Mamontova (1847–1908), the wife of the industrialist. Despite Mamontov’s 1899 arrest and subse- quent bankruptcy and Diaghilev’s personal quarrel with Tenisheva,42 the affinity with Russian neo-nationalism remained a staple in Mir iskusstva (3/1904 and 11/1904, for example.) It also probably explains how the journal stayed afloat – with an Imperial subsidy from Nicholas II as well as numerous donations from members of the merchant estate.43 In the Russia of the 1890s, nationalist art was modern art, and Diaghilev’s interest in modernism and nationalism were thus mutually supportive, not exclusive. He loved kuchkist music and knew whole operas by heart, promoting Mussorgsky at a time when few shared this interest (Benois 1945, 165–6; Nesteev 1999, 39–42; also Bartlett 1995, 11–12). For the same reason, ballet was not central to the agenda of Mir iskusstva: reviews were few, and all in the later issues of the magazine, following the appointment of Prince Sergei Volkonsky (1860–1937) as the Director of the Imperial Theatres 22 July 1899 (Wolkonsky 2012, 68). Around this time, the theatrical careers of the miriskusstniki gath- ered velocity, and Diaghilev was appointed a ‘special missions official’ in the Imperial Theatres to edit the 1900 Ezhegodnik (see Wolkonsky 2012, 71–5 for his version; Wiley 1976/1977, 31–2; Garafola 1992, 165–8.) Later, it made for a good legend that Diaghilev was dismissed from his position in 1901 in conjunction with his first involvement with a ballet production, , set to the music of Leo Delibes.44 The satirical paper Shut ( Joker/Fool) published a cartoon about the imbroglio, relating to the rumours that Diaghilev would be appointed the vice-president of the Academy of Arts – the illustration depicts Diaghilev, the ‘New Minerva’ in a tutu, squatting on top of the low cupola of the Imperial Academy of Arts and gazing over the Neva in the general direction of the Theatre Square, whilst his hind end is evaluated by a group of bureaucrats.45 Bitter about his dismissal, Diaghilev kept attacking the Imperial Theatres and Teliakovsky’s person in the Mir iskusstva and other papers,46 although he soon received a sinecure at the Ministry of Court for which he received a regular salary until 1917 (Bowlt 1982, 160; Garafola 1992, 167, 441n55). Diaghilev’s continuing allegiance to the crown is perhaps best indi- cated by his triumphant Exhibition of Historical Russian Portraits in the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg amidst the general unrest of 1905. The exhibition glorified Russian rulers as patrons of the arts (Bowlt 2011, especially 89.) In 1906, when the Tauride Palace had already become the seat of the new Duma, Diaghilev put together an exhibition of 206 Dancing Genius contemporary art, and proceeded to take a version of it to the Salon d’Automne in Paris. This, the first of his ‘Russian Seasons’, received ample support from the Imperial government: many of the priceless works of art came from Imperial collections and crown monies covered the huge deficit of 275,000 roubles (Garafola 1992, 171–3). Indeed, all of Diaghilev’s efforts to export Russian arts relied on Imperial favour until 1910, but the financial deficit of 1906 did mean he had to find additional financiers for the subsequent seasons.47 Doing this, Diaghilev relied on an asset most of his friends did not have: his family ties to the merchant estate.48 At the turn of the century, most of the important families promoting Russian culture were joined by ties of blood: the Alekseevs were related to the Mamontovs, who were related to the Tretiakovs and through them to the Botkins, who had married into the Shchukin family, and so on (Owen 1981, especially 222–7). Many members of these families supported the arts, both from a sincere interest and in order to attain social kudos by emulating the aristocrats. Although not all were vanguard in their taste, the merchants offered an alternative system of patronage that encouraged the emer- gence of socio-politically critical art in the wake of the Great reforms, of Symbolism in the 1890s and 1900s, and of modernism a decade later.49 As noted, Mir iskusstva had solicited patrons from the merchant estate to keep the magazine afloat and the exhibitions aimed to sell paint- ings to important art collectors, many of them merchants. Many of the merchants seem to have genuinely liked Diaghilev’s panache and enthusiasm – that is, his ‘Russian’ qualities that upset his Petersburgian collaborators. Merchants (including four of the Morozov clan: Garafola 1992, 159–62) lavishly funded Diaghilev’s export campaigns of Russian art, and Diaghilev was not above using his connections to the Imperial family to secure subsidies from merchants aspiring to become nobility in the manner of his own great-grandfather. Diaghilev’s first venture into ballet in 1909 almost came to naught when the Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich died and his widow refused Diaghilev’s manufacturer associate the title he yearned for, with the result that the manufacturer withdrew his support from Diaghilev’s season.50 Previous narratives about the Ballets Russes have tended to downplay the significance of the Imperial family as patrons to Diaghilev’s export campaign. Although no exact ledgers exist, the Imperial government contributed something between 30,000 to 71,000 francs to fund the 1909 season. More importantly, the costumes, sets, performers and stage professionals were all on loan from the Imperial Theatres, and Russian embassies helped Diaghilev abroad more than once (Garafola The Old and the New Ballet 207

1992, 171–4). Indeed, reviews of the 1909 season noted the political significance of the presence of Russian notables such as the ambassador, Nelidov (Le Figaro 20 May 1909), and Prince Argutinsky-Dolgurokov, secretary to the Paris embassy (see Lifar 1945, 178fn1). Both the 1910 season in Paris and the famous performances at the Coronation Gala in London in 1911 (The Sketch 8 February 1911; The Daily Telegraph 10 and 22 June 1911) relied heavily on Imperial support. The support Diaghilev received from the Crown was such that his pri- vate ballet could be said to have originated as an Imperial propaganda measure financed with merchant capital. After the 1905 Revolution and the disastrous war against Japan, Nicholas II desperately needed foreign loans, and exporting Russian art on a grand scale assisted the flow of Western gold into Russian coffers. Diaghilev was by no means the only impresario to benefit from the Crown’s generosity.51 Ever since the 1880s, official visits on the part of the Imperial Russian entourage had included a programme of ‘cultural exchange’ between Russia and her allies, which had gained in scope after the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893/1894. The translations of Dostoyevsky in the 1880s had a major impact on Western intellectuals and a general knowledge of Russian literature and Russian culture spread rapidly (for example, Acocella 1984, 240–1). The Russian Arts and Crafts movement triumphed at the Exhibition Universelle of 1900, which also included a series of concerts; and kustarnichestvo was sold at commercial outlets in Paris, London and New York (Newmarch 1916, v; Salmond 1996, especially 102–4, 161–4, 243n58). As Salmond (1996, 161) has noted, the Ballets Russes “was just the climax of a grow- ing interest in russerie, to which export kustar goods contributed”. Moreover, the 1890s had brought Russian music yearly to Paris and, by 1909, the Paris Conservatory had a collection of over 175 scores of Russian music from Glinka to Mussorgsky. Even if Russian music was not well known, it was by no means unknown, particularly not by musicians such as Saint-Saëns and Debussy, who had visited the coun- try (Brody 1987, 192–207.) The Moscow Art Theatre had toured Berlin, Dresden, Prague and Vienna in 1906, although their planned Parisian season proved too expensive (Slonim 1961, 135–6). Russian dancers had performed abroad since the 1840s, also in organised companies; and after the turn of the century, there had been a veritable influx of Russian ballerinas on Western stages.52 While living standards and individualism were on the rise, the Western public looked to the exotic and primitive Others as producers of consumer goods that stood out from mass-produced items. In France, Russian products had special ideological appeal: the 1893/1894 alliance 208 Dancing Genius had ended the political isolation of France by Bismarck’s policies and led to the Triple Entente of 1907. Accepting a handmade Russian item was thus both politically and aesthetically easier than supporting the more industrial German art nouveau style, which was a nasty reminder of the growing industrial might of Germany.53 Diaghilev chose to export the romantic Russia his Western audi- ences had imagined from shop displays and travelogues, but he did this with a decidedly zapadniki twist. Although advertised as a cross-section of Russian art and including a large display of icons,54 the focus of the 1906 exhibition was on contemporary Russian art especially miriskusstniki. Most things previously presented as ‘typi- cally’ Russian were either excluded (such as the Social Realism of the peredvizhniki) or derided (the Talashkino crafts were called impractical in the catalogue). The exhibition was accompanied by a series of music recitals.55 In comparison, only months before this exhibition, Princess Tenisheva had arranged an exhibition of Russian art at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Here, Talashkino wares were exhibited side by side with ancient artefacts, representing Russia as the last primitive nation in Europe. The following year, both impresarios brought series of concert performances of Russian music to Paris; and in 1908, Tenisheva’s pro- duction of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snegurochka at the Opéra Comique was eclipsed by Diaghilev’s near-simultaneous presentation of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godounov at the Palais Garnier (Salmond 1996, 140–2, 240fn97; Taruskin 1996, 522–35; also Bowlt 2001.) For the Western spectator, little set apart these rivalling enterprises, but for Russians at stake was the true nature of Russianness in the European imagination: were the Russians to be seen as the nation whose art was original because it was devoid of Western influence, or was its art bending the indigenous tradition to Western norms, perhaps to result in a superior fusion? Although by 1909, Diaghilev had made some influential enemies in the higher reaches of Imperial society,56 the withdrawal of Imperial funds from Diaghilev’s organisation and the hostility of many Russian ballet critics towards his enterprise must be seen as reactions against what exactly Diaghilev promoted as Russian ballet, and what kind of ideas of Russia and Russianness the repertory evoked in Western spectators.

Theatre reforms and Russian ballet

In Russia, the Ballets Russes emerged amidst an intense intellectual debate on theatre. Forms of theatrical entertainment had proliferated in The Old and the New Ballet 209 the wake of the lifting of the Imperial theatrical monopoly in 1882: the number and variety of private theatres and teaching institutions grew rapidly, the commercialisation of entertainment and the influx of talent also affected repertoires.57 As increasing sections of the population had leisure time, concern over the potential immorality and irrationality of the urban masses also surfaced in Russia. In a country with low literacy levels, theatre was well suited to the utilitarian and didactic beliefs of Populism and Social Realism, and many intellectuals advocated theatre as a ‘rational recreation’ (Swift 2002; Marsh 1999, especially 162–3). As in the West (see Bailey 2003, especially 21–6), popular theatres were subject to a stricter form of censorship in what was allowed on stage. Both traditional popular urban forms (such as the balagan or fairground theatre) and new forms of variety theatre entertainment (such as the café chantant) were labelled harmful to the uneducated masses (Swift 2002, especially 28–30, 196). With the new aesthetics of Symbolism, the stage was set for fierce disputes over form and function, intimately tied to the political definition of ‘the nation’. Of the numerous new theatrical companies in the two capitals, two in particular acted as precursors to the Ballets Russes: the Krotkov Private Opera (1885–87, 1896–1903) and the Moscow Art Theatre (est. 1898). The former, founded and funded by the railroad tycoon Savva Mamontov, was particularly important in its second cycle of primarily kuchkist operas that also toured St. Petersburg. Promoting Russian opera at a time when it was not fashionable, the company utilised pered- vizhniki artists as theatrical decorators (Bowlt 1982, 37–8; Taruskin 1996, 490–6.) The latter was the enterprise of Elisaveta Mamontova’s cousin’s son, Konstantin Alekseev (1863–1938), better know under his stage name Stanislavsky, and his aristocratic colleague Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943). Funded by the textile magnate Savva Timofeevich Morozov (1862–1905), the company employed new Russian playwrights, notably Chekhov (Slonim 1961, especially 126–7; Benedetti 1994, 16–26). Both companies strove for the total work of art effect, emphasising accurate period style and artistic cohesion that sometimes extended to the foyers.58 Both also had a great impact on the Imperial Theatres, which soon gave new work opportunities and visibility for the artists associated with these companies. Although Mamontov’s enterprise folded, the Imperial Theatres and the Moscow Art Theatre continued to dominate Russian theatrical life well into the twentieth century. In many ways, Diaghilev’s theatrical ventures were both a develop- ment of and a reaction to these predecessors. Like the Imperial Theatres 210 Dancing Genius they emulated, the merchant-funded private companies relied upon rich patrons rather than the box-office and, similarly, Diaghilev never seems to have sought financial profit from his ventures.59 Like these companies, the early Saisons Russe relied heavily on the visual aspects of the productions, were persistently nationalistic and retrospective, preferred drama to dancing or singing, and shared an aesthetic that transcended realism. The designs of the miriskusstniki expanded the pictorial worlds of fine art on stage, instead of following contemporary theatre reformers like Adolphe Appia, who created spatial structures for performing art (Bowlt 1988, 48–9; Taruskin 1996, 496.) Yet the Symbolist legacy of the miriskusstniki shows in the way in which they attacked ‘excessive realism’ at the Moscow Art Theatre and at the Imperial Theatres alike. For example, in 1902, Valery Briusov wrote to Mir iskusstva (3–4/1902) on the “Ненужная правда” (“Unnecessary Truth”) of the Art Theatre, advocating a return to the stylized ideals of Ancient Greek drama in the manner of Nikolai Evreinov’s (1879–1953) Ancient Theatre (1907–08, 1911–12). Indeed, the careers of the younger miriskusstniki gathered speed around 1905, when many theatre com- panies in the two capitals went in search of Symbolist drama and the larger art-buying public discovered Symbolism.60 By 1906, the style of stage production that dance history has attributed solely to the Ballets Russes was already a trend. Until the twentieth century, ballet remained relatively uncharted territory for both didacticism and neo-nationalism. As such, it offered a field for novel experimentation as late as 1909, when in other art forms Symbolism and neo-nationalism were already giving way to neo- realism61 and the kind of formal experimentation that later became known as Russian modernism. Ballet attracted Diaghilev and the ‘generation of the 1890s’ because it created fantastic, artificial worlds on stage and eschewed dealing with contemporary issues and social problems – precisely the qualities that had repelled the ‘gen- eration of the 1860s’ (Taruskin 1996, 538; Acocella 1984, 80). Ballet was also prestigious and aristocratic: the style of the Imperial ballet productions, lasting up to four or five hours, was lavish and extrava- gant. The companies were enormous – according to the Ezhegodnik 1907–1908 (ii:15–25), during the season 128 female and 88 male danc- ers appeared in the ballets, not counting the number of students from the ballet school who regularly performed in the works. Astonishing special effects impressed even habitués, as in the ending of La Bayadére (1877), where everything on stage collapsed in a simulated earthquake.62 The Old and the New Ballet 211

In fact, thanks to the effectively infinite budget of the Imperial Theatres and the favour of the Crown, ballet was quick to benefit from the new trends in mise-en-scène and technical innovation in the 1890s: lighter costumes, on-stage lighting techniques, explosions and other sound effects, and stage machinery that allowed the performers to appear from above as well as from underneath the stage all made the works visually powerful and, hence, suitable propaganda for the autoc- racy (Wiley 1985, especially 95–101). Russians also perfected methods that allowed for unprecedented stylistic finesse in the execution of large stage designs; and created innovative sets that could be folded and thus easily stored and transported, which facilitated touring (Polunin 1980, especially viii–ix, 10–12). With Tchaikovsky’s involvement with ballet, even writing music for dancing became more respectable.63 Petipa’s choreography had many aesthetic qualities that would have attracted Symbolist artists: the compositions strove for verticality and defiance of gravity, and advocated symmetrical and geometrical ideal forms. The plots of Petipa’s greatest ballets all included allusions to tran- scendence, dream and the correspondences between the material and spiritual realms that characterised Symbolist art. More often than not, these ballets were féeries, fairy-tales set once upon a long time ago or in some place far, far away.64 As a highly conventionalised art that required years of training and which had a specific technique for narrating the twists of the plot (ballet mime), ballet also facilitated an elitist discourse of connoisseurship, through which the ballet expert (balletomane) could distinguish himself from the lay spectator. As a discursive strategy, this elitism reproduced the system of exclusion evident in the physical space of the theatre auditorium, and in the discursive space of Symbolism. Dance history has continued this elitism, giving aesthetic validation to the exclusion of dance styles and venues such as market places, cir- cuses and variety theatres through preference of the high-end theatre journals and review columns of the boulevard press. For Russian theatre reformers, the Imperial Theatres suffered from ideological control of the state apparatus and bureaucratic inertia: authorities with no theatrical qualifications made crucial decisions as to what was presented and how, and the system was criticised as leading to stagnation (for example, Frame 2000, especially 45–7). As these were qualities the miriskusstniki opposed in other art institutions, this has contributed to the opposition created in dance history between the “revolutionary” Ballets Russes and the Imperial ballet. According to this narrative, the productions of the Imperial Theatres had no aspirations to stylistic unity or period style, the set or costume 212 Dancing Genius had no function in the work itself and the choreography was composed of independent dance numbers that the leading dancers could swap at will. Beyond the beloved Tchaikovsky ballets, the repertory was full of Romantic Giselles who died in the first act and reappeared later in spirit form, or of ‘historical’ themes adapted from Victor Hugo (as in La Esmeralda, orig. 1844). Of course, there were a few more humor- ous ‘national’ ballets with lots of character dancing, and their courtly eighteenth-century equivalents (like La Fille Mal Gardée, orig. 1789, revived by Petipa in 1885 for Zucchi) but, on the whole, the audience knew exactly what it was getting.65 This was the stereotypical ‘old bal- let’ of the 1890s. In contrast, the ‘new ballet’ of the 1900s specifically aimed to make the art form less codified and elitistic, less artificial, courtly, and alien- ated from real life. Unlike the way in which the story is usually told, this reform movement began in the Imperial companies and not just because ballet lacked artistically vanguard private patronage (the mer- chant capital that had financed the Krotkov Private Opera and the Moscow Art Theatre) but because the new Director of the Imperial Theatres, Vladimir Teliakovsky, sincerely believed in reform. In previous research, the Ballets Russes has been the culmination of reforms that began from the so-called ‘ballet strike’ in the Imperial com- pany during the Revolution of 1905. Although many of the demands made by the strikers, like a five-day working week and higher salaries, were intended to improve their working conditions, the strike also addressed the artistic value of the performances. Among the demands were the return of Petipa, his assistant Aleksandr Shirgaiev and the teacher Alfred Bekefi, who had all been forced to step down in Teliakovsky’s reforms.66 Of the twelve delegates chosen by the strikers, no less than three were future Diaghilev stars – Tamara Karsavina, Mikhail Fokine (1961, especially 115–16, 125–6) and Anna Pavlova. Some students from the Theatrical Schools also became involved, demanding improvements in their education, instruction in theatrical make-up and certain liberties with student uniform – Nijinsky was allegedly one of these. With the strike, the Imperial company was divided into factions for and against the management, especially as, despite promises of amnesty, the man- agement instigated purges after the strike ended. When the time came for Diaghilev’s first ballet season in Paris in 1909, it seems self-evident that dancers from the dissident section were selected for the troupe (for example, Roslavleva 1966, 168–72; Garafola 1992, 4–5, 7.) In this version of events, Isadora Duncan’s visit to St. Petersburg in 1904 was one inspiration for the strike. Duncan was one of the The Old and the New Ballet 213 new American ‘free-form’ dancers, a one-time protégée of Loïe Fuller whose spectacular performances of flowing cloth and electrical light- ing had thrilled the audiences of the Paris International Exhibition of 1900.67 Influenced by Delsartean68 ideas on acting, Duncan believed in the expressive, moral and emotional capacities of dance. Barefooted, dressed in flowing ‘Graecian’ tunics, she delighted and shocked her audiences with seemingly improvised dances to concert-hall music – Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven.69 Like many of her colleagues, she was an ardent admirer of Classical Greece and an almost as ardent opponent of ballet, which she saw as restricting the female body (for example, Daly 1994, 28.) Most dance experts agree, and had already agreed prior to the First World War (Benois in Rech 25 July/7 August 1909; Svétlow 1912, 33; Kinney & Kinney s.a., 246), that Duncan’s visit was a revelation to the young Mikhail Fokine, struggling with the Imperial bureaucracy while trying to create his new choreographic style – this despite Fokine’s furious claims to the contrary.70 In his autobiography, Fokine painted himself as single-handedly reforming Russian ballet, and claimed he had submitted plans to this effect to the Imperial Theatres before Duncan set foot in the country.71 In actuality, by 1900 his colleague, Aleksandr Gorsky, had instigated reforms that became known as the ‘new ballet’ (Surits 1998, 53–5, 64–5, 95–7; Krasovskaia 1971, especially i:110–11, 116–28; Roslavleva 1966, 155–66). Although little known outside Russia, Gorsky’s work undermines the vanguard nature of the Ballets Russes and repositions the 1905 ballet strike as a conservative, anti-reformist movement very much in line with the opinions of the miriskusstniki. Around 1898, Gorsky had become very interested in new Russian theatre, in particular the realism of the Moscow Art Theatre. Employed by the Imperial Theatres, he went to Moscow to mount Petipa’s La Belle au Bois Dormant for the Bolshoi company as a test of the notation system developed by his friend Vladimir Stepanov. The director of the Imperial Theatres in Moscow, Vladimir Teliakovsky, took Gorsky under his wing. The ballet master’s first experiments took place around 1900, when he staged a new version of Don Quixote – an event still regarded by Russian researchers as “the dawn of a new era”.72 Although even the choreographer had to admit this début was not entirely successful, Gorsky’s reform movement not only predated Duncan’s visit (which is not to say Gorsky was not influenced by Duncan),73 but it also consti- tutes a new kind of genealogy for both the ‘new ballet’ and the Ballets Russes. 214 Dancing Genius

In 1901, Teliakovsky became Director of the Imperial Theatres. In 1903, as one of his attempts to reform the St. Petersburg ballet com- pany, he replaced the ageing Petipa with Gorsky (Telyakovsky 1990, 42–6). At the time, the newspaper Birzhevie Vedmosti (quoted in Buckle 1998, 28) heralded that Gorsky “will stage his own versions of ‘The Hump-backed Horse’ and ‘’. He stages both ballets entirely differently [from Petipa] and in a much more original manner.” As Teliakovsky (1990; 1991, especially 26–31; and 1995, 80–1) noted in his memoirs, the St. Petersburg company was far less enthusiastic about reforms than the Moscow one, and with the exception of Don Quixote and La Fille de Gudule (Дочь Гудулы, a version of Esmeralda – see, for example, Teliakovsky 1995, 80), Gorsky’s works were never established in the Mariinsky repertory. However, the repositioning of the ‘ballet strike’ and of the miriskusstniki as opposing the ‘new ballet’ raises ques- tions about when and why this style became a suitable means for the Diaghilev collaborators to realise their aspirations.

Aesthetics of the new ballet

As with the miriskusstniki dislike of the Arts Theatre, Benois’s or Korovin’s negative comments on Gorsky’s ‘excessive naturalism’ must be seen as indicative of the Symbolist goals of the miriskusstniki, not as an indicator of a general dislike of Gorsky’s work in Russia (as Adamson 1999, 194–5 claims). For example, Benois (in Mir iskusstva 2/1902) advo- cated a return to Petipa because the “ожесточенными верченіями массъ” (“wild whirling masses”) Gorsky staged drew attention away from the sets and costumes, which Benois found of principal interest in ballet. As noted, this favouritism of the decorative arts over the choreographic qualities (sometimes described in precisely the words Benois used of Gorsky) was to be a hallmark of the Diaghilev productions. For the Symbolist generation, ballet was a refuge from contemporary life, a holy relic tinged with the nostalgia of better days – and these balletomanes were by no means all either old or politically conserva- tive (Benois was born in 1870, Levinson in 1887). Ballet was appreci- ated for its lack of contact with the dreary aspects of life, its emphasis on ideal forms, its decorativeness and supreme artifice. In the words of Iakov Tugenkhold, “балетъ становится высокимъ художественнымъ ̪ зрьлищемъ, очищающемъ душу отъ скверны повседневности.”74 Similarly, Lieven (1973, 354) claimed that “[t]he ballet has been built wholly on cultural creativeness, distinguished from real life by the phantasies of its creator. A touch of realism would prove fatal to it.” This kind The Old and the New Ballet 215 of escapist anti-Realism helped to make the Ballets Russes popular amongst Western Aesthetes, but it was not inherent in the new ballet as such – rather on the contrary (see Scholl 1994, especially 18–21, 32–5 on féeries.) Fokine emphasised the formal aspects of dance composition when he formulated the so-called ‘five principles’ for the new ballet – princi- ples that neatly correspond to the five positions of classical ballet and have secured Fokine a place in the canon of ballet. Paraphrasing the earliest dated source for these (The Times 6 July 1914, quoted in, for example, The Sketch 8 July 1914 and Boston Evening Transcript 8 January 1916): First, the ballet master should represent the period and national character of the ballet with the most expressive dance form possible. Second, dancing and mimetic gesture should have a connection to the scheme of the ballet and only be used to serve the dramatic action. Third, conventional gesture is appropriate only where required by the style of the ballet – elsewhere, mimetic of the whole body should replace it. Fourth, from the expressiveness of the individual body of the star one must strive for the expressiveness of a group of bodies and the combined dancing of a crowd. Fifth, dancing should ally with other arts in a balanced whole – it should be equal in importance to the music and scenic decoration, and in return allow them perfect creative freedom. Notably, in this text Fokine is not yet opposed to Isadora Duncan but rather sees her as limited by her ‘Greek’ style. Fokine also gives no credit to Gorsky but neither does he claim he invented these princi- ples – rather, he writes in support of a new trend in Russian ballet. In all likelihood, he had joined this trend some time after 1906, when he first danced in Gorsky’s version of Don Quixote (Ezhegodnik 1906–1907, i:147, ii:24; also 1909 Repertuar: 96). Although Fokine later made out that he had single-handedly invented the new ballet,75 by 1905 Gorsky had consistently followed all but the fifth of the aforementioned principles, which is simply that of a total work of art. By all accounts, Gorsky was the first choreographer to work with the same artist-decorators as the Krotkov Opera and the Arts Theatre, and the first to pay attention to the ethnographical and historical accuracy of ballet productions. He also introduced to ballet something of the real- istic acting style of the Arts Theatre: individual expression substituted conventional gestures as the dancer worked out with the ballet master the psychological characteristics of each role, also sustained throughout the danced part. This blurred the distinction of dance from mime in a manner that obviously contributed to how old ballet also gradually 216 Dancing Genius lost mimed sequences.76 Although his duties both at the Mariinsky and later as the principal ballet master of the Moscow Bolshoi company included a lot of re-stagings of old works, Gorsky rejected compositional formulae such as the pas-de-deux structure (adagio, variations, coda), and aimed for more realistic groupings and less uniform group move- ments for the corps de ballet.77 Whenever possible, particularly in one- act pieces, Gorsky strove for the “fifth principle” in Fokine’s list – that of the total work of art, a well-known theatrical ideal in Russia at least since the 1860s (Marsh 1999, 155–7). In many ways, the aesthetic differences between Gorsky’s and Fokine’s œuvres resulted from the demands of and possibilities offered by their different employers. Because he choreographed for a company on tour, Fokine composed short works that aimed either for the classical effect (as in Les Sylphides), or for the ethnic spectacle in national dress (as in Schéhérazade), and (after Chopiniana of 1907) he never mixed the two. As such, the distinction between classical and character parts all but vanished in his œuvre. Yet the successful unity of time and space in many of the Ballets Russes works was due to the length of the ballets. In comparison, Gorsky worked with evening-length spectacles where the principals had to be given a well-earned rest between their dances, whilst something else kept the attention of the audience and developed the plot – both functions traditionally given to the corps de ballet and character dancers. Similarly, it was much easier to encourage audiences not to applaud in the middle of an act when this lasted less than fifteen minutes (closer to ten minutes in the Ballets Russes) instead of an hour or more – “long” Ballets Russes works, such as Petrouchka, were divided into different ‘acts’. Moreover, the audience of the Ballets Russes was not the typical balletomane crowd of the Imperial Theatres who came to cheer their favourite star.78 At their best, short works were compact and effective, but more fre- quently the limited time did not allow for grand thematic elaborations, either in terms of plot, character or choreography. As such, they easily became trivial and uninteresting – few one-act works survived in the Mariinsky repertory for more than a season, and it says something of Fokine’s skill that many of his did.79 Western audiences, by contrast, generally appraised brevity as a virtue in dance (for example, Henry Adams Bellows in The Bellman 13 November 1915). However, Fokine was far from being ‘naturally’ a fast worker: with the exception of Le Festin, a varying series of by different choreographers (including the Blue Bird pas de deux from Petipa’s La Belle au Bois Dormant, renamed – to the consternation of later researchers – L’Oiseau The Old and the New Ballet 217 de Feu), the works of the 1909 season had premièred in St. Petersburg in 1907 and 1908.80 Even if most of these were reworked to an extent for the tour, such changes were standard remounting practice in the Imperial Theatres (see Petipa quoted in Wiley 1985, 2). After the initial season, Fokine was not as involved in the planning of the repertory and new works: with Petrouchka (1911) he was notified only when preliminary sketches for sets and costumes were designed and the music agreed upon (for example, Wachtel 1998, 11–12; Buckle 1998, 183). With Diaghilev, Fokine hardly ever got to suggest new works, and tailoring ballets to suit his professional rival, Nijinsky, and his one-time mistress, Karsavina, must have chafed him. The relative insignificance of choreography in the reviews must also have contrib- uted to Fokine’s frustration with Diaghilev’s enterprise. The critics’ lack of interest certainly meant that the only way of getting publicity was novelty, which put great strain on the organisation and quickly con- tributed to the repetitive quality of the ballets (noted by Whitworth 1913, 58–9, for example). The recycling of good ideas in plots as well as choreography – and in the performances by other “Russian Ballets” (see Levy 1990) – added to the sense of déjà-vu for the audience and shortened the lifespan of a particular work, which further contributed to the vicious circle that was a search for novelty. After Diaghilev started an all-year company of his own, Fokine could no longer produce original works quickly enough. Henri Prunières (1930, 103) recollected that after Fokine quit the company, Bakst dis- missed his achievements in blunt terms:

Je m’étonnais un jour du peu d’originalité de Fokine, grand tech- nicien pourtant, depuis qu’il avait quitté la troupe. Bakst me dit avec son immuable sourire: “Oh! vous savez, il était comme tous les autres, il n’avait aucune imagination. Je devais lui montrer scène par scène tout ce qu’il fallait faire. Lui mettait au point les pas . . .”81

If this is true, Bakst was being very unfair towards Fokine. Later, Stravinsky (1975, 36) used a conspicuously similar wording when claiming Bakst “inspired the choreography [of Faune] even to the slightest movements” (repeated by Haskell 1955, 269; Bullard 1971, i:18; Baer 1988/1989, 64–6; and others). With Fokine, however, contemporary critical opinion seems to indicate an aesthetic impasse (see Chapter 8 note 26). During the 1909 and 1910 seasons of what became the Ballets Russes, Gorsky’s name still appeared in accounts of the new Russian ballet in the Western press: for example, Le Théatre (1 May 1909) called him 218 Dancing Genius

“chef et sans partage” (“leader and undisputed”) in Russian choreog- raphy. However, outside Russia, Fokine’s reputation quickly surpassed Gorsky’s, as this simplified the new ballet as solely due to the Ballets Russes and the support of Western audiences. This brought about an anachronism in Western ballet criticism whereby choreographers like Gorsky, whose innovations predated Fokine’s, were considered to have imitated him – Fokine’s self-congratulatory poise merely ensured it became hegemonic in research as well. What gets forgotten is how Les Sylphides, often considered Fokine’s most innovative work “the first abstract ballet” (Fokine 1961, 131), owed much of its final appearance to Gorsky’s Valse Fantasie (1901), which had popularised the long tulle skirts à la Taglioni. Indeed, the first version of Les Sylphides, Chopiniana (1907), had the conventional plot and character dancing expected of a pastiche of a Romantic ballet; and how much of the elimination of the plot can be attributed to Fokine is rather moot, as the changes appar- ently took place after Diaghilev failed to secure Giselle for the 1909 season.82 Fokine became the choreographer of the Ballets Russes because he was available and in St. Petersburg, physically close to the miriskusstniki with whom he had collaborated in recent productions (Fokine 1961, especially 106–39; compare with Benois 1945, 227, 240–55). Gorsky was fully employed as the principal ballet master of the Moscow Bolshoi. Yet Fokine’s position as one new ballet choreographer amongst many gave Diaghilev leverage to keep him in check: whenever the choreographer’s demands became unreasonable, the impresario simply offered to hire his competitors – even if this was often merely to bring Fokine back into line. During the first crisis, in 1910, Diaghilev suggested Gorsky as someone to take over choreographing Sacre, and when Fokine left in 1912, Boris Romanov came to do La Tragédie de Salomé for Diaghilev.83 And of course, there was always Nijinsky. 8 Revolutionary Exiles

The Giselle incident

In the autumn of 1910, Diaghilev began to prepare for a permanent, private ballet company, one that employed its own dancers throughout the year.1 From the beginning, this new touring company was to rely strongly on the person of Nijinsky both as its male star and as its cho- reographer: Diaghilev’s plans coincide with permission received from Debussy to use Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune for a choreography that Nijinsky started working on in November (NYPLDC Astruc Papers; Garafola 1992, 180–1, 198). However, securing the star dancer for the company required Nijinsky to cancel the remainder of his contract with the Imperial Theatres. He did this quite spectacularly. On 23 January/5 February 1911, Nijinsky danced the role of Albrecht in Giselle wearing his Paris costume that lacked the trunks used in the Mariinsky to cover certain parts of the male anatomy (see images in Comœdia 25 April 1911; The Graphic 24 June 1911). Because Teliakovsky was in Moscow, the acting direc- tor Krupensky told Nijinsky either to make a public for his ‘indecent’ costume, or be dismissed. The dancer refused to apologise and was fired. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Teliakovsky was faced with a fait accompli and a group of malevolent reporters demanding an explanation.2 Apparently, Teliakovsky never found out why Baron Frederiks, the Minister of Court and Teliakovsky’s superior, had sanc- tioned Krupensky’s dismissal of Nijinsky, although he assumed this was somehow Diaghilev’s fault – after all, Diaghilev was an official at ’s ministry.3 Nijinsky had many reasons to be dissatisfied with the Mariinsky. As a young classical dancer he fell between two stools: on one hand, he was

219 220 Dancing Genius competing with premiers danseurs who received certain roles through seniority alone, whilst his own exceptional talents made the officials reluctant to show him in minor roles. For the same reason, he was not given the more common character parts that might have satisfied his yearnings in terms of expressive, dramatic dancing characteristic of the new ballet. Nijinsky felt he performed too rarely,4 and in Comœdia (interview of 25 April 1911) even dismissed his position as a “sinecure”. Conversely, the Theatre officials had fretted over their young star for some time. Nijinsky’s requests for vacations and sick-leaves5 had caused cancellations of scheduled performances – something that the officials were quick to see as due to the dancer’s personal involvement with Diaghilev (Krasovskaya 1979, 120–3). Nijinsky’s lack of enthusiasm for the old ballet had been noticed in the Russian press (Nijinska 1992, 310; Krasovskaya 1979, 126–7), and the star made disparaging remarks about the company that Teliakovsky duly noted in his diary (quoted in Krasovskaya 1979, 154). Yet critics also protested they saw less of his dancing than was appropriate for such an internationally known star (Rech 25 January/7 February 1911; also Wiley 1979/1980, especially 245fn14). Punishing Nijinsky by withholding his salary whenever he failed to appear (Parker 1988, 71; Ostwald 1991, 37–8, 40–1, 44–6) did no good, as he had significant income from his performances outside the Mariinsky. In order to keep his attention, the management allowed the dancer to make changes in the preordained costumes as well as in his dance variations, which apparently only fed the young man’s sense of self-importance (Nijinska 1992, 208–9; Karsavina according to Haskell 1955, 255–6). The management may have fired Nijinsky as a ‘warning’, supposing that he would repent after he realised he could, indeed, lose his job;6 but the decision infuriated ballet critics. Teatr i iskusstvo (6/19 February 1911) headlined its story “Въ чемъ неприличiе?” (“What is indecent?”), answering that by European standards, there was nothing shocking in Nijinsky’s costume, at least not in the wake of Isadora Duncan. The influential daily paper Rech launched a tirade, proclaiming that Nijinsky’s one performance would supply enough artistry for the entire ̪ season and that “Этого артиста дирекція обязана была цьнить и беречь, какъ гордость русскаго театра.”7 Rossiia (according to Rampa i zhizn 6/19 February 1911) promoted a conspiracy theory of its own, suggesting Nijinsky had been dismissed for overhearing the management plot- ting something unwholesome backstage. Nijinsky was given free reign in interviews to Peterburgskaia gazeta (quoted in Wiley 1979/1980). Satirists had a field day with the incident, both because the bureaucrats Revolutionary Exiles 221 provided an easy target and because all were aware of the sexual allure of this particular dancer: under humorous guise, it was fine to note that the principal element of chic in Nijinsky’s dancing may have been in the “unmentionables” (“невыразимых”, Peterburgskii listok quoted in Krasovskaia 1971, i:402). In a poem titled “Трико. (Хореографическая баллада.)” (“Tights. (A choreographic ballad.)”), Rampa i zhizh (6/19 February 1911) portrayed a narcissistic Nijinsky in cobweb-thin leotards happily dancing away as a bureaucrat, seething in prudish rage, looked to avenge such sinful behaviour. Although some Western reports of the events were remarkably accu- rate (for example, Le Monde artiste 18 February 1911), Diaghilev insisted on spreading false information as part of the publicity for his new com- pany. Nijinsky’s dismissal was filled with sexual innuendo befitting his exotic reputation, and Russia was so associated with Oriental cruelty that the dancer’s fans were ready to believe just about anything they were told of the matter – that Nijinsky had been hissed at, driven off the stage by a shower of objects, dismissed on the orders of the Dowager Empress, performing in a new Bakst costume or perhaps in Cléopâtre (apparently because this ballet had caused an outrage in Milan).8 In several ways, the Giselle incident illustrates how the Ballets Russes was launched as a commercial rival to the Imperial Theatres. Diaghilev used the scandal to equate his new organisation with the new ballet – after Nijinsky’s dismissal, Giselle became the epitome of the old bal- let and its 1910 reception in the West was reinterpreted as lukewarm. Goaded by the impresario, the Western press represented Nijinsky as a renovator of ballet not understood in the stale atmosphere of the Imperial Theatres. That Nijinsky was dismissed after dancing in a bal- let from the Romantic period, a work that had not caused a scandal in the West, solidified the ‘revolutionary’ reputation of the Ballets Russes, flattered the Western connoisseur, and brought the Romantic notion of the misunderstood genius into the Nijinsky legend (for example, Flitch 1912, 129-30, 154-5). For example, Comœdia (14 February 1911) reported that Nijinsky and Bakst, who had had difficulties with Russian authorities because he was Jewish,9 were “révolutionnaires d’art, de dangereux agitateurs que l’on vient d’expulser solennellement des théâtres impériaux”.10 Somewhat placatingly, Le Matin (14 February 1911) pointed out that the ruthlessness of the Imperial system, evinced in Nijinsky’s fate, had also created the excellence of the Russian ensemble work. Later, Nijinsky’s fate exemplified that of the Ballets Russes as critics pointed to how the works they themselves admired had failed to capture the hearts 222 Dancing Genius of Russian audiences – regardless of whether these works had actually been performed in Russia or reviewed there (as with Petrouchka, discussed by Robin H. Legge in The Daily Telegraph 21 June 1913; compare with Tugenkhold praising the Paris performance in Apollon 6/1911). Even the fact that the company did not perform in Russia was used as proof of their revolutionary status (Richard Capell in The Daily Mail 4 February 1913). In contemporary Western papers, Nijinsky’s dismissal was written as self-imposed political exile, but it actually resulted in Nijinsky’s very concrete exile as authorities denied his appeal to serve the three-year military duty of Imperial Russia nominally (as he would have had he stayed in the employ of the Imperial Theatres). In September 1911, Nijinsky became a military deserter (Nijinska 1992, 324, 382–3, 390–1, 441, 453, 476–8, 480–3.) Unlike Fokine, Nijinsky could not return to the Mariinsky when things did not work out with Diaghilev; and in the Ballets Russes, his position was conditioned less by his dancing than by his intimate relationship with the group’s impresario. Although Diaghilev also employed Nijinsky’s sister (Nijinska 1992, 324–6), in reality, the impresario was soon borrowing money from his lover.11 Together with Diaghilev’s doubts about Nijinsky’s choreogra- phies,12 this grated their relationship. In 1912–1913, Nijinsky’s friends were increasingly worried over his physical health, and for a good rea- son: Nijinsky was performing as the major star of a touring company, required to dance in each new city whilst composing new choreogra- phies, rehearsing and training the dancers, and meeting reporters and audience members in various social functions. In 1914, when Nijinsky’s season at the Palace in London had to be cancelled after the dancer fell ill with a high fever, the newspapers generally attributed this to over- work.13 When Nijinsky did return to work for Diaghilev in 1916, the professional relationship chafed personal scars on both sides. Although Nijinsky’s reputation at first benefited from the opposi- tion between the Imperial system and the allegedly revolutionary new troupe, he soon ran against the limits of this narrative. Despite its possible decadence, the West was always progressive, advanced, new, modern, politically tolerant and economically liberal in relation to the Oriental Other. As the Other, Russia was backward, old-fashioned, ret- rospective, intolerant, medieval – and overdue for revolution (Williams 1999, xiii-xiv). Originally, the political affinity between the Ballets Russes and revolution was constructed to safeguard a Western sense of superiority vis-à-vis Russia, applying a familiar rhetoric of Oriental Russia that also surfaces in contemporary descriptions of the official political alliance.14 However, the admiration of the Other quickly Revolutionary Exiles 223 turned against itself as Nijinsky instigated a different kind of revolu- tion with his choreographies, works that could be called ‘modernism’ precisely because their aesthetic values challenged the expectations of the audience, their very ontology of ‘dance’ (see, for example, Lalo in Le Temps 3 June 1913). The year after his dismissal from the Imperial Theatres, the same crit- ics who had embraced the ‘revolutionary’ narrative about the Ballets Russes attacked Nijinsky’s aesthetic and soon turned the choreogra- phies of Faune, Jeux and Sacre into examples of undesirable political anarchism.15 Nijinsky was, amongst other things, compared to militant suffragettes (a letter by “An Englishman” published in The Daily Mail 19 July 1913) and, jokingly, to the Hun (Alfred Capus in an editorial to Le Figaro 2 June 1913). Previously, the similarity of each year’s novelties – their exotic and nostalgic overtones – had conformed the critics’ belief in Russia as an Oriental nation that did not progress or evolve; and the revolutionary narrative had thus only emphasised the stereotype of Russia as an Oriental, despotist state, intolerant and belligerent (see, for example, Le Monde artiste 1 June 1912 reporting Russian maltreatment of a French artist). Modernism, by contrast, implied change, novelty and impermanence, so it is hardly surprising that Nijinsky’s choreographies were construed as proof that the entire project of the Ballets Russes had been a fraud, a glittery surface under- neath which lay an aesthetic void (for example, “Les Barbares”, a review of Faune in La Critique Independante 15 June 1912). Nevertheless, the ‘revolutionary’ narrative directly benefited the careers of the Russian artists involved in the enterprise. In 1909 and 1910, the Imperial association had impeded the extent to which the Russian creators and supporters of the company could present themselves as radical reformers. After 1911, the ire of Russian crit- ics at what they saw as misrepresentation of Russia could be written off as the ranting of old-fashioned supporters of the autocracy, even when these writers (for example, Minsky (pseudonym of Nikolai Maksimovich Vilenkin) in Utro Rossii 1/14 August 1910) came from the other end of the political and aesthetic spectrum. Cultural and linguistic barriers further helped to guarantee the hegemonic position of only those who praised the new organisation – Svetlov’s appraisal of the new ballet was immediately translated into French (Svétlow 1912). Louis Laloy (La Grande revue 25 June 1912) went as far as attrib- uting the entire interest in ballet in Russia to Diaghilev, blatantly denying that the Imperial Theatres had any part in the creation or success of the Ballets Russes. 224 Dancing Genius

It is true that some of the Fokine works were not and could never have been presented on Imperial stages – even outside the Imperial fold, the sexual seduction depicted in the Dance of the Seven Veils that Fokine had choreographed for Rubinstein as Wilde’s Salomé caused an outrage (Benois 1945, 277–8; Braun 1995, 84). But it was not simply the erotic that shocked Russian spectators, it was a host of things previously excluded from the Imperial stage: suicides, bare feet, naked shoulders and disorderly conduct – all exemplified by the whirling corps de bal- let of Schéhérazade. In the Imperial Theatres, even Giselle had to die of exhaustion rather than by her own hand (making the second act rather illogical – see Ries 1979, 63–9); and as noted, costumes were also strictly regulated. Yet it is notable how, even in Fokine’s choreographies, overt sexuality was always distanced into the body of the Oriental other: none of the Russian works of the Ballets Russes (such as L’Oiseau de Feu) had femmes fatales or submissive Western men (Nijinsky’s slave in Armide is clearly an Oriental), nor was there as much sexual titillation or violence in these works as in the Oriental spectacles. Although much of the contemporary Western writing made no difference between ballets set in Russia and ballets set in the Orient,16 for Russians, the Orient did not include Russia proper, and it certainly did not include St. Petersburg and the Imperial court. In other words, characters and characteristics that Western audiences thought of as ‘Russian’ were not seen as ‘Russian’ by Russians – for example, in the Danses Polovtsiennes, the dancers were portraying not the Russians of Prince Igor, but the wild Polovtsy tribe; and Thamar was a legend about a Georgian queen, set on the more exotic fringes of the Russian Empire. For the Russians, these works were examples of success- ful Russian imperialism: the Oriental Other that was included in the Empire was excluded from Russianness, did not behave according to the same cultural codes, nor shared Russian moral or religious views.17 For the dancers, Oriental connoted a similar Otherness as it did for the Western viewer: a place where they could relieve themselves of moral inhibitions in the performance of a sensual spectacle. It apparently never occurred to Russian dancers that their audiences might read their performances of the Orient as evidence of their true nature as Russians. If Russians did not consider themselves quite Europeans, either, this was because they were a superior nation with a great, spiritual destiny. As Nijinsky (Musical Courier 7 December 1916, my emphasis) mused: “Our civilisation is complex. To the true Oriental mind, there is some- thing crude in the West, though you look upon us Asiatics as somewhat barbaric still! So you see, the whole thing depends on the point of view Revolutionary Exiles 225 one takes.” Similar self-definitions of Russianness as essentially alien to both occidental and oriental norms can be found in the writings of Nijinsky’s colleagues (for example, Bourman 1938, 41, 166–172). Benois, for one, was ambivalent about the Orientalism of the Ballets Russes:

Yet, stifling deep in my heart my feeling of resentment at the forthcom- ing victory of the “barbarians,” I felt from the very first days of our work in Paris that the Russian Savages, the Scythians, had brought to the “World Capital,” for judgment, the best art that then existed in the world.18

Although Benois here evokes an ideology of Eurasianism (Scythianism) that was at best nascent in 1909,19 he manages to illustrate something of the ambivalent position of Russia as between the Occident and the Orient. Simultaneously, Benois reiterates the official opinion about the Imperial Theatres as the best art that existed in the world (Telyakovsky 1990, 38). Since in Russia, ballet was “regarded as [a] serious mat- ter, a national, almost state matter, a source of the country’s pride” (Teliakovsky 1994, 44), its Western reception carried political weight that was taken very seriously – at least by Russian ballet critics.

The politics of tradition

The difference between the Russian and the Western understanding of ballet culminates in the reception of old ballet excerpts included in Diaghilev’s seasons. The rhetoric of the Ballets Russes as radical reformers of ballet fails to explain the need to include old ballet in the repertory except as something that provides contrast to the new. The classical excerpts performed by the Ballets Russes have been rep- resented as failures, as too similar to what was available for audiences in Western institutions and, therefore, as uninteresting, an aberration from Diaghilev’s vanguard programme, as fill-ins for seasons that lacked novelties, as evidence of conservativism amongst Diaghilev’s collabora- tors, or as nostalgia on the part of the impresario.20 The reappraisal of classical ballet and the advent of neoclassicism in the 1930s and 1940s caused a marked incongruity within the narrative of the Ballets Russes: when Diaghilev’s importance as the ‘discoverer’ of Balanchine and as admirer of classical ballet was much stressed, the same company that was praised as the revolutionaries of dance who overthrew the tyranny of classical ballet was also represented as the greatest guardians of this old style. 226 Dancing Genius

Like the representation of the miriskusstniki as opponents of nation- alism and social Realism in Russian art, this is a simplification of the tensions between novelty and the existing tradition. In 1909 in Paris and during the 1911 Coronation Season in London, the publicity for the Ballets Russes extensively discussed the history of ballet in Russia, and related this enterprise to the tradition of the art form. As long as the dancers performed as visits of the Imperial Theatres, the Imperial Theatres, in turn, were presented as the rightful heirs of the French bal- let tradition (for example, Le Gaulois 17 June 1909). Le Figaro (6 June 1910) even explicitly credited the Ballets Russes to Teliakovsky’s vision. Yet, from the first, the Imperial background of the company was problematic. Although the formal accomplishments of the dancers were credited to the Imperial Theatres’ training system, more or less accurately described in articles on the troupe,21 their expressive qualities were, as noted, usually portrayed as stemming from their racial quali- ties (atavism, primitivity, inclination to dancing – see, for example, Le Temps 21 June 1910). When direct comparisons were made between a specific Russian ballerina and a Western one, the difference is implicitly racial: “Pavlova has more than an Oriental suggestion; Genée is one of us – a Northerner.”22 Politically, it was difficult for the Western public to accept that any- thing new, fresh, or innovative could come out of Tsarist Russia. In liberal circles, Russian autocracy stood for everything conservative, stiff, intolerant and hopelessly old-fashioned – a stereotype propagated by the numerous Russian exiles residing in major European cities. As Lauchlan (2001, especially 76) has observed, this image of Russia served the self-definition of both Western people and the Russian opposition, wishing to perceive themselves as liberal and progressive. It was far eas- ier to represent the Russian Ballet as having preserved something that had been lost in the Western industrialised and modern societies, or to stress their debt to the French art form, or both,23 than to simply laud them as innovative and new. At the same time, many early analyses of the Ballets Russes specify the political system of Russia as a require- ment for their kind of art: “Un ensemble chorégraphique ne peut être obtenu que dans un pays soumis à l’autocratie.”24 After all, in France, ballet had first flourished under the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV, so a (despotist) court had to be necessary for ballet to exist (Prévost in Le Figaro 13 June 1910; similarly, The Times 24 June 1911.) This, these critics attested, made it impossible for something like the Ballets Russes to emerge in the West – democratisation had destroyed Western ballet. (However, see also Gauthier-Villars’s analysis in Akademos 15 July 1909.) Revolutionary Exiles 227

After the 1910 season, Diaghilev’s new, private company required a publicity strategy that set the troupe apart from other Russian compa- nies, including possible official tours of the Imperial Theatres. By cast- ing the official representatives of the Imperial system as an embodiment of the political system of Russia, the Ballets Russes threw its lot in with Western audiences and constituted itself as a revolutionary organisa- tion. The early accounts that presented Russian ballet in general as an advanced form were now replaced by accounts that stressed the differ- ence of the Diaghilev company to both the Imperial Ballet and Western companies:

For it is a great misapprehension to suppose that the Russian bal- let as it has been seen in Paris and London is typical of the official ballet at St. Petersburg and Moscow. When the Diaghilew company first appeared at the Theatre du Châtelet, the republican convictions of Paris received a shock. Could any good thing come out of Tsardom? Had autocracy succeeded where the alliance of liberty, fraternity and equality had failed? Was it then true that venerable tradition, assisted by a bureaucratic regime, was a kinder nursing mother to the arts than the revolutionary spirit? Little by little the truth leaked out. The Russian ballet, which had been welcomed as the most modern manifestation of theatrical art, was not traditional but revolutionary. It was not the child of the official art of St. Petersburg but the outcast. Its leaders were dangerous innovators whom the intransigent conserva- tives had expelled as hastily as if they had been political agitators. Paris was reassured. (Flitch 1912, 129, emphasis mine)

Here, Western audiences are given a rhetorical truth that confirms what was already known – that tsarist Russia could not tolerate truly revolutionary art. The Ballets Russes, through their opposition to the mummified Imperial Ballet, are presented as politically opposed to the absolutist monarchy and, in the process, the Russian autocracy that ‘nursed’ such old-fashioned art is tinged with oriental cruelty and injustice – they have tried to hide the truth of the matter. The political truth that ‘leaks out’ reassures the Western reader of the correctness not only of the aesthetic quality of the Ballet but of the rightful path of Western democracy.25 The increasing importance given to Isadora Duncan as someone inspiring the Russians’ ‘revolution’ in ballet (see, for example, Bakst in Current Opinion October 1915) was thus not simply American patriotism but a means for the Diaghilev coterie to align their work with Western 228 Dancing Genius political liberalism (see Diaghilev in The New York Times 23 January 1916). After the stars of the early seasons failed to appear in the first North American tour of 1916, this idea of ‘democratic revolutionar- ies’ gained extra weight. The impresario, Diaghilev, was now the only ‘name’ that gave continuity between what audiences paid to see and the reputation of the pre-war Russian Ballet. In the absence of stars, the emphasis notably shifted to the ‘democratic’ principle of ensemble work (see Montrose J. Moses’s analysis in The Bellman 29 January 1916). Although many American authors reviled this ‘ballyhoo’ (see Järvinen 2010), the hegemonic interpretation has continued to uphold this myth: Diaghilev has been construed as a great impresario of modern- ism, as someone who was not understood in his native country, and he is discussed as the actual author-figure of the company. What is forgotten is that the association of the new, private company with ‘revo- lution’ both directly benefited the Russians involved in creating the works by turning them into an artistic vanguard and flattered Western audiences by representing them as knowing more about dance than the Russians, who had failed to appreciate these ‘revolutionary’ artists. As with any admiration of the Other, this ‘revolutionary narrative’ was easily reversed to connote anarchy and barbarism – as happened with Nijinsky’s choreographies (see Järvinen 2013a). It is likely that Diaghilev and his early collaborators saw the hostil- ity of the Russian critics as a justification for their dismissal of the tra- dition of old ballet and their representation of the Imperial Theatres as simply stifling artistic expression. The lack of ‘originality’ in the classical works – their similarity to ballet in the West – predisposed Western audience to treat the Orientalist spectacles as ‘modern’ dance, and the obvious demand for such works affected what was presented as Russian ballet by this company. Consequently, whether or not the audience understood ballet’s technique or aesthetic norms, or the rel- evance of the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ ballet, became relatively irrelevant in the discourse on the Ballets Russes. But in Russia, both Western crit- ics’ adulation of the Fokine works and their shocked reaction to the Nijinsky choreographies were treated with disdain. After leaving the Ballets Russes, Fokine returned to St. Petersburg but his choreographies were evaluated as derivative of his earlier successes: “Новый балетъ былъ ̪ ̪ поставленъ вмьсть съ “Павильономъ Армиди” и “Карнавалом”; я уже писалъ объ этихъ балетахъ.”26 Such statements superficially support the Western view that the Ballets Russes was unacceptable in conservative Russia – an argument insupportable in view of Russian critics’ praise for Nijinsky’s 1912–1913 Revolutionary Exiles 229 works. In the nationalist rhetoric that saw cultural products as indica- tive of racial qualities, revolution by ‘Orientals’ was easily translated as anarchy. As Europe prepared itself for war, aesthetic revolution became something that could no longer be used as a model for Western self-renewal – it threatened the status quo. Thus, Nijinsky’s choreogra- phies became indicative of this danger inherent in the cultural Other (see Järvinen 2009a; 2009b; 2013a).

The aesthetics of old and new

In Europe, local preferences affected how audiences reacted to the excerpts of old ballets in the Ballets Russes repertory, but nowhere were they abject failures. The French, especially, considered Giselle a compliment on the part of the Russians: Giselle, according to Heine, was based on a Slavic story, and its return from Russia to its historical home, the Paris Opéra, played on the strings of nostalgia so important to the Ballets Russes (Le Courrier Musical 1 July 1910; Le Gaulois 19 June 1910; Comœdia 17 June 1910). The Ballets Russes programme for the first London season (following the Coronation Gala performances) was heavily weighed in favour of the old ballet: the repertory included the Blue Bird duet from La Belle au Bois Dormant, Giselle and Le Lac des Cygnes (Лебединое Озеро 1877, 1895), all shortened to fit the triple-bill format. As mentioned in Chapter 5, Diaghilev also brought to London the most famous star ballerinas of Russia, including Kshesinskaia. Reviews reveal that by no means could all Western “experts” differen- tiate between Fokine’s new ballets and the old ballet they nonetheless derided – for example, the Kinneys (s.a. 263–8, especially 268) distin- guished the two styles but listed Le Lac des Cygnes with the Fokine works not only as a new ballet but as a ‘practically plotless reverie’ similar to Les Sylphides.27 In 1919, Pavel Barchan (1919, 3) claimed Western critics could still not tell old ballet from the new, in part because the old bal- let excerpts in the Ballets Russes repertory had been modified from the Imperial Theatres’ evening-long productions. As he had done with Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in 1908,28 Diaghilev created his own ‘authentic’ versions of old ballets. For example, in 1910, Giselle was shortened to less than an hour-long version, with new décor and costumes by Alexandre Benois in the style of a Romantic ballet: Nijinsky was dressed in a fifteenth-century ‘troubadour style’, and the Wilis of the second act wore long tulle dresses similar to those used in Les Sylphides. Karsavina (1981, 266) claimed Giselle was “a holy ballet, not a step of it to be altered”, but Fokine’s new choreography eschewed 230 Dancing Genius the virtuosity of the contemporary Russian version (itself very different from what the French would have seen in the past). The cuts also focused on mimed passages, which perhaps accounts for the perceived similarity to Les Sylphides (as in Perugini 1915, 236). Restored to Nijinsky’s role was the French emphasis on Albrecht as the hero through whose eyes the audience is supposed to watch the spectacle (Nijinska 1992, 282–3, 298–9; Ries 1979, 63–9; Krasovskaia 1971, i:399–400). From the first, Diaghilev’s plans included far more old ballet than usually noted:

In an interview, published on 30 July 1908 in Peterburgskaya Gazeta (The Petersburg Gazette), Diaghilev also included Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker with Kshessinska in his plans, and in another inter- view, published on 1 October 1908 in Teatr (Theatre), he included Glazunov’s and Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, as well as Le Pavillon d’Armide in both interviews. (Schouvaloff 1997, 116n1)

It might seem plausible to account for this by claiming that Diaghilev thought productions from the Mariinsky repertory would be easier to export than novelties for which new designs and costumes would have to be executed. Still, the repertory of the Ballets Russes always included some old ballet numbers, such as the Blue Bird pas de deux, included in the first season as L’Oiseau de Feu, later renamed L’Oiseau d’Or (1911), L’Oiseau et le Prince (1912), and La Princesse Enchantée (1916). Diaghilev’s plans for a 1912 winter season at the St. Petersburg Narodny Dom (can- celled) included four works, one of which was the new version of Giselle (NYPLDC Astruc papers; Garafola 1992, 195, 442–3n83). Even so, in a letter to The Times (10 March 1911), Diaghilev justified his choice of repertory and the cuts made in the old ballets by claim- ing that either the great works by Petipa and Tchaikovsky had already proven unsuccessful (or the excerpts in music halls had) or they were not really Russian: “ne possède aucun élément national qui puisse justi- fier l’idée de donner à Londres cette féerie franco-italienne”.29 In 1921, he well nigh bankrupted himself by bringing to the West precisely this “féerie franco-italienne”, La Belle au Bois Dormant. This discrepancy between Diaghilev’s recorded statements and his actions has puzzled later commentators, in particular after the re-evaluation of Petipa’s works in the 1930s.30 For the Russian dancers, the classical works no doubt counterbalanced the Oriental spectacles and created a sense of familiarity within the new company and a continuum between it and the repertory of the Imperial Revolutionary Exiles 231

Theatres, where classical works were the measuring-stick for a dancer’s reputation. At the Mariinsky, dancers were classified either as classical or character dancers, but only the former could take principal roles.31 In Russia, Nijinsky was defined as a classical dancer, and singled out in the press because he differed favourably from the premiers danseurs of the age, the “awfully heavy cavaliers in the present ballet company”, as the Slovo critic wrote in 1905 (quoted in Krasovskaya 1979, 52, 357n24). Two years later, his reputation led one theatre critic to warn ballerinas that here was someone who could usurp their position in the limelight: ̪ Героемъ спектакля былъ молодой танцовицикъ г. Нижинскій, сразу сдьлав- шійся любимцемъ публики. Г. Нижинскій обладаетъ поразительными ̪ баллономъ и элеваціей, пріятной вньшностьюе мягкими движеніями, ̪ безъ всякой рьзкости, которая часто присуша сильнымь танцовщикамиъ. ̪ Балерины могутъ на него обижаться на то, что онъ своимъ успьхомъ при- ̪ влекаетъ къ себь исключительное вниманіе.32

Exceptional this career certainly came to be, but it could be argued that Nijinsky’s outstanding performances were in the classical old bal- let repertory simply because that was the standard repertory. However, Nijinsky also appeared in those of Fokine’s works that were performed at the Mariinsky, including Chopiniana (as Les Sylphides was called), Armide, and Nuits d’Egypte (that is, Cléopâtre). (See Ezhegodniki 1907–1910, especially 1909, iii:117.) Nijinsky’s Russian reputation points to why, even if Diaghilev never presented classical ballets as the grand ballet spectacles they were at the Mariinsky, it was imperative that he present them. In art, any novelty had to emerge from and be understood through its relationship to tradition, which was associated in ballet with its particular dance technique (for example, Perugini 1915, 17–18). Tradition was not merely convention:

‘Almost one forgets the absurd convention,’ says Mr. Titterton, in ‘The Eyewiness,’ in praise of Nijinsky’s dancing. This is to talk like the people who admire Shakespeare in spite of the ‘absurd conven- tion’ of blank verse. Neither Shakespeare nor Nijinsky could exist without the conventions which they can expand to perfect freedom. (The Lady 23 November 1911)

Tradition also bestowed status: Russian ballet critics would not take the Ballets Russes seriously as a company if their repertory included only novelties. Without the respect of the critics or classical roles where 232 Dancing Genius the dancers could present their technical skill and artistic refinement, Diaghilev could not get the best dancers to join his company. The opinions of Russian critics might seem insignificant to an organi- sation that never toured Russia, but Russian critics and audience mem- bers actually travelled widely in the West and reported on the activities of Russian artists, including the Ballets Russes, in the Russian press. In addition, most of the dancers in the company were Russian, followed Russian criticism, and, most importantly, had learned the exclusive and elitist attitude of the Imperial Ballet School. Russian dancers con- sidered the Russian ballet as the highest art form in the world, a jewel polished from French stone. Thus, like the Russian critics, they con- sidered themselves as the rightful heirs of a Western tradition, and the Ballets Russes as something educating the decadent Europeans.33 The old ballets – whether the long works by Petipa, their excerpts, or the shorter divertissements composed by new ballet choreographers in emulation of these – were considered essentially Russian as well as integral to ballet as an art form.34 It is difficult to overestimate the extent of this national pride, but the forms it took in the Ballets Russes repertory were significantly different from earlier Russian ballets. Before the Decembrist uprising of 1825 some Russian choreographers, including Ivan Valberg (1766–1819) and Adam Glushkovsky (1793–c.1870), had attempted ballets on native themes, such as adaptations of Pushkin (Roslavleva 1966, 34–7, 53–4; Surits 1998, 19–20; Borovsky 1999b, 82–3). However, once ballet allied itself with the court, the only nationalism evident in the repertory sup- ported the status quo: for example, Saint-Léon’s ballet Le Petit Cheval Bossé (1864) turned the evil Tsar of Ershov’s fairy-tale into a Tatar khan, whilst the inclusion of folk dances of all the 22 races understood as populating Imperial Russia made the ballet blatant propaganda for Russian imperialism (Surits 1998, 33–4; Roslavleva 1966, 71; Benois 1988, 136–7). By contrast, the repertory of the Ballets Russes in 1909 represented the history of ballet in a very Russian nutshell. As Tim Scholl has sug- gested, Armide was selected as the opening piece for the 1909 season because it was set in the ‘golden days’ of ballet in the seventeenth cen- tury, but, as Vaudoyer (1929, 709) noted, its seventeenth century had more to do with Peterhof than with Versailles. Fokine’s recreation of the Romantic ballet in Les Sylphides continued this history of the Russian preservation of French traditions, particularly when paired with an Orientalist work, Cléopâtre, based on an earlier Petipa/Ivanov ballet.35 Finally, the divertissements of Le Festin were set in a medieval Muscovite Revolutionary Exiles 233 hall reminiscent of slavophile fantasies. All of these themes connected the history of ballet in Russia with the classical greatness of Petipa and via Petipa with the grand tradition of ballet in the West, now forgotten. The following season, Giselle paralleled Les Sylphides, and Schéhérazade built on the success of Cléopâtre, with Les Orientales serving the hodge- podge of divertissements to Russian music that Le Festin had been in 1909 (for example, Lifar 1945, 240 on this similarity, which Grigoriev 1953, 41 claims as “purely accidental”). The only ballet in the 1909 repertory that did not have music composed by a Russian36 was Les Sylphides to the music of Chopin, who, as Diaghilev (in The Times 10 March 1911) aptly pointed out to an English critic: “est polonais, donc slave, et par conséquent en tout cas plutôt russe qu’anglais” (“is Polish, therefore a Slav, and in any case more Russian than English”). In 1910, Carnaval was set to Schumann’s music, as it was the composer’s cente- nary and the tour began in Germany, but even this work had already been shown in St. Petersburg (Fokine 1961, 135–7). The gradual inter- national expansion in terms of aesthetic collaborations was increasingly necessary because using pre-existing concert music for the novelties was risky – especially when a composer or his family objected to what the Ballets Russes did, as happened with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Schéhérazade.37 There are several reasons for the Russian critics’ mixed reaction. For one thing, the Fokine works were too similar to what else was available for them to seem to merit all the praise. Russian fairy-tales, the Orient, Ancient Greece and Hoffmanesque Romanticism were not only the preferred topics of the miriskusstniki but the standard fare of Petipa’s old ballet. Russian critics were also familiar with the artist-designers and the music used for those pieces. Like many of his Russian colleagues, Levinson insisted that in the Ballets Russes, “principles of staging have remained unchanged”38 from the productions seen in Imperial Theatres. The Ballets Russes seemed to be much ado about nothing new. Moreover, as an art, ballet was considered as being founded on a spe- cific technique. The importance Fokine placed on the dancers’ acting and mimicry tended to overshadow other aspects of their performance, a fact emphasised in reviews that focused on the ballets’ narratives. The devaluation of pointe work and virtuosity and the simultaneous emphasis on dramatic acting in the new ballet meant that it became unnecessary for a Fokine dancer to know classical technique; thus someone like Ida Rubinstein (who had very little ballet training) could take a principal role in a Fokine work. In this manner, Fokine intro- duced to ballet the same dilettantism for which he and his generation scolded free-form dancers (Fokine 1961, especially 258) and encouraged 234 Dancing Genius a discourse of dance that paid more attention to plot, stage designs and music than it did to the dancers’ dancing.39 Since the Ballets Russes presented itself as the Imperial Ballet on tour (as it did even during the first London season in 1911) or as heirs to the tradition of Imperial Ballet, the quickly shrinking size and technical weaknesses of the troupe were seen as abuse of status. Akim Volynsky (pseudonym of Akim Lvovich (Khaim Leibovich) Flekser, 1863–1926) chided the company for ruining the great classical dancers that starred in his company, Nijinsky, Pavlova and Karsavina.40 At the same time, other critics chastised Western audiences for focusing on virtuosic (male) dancing: “Что касается прыжковъ Нижинскаго и Фокина, то они ̪ ̪ ̪ ̪ ̪ гораздо умьстнье было бы въ циркь, чьмъ въ балеть; и съ искусствомъ они ̪ имьють весьма мало общаго.”41 With his circus reference, V[ladimir]. A[vovich]. Binshtok was effectively showing that, for its audiences, the Ballets Russes was what it claimed to oppose: entertainment. The Western critics’ inability to distinguish between good and bad dancing thus reflected badly on the company, creating a situation where it no longer really mattered who watched them.42 Russian critics were surprised at how little merit was given to their wonderful ballerinas in the early Western reception of the Ballets Russes (for example, Teatr i iskusstvo 31 May/13 June 1909). In con- trast, Nijinsky’s exceptional reputation did not go unnoticed, nor was it welcomed without reservations. Teatr i iskusstvo reported from Paris that:

Что касается балета, который отличается блескомъ постановки, особенно винегретъ, подъ названіемъ “Le Festin”, то въ немъ пальма первенства принадлежитъ г. Нижинскому – изумительному танцовщику, буквально поразившему Парижъ, привыкшій къ легкости балеринь, но совершенно ̪ незнакомый, не имьющій понятія о виртуозныхъ танцахъ мужчинъ. И, если въ ̪ ̪ Парижь говорятъ о спектакляхъ г. Дягилева, то это толко о гг. Шаляпинь [ . . . ] ̪ и Нижинскомь.43

The Russians also thought that the excessive focus on individual danc- ers’ (inherent) abilities indicated unawareness of the institutional con- ditions of the art form: ̪ ̪ Зато болье легковьсная критика меланхолически восклицаетъ: “Вотъ въ нашу бы оперу такого танцора, какъ Нижинскій! Но, да где ужъ объ этомъ думать въ такое время, когда приходиться возиться съ синдикалистами” ̪ ̪ (Gil Blas). То ли д ьло въ Россіи, гдь обо всемъ этомъ думать не приходится Revolutionary Exiles 235

̪ ̪ и можно удьлять достаточное вниманіе всьмъ этимъ “danses virevolantes [sic], ulutantes [sic], crissantes, bêlantes”!44

Although quite flattered by the extraordinary amount of attention the Ballets Russes received in the West, the Russian critics nonetheless saw through all the superlatives and realised that in this Ballet, ballet was quite secondary. For example, since their Parisian colleagues’ attention quickly waned after the first performances, the Russian critics thought that the spectacles did not really interest the French. The manner in which only Nijinsky and one or two other dancers were mentioned in the reviews or how little attention was paid to the technical aspects of their dancing were similarly taken as signs of disinterest and/or the incapability to address what was important in a dance performance (for example, Obozrenie teatrov 3/16 June 1909; Teatr i iskusstvo 31 May/13 June 1909.) Hence, some Russian critics also ridiculed the appraisal of Nijinsky as a genius:

Два слова изъ парижских ‘entrefilets’. Оказывается, что Павлова своими ̪ ̪ танцами произвела въ Петербургь . . . революцію (конечно въ искусствь), а г. Нижинскій не просто превосходн ый танцовщикъ, а геній! Как все это просто въ Париже!45

In the Russian discourse, dancing (individual performance) was also sep- arate from choreography (composition or design of the work), and the failure of Western critics to analyse either the differences between danc- ers in the same role or the contribution of the ballet master was taken as a sign of incompetence. In a somewhat biased manner, this was represented as due to the fact that the admirers of the Ballets Russes were not experts in dance, but painters and musicians. For example, André Levinson (1982, 33) saw that the Ballets Russes:

has been reported back to us rather one-sidedly, simply as a wave of enthusiasm that seized the artists and aesthetes of Paris. But one can assert that the ‘Saisons Russes’ captivated the likes of Auguste Rodin, Maurice Denis and Jacques-Emile Blanche, primarily as a revelation of a painterly-decorative order, as an avalanche of unbri- dled and farfetched colors. The living scenic action receded into the background.

Curiously enough, Levinson’s view has since become a standard expla- nation for why reviews of the Ballets Russes say so little of choreography. 236 Dancing Genius

Perhaps most importantly, however, Russian ballet critics invariably chided Diaghilev and his organisation for misrepresenting Russia as an Oriental and/or barbarian nation: ̪ Я не встрьтилъ ни одной рецензіи, въ которой среди расточаемыхъ похвалъ ̪ не было-бы проскользнувшихъ какъ-бы невзначай выраженій “свирьпый, хрипящій, дикій, экзотическій, варварскій” и т. п.46

That such expressions surprised the seasoned ballet critic indicates that he did not expect ballet could be discussed in these terms, at least not in a positive light. In Utro Rossii 1/14 August 1910, Nikolai Minsky ridiculed the French for thinking the ballet performances resulted from the Russians’ natural wildness – and considering how most of the danc- ers were graduates of academic training programmes (although not necessarily of the Imperial Theatres), this constant emphasis in the Western reviews really should strike us as odd. Leonid Sabaneev (in Golos Moskvi quoted in Taruskin 1996, 1016) similarly found the way ballet was turned into a barbaric art a contradiction in terms and attacked Diaghilev’s export policy as providing the jaded sensibilities of the French with an incorrect view of Russian art:

The idea of the “Diaghilevshchina” is to demonstrate a barbaric Russian art to the raffiné Parisians. That Russian art might in fact not be barbaric at all, that it might be just as refined as the French – this is something Diaghilev either does not know or does not wish to know. Russian art must be barbaric – period!

To add insult to injury, the French dared to perceive ballet as entertain- ment or amusing: ̪ Въ прошломъ году ни одинъ критикъ не рьшалсяъ говоритъ о “забав- ̪ ̪ номъ” русскомъ искусствь въ тонь таково снисходительнаго похлопыванія по плечу. Тогда тоже говорили о “глубоко націоналъномъ” въ русскомъ ̪ ̪ ̪ искусствь. Но отмьчали то возвышенно-націоналъное, которое дьлаетъ ̪ его всечеловьческимъ, позволяетъ ему подниматсяъ надъ націоналъными границами и роднитъ съ собою весъ міръ.47

This erosion of the cultural significance of ballet was seen as Diaghilev’s fault (at least in part). Diaghilev’s publicity strategies were found unfit for the stars of the Imperial theatres – the posters of the season were compared with the garish advertisements of the café-chantants and Revolutionary Exiles 237 circuses.48 Diaghilev was also blamed for inflating the title of ballerina by lauding second-rate dancers: in one contemporary caricature, the impresario was represented hatching little ballerina-eggs in an incuba- tor heated by the gas flame of advertisements (Peterburgskaia Gazeta 25 December 1912/7 January 1913 – see Järvinen 2008, 29). This pointed attention to how much of the Ballets Russes’ renown was bought rather than earned. Certainly, the style of the pre-war spectacles also contributed to the Russian dance critics’ condemnation. In excluding the long classical spectacles, the Ballets Russes, although they actually indicate the wide- spread reputation of the company, became more like the variety theatre ‘turns’ familiar to their Western audiences, and later, this contributed to the relative ease by which the Diaghilev dancers moved to perform in music halls, cinemas and vaudevilles (for example, Levy 1990, especially 342–3; Kendall 1984, 134–49). As early as in 1909, Novoe Vremia (3/16 July 1909) warned dancers of international agents luring them to ‘low- brow’ stages, as had recently happened to Anna Pavlova. By contrast, the proponents of the Ballets Russes claimed that true art was inherent in the Ballets Russes works and could always be distinguished from mere advertisement, regardless of venue (Svétlow 1912, 107). In the West, comparisons to music hall entertainments only appear as critics become dissatisfied with the Ballets Russes. Perhaps the most hostile of such reviews appeared in The Modern Dance Magazine (November 1916):

“Schèhèrazade,” [sic] with its Parisian Orientalism, had not a single dramatic moment that was above the mark of a ten-twenty-thirty mel- odrama.49 It was not the art of stage decoration. Bakst’s costumes and scenery, interesting as they are to look at in a book, seldom carry across the footlights. It was, above all, not dancing – not dancing as we have found that dancing can be – not the expression of significant moods of the soul through bodily gesture. [ . . . ] It was a marvelous exhibition of technique – vaudeville in excelsis. Only as vaudeville it was marred by an excess in numbers. Two trick dancers in “Chin-Chin” were more effective than a hundred trick dancers at the Century, except to a Hippodrome taste. It was a fourteen-ringed circus, staggering, dazzling, bewildering in its stupendous aggregation of unparalleled effects, and one longed for a bag of peanuts and some red lemonade.

Although this particular paper vociferously attacked all ballet as European affectation, the condemnation of the Russians as excessive 238 Dancing Genius vaudeville acts explains much of the need to assert the “high art” quali- ties of the Ballets Russes. As several of its stars (such as Pavlova 1977, 13) appeared in variety theatres, the similarity of the Ballets Russes reper- tory to the riskier variety-stage numbers – short and melodramatic works with lots of dancers in skimpy costumes – required ever more ardent accolades about the spiritual and artistic superiority of the com- pany. As the figurehead of the troupe, Nijinsky was put on record as opposing the variety stage. He explained to Peterburgskaia gazeta that music halls were “не место артисту императорских театров, дорожащему своей репутацей”,50 and professed the same opinion to J. Crawford Flitch (1912, 157). Yet it only took two years for Nijinsky to star at The Palace, a London music hall. It may even be that the Ballets Russes so obstinately stuck to serious dramatic plots – virtually the only comic ballet in the early repertory was Carnaval, although Petrouchka was sometimes (for example, Johnson 1913, 15–33) attributed as being another – because comedy would have smacked too much of variety entertainment. Certainly, Henry Adams Bellows (in The Bellman 13 November 1915), criticised contemporary dance for taking itself too seriously. Even so, it was more or less inevita- ble that detractors would find the company providing for the rich the same kind of passing and empty pleasure as the popular ‘low’ entertain- ments of music halls and cinema (Le Temps 3 June 1913 called it “le ciné- matographe du riche”, “the cinema of the rich”). Although much of this disillusionment coincides with Nijinsky’s choreographies of 1912–1913 when popularity becomes indicative of a lack of aesthetic sustainability in the Russians’ project, this rhetoric surfaces with vehemence only after Nijinsky had been dismissed from the company and his ‘revolutionary’ works withdrawn from the repertory. For Nijinsky’s proponents, noth- ing indicated the company’s lack of commitment to artistic ideals more than betrayal of the vanguard in favour of the well-tested saleable for- mula of former years (see Järvinen 2009b, especially 221n43). The rhetorical exclusion of the popular from the art of the Ballets Russes and the apparent ease of proving the opposite relates what was acceptable on stage. As with rational recreations, the morality or immorality of dance was class-specific. In conjunction with Faune, Variety (15 June 1912) pointed out that:

Under the guise of ‘art,’ Nijinsky portrayed a fauna [sic] with bestial reality, and his success was great. The same show given in a vaude- ville theatre would be banned as immoral. The Chatelet audience, paying $4 for a seat, would be shocked at anything half as realistic Revolutionary Exiles 239

in a music hall. [ . . . ] An act was given at the Etoile Palace some months ago which showed a fauna and nymph at play. The manage- ment, after the trial show, withdrew it as unsuitable. A fashionable audience enthusiastically accepted a similar show at the Chatelet.

Similarly, The Theatre (December 1916) parodied the immorality of Faune in a cartoon where a variety artist gets booted out of a Broadway show after giving it as an “artistic” encore. These reactions, like the negative views of Russian critics, have been excluded from the canoni- cal narrative about the Ballets Russes. This leads us back to the political implications of the claim that the Ballets Russes was a revolutionary organisation. In Russia, ‘revolution’ all too easily implied a disregard of tradition and a treasonous allegiance to Western political ideologies, especially so in an art closely connected to the figure of the autocrat – and Diaghilev’s enterprise was, after all, totally dependent on dancers whose training had been paid for by the said monarch. The Russian dancers’ criticism of the Imperial Theatres should not be read as disillusionment or contempt - on the contrary, the fervent desire to reform ballet shows their deep-rooted love and respect for this institution. All advocates of the Ballets Russes firmly anchored their appraisal on the Imperial tradition, emphasising how the new enterprise was a continuation of the Russian traditions. Here is Svetlov (1912, 7) writing on Fokine’s works:

Il semble tout d’abord ne rien y avoir de commun entre la Fille du Pharaon, de Petipa, et Shéhérazade de Fokine. Les créations de Fokine paraissent constituer un entier désaveu du vieux ballet de Petipa. Mais bien au contraire, le nouveau ballet est la conséquence logique de l’ancien. [ . . . ] Dans Armide nous trouvons un prologue, une action, un épilogue: en un mot l’ordre établi du bon vieux temps; tout encore ‘y est en place’: ici, selon l’usage, un ‘pas d’action’, pour la ballerine; là, des variations pour les solistes; d’ailleurs, l’habituel ‘balla bile’; et plus loin, à sa place traditionelle, une coda. A dire vrai, un esprit novateur s’y affirme déjà par endroits: les lignes, les figures traditionelles à la géométrique régularité y appraisent brisées, assou- plies; les groupes sont disposés asymmétriquement; on remarque des hardiesses et des velléités de rompre avec l’académisme, suivies de certaines résultats. Une vie nouvelle y commence à frémir, il y circule un sang nouveau. Mais généralement parlant, tout y reste fort ‘conve- nable’, et ne choque guère les vieux ballétomanes qui, en l’espèce, ne continuent à regretter le ‘bon vieux temps’ que par habitude.51 240 Dancing Genius

As Svetlov here points out, beyond relying on typical topics for bal- let Fokine also retained much of the old ballet in terms of steps and choreographic structure (Nijinska 1992, 459, 466; Lieven 1973, espe- cially 169). In the character dances of the new ballet, the corps de ballet was still scenery for the main action, executed by the soloists, but now the dancers in the corps were given the freedom to improvise their particular tasks. This not only broke up the traditional uniformity of the corps but allowed greater liberties in interpretation for precisely the dancers traditionally deprived of such rights – a likely reason for Fokine’s great popularity amongst corps-de-ballet dancers. What actually separated the new ballet from the old was not what was said but how, and it was this “how” that was often criticised in Fokine’s works. Although imposing period style and ‘national character’ on the dances was a hallmark of the new ballet, the claims made by the ballet masters about how well they had researched the Other for these works (for example, Fokine 1961, especially 55–61) should really be taken with a grain of salt: thoroughly conditioned by the balletic ideals of beauty, grace and , their cultural appropriation had just about as little to do with actual ethnography as that resulting in the character dances of the old ballet (see, for example, Misler 1988). Moreover, since Fokine relied on the dancers’ improvisation, the dancers also played up their favourite bits, regardless of the period style (Fokine 1961, p assim, especially 133 complains repeatedly of this.) For example, the New York Evening Mail 19 January 1916 noted that:

Adolf Bohn [sic] uses the same leaps and contortions in his Tartar dance as in the amorous exultations of the negro in ‘Scheherazade.’ And there is no great difference between the steps of the harem ladies and those of the maidens of the enchanted forest.

In retrospect, Fokine clearly exaggerated his exactitude when it came to choreography. He frequently changed his choreographies because this was expected; it was standard practice in ballet at the time.52 Fokine was never enthusiastic about dance notation, either (see, for example, Wachtel 1998, 12; Garafola 1992, image 10). However, since a “fixed” choreography was not expected, this was also not the reason his contemporaries found improvisation problem- atic. Rather, they saw a tension between the dramatic and the musical principles in the (individual) performances of these choreographies. Prince Volkonsky argued that:

The main fault of the leaders of the modern ballet is that they put the centre of gravity of the ballet in the plot, in the event, in Revolutionary Exiles 241

the story [ . . . and the . . . ] rupture with the music is all the more felt the more participants there are in the picture, and the more its tendency towards ‘realism.’ Only look at them when they represent scenes of disorder, by and by we lose the impression of ‘art’; we see real, not represented, disorder. [ . . . ] The dramatic principle based upon an arbitrary division of time is directly opposed to the choreographic principle, which is wholly founded on the musical, consequently regulated, division of time. Therefore, the introduction of the element of ‘personal feeling,’ of individual choice, and even more – all tenta- tive independent elaboration of the psychological situation – destroys the very essence of the choreographic art, and eats away its very texture.53

For Volkonsky, who emphasised the responsibility of the ballet master (Apollon 6/1913), the dissolution of dance’s connection to music made Fokine’s work no longer choreography. In the Ballets Russes rehearsals, Fokine often showed no more than a sequence of steps to the dancers, asking them to improvise their roles, and for the corps de ballet, he could simply give a vocal instruction.54 Whereas in Western criticism the authorship of dance rested in the dancing genius, which was, by definition, inexplicable and natural, the Russians focused far more on the dancers’ performance and the role of the ballet master in directing them. This focus on dancing is why the Russian context also facilitated the emergence of a new author of dance: that of the choreographer interested in preserving his exact, ideal com- position for future generations (see Järvinen 2006; 2009c). Gorsky’s career began as a notator testing the Stepanov system and he also wrote on notation (Gorsky 1978); Nijinsky (in Musical America 15 April 1916) considered his notation of Faune his most important contribution to his art form. However, the rise of the choreographer and the idealist notion of dance as an abstraction that the dancer only executes in performance fall outside the scope of the present work. Conclusion

Why, then, a book on some dead Russian dancer today? Why an aca- demic treatise on such a popular figure and one that does not discuss his choreographic œuvre? In part, it is my hope to bridge something of the distance between the rather uncritical hagiographic writing on Nijinsky outside academe and the theoretically dense but often equally hagiographic writing on him inside this specialist context. However, as Michel Foucault (1991, 33, 36) put it, the relevance of a work of history is only ever in the reader’s experience:

[I]t is evident that in order to have [ . . . a transformative experi- ence . . . ] through a book like The History of Madness, it is necessary that what it asserts is somehow ‘true’, in terms of historically verifi- able truth. But what is essential is not found in series of historically verifiable proofs; it lies rather in the experience which the book permits us to have. And an experience is neither true nor false: it is always a fiction, something constructed, which exists only after it has been made, not before; it isn’t something that is ‘true’, but it has been a reality.

This, finally is my hope: that something has changed in you, thanks to this book. In the process of editing this book, a lot has fallen by the wayside, but I hope to have included enough examples from contemporary materials to contest at least some of the most common assumptions about how the Russian Ballet figured in the discourse of dance and the general cultural context of the first decades of the twentieth century. “The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it”, claimed Oscar Wilde (2001, 231) in “The Critic as Artist”. Such re-writing is necessary because a cultural

242 Conclusion 243 product only remains of interest for generations to come if it can be fit- ted to changing aesthetic ideals and ideas on art. Currently, there seems to be a trend in contemporary dance to return to notable predecessors in order to rethink the practice of this art form through citation, re-performance and reconstruction (for example, Burt 2003; Lepecki 2010). I see this as indicating a need to contest the canon and imagine alternatives to its simplifying narrative about dance. History is never simple or straightforward, which is why I have tried to point to alternatives, to cracks and contradictions in both contemporary and later interpretations. Aesthetic changes are never clear-cut breaks, modernism is not opposed to or exclusive of nationalism, popular is a relative term, and performing artists tend to do whatever it takes to keep performing. It is only through the process of canonisation that the Ballets Russes becomes a revolutionary of new art or Nijinsky the legendary dancer familiar from all those lovely exhibition catalogues. If genius was something that was one-of-a-kind and independent of the physical body of the genius, Nijinsky’s subsequent idolisation certainly fits the profile. After his institutionalisation, Nijinsky was perceived as a dancing genius, even if the creative process of dancing was marginal to this appreciation as authorship in dance shifted to the figure of the choreographer. The labour of the dancer forgotten, emphasis was placed on how Nijinsky whisked everything out of thin air. People forgot that the transformation into a role involved consider- able effort: both years of conscious practice and preparation before each performance (as, for example, Ostwald 1991, 43–4 has noted). Similarly, with reconstructions, interpretations of Nijinsky’s choreographic works have become fixed, attributed with overarching grand visions and ruling principles where practical experimentation and wooden ducks (see Evans quoted in Pritchard 2010, 80–1) might offer a more plausible view of how a choreographer works with movement material and the dancers selected to dance a particular piece. Hence, the four choreographies Nijinsky made for the Ballets Russes haunt the above discussion, and for this reason alone, it is important to stress that they actually mark a significant change in the critical reception of the Ballets Russes. They turned the tables for the Oriental Others, particularly in Paris: critics who had previously praised the company used Nijinsky’s choreographies to prove an aesthetic void underlay their project, that it was all just surface glitter, novelty for the sake of novelty. But with Russian critics, the change was in the opposite direction, particularly with Sacre, which was seen as a quintessentially Russian piece (see Järvinen 2013a.) 244 Dancing Genius

More importantly, already with Faune, Western critics started to discuss both movement qualities and choreographic composition in a manner that proves their above-cited Russian detractors were some- what mistaken. Even if favourable reviews still distanced these works into some kind of racially-defined Otherness and negative reviews attacked them as signs of dangerous degeneration, it is clear these crit- ics could analyse dance. Moreover, Nijinsky’s works, particularly those set to Debussy’s music, received unprecedented amounts of attention even in papers that had never before written on the Ballets Russes (for example, La Plume 1 July 1912; The World 17 May 1913). This extensive interest reveals Nijinsky’s celebrity status, also evident in how many reviews quoted his interviews, taking recourse to authorial intention (for example, Rameau in Le Monde artiste 24 May 1913 compare with 14 June 1913). Ironically, together with his authoritative statements, this made Nijinsky responsible for the under-valuation of the dancer’s art. The emphasis on the importance of choreography and the figure of the choreographic author as the true creator of twentieth-century dance have transformed the past of the art form to fit these preconceived ideas of what is art, and guided dance research away from the dancer’s experience and the physical realities of performance practice. Hence, re-reading the past may help us see the present in a different light, help us notice how we use terms like ‘virtuoso’, ‘star’, or ‘genius’ (or ‘author’ and ‘work’ for that matter), and what kinds of assumptions we make about aesthetics and corporealities alike in our definitions of ‘dance’. Notes

Introduction: A Genealogy

1 I was reading Nijinsky 1980, i, which, as Buckle 1998, xxxi asserts, was writ- ten as a film script. 2 For a short biography on Nijinsky, see Acocella 1989. Nijinska 1992, 12–13 gives 27–8 February/12 March 1889 (Shrove Thursday) as the date of birth of her brother in Kiev, 27 December 1890/8 January 1891 in as her own, and 18/30 April 1891 as their christening date in Warsaw. Their elder brother, Stanislav, was born on 17/29 December 1886 in Tiflis – he was later institutionalised. Nijinsky 1999, 236 states he was born in 1889 and bap- tised in Kiev; his wife Romola Nijinsky 1980, i:19 claimed her husband was born 28 February 1890, a date seen in many secondary sources. To confuse matters, according to Chynowski 1992, 133, Nijinsky’s gravestone in Paris with the date 17/29 December 1889 was inscribed after a Polish record, but Nijinsky’s second daughter, Tamara Nijinsky 1991b, 62–3 says her (different) Polish record from 1921 has 28 December 1889/10 January 1890 as her father’s birthday. According to Ostwald 1991, 4fn, Nijinsky’s death certifi- cate in London says he was 59 years old when he died on 11 April 1950, but Buckle 1998, 537 states he was asked to write Nijinsky’s obituary on 8 April 1950; see also 538 on Nijinsky’s re-burial in Paris on 16 June 1953. Compare with NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings collection of obituaries. 3 See, for example http://www.paperdolls.com/dolls/nijinsky01.htm [26 November 2006]; and http://www.amazon.com/Pavlova-Nijinsky-Paper- Dolls-Color/dp/0486240932 [26 November 2006]; Sampson 1985, a biogra- phy of the racehorse; and Freddie Mercury’s impersonation of Nijinsky as the Faun in The Queen’s 1984 video I Want to Break Free http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=9hMrY8jysdg, c. 2:07-3:07 [9 November 2006]. The most famous Nijinsky feature film is Nijinsky, directed by Herbert Ross (1980), but according to the director Michael Powell, The Red Shoes (1948) was also based on his life. McLean 1988, 33, 44. 4 This is the photograph taken in Jacques-Émile Blanche’s garden of Nijinsky executing a tour-en-l’air dressed in his costume for the Danse Siamoise in Les Orientales. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Druet,_ Eug%C3%A8ne_(1867-1916)_-_Vaslav_Nijinsky_in_the_Les_orientales(1910). jpg. The only other possibility is Gerschel’s image of Nijinsky executing an entrechat in Pavillon d’Armide, reproduced in L’Illustration of 22 May 1909, taken either against a dark curtain or, as Gesmer 2000a, 84 suggests, from above, with Nijinsky lying on the floor. Unlike Pourvoyeur s.a., 10 claims, it is unlikely any photographs of Nijinsky were taken on stage. Although the cameras of the 1910s were quite able to stop motion, bright sunlight was necessary to achieve images sharp enough for publication purposes. 5 Guest 1991, 7 speaks of “a silent black-and-white film” of 1931 when Woizikovsky mounted Faune for Rambert’s company. This is probably the

245 246 Notes

film Ostwald 1991, 139, 151n39 speaks of as being of Nijinsky. See also Franklin 2001, 65n9; similarly, Hodson 2000, 85n25; Gesmer 1999. 6 See Ekaterina Geltser and Vasily Tikhomirov in Moment musical, 1913; Pavlova in The Dying Swan, 1907; Minton 2000, 110–1. 7 It is curious how this argument, prominent in the 1930s (for example, Kameneff 1936, 24), keeps on resurfacing – see Borodin 1952, 73–4; Beaumont 1951, 28–9; Kerensky 1970, especially 32–7; even Bowden 1999, especially 27. Compare with Acocella 1984, 283n17. 8 In early evaluations, for example, Svetloff 1929, 270, Sacre “proved [ . . . Nijinsky . . . ] a great master, a deep and serious thinker, but one already showing undoubted signs of a disturbed mental poise”. Later, this emphasis on insanity became more pronounced: Haskell 1938, 53; Sandoz 1954, 62–76. See Chapter 6 on the metaphor of madness associated with Nijinsky’s choreographies. 9 Perhaps the largest pitfall of dance history has been the uncritical interpre- tation of current performances as historical performances. As for example, Franko 1989; and Scholl 2004, especially 147–60, 213–18, 229n6 exemplify in great detail, any performance is specific to current aesthetic preferences, public morals, and theoretical understanding as well as to the conditions in performance spaces, musical instruments, performing techniques and so on. See, for example, Brown 1992; Jackson 1991, especially 3, 12–16, 25. On the problems with notions like ‘authentic’ and ‘original’ in dance, see Burt 1998b; and Carter 1998; also Acocella 1991; compare with Fink 1999, espe- cially 305–12; Citron 1995, especially 21–7; and Lehmann & Ericsson 1998 on how the same problems apply to music. 10 For example, the memoirs of Lydia Sokolova (1960) were written by Richard Buckle; Lincoln Kirstein and Arnold Haskell (neither one of whom ever saw Nijinsky dance) compiled Romola Nijinsky’s “intimate” biographies of her husband (Nijinsky 1980); Stravinsky’s Chroniques de ma vie (1935, Stravinsky 1975) were chronicled by Diaghilev’s lawyer, Walter Nouvel. Daly 2002, especially xxxiii on ‘canon critics’ who create and uphold canons; Hills 2007, especially 40–4. 11 Citron 1995, especially 19–22; DeNora 1995, 5–8, 186–91; Nochlin 1989b, especially 145–58; Pollock 1992. 12 In Germany, recent tours by Russian dancers had paved the way for the Ballets Russes, if not their specific aesthetic. See Zeidler 1997; Laakkonen 2009, especially 236–44. 13 According to Ostwald 1991, especially 174–5, 184 a sports doctor dabbling in psychiatry who also seems to have been in love with Mme Nijinsky encouraged Nijinsky to write in an associative way whilst administering him psychoactive drugs, including sedatives that would have affected his writing and verbal skills. See Nijinsky 1999, passim, especially 22n*, 61–2, 102; also Acocella 1999, xx–xxi, xxxiii–xxxv. The Diary text is heavily influ- enced by Tolstoy 1904. 14 Many of Romola Nijinsky’s descriptions of her husband’s ideas and work are almost verbatim from contemporary sources (for example, Nijinsky 1980, i:185; compare with Jacques-Émile Blanche in La Revue de Paris 1 December 1913; and Nijinsky in Le Figaro 14 May 1913; or Nijinsky 1980, i:204; com- pare with The Times 26 July 1913). Their aesthetic views seem to have been at odds: see Nijinsky 1980, i:133–7, 247, 430 on Spectre; compare with Nijinsky Notes 247

in The Daily Mail 14 July 1913; Nijinska 1992, 498. The Nijinskys never had a very happy life together, and Romola Nijinsky must have been shocked to read her husband’s scathing opinions of her in his Diary (for example, Nijinsky 1999, 142–3 on marriage; compare with Nijinsky 1991a, 81–2, the version long preferred in the hegemonic interpretation. See also Nijinsky 1991b, especially 102–22, 252–7; Järvinen 2010, 87, 101n36. 15 For example, Françoise Reiss’s (1957) primary sources are Romola Nijinsky and Anatole Bourman (pseudonym of Anatoli Mikhailovich Kuchinsky), Nijinsky’s former schoolmate whom Nijinsky’s sister criticises for lying about his intimacy with the Nijinsky family and for being one of the bullies responsible for the 1901 prank that nearly killed Nijinsky: Nijinska 1992, 85–6, 101–3, 110, 136, 188–9; compare with Bourman 1938, passim, espe- cially 56–60 on the prank, also 94–6 on Nijinsky’s expulsion. Mme Nijinsky’s ‘revelations’ clearly influenced the reminiscences of both Bourman 1938 and Blanche 1938. Similarly, most biographies of Nijinsky rely altogether too much on her, for example, Turi 1987; de Sardes 2006. 16 Nijinsky and Stravinsky addressed each other with the intimate second person singular (ты) (Stravinsky & Craft 1978, 603n38) but Cocteau called Stravinsky ‘vous’ until 27 December 1913 (Stravinsky 1982, 73). 17 Of course, in dance, what is and is not “lost” requires a foray into the ontol- ogy of ‘dance’ and the definitions of ‘work’ in that discourse. As with ‘perfor- mance’, the slippage between different contexts makes ontological definitions of ‘dance’ particularly indicative of the limits of their authors’ viewpoint. Of Nijinsky’s choreographies, only Faune was performed after 1919 in various memory-based reconstructions. 18 For example, Hanna 1988, especially 140–1; Garafola 1998; Garafola 1999, especially 252–61; compare with Scott 2001, 56–60; Nochlin 1989b, 147–50; and Battersby 1994, especially 150–4, 209–32 on feminist failures; also Dorris 2000, 218–19. Although feminists have pointed attention to female choreog- raphers and dancers, as Burt 1995, 8 notes, women’s importance as members of the audience of professional dance and the role of female desire in the discourse of art dance have not been sufficiently addressed in dance history, also op. cit. 3–5, 12. 19 Exceptions include Acocella 1984, especially 323–32, although she speaks of ‘primitivism’ rather than Orientalism; Misler 1988; Holt 2000, 88–129; and Balme & Teibler 1997. 20 Modernity itself is, of course, a difficult concept, even when separated from modernisation (the process of becoming modern) and modernism (as an aesthetic credo shared by several styles from the late nineteenth-century onwards). Modernity, like modernism, was always defined through that which it was not: against the barbarian and the savage, against the parochial, the medieval, the agrarian, the past. For example, Hall 1996a, 276–80. 21 Or, as Frame 2000, 19 notes, “The Emperor’s Theatres”.

1 An Audience for Ballet

1 First, researchers fail to look at popular theatres – see Gutsche-Miller 2010, especially 5: “Ballet did not disappear from the Parisian stage at the end of 248 Notes

the nineteenth century; it simply changed venues.” Second, few novelties premièred as late in the season as the Ballets Russes, and not reading what else papers reviewed in other theatres and earlier in the year can give the impression this company was all there was. This is why yearbooks are so very useful as a source. Third, those French works that received notable critical coverage, such as La Fête chez Thérèse (1910 – see, for example, Le Théatre 15 June 1910), did so for many of the same reasons as the Ballets Russes, notably because of the collaborators involved in writing the plot (Catulle Mendèz) and composing the music (Reynaldo Hahn) were well- known darlings of society. Fourth, specific critics and particular papers have agendas that condition what they say and should also condition how they are used. 2 Gutsche-Miller 2010; also Koritz 1990 and Pritchard 2001, especially 55–6 on England; Barker 1994 on popular ballets in America. 3 Breward 1999, especially 240–61; Smith 1996, 135–42, 173–85, 192, 216–21; Nochlin 1989b, 158–63. 4 Wagner 1895; also Trotter 1904, 21 the unnecessary rhythmic simplicity of ballet music. 5 For example, the objections by ‘An Antiquary’ 1911, 63; or Henry T. Finck of The [American] Nation 27 April 1916. 6 Between 1890 and 1920, the terms used of non-balletic theatrical dance varied greatly. ‘Modern’ dance included all contemporary forms, even ballet; ballet was only sometimes explicitly opposed to ‘free-form’ concert dance; dances that re-imagined Ancient Greek or Roman ideals were often called ‘classical’ dance, but as ballet, too, was represented as a ‘classical’ form, so these dancers without ballet shoes were (derisively) nicknamed ‘barefoot’ dancers. See also Genné 2000, 144–5. 7 Within the larger rubric of Symbolism, Decadence was more a French, Aestheticism a British movement. Decadence praised periods of excess and decline, “an intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an over-subtilizing refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity” as Arthur Symons defined it in 1893 (quoted Ledger & Luckhurst 2000, 105). Both were often labelled ‘degeneration’, op. cit. 1–24. 8 A triple-bill, or three short ballets given as one performance with intervals between ballets, was not one of Diaghilev’s ”unique contributions” as, for example, Kirstein 1987, 280 and Lee 2002, 232 claim, but typical of touring Russian companies. 9 Levine 1988; Stallybrass & White 1986, especially 87, 191–3; Bennett 1995. 10 Swift 2002; Stafford 1999, especially 73; Nead 2005, 109–46 on pleasure gardens; Katz 1998, especially 449–50. 11 Bone 1989, especially 114–16; Tanner 1989, especially 132; Beddow 1989, especially 102, 108–10. The miriskusstniki, who clearly veered towards monistic idealism, certainly subscribed to these ideas: for example, Kennedy 1977, 74, 79–84. 12 Klein 1992, 206–7 on Pater’s formulation; Braudy 1986, especially 479; Moxey 1994, passim, especially 92 on how the invocation of personal genius was necessary for the separation of the ‘high’ from the ‘low’; compare with, for example, Chartier 1989; Burke 1997, 124–35 on cultural objects as never restricted to one class. Notes 249

13 For example, Nochlin 1989b, 147–76; Moxey 1994, especially 146–7; DeNora 1995, especially 45–59. 14 Höher 1986, 85–9; Wiles 2003, especially 150–61; Bailey 2003, 141–8. 15 Mir iskusstva was published in 1898–1905 (in four volumes), the group’s exhibitions were held in 1899–1903 and 1906. The exhibition society was formed anew twice, first in 1910–1924 in Russia and then in Paris in the 1920s. Bowlt 1982, 12; Petrov 1991, 50–60. 16 That is, exhibition societies by artists who separated from the national academies on account of aesthetic differences. The first of these was the Salon au Champs-de-Mars in Paris (1890), but the most famous was the Vienna Secession (Wiener Sezession, est. 1897 – see Schorske 1981, especially 84–6, 213–19, 237–9). Their precedents, also admired by miriskusstniki (see Diaghilev’s editorial for Mir iskusstva 1–2/1899, translated in Diaghilev 1999b), included the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (est. 1848) and the Salon des refusés (est. 1863). Kennedy 1977, especially 168–9. 17 “Saisons Russe” or “Russian Seasons” – a collective term for Diaghilev’s enterprises in the West 1906–29. Diaghilev had a tendency to exaggerate the number of his past seasons because the appearance of longevity added to the prestige of the troupe. 18 Astruc 1930, 42; Astruc 1987, especially 214, 221–3 on the Société Musicale and its (nominal) international committee of patrons, which included of Bavaria (later Queen Elizabeth of Belgium), Infantas Maria de la Paz and Eulalia of Spain, the former’s husband Prince Louis of Bavaria, Prince Louis (later Louis II) of Monaco, Lady Ripon, the Duchesses of Portland and Rutland, Sir Ernest Cassel, and the Americans K. Vanderbilt, John J. Astor, Clarence Mackay, James Stillman and Pierpoint Morgan. The Société also published the S.I.M. Revue musicale. Garafola 1992, especially 186–7 on Diaghilev’s major patrons; NYPLDC Astruc Papers. 19 Kessler to Hofmannsthal 5 June 1909 in Kessler & Hofmannsthal 1968, 240; The Lady 4 July 1912; The Bellman 30 December 1916; also Beaumont 1951, 55. 20 That is, “the whole Faubourg”. Diaghilev in Petersburgskaia gazeta 4 June 1907 quoted in Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, i:205. 21 Simmel 1957, especially 543–4. See also, for example, Crary 2001, 119–27 on novelty. 22 Compare with Walkowitz 2003, 338–42 on London. As, for example, Keith Moxey 1994, 68–70 has discussed, art was read as bearing the imprint of national character, the different nations seen as competing rivals in the sphere of culture; as Burt 1998a, 36 notes, this kind of nationalism was not tied to right-wing politics. 23 Critics sometimes noticed or even complained about the high price for tick- ets: see, for example, The Bellman 6 July 1912; The World: A Journal for Men and Women 27 May 1913. On temporality as a strategy of exclusion, see Corbin 1995, 2–7, also 40–2 on spatial compartmentalisation; also McConachie 1988. 24 In Imperial Russia, ‘princes’ (князь, pl. -я,) were originally feudal nobles (noblesse d’épee): patrilinear descendants of the semi-legendary Rurik (c. 830–c. 879) of Novgorod, founder of Kievan Rus, or the Lithuanian king Gediminas (c. 1275–1341). Until the Great Reforms, a noble’s status was measured in the number of serfs (‘souls’) they owned. ‘Prince’ or ‘duke’ was a title above other nobles but below the , tsar – a title formally adopted 250 Notes

in 1547 by the Great Prince or Grand Duke (великий князь) Ivan IV. Alexander III (r. 1881–94) formalised the use of the title Grand Duke (or Duchess) as connoting the patrilinear descendants of the tsars and emperors of Russia. On the convoluted aristocracy of Imperial Russia, see Kirkinen 1986, 69; Kuujo 1986, 82–4; Juntunen 1986, 168–71. 25 For example, Le Matin 17, 22 and 28 May 1909; The Lady 26 October 1911; or The New York Sun 25 April 1916. Often, these lists were not included in the review but appeared as separate articles. 26 Ballets Russes programmes, 1909–1929 include both these and the actual leaf- let programmes of specific performances. 27 See quotations in Lieven 1973, 217–27, especially 223; and Haskell 1955, especially 85–6, 215–21. 28 However, see Sargeant 2011, especially 225 on differences between aristo- cratic and bourgeois dilettantism. 29 For example, Perugini 1915, 296, 298–305 on Kiasht, 310–11 on Pavlova & Mordkin, 314–15 on Karsavina, 319–22 on the Ballets Russes; Guest 1992, especially 76–80, 136–43; Levy 1990, passim, especially 27–42, 177, 282–6, 342–6. Dance researchers often use a very similar strategy of opposition to variety theatre entertainment to distinguish those (American) performers seen as pioneers of modern dance from everybody else: see, for example, Foster 2001, 152; Albright 2007, especially 15–39, 117; compare with for example, Huxley 1994; Décoret-Ahiha 2004, 278–80 on the American hegemony in the early twentieth-century dance canon. 30 See, for example, Brody 1987, especially 144–5; Garafola 1992, 290. 31 On the importance of salons see, for example, Citron 1995, 104–8; and in Russia, Bernstein 1996, especially 209–10; Holmgren 1996, especially 225–7; Owen 1981, 155. 32 “The footlights become the frontier of fire that separates the two kingdoms. And it seems to us really that there, on stage, there blows a different air.” 33 Garafola 1992, especially 286, claims the Ballets Russes acted as a healthy counterpoint to Wagner for French critics – this attitude cannot be found in contemporary reviews regardless of French concerns over the growing industrial might of Germany: see Kern 2000, especially 247–50; Eksteins 1989, especially 18–20, 49–50, 68–82; also Ch. 7 note 53 below. 34 For example, Noailles 1930, Henriot 1930. Acocella 1984, 419–21, 428 lists the Sitwells, Charles Ricketts, and Lady Ottoline Morrell as examples of this. 35 See Järvinen 2009b; Järvinen 2013b. 36 For example, Hoppu 2011; Carter 2011; Buckland 2011b; Vedel 2011. 37 On the complexities of ‘natural’ dance and ‘modern’ dance, see Fensham 2011. 38 See, for example, Caffin & Caffin 1912, especially 255–79; also Britan 1904, 51; compare with Stallybrass & White 1986, especially 191–3 on the gro- tesque body; also Foucault 1995, 25–7. 39 Hatt 1999, 251–3; Brewster & Jacobs 1997, especially 93–6, 140–1; also Smart 2006, 11–20. 40 See Mauclair in Le Courrier Musical 1 June 1912 quoted in Chapter 2 note 34; or Flitch 1912, 123 on the threat of foreign dancers and modern manners to traditional Russian peasant dances. On the Orient as timeless, see, for example, Nochlin 1989a, 39–41; Ziter 2003, 15–16, 29. Notes 251

41 “Ballet, a form of art exquisite like desire, more ephemeral than pleasure, even more delicious for being more trifle and light. [ . . . ] It is the garden of bodies, in the flower of their youth. All is smoke; all is the illusion of a moment. The art of pleasing, the dream of spring, the bygone rose: and picked, it is already gone.” La Grande revue 25 July 1911. 42 “The immortal youth of gods is recalled in this heroic flesh. I do not want to see it any more: should he die tomorrow, he would already have ceased to be twenty years old, he begins to die. [ . . . ] The day when Nijinski has lost his beauty or his youth, I shall no longer give him a single glance. The more touching for this, and the more living, so extremely beautiful, a being so ephemeral.” Emphasis mine. 43 Brody 1987, 144; Green 1977, 51–2; Buckle 1998, 233, 242. 44 Buckland 2011a, 6–8; also for example, Carlson 1993, 140–58; Wiles 2003, especially 223–4. 45 See Macdonald 1975, 71 for the image; the figure is less active than similar illustrations by Marty in Comœdia illustré 17 June 1911. Also Gross in Guth 1952; also Ricketts 1939, 179 (letter to Cippico 23 September 1912). Of course, Nijinsky was not the only male dancer so adored: Stoneley 2007, 12–13 cites Algernon St. John-Brenon’s review in New York Telegraph from 1910, where the critic pointed out how female members of the audience were particularly thrilled by Mordkin’s legs, which “received a round of applause all to themselves yesterday”. 46 For example, Garafola 1998 quotes as examples of ‘homosexual erotica’ images published in papers predominantly aimed at female readership, such as Femina and Gazette du Bon Ton, and some of her examples of male pin-ups are by women, for example, the images of Lifar by Eileen Mayo (see Cassidy 2003). This also raises the question as to what makes art ‘homosexual’ (see Horne 1996, 132) since the most famous pin-ups of Nijinsky were by decid- edly heterosexual men, like Bakst and Paul Iribe, who created fashion plates for Poiret (Davis 2010, 131–2) and illustrated Cocteau’s poems in Cocteau & Iribe 1910. See also Foulkes 2001, especially 128–30. 47 Napoleon’s statute law, which increased the division between private and public life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of an individual’s right to privacy was still a new and contested domain. Across the Channel, the 1885 amendment, as Sinfield 1994, 9, notes, “is titled ‘Outrages on public decency’, but begins ‘Any male person who, in public or private, commits . . . ’”. Nye 1995, 163; also Martin 1989; and Friedman 2003 on homosocial affec- tion and homosexuality; Burt 1995, 76–8; Kern 2000, 187–90. 48 Homosexuality, like female prostitution, was class-defined: upper-class men were ‘inverts’, lower-class men were ‘perverts’ – the difference being an issue of sexual identity. Consequently, the boy prostitutes of the Wilde case were on trial for blackmail and swindling money, not for ‘gross indecency’. Weeks 1989, 202–10; Sinfield 1994, especially 121–3, 137–8, 149–51; Weber 1986, 37–40; Steakley 1989 on the Eulenburg case. 49 See Bennett in The English Review January 1911; Comœdia 9 June 1910; Cocteau 1972, 30–1. 50 This was particularly true in the United States, where the publicity actively tried to counter the scandalous European reputation of the troupe: see, for example, The Theatre 1915; The Diaghileff Ballet Russe Courier (a press material 252 Notes

publication, in NYPLDC Diaghilev Scrapbook); also Bernays 1965, 107 on hiring the Kinneys to edit the Bakst images of the female dancers for Ladies Home Journal. More in Järvinen 2010. 51 For example, Battersby 1994, 167–9; Gilman 1995, especially 25–6, 136–7; Lewis 1996, 191–229. As all stereotypes, these crop up in research as well: see Spencer 1993 representing Bakst as sex-obsessed. On Russian anti-Semitic views of Jewish purveyors of prostitution, see Engelstein 1992, 299–313.

2 Orientalism

1 The British, French and German empires were all parliamentary democra- cies, although only a fraction of the population had suffrage and both Britain and Germany were ruled by a monarch. The executive powers of the Russian State Duma were very limited (for example, the Duma had no power over ministers), and Nicholas II retained the right to disband it at will. For examples of contemporary Western opinion on Russia, Bennett in The English Review January 1911 equated Russia with Imperial bureaucracy, Crime and Punishment, Ivan the Terrible, and thick-headed drunkard peas- ants depicted by Chekhov; The Literary Digest 6 September 1913 quoted Huntley Carter explaining how Moscow “is a religious fanatic in an elec- trogilt temple [ . . . ] always at a high pitch of excitement, always under the influence of its primitive instincts.” Compare with Kochan 1966, especially 13 quoting official reports of political unrest in Russia; McReynolds 2003, 184–8 on travel books. 2 That is, Ernst Haeckel’s (1834–1919) claim that ontogeny recapitulates phy- logeny. See, for example, Pick 1996, 28–30; Gould 1984, 114-21, 126–7. 3 For example, Gould 1984, especially 114–21 on racial categories; also Bederman 1995, especially 110–12; Lewis 1996; Said 1994a, especially 119–20, 206-9, 252–4; Said 1994b, xi–xxvii; Hall 1996a; also Barthes 1972, 109–59, especially 152; Nochlin 1989a, 34–57. On the Ballets Russes, see Acocella 1984, especially 323–32; Balme & Teibler 1997. 4 See, for example, Gould 1984; Schiebinger 1993, 115–83; Ritvo 1998, espe- cially 120–30, 142-3. 5 Bederman 1995, 219–24; Dyer 1997, 32, 157–8; also for example, Hawkins 1997, especially 61–81, 184–248. 6 Lieven 2000, especially 216–17; Said 1994b, especially 9–10; Petrone 2002, especially 178–9. 7 For example, Caffin & Caffin 1912, 86–7; Koritz 1994, 69–70; Décoret-Ahiha 2004, especially 15. 8 Said 1994a, especially 19–22; Brody 1987, 67–9, 75–6; Nochlin 1989a, 33–59; Fee 1980, 201. 9 “We no longer know what is dance. We are no longer savage enough. We are too civilized, too polished, too modest: we have lost the habit of expressing our emotions with our whole bodies: we barely let them show on our faces and reflect in our talks; and soon they will only stay in our eyes where they will take refuge. Our very gestures are impoverished, limited, reduced and fall from us like branches from a tree being pruned. We are all in the head. Our body is, in other words, abandoned, we no longer inhabit it.” Le Figaro 18 June 1910. Notes 253

10 “Having remained barbarians in a Europe that is, so to speak, civilised to the core, the Russians are at the moment the most fertile, the most beautiful, in their inner development. Very new, avid and sincere like children, they give themselves fully and search feverishly. They are not constrained by for- mulas as we are, and disbelief has not enervated them; they ignore Western satiety. They have not yet used up anything. But all our refinements, all our complications reach these debutants and they welcome them eagerly and immediately renovate them with their entirely primitive ardour with which they adopt them.” 11 As in The Dance 1900, 5–6; St.-Johnston 1906, 10–13; Flitch 1912, 15–19; Caffin & Caffin 1912, 21–5. 12 For example, Lalo in Le Temps 21 June 1910; Ghéon in La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1913; W. R. T[itterton]. in Pall Mall Gazette 24 June 1912. 13 Thamar began and ended with a ‘frozen’ scene, the end thus distinctly echo- ing the beginning and reinforcing the spirit of ennui in the piece. Armide has a similar scene where the dancers actually depict a tapestry that subse- quently comes to life. For example, Johnson 1913, 49 on Thamar, 149 on Armide. On the significance of stage pictorialism, see Brewster & Jacobs 1997. 14 See, for example, Rhodes 1994, especially 74–83; Levine 2008, 194–6; Kallioniemi & Salmi 1995, 13, 32–4; Burke 1978, 17–22; also Buckland 2001/2002; Lepecki 2006, especially 125–6. 15 “Their superiority [ . . . ] is a peculiarity of the Slavic peoples: each has retained in their mores the dance as a primordial element.” 16 “They danced because they could not do otherwise, as they need to translate into movements the new intensity of their emotions.” Fœmina in Le Figaro 27 May 1909. 17 “[W]e would hardly know how to imitate them. It would be ridiculous, impossible, to compose a ballet on the Opèra stage with French popular [or: folk] dances (like the bourrée) . . . ” 18 “It is culture that makes for true superiority. If animals painted and danced, without doubt they would compose ballets comparable to those of the Russians. [ . . . ] the first moment of surprise past, we clearly see that we need not ask them for lessons.” Jean Perros in La Critique Independante 15 June 1913. 19 “The dance is a revelation of joy. [ . . . ] It is impossible to conceive beautiful dance without the joyous glory of the body; and without the gift of youth it is unimaginable. Ugly beings that dance are an awful blasphemy. Beauty creates joy.” La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1912. 20 For example, Deak 1993, especially 101–10, 154–6; Classen 1998, especially 109–37; Pasler 1981, 102–11. 21 For example, Levinson 1982, 41–2 on erotic content as essential to Fokine’s style; Wiles 2003, especially 229 on theatre as increasingly intimate space. 22 See, for example, Femina 11 August 1911 (on Poiret’s party), 1 July 1912 and 1 October 1912. Also Wollen 1987, especially 8–11; Davis 2010, 147–50, also 129–41 on Bakst; Lepape & Defert 1984, 61–2; Décoret-Ahiha 2004, especially 71–4. Notably, during the war, Poiret’s Orientalist fashions were attacked as ‘munichois’ (literally “in the style of Munich”, meaning German), emblem- atic of the cosmopolitanism of pre-war Paris: Silver 1989, 167–85. 23 Green & Swan 1986, 65; also Dunning 1983, 16–17; Davis 2010, 146–7. Contemporary sources verify this: see Comœdia illustré 1 June 1909 on the 254 Notes

new perfume of the audience; Vuillermoz in S.I.M. Revue musicale June 1912. Also Brillant 1930, 96 on the influence of the Ballets Russes on fashion. 24 For example, Kirstein 1971, 190; Garafola 1992, 38–9 on Bakst, 286–92. 25 For example, Wollen 1987, 27–8. See also Foucault 1995, 135–228 on disci- pline as the creation of docile bodies that have internalised surveillance. 26 Sennett 1993, especially 191–3; Davis 2010, especially 96; Berlanstein 2001, 233–6. 27 “This small troupe of men has not been tamed. They have lived in our midst as if in the midst of a steppe. The air that they breathe is not the same. The ideas that are born in their brain are not the same. Between them and us is a distance of one race to another.” Rivière in La Nouvelle revue française August 1913. 28 “If it is impossible for them to communicate with us, when they are between themselves, they have an extraordinary ability to their souls, to sense and think the same thing in plural. Their race is yet too young for them to have construed in every being those thousands of little differences, those delicate personal reservations, those light but insurmountable defences that guard the threshold of the cultivated mind. Originality is not with them this fragile balance of heterogeneous feelings that it is with us. It is something freer, harsher, less easy to damage. This is how it can engage and lose itself in the others.” Rivière in La Nouvelle revue française August 1913. 29 “introduces to us an eighteenth-century dream, Oriental and perverse, recalling more Birdsley [sic] than Watteau.” Comœdia illustré 15 August 1909, emphasis added. 30 Fashion was also feminine: Simmel 1957, especially 550. Steele 2001, passim, especially 60–2, 111 on criticism of fashion. 31 A notable exception was Adam’s music for Giselle in 1910, the cuts to which Diaghilev justified – as with Boris Godounov – as a return to a (fictive) origi- nal: see Diaghilev quoted in Gil Blas 18 June 1910. 32 For example, Adolphe Jullien (in Journal des débats 12 June 1910) thought Rimsky-Korsakov simply deserved what he got in Schéhérazade after mutilat- ing Schumann for Carnaval. For this reason, it is notable that both Debussy and Richard Strauss were publicly reported as accepting Nijinsky’s use of their works: Le Matin 15 May 1913; The New York Times 27 August 1916. As Citron 1995, especially 132–45 notes, music’s form was also gendered. Johnson 1995; similarly, Jordan 2000, especially 12, 67–72 (although she argues ahistorically). 33 Adolphe Jullien in Journal des débats 13 June 1909; La Revue musicale 15 July 1910; also Victor Debay in Le Courrier Musical 15 June 1910; Pierre Lalo in Le Temps 11 June 1912; Richard Aldrich in The New York Times 23 January 1916. 34 “The aroused sensuality that, at times, convulses these Persian miniatures animated with Asian magic, the childishness, the cruelty, the barbarian luxury, the feline flexibility of organisms, the foreignness of the gestures and faces, the violent and bizarre chromatic of the decorations, the spasmodic character of certain groupings of this crowd of eyespots, a crowd that sud- denly moves and expands itself in folly, all this must remain the property of the Russian ballet.” Emphasis added. 35 The term ‘absolute music’ is in itself a modernist term, and the growing twentieth-century emphasis of ‘absolute’ over ‘programme’ music had barely Notes 255

begun in the years leading to the First World War. Jordan 2000, 11–12; Smart 2008, especially 171–204; also Johnson 1995. 36 For example, Pierre Lalo in Le Temps 21 June 1910; Mauclair in Le Courrier Musical 1 June 1912; Henry Adams Bellows in The Bellman 4 March 1916.

3 The Unique Genius

1 By and large, before Nijinsky’s Faune, the ballet master was also not inter- viewed. This is not to say Fokine would not be mentioned or praised as in for example, Femina 1 December 1911, where Judith Gautier called Fokine “l’âme de l’enterprise” – it is just that what he did was so taken for granted it was not even described. 2 For a formalist view, see Cohen 1986, especially 7–12; compare with Fisher 2003, 3–6; Thomas 2004. 3 Bernstein 1998, 6, 10–17; Braudy 1986, 417–18, 425–6; Lehmann & Ericsson 1998, 74–8; also Kallioniemi & Salmi 1997. 4 Lehmann & Ericsson 1998, especially 70–2, 76–7; Brown 1992, especially 113; Citron 1995, especially 27. 5 A Romantic malaise named after the French author Marie-Henri Beyle Stendhal (1783–1842), who first described how masterpieces of art (in his case, the Santa Croce in Florence) caused physical suffering (swooning, depression, sickening) by their sheer beauty. 6 Berlanstein 2001, especially 29–32, 222–31; deCordova 2001, especially 86–92, 98–111. 7 Currie 1974, 9–15; also for example, Moxey 1994, especially 111–47 on this historical distance. 8 “Better as well, the way student Nijinsky danced, demanding the impossible; it is only to be feared that he will lose his inborn phenomenal ballon, if it is to be grotesquely misused. Meanwhile, this classical dancer has pure style that is rarely as innate. It must be regretted that ballet bureaucracy detains Nijinsky from leaving school stages until next year.” Teatr i iskusstvo 16/29 April 1906. 9 The standard was 600 roubles per annum (Krasovskaya 1979, 55, 357n1). At 18, Nijinsky earned three times the annual salary of a Petersburgian factory worker (see Luntinen 1986a, 275, also note 10 below). 10 Nijinska 1992, 318; Wiley 1979/1980, 177; Ostwald 1991, 45; compare with Schuler 1996, 19–25 on wages. 11 Nijinsky was already mentioned in Le Temps 17 February 1909 because, in addi- tion to Diaghilev’s season, Tenisheva brought Kshesinskaia and Preobrazhenskaia to the Opéra and Nijinsky was supposed to partner them (Romanovsky- Krassinsky 2005, 107). For example, drawings of Nijinsky appeared in Le Figaro 5 and 6 June 1909; Comœdia 20 May 1909; and photographs in Comœdia 11, 19 and 20 May 1909. As evinced by, for example, Barbier & Vaudoyer 1914, Garafola 1999, especially 264–5 exaggerates when she says only men were depicted in works of art. In retrospect, informal portraits of Nijinsky were more numerous, but in the contemporary press one is far more likely to come across an informal photograph or drawing of a female dancer – for example, Le Théatre 15 May 1909; The Sketch 25 October and 15 November 1911. 256 Notes

12 “Dieu de la danse” was a nickname for Auguste Vestris, and it was used of Nijinsky in, for example, the advance publicity story in Le Figaro 15 May 1909; also L’Illustration 22 May 1909 subtitled its story “Le Vestris russe”. Also, for example, Comœdia illustré 1 June 1909; Le Monde Illustré 22 May 1909. The connection was so immediate it had to be part of the publicity campaign – “Vestris” was also the nickname used of Nijinsky in Astruc’s cor- respondence with Diaghilev. NYPLDC Astruc Papers. 13 See, for example, Brantlinger 1990, 101–8; Hennegan 1990, 183–6; Albert & Feyel 1998; Schonberg 1988, 31–48. 14 As noted in Chapter 1, the predominance of opera is clear in how much space the press gave to opera in relation to ballet. 15 See, for example, Ballets Russes programmes, 1909–1929, programme of 15 May 1913 (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8415118x [22 August 2013]). From 1910 on, Comœdia illustré published these luxurious souvenir programmes to which details of a particular performance were then added. 16 Garafola 1992, 293 citing NYPLDC Astruc Papers. However, as Le Figaro 2 June 1910 reported, this was because the first répétition générale of the season (for the charities of Marquise de l’Aigle and Duchess d’Estissac) had been cancelled. However, not all Russian dancers who appeared in such events did so for Diaghilev: see, for example, Gil Blas 26 and 27 June 1909. 17 Diaghilev had commissioned the score from Paul Dukas and set designs from Bakst for a ballet on a Persian fairy for the 1911 season. Nijinsky was to be the male lead but the project fell through because Dukas insisted his mistress, Natalia Trouhanova, take the title role. Minors 2006. 18 In the contemporary press, ‘negro’ (French: le nègre) did not have the imme- diate negative connotation we associate with the word. Although as Berliner 2002, 10 notes, “the popular image of blacks in France at the time was overwhelmingly negative”, the assumed (white) reader of such texts would not have thought this an intended insult. Having said this, it is sickening how literature on the Ballets Russes uncritically lauds the obviously racist stereotypes of the lecherous Negro in Schéhérazade or the stupid Blackamoor of Petrouchka. Similarly, ‘juif’ (a word Warnod 1930, 82 used of Bakst) was a degrading term, in clear contrast to the respectable ‘sémite’ or ‘Israëlite’. 19 See, for example, The Lady 22 June 1911; The Athenaeum 21 October 1911; Karsavina 1981, 240–8. 20 Impresarios tried to lure Nijinsky away, too. NYPLDC Astruc Papers includes a telegram from Gatti-Casazza (1910) warning Astruc on Hammerstein’s plans to hire Nijinsky; compare with Astruc’s letter 1 August 1911 that “Quant à M. Nijinsky, M. de Diaghilew m’a déclaré qu’étant donné ses rela- tions d’amitié avec cet artiste, il n’avait pas besoin de signer d’engagement avec lui.” (“As for Mr Nijinsky, Mr de Diaghilew has told me that because of his friendly relationship with this artist, there is no need to sign a contract with him.”) 21 Lifar 1945, 187 claims that Anna Pavlova left the Ballets Russes because of her jealousy of Nijinsky; Nijinska 1992, 283 on Pavlova not wanting to share success with Nijinsky in Giselle; Fokine 1961, 148 claims she left because all the 1909 publicity focused on Nijinsky. Similarly, Rubinstein’s “misunder- standing” with Diaghilev reported by Lieven 1973, 119–20 may have been over who got the spotlight. Garafola 1992, 44, also 175 gives an example Notes 257

why; Garafola 1996b, 102–3; also Carbonneau 1999, 223 on Bolm leaving for the same reason. According to Kopelson 1997, 90, Karsavina told Fonteyn she was lucky at having a wonderful partner in Nureyev “adding, with a sad, downward shake of her head, ‘I . . . had Nijinsky’”. This, of course, gives the opportunity to leap to all sorts of conclusions, regardless of how many other accounts praised Nijinsky’s partnering – for example, Romanovsky- Krassinsky 2005, 109–10. 22 The Bystander 26 February 1913 reported that the Faune photographs by Baron de Meyer were hanging in the passage around the stalls of Covent Garden; The New York Times 27 January 1912 made news of John Singer Sargent agreeing to paint Nijinsky; NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings Chicago Tribune story dated 31 May 1913 was on Nijinsky modelling for Rodin. (It claimed Nijinsky had been sitting for 40 minutes with his back to the sculptor before he realised the old artist was asleep and left quietly.) See also Pourvoyeur 1992, 52–5 for a non-exhaustive list of artists; for their work, see exhibition catalogues such as Kahane 2000. 23 Thus, Ezhegodnik 1907–1908, ii:131: “Павилонъ Армиды. Балетъ-пантомима въ 3 карт., соч. А. Бенуа, музыка Н. Н. Черепнина.” “Armida’s pavilion. Ballet-pantomime in 3 tabl[eaux]., lib[retto]. by A. Benois, music by N.N. Cherepnin.” No mention of Fokine anywhere. 24 “It must, moreover, be mixed in the same praise, all these virtuosos of dance that are named Nijinski, the renovator of the Russian choreographic art, in turn Narcissus and Harlequin amazing for their flexibility and profound life.” 25 Rivière in La Nouvelle revue française November 1913; Vuillermoz in S.I.M. Revue musicale June 1913. 26 See how Fokine’s contribution is discussed in Journal des débats 11 June 1911; compare this with Henri Bidou’s detailed description 10 June 1912 of Nijinsky’s Faune. Also Metzner 1998, especially 113, 277 on performers valued over composers. 27 As Bullard 1971, i:170 notes, these reviews are “remarkable for their thor- oughness and acuity even though they appear not to the surface of the work from a technical or theoretical viewpoint”. Their focus is simply different – not by default worse – and this difference should be at the heart of the inquiry. See Daly 2002, xxix–xlii on different styles of dance criticism; Hammergren 2004, 21 on Bie; also Pritchard 2001, 76 on change of genera- tion in dance critics prior to the arrival of the Ballets Russes. 28 See, for example, Thomas 1995, 26–9 on how dance transforms reality into its particular context in order to be recognisable as dance, whereas everyday movement is not perceived as coded in this way (even when it is). However, this is true of other arts: what is understood as ‘realism’ in painting similarly depends on culturally and historically specific codes by which we ‘read’ the painting. 29 The prevalent tendency in dance literature is to equate ‘modern’ with non- narrative and mimicry with ‘old-fashioned’, to the extent that past dance is evaluated according to these criteria. For example, Foster 1998, 8–10, 97–8, 100–2, 168–70, 253–4 writes of pantomime as a disruption of dance, as a language incomprehensible and unnecessary to the audience even as op. cit., 75–6, 113–22, 168–9 offers evidence of the actual importance of narrative 258 Notes

mimicry for contemporary professionals and audiences alike. See also Guest 1992, especially 30, 36–9, 64, 90. 30 For example, Nijinska 1992, 422–6; see also Van Vechten 1915, 78 comparing Nijinsky and Fokine in the role. 31 Similarly, Duncan quoted in Caffin & Caffin 1912, 50 “all that is most moral, healthful, and beautiful in art”; Duncan 1977, especially 54–8, 78–9; Daly 1994, especially 28–9; Daly 2001, especially 290–3 on Duncan’s opinion that ‘nature’ signified God, truth, beauty, harmony, and morality; also Thomas 1995, 64–9. These attitudes derived in part from Delsartean ideas on gesture, see Ruyter 1999, especially 76–82, and illustrations 6–11. 32 See also Foster 1998, especially 18; Smart 2006, 44–9, 216n35 on poses. 33 For example, Gil Blas 18 June 1910: “Giselle, ballet-pantomime [ . . . ] Cléopâtre, mimodrame”; 25 June 1910: “Carnaval, pantomime-ballet [ . . . ] L’Oiseau de Feu, conte dansé”. However, as The Times 24 June 1911 noted, “Of pure mimesis, the imitation of actual natural movements, there is but little in the Russian Ballet. [ . . . Also . . . ] that mysterious language of ges- tures [ . . . ] with which ballet-dancers are wont to darken the mind of the spectator, seems to have been entirely banished from their stage.” 34 Outside actual reviews, few published stories describe how stage effects were created, and these often emphasise the backstage (or the rehearsal) as a spe- cial privilege: H.M.W in Pall Mall Gazette 10 February 1913. See Karsavina 1998, 84, 86 on trap doors; Grigoriev 1953, passim, especially 38 on horses; Lieven 1973, passim, especially 86–9, 163 on stage devices; Clarke & Crisp 1978, especially 63–6; Jackson 1991, especially 8, 20; Brewster & Jacobs 1997, 142–63. 35 Thus, Rhythm July 1912 was actually quite eloquent about “the tremendous artistry of Nijinski [as Petrouchka]. Like a child or an animal in despair, he tries to peep through the door, he batters, he scratches with his wooden hands, and finally lies flat to peep beneath, then rising on his toes he con- tinues his frantic tattoo on the wall round the stage till he sinks exhausted on the floor.” This critic at least indicates specific gestures and stage actions even if movement qualities are not described. The work is credited to Stravinsky and Benois, the argument copied from the programme notes, and the critic actually focuses on the colours used on stage. Similarly, for example, Gil Blas 5 June 1909 on the entrance of Cleopatra in Cléopâtre. 36 For example, Parker 1988, 54; and Acocella 1988/1989, 108 claim (without actual proof) that Nijinsky was physically incapable of lifting his leg more than 90 degrees; similarly, Kopelson 1997, especially 143–8 on Nijinsky’s imperfect dance technique (based on hearsay); compare with Adams 2005, 65 on flexibility as a feminine quality. 37 As Pritchard 2001, 76 has noted, a whole generation of authors that had written accolades of music hall ballets stopped writing just before the Ballets Russes first appeared in London, which probably influenced the relative lack of interest English critics in particular showed towards the danced aspect of the spectacle. 38 “One should not conclude that the celebrated dancer Nijinsky is not a vir- tuoso; but in a Russian ballet he is a unit amongst other units. And what a unit! Rarely has a male dancer captured the attention, the enthusiasm of an audience as Nijinsky has in his diverse appearances in Paris. In addition, Notes 259

Nijinsky merits the fact that people linger to talk of him.” Le Théatre 15 May 1911. 39 “I will not, in any case, cry out my admiration for the dancer Nijinski, the marvel of marvels, the entrechat record holder . . . Yesterday, when he leaped with an elegant slowness, traced a trajectory of 4.50 metres to gently descend in the wings, an ‘ah!’ of surprised amazement escaped the chests of women.” 40 For example, Karsavina in Je sais tout November 1912; The New York Herald 13 April 1916; Haskell 1955, especially 249; Buckle 1993, 141; see also Brandstetter 1998a. 41 Notoriously, Fokine 1961, 180-1 ridiculed this leap by pointing out that the obstacle the dancer had to cross at the end of Spectre was only slightly over a foot high, and that the dancer need not leap further than a yard away to be out of sight. The first claim may be true, the second certainly is not, given the width of the stage and the seating of the audience. 42 See, for example, Gil Blas 20 May 1909; Comœdia Illustré 1 June 1909 empha- sising the principal dancers in this work; also Levinson in Apollon 9/1911; Roslavleva 1966, 181, 183; Jeschke 1990, 103–4. 43 Allan [1908], especially 63–4; Dunham 1918, especially 61–5, 77–9; Duncan 1977, especially 52–3, 68, 79. 44 This was the so-called “flower-pot theory” of reproduction: see Battersby 1994, 41–2; Schwartz 2000, 225, 341. It is evident in Romola Nijinsky’s edited version of the Diary (Nijinsky 1991a, 129), but importantly not in Nijinsky 1999, 155–7. On the constitution of sexual difference, see Laqueur 1987; Schiebinger 1993, passim, especially 88, 146–8, 156–60; and Montague 1994, 99–102, who points to the link between medical and aesthetic dissec- tion of the female body. 45 Edmond de Goncourt famously claimed in 1893 that were autopsies to be performed on talented women like George Sand, they would be found to have had genitals resembling those of men. Berlanstein 2001, 114–15; Battersby 1994, especially 28–30, 166; also Smith-Rosenberg 1989; Newton 1989, especially 287–9. Accusations of wantonness or lesbianism were also used to discredit professional dancers: see Walkowitz 2003, 343 on Maud Allan. 46 Tomko 1999, especially 186–90; Bloomfield 2007, 684, 692; Vigarello & Holt 2005, 358–62. 47 For example, St.-Johnston 1906, 130–1; ‘An Antiquary’ 1911, 64; Martens in Musical Quarterly, July 1918; Hindson 2007, especially 52–3. On affect and emotion, see Franko 2002, especially 9. 48 “The public is right to embrace in their favour a spectacle of beauty, intermit- tent, I grant, but authentic; of beauty – I did not say of art. But it is wrong to take for art, for an art of the future, progress, growth, a natural play, spontaneous – more spontaneous than it seems – and where it is not possible to predict a future development. [ . . . ] Say nothing! This is precisely her essential quality. [ . . . ] Were she never to complicate her means or perfect her rhythms, we would continue to applaud Isadora Duncan without a second thought, as a natural spectacle.” Ghéon in La Nouvelle revue française 1 March 1911, emphasis mine; similarly, for example, Parker 1982, 63 (orig. 24 February 1911) prefer- ring Pavlova to Duncan on the grounds of her technical training. 49 Together with inspiration, improvisation and instinct were qualities Duncan repeatedly emphasised in discussing her methods (for example, Duncan 260 Notes

1996, 58–60, 127–8; Duncan 1977, especially 52–3). Such emphasis on quali- ties seen as typically ‘feminine’ (see, for example, Malnig 1999, 40–4), also associated with children and savages, meant that both contemporary advo- cates and dance researchers have emphasised that Duncan’s performances only seemed spontaneous: Flitch 1912, 105–8; Kinney & Kinney s.a., 241–5; Jowitt 1989, 75–6. 50 See The World: A Journal for Men and Women 30 July 1912 contrasting Nijinsky and Karsavina to “the more modern work which makes no demand on real technique”; or Propert 1972, 5. Nijinsky himself never publicly disparaged Duncan or other free-form dancers – on the contrary: Urlin 1912, 165 claims Nijinsky “describes a scene in which he collaborated with Isadora Duncan, [ . . . ] in , when [ . . . ] he and she improvised dances before a small audience.” In an interview for L’Intransigeant 13 June 1912, Nijinsky regretted he had not met Isadora’s brother, Raymond Duncan; com- pare with Craig 1977, 90 quoting “a signed article by Nijinski” appraising Isadora Duncan. 51 “[Nijinsky] justifies the place of the young man in ballet, with his fuller, more diverse and more intellectual grace in the charming feminine sur- roundings. If sexual arousal is lost, art gains and increases.” 52 “he is virginal. Here is a beauty without attraction; it is the beauty of man of which women are ordinarily neither capable nor ambitious. Art is consistent with morality for defining [that which is] the most elevated.” 53 “No woman can approach Nijinski. He has all the intelligence of his instinct. [ . . . ] He has grace in strength. [ . . . ] His beauty is pure of all sexual seduction. I speak for myself who am a man. [ . . . ] In the most beautiful woman, one still cannot forget the woman. And the more one is sensitive to feminine charm, the more desire excites one’s admiration. With Nijinski, admiration is without disruption. [ . . . ] Few sentiments would carry us higher towards the discovery of moral perfection.” Emphasis added. 54 Similarly, in writing of Stravinsky’s art, H. T. P[arker]. of the Boston Evening Transcript 26 July 1913 noted that “The individuality of its [Russia’s] music, when there is any, is of a composer and not of a race.” 55 This emphasis on the individual genius was particularly prominent in the nationalist romanticism of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805). For example, Beddow 1989; Wilson 1973, 829; On the significance of the “primitive” peasant, see, for example, Rhodes 1994, especially 23–31; Burke 1978, especially 3–22. 56 See, for example, Nordau 1993, 543; also Applin [1911], 12: “the rise and fall of the dance has accompanied the rise and fall of great nations”. Trotter 1904, especially 33–4 argued that dance expressed national character and taught rhythm and that, since the English suffered from degeneration in both respects, attention paid to traditional English dances would also have a positive effect upon the future of English music (a fact disputed in the discussion, see op. cit. 37). Dr. Louis Robinson in “The Natural History of Dancing” in The Nineteenth Century and After May 1914, argued that as a physical act, dancing revealed deformation and could thus be used in eugen- ics to weed out unsuitable individuals. More famously, Havelock Ellis 1933, especially 35–6, argued for dance as a sign of a healthy and virile people in The Dance of Life (1923). Notes 261

4 Male Beauty

1 The strength of degeneration theory was its emphasis of the invisible – whereas phrenology emphasised measurable physiological differences, degeneration allowed for apparent ‘normalcy’ except in the realm of the psychological, that somehow was still detectable in visual representation (photography). See, for example, Pick 1996, 51–2, 73, and 164–5 on how the fate of the portrait of Dorian Gray in Wilde’s 1891 novel exemplifies how degeneration willed out; Kemp & Wallace 2000, 94–147; Ewing 1994, espe- cially 12–23; Frizot 1998b. However, as Van Zuylen 2001 has noted, the idea that criminality or other forms of degeneration were biological (hereditary) undermined faith in the correctional or ‘healing’ powers of institutions such as mental hospitals or prisons (see Foucault 1995). 2 See, for example, Corbin 1986, 181-6 on the class and gender implications of scent and cosmetics; Wouters 1995a and 1995b on etiquette books; Breward 1999, especially 250–1; Vigarello & Holt 2005, especially 341–8 on the class signs of the sportsman; also Vigarello 2006; Ruyter 1999, especially xvii– xviii, 43, 76–82 on Delsartism. 3 See the cover of L’Illustration 22 May 1909. As I have recently argued (in Järvinen 2013b), it is dangerous to take early-twentieth-century photographs (or art works) as documents of performance practice. See, for example, Webb 1995; Gaskell 2001 on the issues involved in the use of visual materials. 4 For example, Whitworth 1913, 27–8; Van Vechten 1917, especially 160–1; Blanche 1929, 714; Benois 1945, 289–90; Denby 1977, 16–17. 5 Particularly in combination with Fokine’s 1961, 155-6 remark about Nijinsky’s “lack of masculinity”. See Buckle 1998, 253; and following him, Moon 1989, 28–9; Kopelson 1997. 6 In the Symposium, which was standard reading for upper-class boys, the jealous gods split the original, harmonious human beings into incomplete halves, thus creating men and women, who spent the rest of eternity search- ing for their missing halves. 7 West 1993, 71–84; Dyer 1991, 17–19; Sinfield 1994, especially 45–7, 110–11. 8 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vaslav-nijinsky-in-le-pavillon-d- armide-1911.jpg [22 August 2013]. 9 See Kahane 2000, 21, 127 top, 143 top. 10 Bederman 1995, 10–23, 84, 90–4 and especially 178–206, 214; Sinfield 1994, 154–5; Levine 1988, especially 213–15, 235–8. 11 For example, The Modern Dance Magazine, December 1916/January 1917; NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings, unattributed [1916]; New York Tribune 30 April 1916. See also Braudy 1986, especially 504-5 on the importance of the ordi- nary self. 12 Queer is supposed to question fixed identities, but in “queering” Nijinsky, importance tends to be given to a secret core of unchanging and historically stable identity that constrains all interpretation to a pre-determined discourse on that identity, usually through psychoanalysis. Combined with a reluctance to address the question of who created the alterity of queerness in the first place (see, for example, Horne 1996, 132), the author’s self-identification acts as the only justification for speaking for the always-already white, middle-class, aca- demic “queer”. Here, I am grateful to Thomas F. DeFrantz for our discussions. 262 Notes

13 Again, this was particularly true of the American version, where Nijinsky himself appeared as the flower, rather than sliding through a trap-door as an artificial flower took his place. See, for example, New York Tribune 23 April 1916; Musical Courier 27 April 1916. In comparison, Nijinska 1992, 366–7 claimed Narcisse was well received; Buckle 1998, 309–10 claims better in London than in Paris. Once again, too little has remained of the production to pass any judgments as to which version may have worked better on stage, that is, correspondent to contemporary aesthetic views about the stage action. 14 See Puvis et al. 2009, 152. 15 As Nye 1988, 2–4 notes, until c. 1910, electricity was primarily experienced in public places, such as theatres. On coloured light in the Ballets Russes, see Jackson 1991; also Albright 2007 on Loïe Fuller’s experiments with col- oured lights. However, as Bowlt 1988, 48–9 notes, the miriskusstniki actu- ally seem to have known little of the vanguard European theatrical designs of Reinhardt or Appia, except as applied by their Russian contemporaries, notably [Мейерхoльд]. 16 That is, as in the green carnations of Robert Hichens’s novel (1894), a roman à clef used against Wilde in the trials. Also, in Russian slang, where pink (розовый) refers to lesbians, the male homosexual is light blue (голубой). 17 “For the dancer Nijinski is his idol; he [that is, the snob] carries on the wor- ship that at another time would be dedicated to the première danseuse of the Opéra [ . . . but . . . ] he has not yet understood h ow the young dancer by his virile, unequivocal grace without tawdriness, has brought to the ballet a distinctly masculine element. He applauds him like a woman, his applause effeminizes him.” La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1911, emphasis mine. 18 For the image, see Burt 1995, 80. For the story (misdated as having taken place in 1910), see Cocteau 1918, 61; repeated in Cocteau 1967, 34. Nijinsky told the reporter of the New York Sun 15 April 1916 that “I have known other dancers of this role in ‘Le Spectre de la Rose’ to faint after leaping out of the window, so exhausting is the effort to dance continuously during the ballet.” 19 Bederman 1995, especially 46–50; Dyer 1997, 71–4; Ziter 2003, 56–90; Hall 2002, especially 230 quoting Fanon. The images can be found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nijinsky,_Vaslav_(1890–1950)_e_ Rubinstein,_Ida_(1880–1960)_-_1913_-_Barbier,_George_(1882–1932)_-_ Nijinsky_(in_Sch%C3%A9h%C3%A9razade,_Paris,_1910),_1913_7.jpg and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nijinsky,_Vaslav_(1890–1950)_e_ Rubinstein,_Ida_(1880–1960)_-_1913_-_Barbier,_George_(1882–1932)_-_ Nijinsky_(in_Sch%C3%A9h%C3%A9razade,_Paris,_1910)_-_1913_6.jpg [both 22 August 2013]. The latter is a color version of the cover of this book. 20 “Nijinsky, the symbol of perfection and strangeness, aroused the most diverse passionate feelings. ‘I wish he were my son’, exclaimed an old lady, hitherto reasonable, sitting next to me, crossing her hands on her breast in a religious gesture, looking with maternal bliss as Nijinsky leapt, flourishing above the tumult and massacre of the sumptuous court of the Thousand and One Nights.” 21 In addition to Mary Fanton Roberts in The Craftsman October 1916, there are several unidentified and undated articles from 1916 in NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings where the author is identifiably female. In Europe, far fewer women (identified as women) published texts on Nijinsky. Notes 263

22 For example, “Nijinski’s Mail Order Love Trust” in NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings (unattributed, [1916]). 23 “Last night, I went to see Nijinsky at the Châtelet. He is sublime. But I found him a little changed. There is, in some of his attitudes, an I-do-not-know- what, a solemnity and even [clerical] stiffening that was not noticeable at the beginning of the season. He has to be told that he is about to start a religion, and as such an escapade has not yet befallen any dancer, he obvi- ously meets it with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. He reckons that he has to care for souls, and that on the bond that he will make or the pose he will take will depend the salvation of all the young women clustered on the balcony, at the orchestra, in the boxes, and that the gazes fixed on him implore him a sacred thrill. What a responsibility for a dancer and things we put in the dance, that Mr. Jourdain [of Molière’s play Le Bourgeois gentil- homme] could not have suspected!” Alfred Capus in Le Figaro 10 June 1912. 24 Feldman 1993, 1–3; Dellamora 1990, 198–9; also for example, Garelick 1998, especially 14–46. 25 Williams 1991, 120–3 on dandies, especially 307–9 on women consumers; Steele 2005, 36–9; Breward 1999, especially 162–6; also Pearsall 1973, 58, 78–84. 26 Feldman 1993, especially 270–2. Paradoxically, this is exactly what people find most difficult to accept in Foucauldian post-structuralism. Halperin 1997, especially 41–2, 212n137; Pulkkinen 1998, 49, 209–13; Bové 1992. 27 For example, Breward 1999, 60–75; Sinfield 1994, especially 68–75; also Vainshtein 2002, especially 63–71. 28 See Makovsky and Grabar quoted in Vainshtein 2002, 68–9; compare with Massine 1963, 42, 47; also Haskell 1955, passim, especially 25–6, 53.

5 Corporeality

1 For example, Weber 1986, especially 44–5; Sennett 1993, especially 161–76; Bailey 2003, especially 8–9, 50. 2 “Even at rest he had the air of dancing imperceptibly, like those sensitive vehicles that used to be known as huit-ressorts [a horse-drawn vehicle, such as a barouche, resting on eight springs].” 3 For example, Eichberg 1990; Rhodes 1994, especially 91–7; Bennett 1995, especially 215; Ewing 1994, 14–15. 4 “The abnormally developed muscles in legs and round thighs give strong support, carry, in keeping with the miraculous elasticity of their bonds, a young torso, supple arms, a wide and deep neckline, a serious and laughing face, childish and thoughtful, the very face of the Slavic race. The protruding cheekbones, the cheeks right up, the strong lips . . . ” 5 “a pretty ugly kid, knee-high, almost monstrous by the development of his muscles, and yet beautiful as Apollo when transfigured by his art”. Blanche 1929, 714; likewise, Cocteau 1967, 33; Rambert 1975. 6 However, as Pessen 1971 has comprehensively argued, after the Civil War, American ‘self-made men’ came from backgrounds of inherited wealth. 7 “Whoever has not seen him will never know what a powerful teenager is like, drunk from the rhythmic force, terrifying in the spring of his muscles, 264 Notes

as is, for a child in the plains, the grasshopper playing his haughty kinking of his legs of steel. [ . . . ] Only he had this harsh and brutal lightness that held both the beast and the delirious bird, who meet, rushing, the roof of the cage, an obstacle that is invisible to the spectators.” 8 “He walked in the manner of tigers, it was not the transportation from one vertical posture to another, of shifting inert weight, but the elastic complicity with weight, like that of the wing with the air, while all of this muscular and nervous apparel, this body that is not a trunk or a statue, but an organ of power and movement. There was not a single gesture too small as, for example, when a chin was turned towards us, when the little head turned suddenly on the long neck, that Nijinsky did not accomplish with merit, with a vivacity both fierce and suave and with lightning authority!” 9 “a disturbing and charming monster in whom grace unites with force that veils the muscles of steel under a slender form and the flexibility of a cat with the ascensions to flight of a bird and the leaps of a tiger”. 10 The Algerian paper L’Echo de Tiaret (29 March 1914) cited an unidentified British colleague on Nijinsky’s schedule, stating he exercised daily from ten to half past noon, lunched, then conducted rehearsals with dancers from two to five, and from nine to midnight he would return to the theatre for the night’s performance. Were this true, Nijinsky would have been chronically late for performances. 11 Pavlova quoted by Henry Tyrrell in The Theatre December 1911; Pavlova 1977, 5-6; Lopokova according to Kinney & Kinney s.a., 262. 12 See Flitch 1912, 155; NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings, unattributed interview emphasised that Nijinsky practised daily – in words identical to a section in an article attributed to Nijinsky, “Muscle Control as a Fine Art” (Physical Culture April 1916, ibid.). Nijinsky’s devotion to his exercises is noted in several reminiscences, for example, Bourman 1938, 8–10, 115; Rambert 1983, 60; Buckle 1998, 313 quoting Vladimirov. However, contemporary standards for rehearsing also differed from those of today: see Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft December 1913; Whitworth 1913, 11; compare with note 10 above, Kinney & Kinney s.a., 275–6. See also Massine 1963, 54–5; Guest 1992, especially 5–7, 55, 82, 131–2 on differences in the understanding of professionalism. 13 As for example, Beaumont 1951, 28; and Gross 1971, 68, 105 attest, Nijinsky always took his bows as himself. 14 “In perpetual haste, we live a little like the Wandering Jew . . . a Wandering Jew that would travel in a sleeping car, would disguise himself in various ways, and would often have to change his lament! As soon as one has landed on the station platform and shaken the hands of a few friends, one has to shirk from dreaded interviews. Then, by car, quickly, one crosses a part of the city to reach the hotel . . . One sees, in turn, a cathedral that one ignores or would like to see again, a palace, an old house, a stream with picturesque banks, the appearance of a street. The crowd seems different from the one left behind the day before . . . So You promise to Yourself that the next day You will visit the city . . . but deep down, mocking, Your experience tells You that it is a superfluous hope and that tomorrow does not exist! Notes 265

There is also the palace: a large hall, a lift, numbered doors. In London or in Italy, it is the same. The lackeys and bellboys are polished, smooth, discreet, and it is impossible to recognize the one whom You have just recommended . . . And still people one does not know effusively shake Your hands! Last year, every time I arrived at a city and a hotel, I noticed that a fat lady rushed up to me and covered me with compliments. After the third time, intrigued, I asked for her name, and noted it. At the next town I again saw the fat lady, she congratulated me, but she was no longer called the same, it was another fat lady. Each palace had its own fat laudatory lady.” Je Sais Tout November 1912. Nijinsky clearly shared the prejudices of his contemporaries: Nijinsky 1999, 31, 85, 107. 15 Chronophotography was one of the many techniques (see Frizot 1998a) invented in the latter half of the nineteenth century to capture movement in the two-dimensional, still photograph. 16 See, for example, The Times 22 October 1911; and 24 June 1911 contrasting the Ballets Russes with Pavlova’s Palace engagement. 17 Flitch 1912, 124–30; Kinney & Kinney s.a., especially 245, 257–64; Ivan Narodny (“John of the People”, pseudonym of Jaan Sibul) in Musical America 13 July 1912 and 20 July 1912. 18 “technical difficulties were only games to him, and only rarely did he have the opportunity to deploy all the resources of his virtuosity, far superior to what gets included in most traditional dances”. 19 Pseudonym of Anna Olivia Rundquist (1871–1951), a famous Swedish- American opera singer specialising in Wagnerian soprano and mezzo- soprano roles. She sang the role of Salome in the notorious Metropolitan Opera première of Richard Strauss’s work in 1907. Yohalem 2004. 20 As Montrose J. Moses noted in The Bellman 29 January 1916: “One may say that virtuosity is not essential, until some flash of perfect rhythm, some special defi- ance of the center of gravity, proclaims the exceptional artist.” During the first American tour, the Ballets Russes was regularly admonished for the dancers’ poor technique, and Nijinsky was (somewhat unjustly) credited for whipping the company into shape later in the spring - see Järvinen 2010, especially 91. 21 Symons in Ledger & Luckhurst 2000, 67–9; Gutsche-Miller 2010, especially 275; also Guest 1992, especially 17, 27–8, 38–9, 57. 22 Nijinsky in Flitch 1912, 157; Fokine 1961, passim, for example, 32 praising Pavlova for not being a virtuoso; also Volkonsky in The Nineteenth Century and After June 1913; Bourman 1938, 10 on pirouettes. In the early hegem- onic interpretation, Fokine’s alleged discouragement of virtuosity (see, for example, Wilansky 1992, 95) was represented as the defining characteristic of Russian style especially vs. Italian ballet: for example, Haskell 1955, 63. 23 “his virtuosity [ . . . ] never appears as anything but the means for express- ing his dream, like a winged messenger of his desire”. Also Teatr i iskusstvo quoted in Ch. 3 n. 8. 24 In comparing the Russians to their French colleagues, Le Temps 22 May 1909 and 21 June 1910, for example, found only the men better dancers. 25 For example, Werth in La Grande revue 10 June 1913; Blanche in Revue de Paris 1 December 1913; Lieven 1973, 316. 26 Dyer 1993a, 2–5, 10–18; deCordova 2001, especially 98, 102–3, 143–4; Braudy 1986, 572. 266 Notes

27 “When, without any effort, he comes off the ground, one seeks the spring- board from which it seems he leaped like, just as unnecessarily, one spies for the trapeze on the bar of which he gives the impression of taking an invis- ible and light fulcrum. Seeing him pass, ascend and remain at the top of his trajectory for several seconds, hanging motionless in an oblique extension, legs gathered and heels together, I believed, in good faith, he had shot out of a cannon, a human projectile, and on the way to the moon.” L’Illustration 5 June 1909. 28 As in Comœdia Illustré 15 June 1912; The World: A Journal for Men and Women 11 February 1913; Flitch 1912, 156; Beaumont [1913]; or Van Vechten 1915, 78. 29 In Nijinsky 1980, i:8, 13, 190–1 in particular; subsequently, in Haskell 1955, 231; Kirstein 1971, 195; Ostwald 1991, especially 245; and Wachtel 1998, 28 amongst others. 30 See, for example, Berlanstein 2001, 233–6 on advertisers and the stage and the importance of theatre to fashion. 31 See, for example, Nijinska 1992, 369–70. The latter story originates with Romola Nijinsky 1980, i:137; see also Haskell 1955, 241; Parker 1988, 104–5, 165. 32 Famously embodied by Ida Rubinstein in Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911). See Batson 2005, 8–67 for a brilliant analysis. 33 Nashville Tennesseean 9 September 1912 quoted in unattributed cutting in NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings. 34 “The beastmaster and his beast slept in the same cage (their rooms at the Savoy Hotel), lunched together at the steakhouse. The entourage, the bal- letomanes, London society, had recognised the benefit of fiddling the books as regards the kind of ‘friendship’ that united one to the other. Nobody would have thought to invite Nijinsky without Diaghilev.” 35 Similarly, Debussy’s letter to Durand 9 August 1912 quoted in Orledge 1985, 164; Young 1977, 65; Astruc in Chapter 3, note 20 above. 36 deCordova 2001, especially 86–92. He distinguishes this simplistic identifica- tion from the more complex figure of the film star, c. 1913–14 onwards.

6 The Mad Genius

1 For example, Linor in Comœdia 30 May 1913; Johnson 1995, especially 191–6; 228–36; Crary 2001, especially 1–2, 73-5, 247–57. 2 Researchers, particularly those using feminist psychoanalytical methods, have sought to prove that dance has been the Other to the phallogocentric academe and even an art untranslatable into words (for example, McCarren 1998, especially 9–11; Kolb 2009, 25–6; Toepfer 1997, 97). Although mean- ing to privilege the somatic experience of the dancer over the primarily visual one of the traditional critical observer, all too often these writers reproduce the same models they accuse of being responsible for the silenc- ing of dance in academia. For criticisms of this, see, for example, Daly 1992, 246–7; Desmond 1999, 155; also Battersby 1994, especially 150–4, 209–32. 3 Both ‘chameau’ and ‘giraffe’ were used to mean ‘old whore’ – Flaubert 1964, 65: “Girafe. – Mot poli pour ne pas appeler une femme chameau.” Notes 267

4 For variations on this story, see Bourman 1938, 96, 105–7; Lopukhov quoted in Volkov 1996, 299; Haskell 1955, 250. 5 That is, инородц, pl. -ы - subjects of the emperor not ethnically Russian. See, for example, Chulos 2001, especially 132–3 and Lieven 2000, 283 on inorodtsy excluded from definitions of ‘the people’. 6 The ‘illicit’ nature of the conversation is revealed when Nijinsky’s sister walks in, and the reporters end the conversation and pretend they had just happened to be passing by. 7 “To someone who asked, before the première, what Le Sacre du Printemps was going to be like: ‘Oh!’ he answered, ‘you will not like it either,’ and, sketch- ing with his arm that lateral and anclyotic gesture we had learned to know with the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune: ‘There will be more of this!’” La Nouvelle revue française August 1913. 8 Nijinsky in Musical America 15 April 1916; Nijinsky’s plans quoted in Krasovskaya 1979, 326 (1 April 1917), 336–7 (22 March 1918); and Reiss 1960, 174–5; Buckle 1998, 476. 9 See Becker 1978, 14–15; Foucault 2001, especially 197; Foucault 1972, 31–3; also Foucault 1994, especially 195–9. 10 For example, Nijinsky 1980, i:19–20, 342; Lieven 1973, 315; Reiss 1957, 15; Kirstein 1983, 322. See also Ludwig 1995, especially 11 on the “template for genius”. 11 Foucault saw psychoanalysis as a mode of bio-power that regulates life through impossible standards of normalcy, but he did praise it for breaking with the racist discourse on heredity, degeneration and eugenics: Foucault 2005, 157–8; Foucault 2001, especially 165–86; also Yeng 2008–10. 12 See, for example, Dellamora 1990, 118–19 on perversion; also Humphries 2010 on the gendering of mental illness. 13 Becker 1978, especially 28–31, 36–59; Murray 1989b; Kessel 1989; Battersby 1994, especially 43–8. 14 Most people claiming to be ‘in the know’ about Diaghilev’s and Nijinsky’s sexual practices were not. Of Diaghilev’s lovers, only Anton Dolin (in Drummond 1998, 46) stated, off the record, anything about actual sex (that Diaghilev’s sexual demands did not involve any form of penetration). 15 As in Ostwald 1991, especially 32; Kopelson 1997, 9, 16–17; Buckle 1998, 63–5; Scheijen 2009, especially 82–3, 144–7.

7 The Old and the New Ballet

1 Of Nijinsky all the papers All the Parisian aesthetes Sing hymns and sonnets But portraits? Oh, portraits Are centrepieces of every display case! My God! Over the summer Three hundred and thirty-three portraits Of the stars of Russian ballet! . . . What does all this add up to – Only Diaghilev knows! 268 Notes

2 Russia had five hereditary estates defined by their obligations to the state: peasants, petty townspeople, merchants, clergy and nobility. For a number of reasons these should not be confused with social classes. See, for example, West 1998a, especially 5–7. 3 The constitutional reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s, notably the libera- tion of Russia’s approximately 52 million serfs. 4 Read 1979, especially 1–8 on the heterodox meanings of ‘intelligentsia’; Vihavainen 1999. 5 For example, Cooke 1991, 43–4; Kean 1983, 16, 18. In his of matricula- tion Diaghilev had sworn not to take part in any societies during his studies without the permission of his professors (Kodicek 1996, 13). See Bradley 2002; and Frame 2000, 10–11 on Russian associations; on universities, for example, Jussila 1986, 249–52; Luntinen 1986b, 300–1. 6 For example, Williams 1999, 3–18; Pursiainen 1999, especially 91; Carmichael 1968, 217–19; Hoogen 1997, 22–8. 7 Pan-Slavism, especially with increasing support from the state, had its share of ugly side-effects, most notably anti-Semitism, brutal police actions, and the more violent and less official pogroms. Kochan 1966, especially 70–2; Collotti 1990, 84–5; Lieven 2000, 276–7; also Elliott 1991, 26–7. 8 The dancer and choreographer Charles-Louis Didelot, a student of Vestris and Noverre, was the principal ballet master of the Imperial Theatres 1801–11, 1816–29 and taught the first Russian ballet masters like Adam Glushkovsky. Surits 1998, 18–20, 24–5; Lee 2002, 188–203; Roslavleva 1966, 39–55. Nijinsky also received the Didelot Scholarship for dancers from poor backgrounds. Nijinska 1992, 91, 186. 9 Decembrists (Декабристы) were a liberal secret society (Union of Salvation) striving for constitutional reforms, including the abolition of serfdom, so named because of their short-lived revolt on 14/26 December 1825. Jussila 1986, 213–15. 10 Petipa (1818–1910) inherited the position of principal ballet master of the St. Petersburg company from Arthur Saint-Léon (1821–70) and ruled the entire Imperial Ballet 1870–1903 choreographing 74 ballets and some 30 divertissements (from 1885 with his choreographic assistant ). Surits 1998, 37–43, 46–8; Roslavleva 1966, 85–123 (compare with 124–38 on Ivanov); Lee 2002, especially 205–19; Wiley 1985; Wiley 1997. 11 Telyakovsky 1990, 40–1 attributes the decline of the Moscow company to “stringent economies” and “insipid management” (which, of course, ended with his own directorship), and 44 claims the French Petipa and his favourit- ism of foreign guest ballerinas had caused a similar decline in St. Petersburg. Compare with Roslavleva 1966, especially 70 on the Realists’ lack of interest in ballet, 112–13 on Vsevolozhky’s love of féeries, 139–44 on the decline of the Moscow company. 12 The Ballet Schools were fully subsidised by the Ministry of Court and offered room and board also for children (like the Nijinskys) whose par- ents lived in the same city. See also n. 59 below. Compare with Guest 1992, 4–6 on how, in Paris and London, the dancers had to pay for their classes, shoes and such themselves, and dancing was generally a humble profession. Notes 269

13 Nijinska 1992, 6–56; Chynowski 1992, 130–1; also Frame 2006, especially 144; Swift 2002, especially 136, 156. 14 McReynolds 2003, especially 225, 233; Swift 2002, especially 136, 156; Frame 2000, especially 12–13; Scholl 1994, 17–20. 15 See, for example, Ezhegodnik 1907–1908, ii:(Repertuar) 76; Nijinska 1992, 7, 7fn; Frame 2000, 110. 16 These were performances where the box-office income went to a particular (star) artist. McReynolds 2003, 25. 17 These factors were well documented in the Ballets Russes publicity: Le Théatre 15 May 1911; The Daily Mail 26 June 1911; Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft December 1913; Lieven 1973, 64–6. 18 For example, the actor Aleksandr Lensky (Ostrovsky 1999, 229) and the dancer Anna Pavlova (Roslavleva 1966, 184–5) were illegitimate. 19 Nijinska 1992, 195–6, 230–1; Bourman 1938, 125–7 – who himself is an example of a person boosting his own importance by exaggerating his close- ness to Nijinsky. 20 See Courtillet & Piettre [1989], 6–7; Nijinska 1992, image 26 after 196. 21 Quoted in Krasovskaya 1979, 358n10. See also Scheijen 2009, 161–3, 169, 182, 466n28, 31 quoting Nouvel’s unpublished reminiscences for gossip about Nijinsky, Lvov and Diaghilev. 22 Nicholas I’s legislative reform of 1832 had made мужеложство (usually inter- preted as anal intercourse between men) punishable by public disgrace, loss of civil rights and four to five years’ exile in Siberia. Not only were the laws never enforced strictly, but Russians were reluctant to adopt medical means to prove sodomy, which further hampered legal cases. In the 1903 draft for a new criminal code, prostitution of all kind was criminalised as was sod- omy but punishments for acts between consenting adults (including youths over 14 considered ‘knowledgeable’) were greatly reduced. Engelstein 1992, 56–95, 99, 132, also 227–9 on pedagogical attitudes; Healey 2001, especially 252; also Friedman 2003, especially 278–80; Karlinsky 1989, 347–56. 23 Lieven 1973, 24; also Healey 2001; McReynolds 2003, especially 87, 92; Neuberger 1998, especially 7–12, 42–3 on Russian emphasis on acquired culture. 24 The Russian ‘дегенерация’ was a foreign loan. In the discourse on art, it was usually replaced by one of three related terms: ‘перерожденіе’, which also meant ‘regeneration’; ‘вырожденіе’, ‘degradation’; and, most commonly, ‘упалок’, ‘decline’. See, for example, Pyman 1994, 9. 25 On women’s education and the degree of resistance towards women’s profes- sionalism, see, for example, Salmond 1996, especially 2–14; Sargeant 2011, 144–54; Schuler 1996, 5–12; McReynolds 2003, 46, 50; Hobsbawm 1987, 204. On religiosity and patriarchy, Wolkonsky 2012, ii:15–67; Ulianova 1998; Read 1979; also Joffe & Lindenmeyr 1998. Hence, it is crucial the Nijinsky’s were Catholics: Nijinska 1992, especially 13. For a contemporary view on the significance of this, see Wolkonsky 2012, ii:16–41. 26 Bershtein 1999; Healey 2001, especially 238–9, 251–2; O’Malley 1994; Pyman 1994, especially 138–9, 271, 287, 295–7; Engelstein 1992, especially 1–10, 383–420. 27 On the group, see Kennedy 1977; Bowlt 1982; Petrov 1991; Kamensky 1991. 270 Notes

28 Diaghilev was a gentleman but not of the nobility entitled to admission to court, and definitely lower on the social ladder of St. Petersburg society than his cousin Filosofov. See, for example, Lifar 1945, 5–15; Kodicek 1996, 11–12; Buckle 1993, 3–7, 15; Egorova 1999; compare with Nesteev 1999, 24–5. 29 Benois 1945, 103–9 on himself, 173–4 on Nouvel; Haskell 1945, 48, 74; Kennedy 1977, especially 38–41; also Bowlt 1982, especially 217. 30 As, for example, Bowlt 1982, 56–7, 87–8 has shown, there had recently been an explosion of new exhibition societies (for example, the Society of Watercolorists, est. 1880), and art magazines (such as Stasov’s Iskusstvo i Khudozhestvennaia Promyshlennost (Art and Art(istic) Industry, 1898–1902) in Russia. Although Mir iskusstva remained primarily a fine arts journal, Symbolist poets (like Nikolai Minsky) took to it after Severnii Vestnik folded. Pyman 1994, especially 19–20, 111. See also Salmond 1996, 69–73; Kennedy 1977, 16. 31 Mili Balakirev (1837–1910), Aleksandr Borodin (1834–87), César Cui (1835–1918), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) and Modest Musorgsky (1839–81) were not a monolithic group but they shared a dislike of Western influence, especially Wagner (epitomised by the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the form of Anton Rubinstein and Aleksandr Serov). Taruskin 1996, 23–75; Rosenthal 1984, 200. 32 The peredvizhniki (also called Itinerants) were an even less homogenous group than the kuchkists. Led at first by Ivan Kramskoy (1837–87), the group included Ilia Repin (1844–1930), Nikolai Ge (1831–94), Aleksei Savrasov (1830–97), Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842–1910), Ivan Shishkin (1832–98) and Vasili Surikov (1848–1916) amongst others. For example, Bowlt 1982, 15–20. 33 On peredvizhniki teaching miriskusstniki, see Kennedy 1977, especially 129–34; Bowlt 1982, 20–7. 34 Kennedy 1977, especially 45–58 on miriskusstniki criticism of art institu- tions and review practices; Hobsbawm 1987, 229 on how this was typical of the Arts and Crafts movement. 35 Kodicek 1996, 26–7. Mir iskusstva 3–6/1900 published Nietzsche, and 13–24/1900 serialised Ruskin’s article on the Pre-Raphaelites. Although he was not discussed as a political thinker, Wagner was also well presented in the journal, especially in Henri Lichtenberger’s articles translated for Mir iskusstva 7–8 and 11–12/1899. Due to censorship, most Western art criti- cism since Ruskin was unknown in Russia. Kennedy 1977, 113; Bowlt 1982, especially 192. 36 Kennedy 1977, 374–5; Bowlt 1982, 155–6, 161–2. 37 Short for ‘лубочная картинка’, lubok (pl. lubki) is a Russian popular print. See, for example, Benois 1945, 14; Gray 1971, 97. 38 Diaghilev in Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, especially i:69–71; Kennedy 1977, 118–19; Bowlt 1982, 71–3, 157–8. 39 Tenisheva was a collector and patron as well as an impresario of the Russian arts. She founded arts schools and, in 1916, completed a PhD in art his- tory. Bowlt 1982, 39–46; Salmond 1996, esp. 140–2. More on her rivalry with Diaghilev below. Tenisheva’s second husband, Prince V. N. Tenishev, was the Head of the Ethnographic Bureau and the official for the Russian Pavilion at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Bowlt 2001, especially 104–5. Notes 271

40 See, for example, Bowlt 1982, 30–9; Petrov 1991, 24–6. More on Mamontov and the Private Opera, also stemming from the Mamontovs’ patronage of peredvizhniki artists and kuchkist composers at Abramtsevo, below. 41 Kustarnichestvo means produce of kustari, Russian peasant manufactures. The artist-improved versions of kustarnichestvo resulted from designs cre- ated by academically trained artists but based on folk motifs manufactured in the kustari. On the kustari art industries, see Salmond 1996. 42 Mamontov was accused of mismanaging funds and although found not guilty he went bankrupt. Bowlt 1982, 39; Kean 1983, 91–3. Tenisheva disliked Mamontov, Benois’s promotion of Empire classicism, the refusal of the editorial board to include her protégé Roerich, Diaghilev’s boorish behaviour, and the caricatures of the press – presenting her as a cow milked by Diaghilev (see Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, i:plates 38–9 after 96); Benois 1945, 184–5, 209 (on Tenisheva, called ‘Tenishev’); Bowlt 1982, especially 39, 41, 92; Bowlt 2001. Also Pyman 1994, 116–17. 43 This subsidy was several thousand roubles per annum, although accounts disagree about the exact amount. Bowlt 1982, 62; Kamensky 1991, 32–4; compare with Buckle 1993, 53–4; or Haskell 1955, 123. Although Diaghilev also received funds from, amongst others, Ilia Ostrukhov and Sergei Botkin (Kamensky 1991, 32; Garafola 1992, especially 159), the Imperial subsidy’s importance shows in how Mir iskusstva folded when it was withdrawn during the 1905 Revolution. For example, Kamensky 1991, 64–8; Bowlt 1982, 64–5. 44 As in Svétlow 1912, 59–60; Brussel 1930, especially 34; Benois 1945, 210–19; Haskell 1955, 140–6; Scheijen 2009, 111–19. See also Diaghilev in Mir iskusstva 9–10/1902. 45 Cartoon by P. E. Shcherbov (1866–1938) in Shut 12/1901 in Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, i:plate 41 after 96; also http://amnesia.pavelbers.com/ Istorija%20russkogo%20baleta.htm [2 August 2007] subtitles the cartoon as “dealing with the birth of rumours concerning S. Diaghilev’s appointment as the vice-president of the Arts Academy”. 46 Diaghilev in Mir iskusstva 9-10/1902; Krasovskaia 1971, especially i:16 quot- ing Rus; Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, i:148–53, 184–5, 194–7; Benois 1945, especially 220–3, 227. 47 The millionaire grocers Sergei and Grigori Grigorevich Eliseev and the rubber manufacturer Henrik van Gilse van der Pals (not his musicologist son Nikolai (b. 1891), as Garafola 1992, 161 claims) guaranteed the success of the 1907 and 1908 tours. The latter was a backer of Aleksandr Ziloti (1863–1945), a nobleman, piano virtuoso and prestigious concert leader, who, like Sergei Botkin and Léon Bakst, had married one of Pavel Tretiakov’s daughters. Joffe & Lindenmeyr 1998, 101; Taruskin 1996, 396–7, 408; Scheijen 2009, 153, 175. 48 According to Egorova 1999, especially 15, Diaghilev’s great-grandfather had been granted hereditary nobility (de robe) in 1806. The Diaghilev family for- tune derived from manufactures and, during the nineteenth century, from distilling vodka, which, as Juntunen 1986, 177–8 notes, was a highly popular and profitable noble privilege. Nesteev 1999; Garafola 1996a, 80; Scheijen 2009, 9–10, also 30–2, 38–40 on the bankruptcy of the Diaghilev family. To describe Diaghilev in Chekhovian terms as an “impoverished noble” (Goldman 1977/1978, 28; similarly, Scheijen 2009, 9–11) is something of a misnomer: the Diaghilev family were of the new nobility, whose financial 272 Notes

troubles derived from bad business sense rather than from the Great Reforms of the 1860s that impoverished the formerly serf-owning landed nobility. 49 Diaghilev’s contacts included the family of the textile merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretiakov (1832–1898), who donated his collection of pered- vizhniki art to the City of Moscow in 1894; and the timber merchant Mitrofan Petrovich Beliaev (1836–1903), who founded an important concert series and quartet Fridays in 1885, frequented by the Five and Vladimir Stasov. Taruskin 1996, 43–51; Kean 1983, 65–8. Diaghilev also knew both Ivan Abramovich Morozov (1871–1921) and Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (1854–1936), both textile manufacturers and Old Believers (раскольники (that is, ‘schismatics’, a term frequently used until 1905), старове́ры or старообря́дцы – a sect that parted from the Orthodox church in the seven- teenth century – see West 1998b). Both gathered expansive collections of contemporary art that influenced Diaghilev’s turn to post- in the last issues of Mir iskusstva (8–9/1904). Kean 1983, especially 111–26, 135–46; Kennedy 1977, 172–7. Owen 1981, 153–5 on cultural aspirations of merchants, also 156–8 on the conspicuous absence of merchants from periodical press; Cooke 1991. 50 Although not unusual, such commerce in titles attracted malicious gossip. Benois 1945, 279–80; Haskell 1955, 206; Buckle 1993, 131–4, especially 131, 551n56; Scheijen 2009, 153, 175, also 468–9n12. 51 Salmond 1996, especially 140–2; Garafola 1992, 171–4, also 274–5; Holt 2000, 53–71. 52 Russian papers spoke collectively of ‘our ballet in the West’ (нашъ балетъ на ̪ западь/за границей). Laakkonen 2009 on Fazer’s 1909 troupe – to call this company “Pavlova’s” (Garafola 1992, 173–4) or “Bolm’s” (Carbonneau 1999, 221) is to say the Ballets Russes was Nijinsky’s (of course, some contempo- rary papers did: see, for example, The New York Times 27 July 1913 editorial; Craig 1977, 90). Russian dancers had performed abroad regularly since the mid-nineteenth century – see, for example, Slonim 1961, 52; Garafola 1992, 417–18n8; Goldman 1977/1978, 2–4; and Parmenia Migel Ekstrom’s note in Diaghilev 1979, 54n1. 53 See Chapter 1 note 32 above; Salmond 1996, especially 161–78; Davis 2010, especially 69–78; Williams 1999, 24–5, 34–5; Acocella 1984, especially 240–1; Hynes 1969, especially 336–45. Also Balme & Teibler 1997, 116–17 on the Ballet benefiting from the desire for the ‘authentic’ that followed the 1900 Exhibition; West 1993, 131–8 on primitivism and revitalisation. 54 By this time few icons had been restored: Gray 1971, 18, 54–5; Tarasov 2001, especially 82–3, 86–7. 55 Haskell 1955, 168–9 quoting parts of the catalogue text; Bowlt 1982, 105–7, 170–1; Kamensky 1991, 90–2; also Gray 1971, 70–1 on the eclectic exhibition. 56 Including his boss, Baron Vladimir Fredericks, the Minister of Court, whose letter to Nicholas II in January 1909 is quoted in Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, ii:182–3. See also Holt 2000, 67–71. 57 Ostrovsky 1999; Frame 2000, especially 12–14; also McReynolds 2003, 193–291; Slonim 1961, especially 84–5. 58 As in the West (see Ashman 1992, 29–35; Carnegy 1992, 48–57), period style and decorative function became concerns for set design and mises-en-scène Notes 273

only in the second half of the nineteenth century – Shishkov gave the first classes in the subject at the Academy of Fine Arts in the 1880s. Slonim 1961, 94–6; Taruskin 1996, 490–6. 59 In the last years of Imperial rule, the budget of the Imperial Theatres tended to run a deficit, which Lieven 1973, 65–6 claims amounted to around two million gold roubles a year, and was covered from the Privy Purse (personal property of the reigning monarch). 60 Some of the miriskusstniki became close to Stanislavsky, Evreinov’s Ancient Theatre (Старинный театръ), Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940) and the Distorting Mirror (Кривое зеркало) company, and Vera Komissarzhevskaia (1864–1910) and her brother Fyodor (Theodor) Komissarzhevsky (1882–1954). See, for example, Vlasova 1984, especially 6–10; Petrov 1991, 144–50; Bowlt 1982, 116–17; Golub 1999; Slonim 1961, 171–227; Braun 1995, 45–153 passim . These personal contacts explain how Diaghilev managed to employ A. A. Sanin from the Art Theatre as his stage director for the 1909 season of opera and ballet. See, for example, Vlasova 1984, 112–14. 61 Neo-realism was a term branded to include various Russian experiments in literature, from Gorky to the Acmeists, authors who eschewed the florid language and flights of fancy of the Symbolist generation. Yet, Nikolai Minsky uses it of Nijinsky in a thoroughly positive affirmation of this new formalism, linking ballet to new developments in Russian literature. See Järvinen 1913a, 18. 62 Benois 1988, 136–44 on old-fashioned ballets of his youth; Lieven 1973, 66–73 attacking the old ballet; compare with Scholl 1994, especially 4–5 on how much of this can be seen as nothing but hindsighted self-appraisal on the part of the Diaghilev coterie; Wiley 1985, especially 20–3, 101. The spec- tacular effects were, however, close to the effects favoured in large Western variety theatres: see Guest 1992, especially 16–7, 27–8, 38–9. 63 Stravinsky 1975, 26–7 on Tchaikovsky changing Russian musicians’ opinion on ballet music; compare with Wiley 1985, 1–10 on ballet composition in Imperial Russia. Diaghilev apparently loved Tchaikovsky’s music but thought Western audiences saw his music as too ‘German’. Taruskin 1996, 526–8; Brody 1987, 193–4. See also Calvocoressi in The Musical Times 1 August 1911 on the kuchkists revolting against German taste and Stravinsky as their heir; Laloy in La Grande revue 10 November 1910 attacking “Kostyliev’s” article in Apollon, which claimed the French only liked the Asiatic aspects of Russian music. 64 For example, Benois 1945, 124–32; Wiley 1985, especially 18–23, 108; compare with Scholl 2004, 1–29 on 1890s’ Russian opinion of this féerie as indicating decline in Russian ballet. 65 See note 59 above. Svétlow 1912, 50–6; Lieven 1973, 67 also claims the back- drop also depicted a pond or a so often that the corps-de-ballet was called “les ballerines près de l’eau”, the ballerinas close to the water; some- what simplistically, Scholl 1998, 44–5 claims the format and standard array of dances in the Petipa works were due to the hierarchy of the dancers and accredits Fokine for dismantling this hierarchy. Lieven 1973, 70n1 famously ridiculed how Tchaikovsky was given strict instructions for Casse-Noisette; compare with Wiley 1985, 108–11 on how this is an overstatement, also 101 on the new need for ballet music following the abolishment of the post of ballet composer in 1886. 274 Notes

66 Officially, Petipa remained “the first ballet-master” until his death, noted in Ezhegodnik 1910, Repertuar:90, when Nikolai Legat takes over his duties. However, as Wiley 1976/1977, 33 notes, there is a marked shift of attention to works by Gorsky in the Ezhegodniki 1904-08. See also Roslavleva 1966, 155–72. 67 Fuller 1913, 223–31 on Duncan; compare with how Duncan 1996, 71–4 reverses the relationship, claiming Fuller first came to her to hear her theo- ries. Both books are, of course, propaganda. Duncan’s account of her visit to Russia (Duncan 1996, 118–26) is also erroneous. On Fuller, see, for example, Albright 2007; or, more accurately, Hindson 2007, 61–84. In contrast to Duncan, contemporary authors were not all of the opinion that what Fuller did was actually dancing: see St.-Johnston 1906, 130–1; Kinney & Kinney s.a., 235–8. 68 François Delsarte (1811–1871) developed a system of teaching rhetoric and acting particularly influential to many of the American free-form dancers. See Ruyter 1999, especially 126–7; Thomas 1995, especially 48–53, 63–5; Kendall 1984, passim, especially 23–5, 29–30, 63–7. 69 However, Fuller and other variety stage performers had used concert-hall music well before Duncan. For example, Thomas 1995, 53–60. 70 Nelson 1984, 6–7. Fokine 1961 avoids discussing Duncan’s ‘influence’, but consistently represents all ‘modern’ dance as a mistake: for example, 42–3, 250, 254 associates ‘Greek dance’ with amateurs and dilettantes, 250–3 attacks Martha Graham and Mary Wigman, 256–9 attacks Duncan and ‘free’ dance. Duncan’s influence acquired particular significance during the American season of the Ballets Russes: see, for example, Montrose J. Moses in The Bellman 29 January 1916; Musical America 13 May 1916. Also Duncan 1996, 126 implies the ballet reform was due to her visit. 71 Fokine 1961, 71–2 claimed to have submitted a plan of a ballet on Longus’s novel Daphnis et Chloë (translated into Russian in 1904) to the officials of the Imperial Theatres, but as Krasovskaia 1971, i:164–5 found out, the two drafts in the archive are undated. Fokine told René Chavance of Gil Blas 4 June 1912 that he had written the scenario in 1905. 72 Souritz 1999, 104. See Telyakovsky 1990, 42-6 on his protégé; Krasovskaia 1971, i:107–51, 230–306 on Gorsky’s work; Scholl 1998, 42–9 for compari- sons between Petipa’s, Gorsky’s, Fokine’s and Nijinsky’s choreographic prin- ciples (although only the first two created evening-long ballet spectacles); Roslavleva 1966, 155–60 on Don Quixote. Gorsky taught so-called “theory of ballet”, an obligatory subject at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, and wrote a students’ manual on notation (Gorsky 1978); see also Nijinsky’s report card 1906–07 reproduced in Nijinska 1992, images 27–8 after 196. 73 Krasovskaia 1971 i:38–49; and Yuskova 2009, esp. 50–2 on Duncan in Russia; Souritz 1999, 104–8, especially 105 quoting Gorsky. 74 “ballet becomes a highly artistic spectacle, cleansing the soul from dreary everydayness.” Ia.[kov] Tugenkhold in Apollon 8/1910. 75 That is, in the Russian periodical Argus, 1916, which has become the hegem- onic version through inclusion in collections like Cohen 1992, 102–8. See also Scholl 1995, 59–60; Scholl 1998, 145n7. 76 See Smith 2000b, 35, 46–47 on a nineteenth-century Giselle having 54 min- utes mime to 60 minutes of dancing; Haskell 1938, esp. 152–3 on mime as Notes 275

“tedious interruption of the dancing [in Le Lac des Cygnes]; so much so that in many versions it has been heavily curtailed, and with no loss”. 77 Telyakovsky 1990, 42–6; Souritz 1999, 104–8; Roslavleva 1966, 159; Krasovskaia 1971, especially i:125–8, 143–4; Scholl 1998, 42–7; compare with Adamson 1999, 194–5, who represents Gorsky as a mere precursor to Fokine. 78 See Crary 2001, especially 48–54, 63, 73–5, 248–54 on attention; Levine 1988 for the various disciplinary efforts of the bourgeoisie; also Swift 2002; and Frame 2006, especially 1–2 on Russian view of the pedagogical, disciplining function of theatre. 79 The international renown of Fokine’s choreographies meant Armide, Chopiniana, and Nuits d’Egypte remained in the Mariinsky repertory for several seasons, even if only Carnaval (for the 1911–12 season) was accredited to Fokine in the Ezhegodniki: see 1907–08, ii:131; 1909, Repertuar:64; 1910, Repertuar:65–6; compare with 1911, Repertuar:64–5 where Fokine is finally named as the librettist; also 1913 Prilozhenie (Repertuar 1911–12):63–4. 80 Ibid. Grigoriev 1953, 39–40 claims one of the two solos for Nijinsky in Le Festin was actually composed by Nijinsky himself; see also Pritchard 2009, 110 on this work. Both Roslavleva 1966, 127–8 and Wiley 1997, 214–16 attribute Les Danses Polovtsiennes from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor to Lev Ivanov. Wiley notes that “some of his [Fokine’s] celebrated works, bal- lets in which his originality was hymned in the first Diaghilev years, are simply updated reworkings of borrowed ideas”. However, as with any re- performances, historical sources are often insufficient to determine when a choreography to an old libretto and score merits being called a new work. 81 “I was surprised one day by the little originality that Fokine, a great techni- cian nonetheless, had shown since he had quit the company. Bakst said with his unchanging smile: ‘Oh! you know, he was like all the others, he had no imagination. I had to show him scene by scene what to do. Showed him even the steps . . . ’ ” 82 NYPLDC Astruc papers, Diaghilev to Astruc 6 April 1909. See Fokine 1961, 99–105 on Chopiniana as the perfect example of his reform, compare with 129–34 on the Paris version, Les Sylphides; Nijinska 1992, 176–7 compare with 250–2, also 226–30, 232 on Fokine’s other versions; as usual, Benois 1945, 275 also takes the credit for Les Sylphides. Also Souritz 1999, 105, 109–10 on Valse Fantasie and Chopiniana; Telyakovsky 1994, 47; and Pritchard 2010, 78 on the skirts. Kerensky 1970, 30-1 on Fokine “constantly changing” his work, compare with 34–5 never allowing changes to his vision; Lomax 1979, especially 87–94. 83 See Stravinsky’s letter to Roerich 19 June/2 July 1910 in Stravinsky 1997, i:226: “Дягилев имел бестактность мне сказать, что вопрос участия Фокина в ‘Великой жертве’ решается очень просто, заплатить ему, и конец. Но дело в том, что Дягилев даже не поинтересовался узнать, хотим ли мы работать с кем-либо иным. Он думает, что если с Фокиным не удастся примириться, то он (Дягилев) будет работать с Горским, о котором я впервые услышал. Быть может, Горский гений, но не думаю, что Дягилеву было [бы] безразлично потерять Фокина.” (“Diaghilev told me impolitely that the question of Fokine’s participation in ‘The Great Sacrifice’ will resolve itself quickly, pay him and [it] ends. The 276 Notes

thing is, Diaghilev was not interested in asking whether we want to work with anyone other [than Fokine]. He thinks that if he cannot be reconciled with Fokine, then he (Diaghilev) should work with Gorsky, of whom/which I hear for the first time. Perhaps Gorsky [is a] genius, but I do not think Diaghilev will part with Fokine indifferently.”) Also Buckle 1998, 177–8, 330 mentions Diaghilev’s plans to employ Gorsky, and 409 to hire Romanov.

8 Revolutionary Exiles

1 Diaghilev’s first plans to this effect date from the autumn of 1910, when he started signing contracts with major companies around the world: seasons with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Opera Company in London, and the Opera secured work for the com- pany for the 1911–12 and 1912–13 seasons. Obozrenie teatrov 13/26 July 1910; contracts in NYPLDC Astruc Papers, for example 28 July 1910; Garafola 1992, 180–1; also Buckle 1998, 193. 2 Wiley 1979/1980, especially 176. According to Krasovskaia 1971, i:402–3 Teliakovsky wrote in his diary that the Dowager Empress Mariia Feodorovna via the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich had demanded to know whether Nijinsky were to wear the same costume for the second act and if so, she and the Grand Duchess would leave the theatre. However, since Teliakovsky was in Moscow, he would have received this information from either Krupensky or Baron Frederiks. Compare with Haskell 1955, 235–7 quoting Nouvel quot- ing Krupensky’s letter to Svetlov and an anonymous witness; according to Nijinsky 1980, i:120 the Dowager Empress refuted all this to Lady Ripon. In his interview in Comœdia 25 April 1911, Nijinsky says the Dowager Empress sent him her congratulations for the performance, and hints the blame was Kshesinskaia’s, the mistress of the Grand Duke Sergei – she was also impli- cated by Rampa i akter quoted in Pogojèva 1992, 26–7. Kshesinskaia refuted the part given to her in the scandal – see Krasovskaya 1979, 155–6, 361n40 on her disciplining Ludmila Schollar for spreading a rumour about her involve- ment; also Nijinska 1992, 322–3, 322fn* and fn†. 3 Telyakovsky quoted in Krasovskaya 1979, 155. As Wiley 1979/1980, 245 notes, had Teliakovsky wished to take revenge on Diaghilev, he would have kept Nijinsky employed full-time. According to Krasovskaia 1971, i:403, the grounds given for Nijinsky’s dismissal were “за ослушание и за неуважение к императорской сцене” (“for insubordination and disrespect towards the Imperial Stage”). 4 Flitch 1912, 155; see also Rech 25 January/7 February 1911. Exaggeratedly, Nijinsky 1999, 162 claimed he danced only four times a year. However, in 1907–08 Nijinsky danced in 13 ballets, 26 times total: in 1908–09, he danced in three ballets, 11 times total, all but once in either Armide or Nuits d’Egypte. In 1909–10, he was given both more roles and more performances – he danced 18 times in eight ballets as well as four times in two operas. Yet, this was nothing in comparison to how many times stars like Nikolai Legat (37, 17 and 26 times total, respectively) or (46, 46 and 36) performed during the same seasons. Ezhegodnik 1907–1908, ii:21–3; 1909 Repertuar:93–4; and 1910, Repertuar:96–8. Notes 277

5 According to Ostwald 1991, 38: “Entries pertaining to health problems can be seen in his St. Petersburg personnel file on 29 March 1908, 3 September 1909, and 18 August 1909, interspersed with repeated requests for ‘vaca- tions.’ These were treated with increasing suspicion by the Imperial authori- ties as it became clear that the dancer, still on full salary, was using his absences primarily to fulfil engagements abroad with Diaghilev. [ . . . ] It was Diaghilev’s physician friend, Dr. Sergei Botkin, who usually would examine Nijinsky as to ascertain his fitness for performances.” Also op. cit. 40–1. Ostwald wants to see all Nijinsky’s health problems as indicators of men- tal illness, but from Nijinska 1992, 212, 277, 308 we know of three major cases of illness that would almost coincide with these dates: the gonorrhoea Nijinsky caught from a prostitute; his typhoid fever in Paris; and (if the year is wrong) “sunstroke” that he treated by spending a month with Diaghilev in Venice in 1910. According to Krasovskaya 1979, 120, 359n4 Teliakovsky noted in his diary 30 September 1909 that Krupensky had bumped into Nijinsky at the Paris Opéra after the dancer had reported himself sick (with typhoid) and Nijinsky went “red as a beetroot”; see also Wiley 1979/1980, 243 quoting Teliakovsky in Peterburgskaia gazeta 30 January/12 February 1911. Doctor Sergei Sergeevich Botkin (see http://www.rulex.ru/01020662. htm [22 August 2013]) was an arts collector, his brother Evgeni was the personal physician of the Tsarevich Aleksei. See Nijinsky 1999, 198–201; Karsavina 1981, 338–40. 6 See Teliakovsky quoted in Wiley 1979/1980, 244; Nijinska 1992, 318–20. In a review of the performance, Rech 25 January/7 February 1911 most curi- ously claimed that “У насъ Нижинскій, вообще, выступаетъ рɦдко, а съ будущаго сезона и совсɦмъ покидаетъ Маріинскую сцену.” (“Nijinsky appears here but rarely, and next season will leave the Mariinsky stage altogether.”) At the time, the critic could not have known of Nijinsky’s dismissal, which seems to indicate Nijinsky planned to cancel his contract in any case. See also Novoe Vremia 28 January/10 February 1911; Obozrenie teatrov 27 January/9 February and 29 January/11 February 1911; Teatr i iskusstvo 6/19 February 1911; and Rampa i zhizn 6/19 February 1911. 7 “The directors [of the Theatres] are obliged to value this artist and retain him as the pride of Russian theatre.” Emphasis in the original. Rech 29 January/11 February 1911. 8 NYPLDC Astruc papers Diaghilev to Astruc and vice versa 12–14 February 1911; NYPLDC Nijinsky Clippings unidentified cutting dated “March 25 1911” quoting the correspondent of Berliner Tageblatt; also Buckle 1998, 193–4 and Buckle 1993, 187–8. 9 In Russia, anti-Semitism was rife and Jews wanting to reside in the capitals had to have university degrees, but 1881 saw their entrance restricted to a quota. See, for example, Sargeant 2011, 154–61. 10 “artistic revolutionaries, dangerous agitators that had to be solemnly evicted from the imperial theatres”. 11 Diaghilev apparently persuaded Nijinsky to lend him 100,000 francs before the South American season of 1913 to cover the debts from the 1912 and 1913 seasons. Stanislav Drobecki told Haskell 1955, 263 that the impresario had previously borrowed (and paid back) 17,000 francs for a similar pur- pose. In a letter to Stravinsky of 26 November/9 December 1913 quoted in 278 Notes

Stravinsky 1997, ii:181–2, Nijinsky claimed Diaghilev never paid him for his dancing in the company or for his three choreographies of 1912–13. Nijinsky 1999, 164–5 also speaks of Diaghilev asking him for money; also, Nijinska 1992, 486–7. 12 Nijinska 1992, 428–31; Diaghilev’s demands that Nijinsky change Faune caused fights that were even reported in the press – see Peterburgskii listok 4/17 June 1912; also NYPLDC Astruc papers Diaghilev to Astruc 17 April 1912. After the Sacre scandal, Russian papers began gossiping about a break between Diaghilev and Nijinsky: Peterburgskii listok 25 June/8 July 1913. See also Nijinsky 1999, 103, 110–11 on deliberately quarrelling with Diaghilev; Misia Edwards (that is, Sert) to Stravinsky in Gold & Fitzdale 1980, 155–6; Lady Juliet Duff to Buckle 1993, 235 on Nijinsky reducing Diaghilev to tears. 13 Nijinsky had complained of the strain of touring in Je Sais Tout November 1912. He was ill during the 1913 tour in Berlin, Vienna and and was apparently exhausted during the rehearsals in Monte Carlo: Nijinska 1992, 443, 452–3, also 506–7; Fraser 1982, 161. In a letter to Stravinsky 26 November/9 December 1913 (in Stravinsky 1997, ii:182–2), Nijinsky explained he had been ill after returning from South America. The 1914 Palace season had to be cancelled due to Nijinsky’s illness, which The Daily Telegraph 17 March 1914; The New York Times 17 March 1914; and The Stage 19 March 1914 all attributed to physical exhaustion; see also Variety 20 and 27 March 1914. Also Nijinsky 1999, especially 143; Buckle 1998, 260 quoting Stravinsky. Nijinsky had a high work ethic and is reported to have performed even when injured: for example, The New York Times 26 April 1916 reported that he had run a nail through his foot but after seeing a physician, he danced later in the programme. 14 La Nouvelle revue 15 September 1911; The Illustrated London News 25 May 1912; also Williams 1999, especially 25–46. 15 See, for example, Camille Mauclair in Le Courrier Musical 1 June 1912; compare with 15 June 1912; Louis Laloy in La Grande revue 10 June 1909; compare with 25 May 1913. 16 For example, Ghéon in La Nouvelle revue française 1 August 1910; Vaudoyer in La Revue de Paris 15 July 1910 (on hashish dreams and Persian miniatures); La Revue musicale 15 July 1910 (L’Oiseau de Feu as oriental tale) all labelled Stravinsky’s L’Oiseau de Feu as an Oriental work, lumping it together with works like Schéherazade. Similarly, for example, Banes 1999, especially 123. 17 Non-normative or excessive sexual practices were often seen as characteristic of the inorodts, the non-Russian Other: Engelstein 1992, especially 69, 229, 299–300; Stites 1993, 13; also Fokine 1961, 55–7; also Misler 1988. 18 Benois 1945, 284, emphasis mine, see also 182–3 disliking Russians’ “barba- rism”, compare with 285–6, 292, 299–300 on Russians as more progressive than the French. In Rech 19 June/2 July 1909, Benois famously described the reception of the Ballets Russes with military metaphors of campaigns and conquest and hails the victory of the collective Russian culture. Unlike for example, Goldman 1977/1978, 47; or Acocella 1984, 330 present, this was more than just (primitivist) rhetoric: the barbarians who conquered Rome brought about a new, vital civilisation, that is, Christianity. In a sense, Benois thus emulated the view of Russia as “the Third Rome”. Louis Schneider in Gil Blas 10 July 1909 was deeply offended by this piece, reproduced in the Notes 279

Journal de St-Pétersbourg (see NYPLDC Astruc Papers) seeing it as representa- tive of Russian ingratitude and arrogance. 19 As a nationalist ideology, Eurasianism or ‘scythianism’ (after the ancient people who had inhabited the Southern steppes of Russia) gained popularity during the First World War and stressed Russia’s ties to Asia. Unlike Hoogen 1997, especially 38–40 presents, prior to 1914, scythianism was a mysticist, anti-liberal ideology with limited influence. Pursiainen 1999, 82–4; Lieven 2000, 219–20. 20 See, for example, Buckle 1998, especially 174, 209–12, 392–3 on the failures of classical ballets; Goldman 1977/1978, especially 47–51 adheres to the hegemonic view whereby people like Benois were “modernists”, and the company an avant-gardist break with the Imperial Theatres. See also note 30 below. In contrast, the more conservative Russian writers, such as Benois 1945, especially 380–2; or Lieven 1973, especially 169, 337–51 use classi- cal tradition and retrospective works to prove that Diaghilev’s avant-garde experiments (especially Nijinsky’s choreographies) were mistaken, mere snobbery that the impresario himself denounced. Advocates of neoclassi- cal ballet (such as Vaughan 1999, 153–7, 165; Scholl 1994, 79–104) tend to appraise Diaghilev for reinventing the greatness of Petipa. 21 See, for example, Le Theâtre 1 May 1909; Comœdia illustré 15 May 1909. See also The Athenaeum 22 March 1911; The Daily Telegraph 22 June 1911; The Bystander 5 July 1911; Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft December 1913; The Theatre Magazine September 1911; Musical America 29 April and 13 May 1916 for similar articles emphasising the Russian training system. 22 The Punch 5 June 1912, emphasis mine; similarly, Parker 1982, 13 (orig. 18 November 1912); Caffin & Caffin 140, 143. 23 Particularly when speaking of Les Sylphides, “l’apothéose posthume d’un genre où nous ne croyions plus réussir à prendre plaisir” (“the posthumous apotheosis of a genre where we no longer believed it possible to take pleas- ure”), as Comœdia illustré 15 June 1909 put it. Similarly, Le Temps 15 May 1909 on Armide. 24 “A choreographic ensemble cannot be achieved except in a country subject to autocracy”, Le Théatre 1 August 1909. 25 Similarly, Hiram Kelly Moderwell in The New Republic 15 January 1916; also Järvinen 2008, 37n22 quoting Svetlov (in quoting Reynaldo Hahn Teatr i iskusstvo 18 September/1 October 1911 26 “The new ballet stopped to a halt with ‘the Pavillon of Armida’ and ‘Carnaval’; I have already written of these ballets.” Levinson on Fokine’s Les Préludes in Rech 2/15 April 1913. This is possibly the cruellest thing a critic can write of a new work. Similarly, Volynsky 2008, especially 58–61. Even Fokine’s sworn Western admirers, as long as they did not know they were watching his choreographies, saw them as derivative and dull: see Rouché 1952, 96 attacking the selfsame Les Préludes, as well as two other Fokine works, which he misattributes to “Liapoulos”, responsible for arranging Balakirev’s Islamé for the orchestra. 27 Similarly, The Lady 26 October 1911 thought the 1910 production of Giselle too similar to Les Sylphides. 28 Diaghilev reinstated parts previously cut from Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestra- tion, dropped the recitative and rearranged the scenes for dramatic effect. 280 Notes

Everything, including the logical procession of the narrative, was sacrificed to the spectacle. Haskell 1955, 179–80; Taruskin 1996, 528–35; Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, especially i:220–2, 437–42. 29 “does not possess a single national element that would justify the idea of giving in London this Franco-Italian féerie”. The Times 10 March 1911. 30 On this re-evaluation, see Genné 2000. La Belle au Bois Dormant may have been Diaghilev’s first experience of ballet: Haskell 1955, 56; Buckle 1993, 18, also 386–98. 31 Russians always differentiated between classical and character dancers, although both could dance character roles. On the Russian dancers’ respect for their alma mater, see, for example, Karsavina 1998, passim, especially 84; Lopokova informing Kinney & Kinney s.a., 257–64, especially 259. 32 “The hero of the spectacle was the young dancer Mr. Nijinsky, who immedi- ately became the favourite of the public. Mr. Nijinsky possesses an amazing ballon and elevation, pleasant appearance with supple movements without the kind of stridence that often characterises strong dancers. Ballerinas ought to watch out for with him, because his reputation will attract exceptional attention to itself.” Teatr i iskusstvo 4/17 November 1907. Compare with Vossische Zeitung 21 May 1910 quoted in Oberzaucher-Schüller 1997, 96: “An Leichtigkeit, Ausdrucksfähigkeit, Elastizität nimmt es keine der gefeierten Primaballerinen Petersburgs und Moskaus mit Nijinsky auf.” (In lightness, expressivity, elasticity none of the celebrated prima ballerinas of St. Petersburg and Moscow can vie with Nijinsky.) 33 Bourman 1938, especially 136, 152–3; Karsavina 1981, especially 223; Benois in Rech 19 June/2 July 1909. 34 For example, Levinson 1982, esp 37, 39–40, 65; Stravinsky 1975, 96–100 also rhetorically equals nationalism with classical ballet and classicism with superior art. Even Lifar 1945, 263 claims that until Faune, “every one of his [Diaghilev’s] ballets, with Le Spectre de la Rose as virtually the sole exception, had been purely national in character”. By ‘national’ Lifar obviously means character dance. 35 This was Une Nuit d’Egypte (1900, never performed), but Petipa had also made a grand ballet called La Fille du Pharaon (1862), from which Fokine borrowed sets and costumes. Nijinska 1992, 227. However, at a time when ballet mas- ters changed choreography with each restaging, what was a new work is at times difficult to determine. Also Scholl 1994, 61–3 on Armide, 63–5 on Les Sylphides. 36 Pavillon d’Armide had music by Tcherepnin, and both Le Festin and Cléopâtre were accompanied by a hodgepodge of Russian composers (Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Musorgsky, Glazunov, and Rimsky-Korsakov for the former; Arensky, Taneev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, Musorgsky, Glazunov, and Tcherepnin for the latter). 37 See, for example, Rampa i zhizn 1/14 August 1910 (where Diaghilev is admit- ted to be legally right but morally wrong); Stravinsky’s letter to Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov 8/21 July 1911 in Stravinsky 1997, i:290–4; Zilberstein & Samkov 1982, i:220–2, 437–42; Taruskin 1996, 972n10, 1040–51. 38 Levinson 1982, 33 commenting on Gordon Craig. When Tugenkhold reported in Apollon 8/1910 that Bakst’s scenery was a revelation to the French, he implied there was little that was new in this for the Russian Notes 281

spectator; similarly, E[vgeni]. Pann in Maski 6/1912–1913 criticised the French for disdaining the art of stage setting. See also Schouvaloff 1997, 225. Taking mise-en-scène to include choreographic groupings, Homo novus [Aleksandr Kugel] in Teatr i iskusstvo 1/14 June 1912 furthered this argument and used it against Svetlov’s praise of the new ballet. 39 This is not to claim that ballet technique by itself is a measure of a com- pany’s superiority or inferiority as in Scholl 1994. Rather, I wish to point out that the claims made by the Ballets Russes inner circle were not true in the light of other contemporary evidence. However, free-form dancers were equally aware of the danger of dilettantism, and often professed their rigourous practice: for example, Allan [1908], especially 63–4, 74; compare with Flitch 1912, 77, 119 on free-form dance as attracting people who were averse to hard work. 40 Volynsky in Birzhevye vedomosti 18 November 1913 quoted in Rabinowitz 2009, 6. Also Volynsky 2008, especially 58; compare with Fokine 1961, 74–6 complaining about Volynsky. 41 “As for the jumps of Nijinsky and Fokine, they are much more fitting for the circus than for ballet; and they have very little in common with art.” Rampa i zhizn 15/28 August 1910. See also Järvinen 2008, 38n30 on Diaghilev as “the Russian Barnum” (Peterburgskaia gazeta 11/24 February 1910 quoted in Zilberstein & Samkov i:212). Also Blanche in Le Figaro 29 May 1909 recol- lected a Russian spectator to his left apologising to him for the “décor de cirque” (circus sets) that Maurice Denis, sitting to his right, was simultane- ously admiring. 42 As in the cartoon “Apotheosis of the fame of Russian ballet! First spectacle at the North Pole!” in Petersburgskaia gazeta 14/27 March 1913; see Järvinen 2008, 22–3. 43 “As for ballet, from the glitter of the performances stands out the hodge- podge, which we call ‘Le Festin’, in which the laurels of success belong to Mr. Nijinsky – the amazing dancer, who literally astonished Paris, used to the lightness of ballerinas but perfectly unaware of, lacking an understanding of, the virtuosity of male dancers. And whenever there is talk in Paris of the spectacles of Mr. Diaghilev, then it is solely of Mssrs. Chaliapin [ . . . ] and Nijinsky.” Teatr i iskusstvo 17/30 May 1909. Similarly, Rampa i zhizn 17/30 May 1909. 44 “The louder the superficial critic melancholically exclaims: ‘If only our opera would have a few dancers like Nijinsky! But where would this be thinkable these days when all that exists is organised with syndicalists.’ (Gil Blas). But things are different in Russia, where of all this is thought not to exist and enough attention can be given to these ‘twiling, hooting, rustling, bleating dances’!” Teatr i iskusstvo 17/30 May 1909. Syndicalists were labour union movements. The quote from Gil Blas 20 May 1909 is inexact, the second quote paraphrases Ernest La Jeunesse’s (1913, 44–6) review in Le Journal. 45 “A couple of words from the ‘entrefilets’ [small notes of Parisian papers]. It appears that Pavlova with her dancing in St. Petersburg brought about . . . a revolution (in art, of course), and Mr. Nijinsky is not simply an excellent dancer but a genius! How simple everything is in Paris!” Teatr i iskusstvo 31 May/13 June 1909. Already 17/30 May 1909, this paper had pitied Kshesinskaia and Preobrazhenskaia (also performing in Paris) because Karalli 282 Notes

(who later became a film star) was now suddenly “la plus grande ballerine en Russie” (“the greatest ballerina in Russia”). Similarly, for example, Rampa i zhizn 15/28 August 1910. 46 “I have not encountered a single review in which, amidst all the compli- ments, there would not suddenly appear ‘furious, hoarse, wild, exotic, bar- barian’ or some such expression.” N.N. in Teatr i iskusstvo 17/30 May 1909. Even Lifar 1945, passim, for example, 225, 227 complains about this Western desire for the Russians to be exotic. 47 “Last year not one critic dared speak of ‘amusing’ Russian art in this favour- able tone of patting one’s back. Then all spoke of the ‘deep nationalism’ in Russian art. By this was meant a lofty nationalism that made it [that is, this art] pan-human, that which allowed it to transcend national borders and encompass the whole world.” Teatr i iskusstvo 17/30 May 1909. 48 For example, Obozrenie teatrov 30 May/12 June 1909 and 3/16 June 1909; Teatr i iskusstvo 31 May/13 June 1909; Rampa i akter 17/30 May 1909; Rampa i zhizn 15/28 August 1910; Sabaneev in Golos Moskvi 8 June 1913 quoted in Taruskin 1996, 1016. 49 That is, shows costing 10, 20 or 30 cents at most. Singer 2001, 2–3. 50 “no place for an artist of the Imperial Theatres who values his reputation”. Nijinsky in Peterburgskaia gazeta 6/19 October 1909 quoted in Krasovskaia 1971, i:394. 51 “At first it seems there is nothing in common between Petipa’s La Fille du Pharaon, and Fokine’s Schéhérazade. Fokine’s creations seem to constitute a total repudiation of Petipa’s old ballet. But on the contrary, the new ballet is the logical consequence of the old. [ . . . ] In Armide, we find a prologue, an action, an epilogue: in one word the established order of the good old days; everything ‘is in place’: here, as usual, a ‘pas d’action’ for the ballerina; there, variations for the soloists; indeed, the usual ‘ballabile’; and later, in its traditional place, a coda. In truth, an innovative mind already shows in a few places: the lines, the traditional figures with geometric regularity appear broken, relaxed; the groups are disposed asymmetrically; one notes that the boldness and inclination to break with academism are followed by certain results. A new life will begin to quiver, here, a new blood will flow. But generally speaking, everything here remains very ‘proper’, and shocks only old balletomanes who, in this case, do not continue to regret the ‘good old days’ except by habit.” Emphasis added. 52 See Petipa quoted in Wiley 1985, 2; also, for example, Whitworth 1913, 39 on Armide cut; Van Vechten 1915, 62; Beaumont 1951, 85. Also Lomax 1979, 87–94 on changes in Les Sylphides. The changed expectation causes contra- dictions in Fokine 1961, for example 93, compare with 151. 53 Volkonsky in The Nineteenth Century and After June 1913, emphasis mine. Similarly, Volkonsky in Apollon 6/1912; Homo novus [Aleksandr Kugel] in Teatr i iskusstvo 1/14 June 1912. Compare this with Svetlov quoted in note 51 above. 54 See, for example, Karsavina 1981, 287; Rambert 1983, 61, 78; Nijinska 1992, especially 286, 466. Bibliography

Primary sources

Yearbooks Les Annales du théatre et de la musique 1910–1914 (the year refers to printing date). Ezhegodnik Imperatorskikh Teatrov 1906–1913 (the year is part of the title).

Newspapers and periodicals Akademos 1909. Apollon 1909–1915. Art et decoration 1911. The Athenaeum 1911–1914. The Bellman 1909–1916. Boston Evening Transcript 1912–1916. The Bystander 1911–1914. Comœdia 1909–1913. Comœdia Illustré 1909–1913. Le Courrier Musical 1909–1913. La Critique independante 1912–1913. Current Opinion 1913–1917. The Daily Mail 1911–1913. The Daily Telegraph 1911–1914. The Dancing Times 1911–1916. The English Review 1911–1914. L’Excelsior 1912–1913. Femina 1910–1913. Le Figaro 1909–1914. Le Gaulois 1909–1913. Gil Blas 1909–1913. La Grande revue 1909–1914. The Graphic 1911–1914. Harper’s Bazaar 1915–1916. Harper’s Weekly 1912–1916. The Illustrated London News 1911–1914. L’Illustration 1909–1913. L’Intransigeant 1909–1913. Je Sais Tout 1910–1912. Journal des débats politiques et littéraires 1909–1913. The Lady 1911–1913. The Literary Digest 1911–1916. Maski 1912–1914. Le Matin 1909–1913. Mercure de France 1910–1914.

283 284 Bibliography

The Modern Dance Magazine 1914–1916. Le Monde Artiste 1911–1913. Le Monde Illustré 1909–1913. Musical America 1911–1916. Musical Courier 1916. The Musical Quarterly 1916, 1918. The Musical Times 1911–1914. The [American] Nation 1916. The New Age 1911. The New Republic 1916. The New Statesman 1913–1914. The New York Dramatic Mirror 1916. New York Evening Mail 1916. The New York Herald 1916. The New York Sun 1915–1916. The New York Times 1910–1916. New York Tribune 1915–1916. The Nineteenth Century and After 1913–1914. La Nouvelle revue 1909–1913. La Nouvelle revue française 1909–1913. Novoe vremia 1909–1911. Obozrenie teatrov 1909–1913. Pall Mall Gazette 1912–1914. Pall Mall Magazine 1912–1913. Pan 1912. Peterburgskaia gazeta 1913 and individual issues from Helsinki University Slavic Library collection. Peterburgskii listok 1912–1913. La Plume 1912–1913. The Punch 1910–1914. Rampa i akter 1909. Rampa i zhizn 1910–1913. Rech 1909–1914. La Renaissance 1914. La Revue 1910–1913. Revue française de musique 1912–1913. La Revue de Paris 1909–1914. Revue musicale 1909–1911. Le Rire 1910–1911. Russkaia Muziikalnaia Gazeta 1913–1914. Rhythm 1912–1913. S.I.M. Revue musicale 1909–1913. The Sketch 1910–1913. Sovremennik 1914. The Spectator 1911–1913. The Stage 1914. Teatr i iskusstvo 1906–1913. Le Temps 1912–1914. Le Théatre 1909–1913. Bibliography 285

The Theatre 1915–1917. The Theatre Magazine 1911. The Times 1911–1914. Utro Rossii 1909–1913. Vanity Fair 1915–1916. Variety 1912–1914. Vogue 1915–1916. The World. A Journal for Men and Women 1911–1913. The World 1913, 1916. Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 1913.

Archival material General Ballets Russes programmes, 1909–1929. Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica. bnf.fr [7 May 2013]. The Dying Swan. 1907. Film and dating: attributed to the Mariinsky Theatre. Dancer: Anna Pavlova. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW01o9x0Alc [30 September 2013]. Moment musical. 1913. Film and dating: attributed to Bolshoi. Dancers: Ekaterina Geltser and Vasily Tikhomirov. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aU3duL70Y5g [30 September 2013].

New York Public Library Dance Collection (NYPLDC) Astruc, Gabriel. Varia. Papers. Diaghilev, Serge. Varia. Clippings. Diaghilev, Serge. Varia. Papers. Diaghilev, Serge. 1915–1917. Programmes, 1915–1917. http://digilib.nypl.org:8080/ mille/lpa_cat_results2?rlin=NYPY99-B2831. and http://digilib.nypl.org:8080/ mille/lpa_cat_results2?rlin=NYPY99-B2829. Diaghilev, Serge. Varia. Scrapbook. Kachouba, Valentina. 1979. Interview with J. Maroth 11–12 July 1979. Nemchinova, Vera. 1975. Interview with Joan Kramer, Carrie Nye Cavett, Benita and Dean Carey 20–21 June 1975. Nijinsky, Vaslav. Varia. Clippings. Nijinsky, Vaslav. [1919]. Manuscripts (Dnevnik Vatslavo Nizhinskogo). Rambert, Marie. 1975. Interview with John Gruen 30 July 1974, read and cor- rected by Marie Rambert 27 January 1975. Rambert, Marie. 1979. Interview with Anton Dolin (sound recording).

Contemporary books and articles

‘An Antiquary’ [Westlake, Hubert John]. 1911. The Dance: Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson. Applin, Arthur. [1911]. The Stories of the Russian Ballet. London: Everett & Co. Barbier, George. 1913. Nijinsky. Tr. C. W. Beaumont. London: C. W. Beaumont & Co. Barbier, George & Vaudoyer, Jean-Louis. 1914. Album dédié a Tamar Karsavina. Paris: Collections Pierre Corrard. 286 Bibliography

Barchan, Pavel. 1919. “Den Rysska Baletten.” In René Bull. Den Ryska Baletten: Tolv Akvareller in Färgtryck. Stockholm: Aktiebolaget Ljus, 3–8. Beaumont, Cyril W. [1913]. “Introduction.” In Robert Montenegro. Vaslav Nijinsky: An Artistic Interpretation of His Work in Black, White and Gold. London: C. W. Beaumont & Co., [3]–[4]. Blanche, Jacques-Émile. 1916. Cahiers d’un Artiste, Deuxième série: Novembre 1914–Juin 1915. Paris: Émile-Paul Frères. Britan, Halbert H. 1904. “Music and Morality.” International Journal of Ethics, 15:1, 48–63. Caffin, Caroline and Caffin, Charles H. 1912. Dancing And Dancers Of Today: The Modern Revival Of Dancing As An Art. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Cocteau, Jean. 1918. Le Coq et L’Arlequin: Notes autour de la musique. Paris: Editions de la Sirène. Cocteau, Jean & Iribe, Paul. 1910. Vaslav Nijinsky: Six vers de Jean Cocteau, six des- sins de Paul Iribe. Paris: Société Générale d’Impression. De Miomandre, Francis. 1913. “Foreword.” In George Barbier. Nijinsky. Tr. C. W. Beaumont. London: C. W. Beaumont & Co., 3–8. Duncan, Raymond. 1914. La Danse et la Gymnastique. Conference address 4 May 1914. Paris: Akademia Raymond Duncan. http://archive.org/details/ danceman062 [31 January 2013]. Dunham, Curtis (ed.), 1918. Dancing with Helen Moller: Her Own Statement of Her Philosophy and Practice and Teaching Formed upon the Classic Greek Model, and Adapted to Meet the Aesthetic and Hygienic Needs of To-Day. Introduction by “Ivan Narodny”. New York and London: John Lane Company and The Bodley Head. Flitch, J. E. Crawford. 1912. Modern dancing and dancers. Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co. and Grant Richards Ltd. La Jeunesse, Ernest. 1913. Les soirs, les gens, des choses . . . Paris: Maurice de Brunoff. Johnson, A. E. 1913. The Russian Ballet. London: Constable & Co. Kinney, & Kinney, Margaret West. s.a. The Dance: Its place in art and life. Rev. edn. New York: F. A. Stokes Company [1st edn. 1914]. Perugini, Mark E. 1915. The Art Of Ballet. London: Martin Secker. Rath, Emil. 1914. Æsthetic Dancing. New York: The A. S. Barnes Company. Sem [Goursat, Georges.] 1913. Tangoville sur mer. Paris: Succès. Svétlow, V. 1912. Le Ballet Contemporain. Ouvrage édité avec la collaboration de L. Bakst. Tr. M.-D. Calvocoressi. Paris & St-Pétersburg: M. de Brunoff & Société R. Golicke et A. Willborg. Terry, Ellen. 1913. The Russian Ballet. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. Thomas, William I. 1907. “The Mind of Woman and the Lower Races.” The American Journal of Sociology 12:4, 435–69. Trotter, T. H. Yorke. 1904–1905. “Rhythm in National Music.” Proceedings of the Musical Association, 31st Sess., 17–41. Urlin, Ethel L. 1912. Dancing Ancient and Modern. New York: D. Appleton Company. Van Vechten, Carl. 1915. Music After the Great War and Other Studies. New York: G. Schirmer. Van Vechten, Carl. 1917. Interpreters and Interpretations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Whitworth, Geoffrey. 1913. The Art of Nijinsky. London: Chatto & Windus. Bibliography 287

Reprints and edited collections of contemporary sources alexandre, Arséne. 1972. “The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst.” In Jean Cocteau. The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst. Tr. Harry Melvill. New York: Dover Publications, 1–17 (1913). Bakst, Léon. 1990. “The Paths of Classicism in Art.” Tr. with introd. by Robert Johnson. Dance Chronicle 13:2, 174–92. Bie, Oskar. s.a. Der Tanz als Kunstwerk. Compilation of Der Tanz als Kunstwerk, Das Ballet & Fest der Elemente. Berlin: Brandusscher Verlag. Bullard, Truman Campbell (ed.), 1971. The First Performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps. Vols 2 and 3. Unpublished PhD thesis, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Cocteau, Jean. 1972. The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst. Tr. Harry Melvill. New York: Dover Publications (French 1913). Craig, Edward Gordon. 1977. Gordon Craig on Movement and Dance. Ed. Arnold Rood. New York: Dance Horizons. Diaghilev, Serge. 1999a. “Early Writings of Serge Diaghilev.” Tr. and ed. by John E. Bowlt. In Lynn Garafola & Nancy van Baer (ed.), The Ballets Russes and Its World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 43–70. Diaghilev, Serge. 1999b. “Diaghilev’s ‘Complicated Questions’.” Tr. Olive Stevens, ed. Joan Acocella. In Lynn Garafola & Nancy van Norman Baer (ed.), The Ballets Russes and Its World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 71–93. Gross, Valentine. 1971. Nijinsky on Stage. Ed. Richard Buckle. London: Studio Vista. Kessler, Graf Harry & Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. 1968. Briefwechsel, 1898–1929. Ed. Hilde Bürger. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag. Levinson, André. 1982. Ballet Old and New. Tr. Susan Cook Summer. New York: Dance Horizons (Russian 1918). Macdonald, Nesta (ed.). 1975. Diaghilev Observed by Critics in England and the United States, 1911–1929. New York & London: Dance Horizons & Dance Books. Nijinsky, Vaslav. 1999. The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. [Unexpurgated edition.] Tr. Kyril Fitzlyon, ed. Joan Acocella. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Nijinsky, Vaslav. 1991a. The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. Tr. and ed. by Romola Nijinsky. London: Quartet Books (1937). Parker, H. T. 1982. Motion Arrested: Dance Reviews of H. T. Parker. Ed. Olive Holmes. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Ricketts, Charles. 1939. Self-Portrait: Taken from the letters and journals of Charles Ricketts, R.A. Ed. T. Sturge Moore & Cecil Lewis. London: Peter Davies. Stasov, Vladimir. 2001. “The Poor in Spirit (1899).” Tr. Wendy Salmond. Experiment 7, 233–45. Stravinsky, Igor. 1969. The Rite of Spring – Le Sacre du Printemps: Sketches 1911–1913. Facsimile. s.l. Boosey & Hawkes. Stravinsky, Igor. 1982. Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, vol. 1. Tr. and ed. by Robert Craft. London, Boston: Faber and Faber. Stravinsky, I. F. 1997. Perepiska s russkimi korrespondentami: Materialy k biografii. Vol. I: 1882–1912; Vol. II: 1913–1922. Ed. and annotated by V. P. Varunts. Moscow: Kompozitor. Zilberstein, I. S. & Samkov, V. A. 1982. Sergei Diagilev i russkoe iskusstvo. Moscow: Iskusstvo. 288 Bibliography

Reminiscences Astruc, Gabriel. 1930. “Au temps de la ‘Corbeille’. Le premier feu d’artifice.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 42–7. Astruc, Gabriel. 1987. Le Pavillon des fantômes: Souvenirs. Préface de Pierre Lebaillif. Paris: Editions Pierre Belfond. Beaumont, Cyril W. 1951. The Diaghilev Ballet in London: A Personal Record. 3rd edn. London: Adam and Charles Black (1940). Beaumont, Cyril. 1998. Interview with John Drummond. In John Drummond. Speaking of Diaghilev. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 123–32. Benois, Alexandre. 1930. “Serge de Diaghilew. Essai de portrait par un ami- collaborateur.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 21–32. Benois, Alexandre. 1945. Reminescences of the Russian Ballet. Tr. Mary Britnieva. London: Putnam (1941). Benois, Alexandre. 1988. Memoirs. Tr. Moira Budberg. London: Columbus Books (1st English edn 1960). Bernays, Edward L. 1965. Biography of an idea. New York: Simon & Schuster. Blanche, Jacques-Émile. 1929. “Souvenirs sur Serge de Diaghilew.” L’Art Vivant 15 September, 713–15. Blanche, Jacques-Émile. 1938. Portraits of a Lifetime: The Late Victorian Era, The Edwardian Pageant, 1870–1914. Tr. and ed. by Walter Clement, Introd. Harley Granville-Barker. New York: Coward-McCann. Blanche, Jacques-Émile. 1949. La Pêche aux souvenirs. Paris: Flammarion. Bourman, Anatole. 1938. The Tragedy of Nijinsky. London: Robert Hale (1937). Brillant, Maurice. 1930. “L’influence multiforme des Ballets russes.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 90–100. Brussel, Robert. 1930. “Avant la Féerie.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 33–41. Calvocoressi, M. D. 1978. Music and Ballet: Recollections of M. D. Calvocoressi. New York: AMS Press (1934). Chaplin, Charles. 1982. My Autobiography. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (1964). Claudel, Paul. 1959. “Nijinsky.” In Oeuvres Completes XV: Positions et Propositions. Paris: Gallimard, 125–9 (orig. 27 March 1927). Cocteau, Jean. 1967. My Contemporaries. Ed. with Introd. by Margaret Crosland. London: Peter Owen (1935–1967). Cocteau, Jean. 1972. Professional Secrets: An Autobiography of Jean Cocteau. Collected by Robert Phelps, tr. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1970). Diaghilev, Serge. 1979. “Around the World with the Russian Ballet.” Dance Magazine, September 1979, 48–54 [orig. The Graphic 20 July 1929]. Fokine, Michel. 1961. Memoirs of a Ballet Master. Tr. Vitale Fokine, ed. Anatole Chujoy. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Co. Grigoriev, Serge. 1953. The Diaghilev Ballet 1909–1929. Tr. and ed. by Vera Bowen. New York: Dance Horizons. Henriot, Émile. 1930. “Les Ballets russes.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 8–16. Bibliography 289

Kameneff, Vladimir. 1936. Russian Ballet through Russian Eyes. London: Russian Books and Library. Karsavina, Tamara. 1981. Theatre Street or the Reminescences of Tamara Karsavina. London: Dance Books (1930). Karsavina, Tamara. 1998. Interview with John Drummond. In John Drummond. Speaking of Diaghilev. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 83–99 (1997). Laloy, Louis. 1930. “Hommage à Diaghilew.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 57–61. Larionow, [Mikhail]. 1930. “Souvenirs sur Diaghilew.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew: Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 48–56. Legat, Nicolas. 1931. “Famous Dancers I Have Known: Pages from the Memoirs of Nicolas Legat.” Tr. Sir Paul Dukes, KBE. The Dancing Times May–July 1931, 123–6, 222–4, 324–7. Lieven, Prince Peter. 1973. The Birth of the Ballets Russes. London: Dover (1936). Massine, Léonide. 1968. My Life in Ballet. Ed. Phyllis Hartnoll and Robert Rubens. London: Macmillan. Michaut, P., & Kuhlmann, A-E. 1929. “Les Ballets Russes de M. Serge de Diaghilew.” L’Art Vivant 15 September, 718–21. Morand, Paul. 1952. “Souvenirs sur la danse.” In anon., L’Art du Ballet des origins à nos jours. Paris: Éditions du Tambourinaire, 249–54. Morrell, Lady Ottoline. 1963. Ottoline: The Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Ed. Robert Gathone-Hardy. London: Faber & Faber. Nijinska, Bronislava. 1992. Early Memoirs. Tr. and ed. by Irina Nijinska and Jean Rawlinson. Durham and London: Duke University Press (1981). Nijinsky, Romola. 1980. Nijinsky and The Last Years of Nijinsky. Facsimile. New York: Simon and Schuster (©1934 and ©1952). de Noailles, Comtesse [Anna]. 1930. “Adieux aux Ballets Russes.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 3–7. Pavlova, Anna. 1977. “Pages of My Life.” Tr. by Sebastien Voirol. In Paul Magriel (ed.), Nijinsky, Pavlova, Duncan: Three Lives in Dance. New York: Da Capo Press (1947), 1–15. Polunin, Vladimir. 1980. “The Continental Method of Scene Painting.” Ed. Cyril W. Beaumont. London: Dance Books (1927). Propert, W. A. 1972. The Russian Ballet in Western Europe, 1909–1920. New York: Benjamin Blom (1921). Prunières, Henri. 1930. “Conclusion.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 101–7. Rambert, Marie. 1983. Quicksilver: The Autobiography of Marie Rambert. London: Macmillan (1972). Rambert, Marie. 1998. Interview with John Drummond. In John Drummond. Speaking of Diaghilev. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 109–19 (1997). Romanovsky-Krassinsky, H. S. H. The Princess. 2005. Dancing in Petersburg: The Memoirs of . Translated by Arnold Haskell. Alton: Dance Books (English, French 1960). Rouché, Jacques. 1952. “La Danse en Russie (Impressions de voyage, hiver 1914).” In anon. L’Art du Ballet des origins à nos jours. Paris: Éditions du Tambourinaire, 91–101. Sandoz, Maurice. 1954. Crystal Salt Cellar. London: Guilford Press. 290 Bibliography

Sazonova, Julie. 1930. “La chorégraphie des Ballets de Diaghilew.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 67–77. Sert, Misia. 1953. Misia and the Muses. With an appreciation by Jean Cocteau. New York: The John Day Co. (French 1952). Sokolova, Lydia. 1960. Dancing for Diaghilev: The Memoirs of Lydia Sokolova. Ed. Richard Buckle. London: John Murray. Sokolova, Lydia. 1998. Interview with John Drummond. In John Drummond. Speaking of Diaghilev. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 135–61 (1997). Stravinsky, Igor. 1975. An Autobiography. London: Calder & Boyars (1936, French 1935). Stravinsky, Igor & Craft, Robert. 1960. Memories and Commentaries. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company. Svetloff, Valerian. 1929. “The Diaghileff Ballet in Paris (From its inception to our days).” The Dancing Times December 1929, 263–74. Symons, Arthur. 1923. Dramatis Personae. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Telyakovsky, V. A. 1990. “Memoirs.” Tr. Nina Dimitrievitch. Dance Research 8:1, 37–46. Telyakovsky, V. A. 1991. “Memoirs. Part 2.” Tr. Nina Dimitrievitch. Dance Research 9:1, 26–39. Telyakovsky, V. A. 1994. “Memoirs.” Tr. Nina Dimitrievitch. Dance Research 12:1, 41–7. Telyakovsky, V. A. 1995. “Balletomanes. Memoirs, Part 4.” Tr. Nina Dimitrievitch. Dance Research 13:2, 77–88. Vaudoyer, Jean-Louis. 1929. “Impressions et souvenirs.” L’Art Vivant 15 September, 709–10. de Voisins, Gilbert. 1930. “La belle légende des Ballets russes.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 17–20. Warnod, André. 1930. “Les peintres et les Ballets russes.” Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Numéro special de la S.I.M. Revue musicale, Décembre 1930, 78–89. Wolkonsky, Sergei. 2012. My Reminiscences, 2 vols. Tr. by A. E. Chamot. Binsted, UK: The Noverre Press (1924, Russian 1923). Young, Stark. 1977. “Note on Nijinsky and Robert Edmond Jones.” In Paul Magriel (ed.), Nijinsky, Pavlova, Duncan: Three Lives in Dance. New York: Da Capo Press, (1946), 65. Other published material —— The Dance: Ancient and Modern. 1900. Tr. from French by Arabella E. Moore. Philadelphia: Press of Avil. http://www.archive.org/details/danceman058 [13 January 2008.] Allan, Maud. [1908]. My Life and Dancing. London: Everett & Co. Baudelaire, Charles. 1992. Selected Writings on Art and Literature. Tr. with an Introd. by P. E. Charvet. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (1972, French [1845–1863]). Duncan, Isadora. 1977. The Art of the Dance. Ed. with Introd. by Sheldon Cheney. New York: Theatre Arts Books (1928). Bibliography 291

Duncan, Isadora. 1996. My Life. London: Victor Gollancz (1927). Ellis, Havelock. [1890]. The New Spirit. New York: Boni and Liveright. Ellis, Havelock. 1933. The Dance of Life. London: Constable & Co. (1923). Flaubert, Gustave. 1964. Dictionnaire des idées reçus suivi des Mémoires d’un fou. Paris: Nouvel Office d’Édition [French 1911–1913 and 1900–1901]. Freud, Sigmund. 1997. Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. Translator not given. New York: , Simon & Schuster (©1967, German 1905–1909). Freud, Sigmund. 2000. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Basic Books (German 1905). Fuller, Loïe. 1913. Fifteen Years of a Dancer’s Life. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. Galton, Francis. 1900. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences. New York: D. Appleton and Company (1869). Gilbert, W. S. 1994. The Savoy Operas. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Reference. Gorsky, Alexander. 1978. Two Essays on Stepanov Dance Notation. Tr. Roland John Wiley. New York: CORD. Lombroso, Cesare. [1910]. The Man of Genius. London & New York: Walter Scott & Charles Scribner’s Sons (Italian 1888). Meyerhold, Vsevolod. 1981. Teatterin Lokakuu. Tr. and ed. by Marja Jänis. Helsinki: Love Kirjat. Mir iskusstva 1899–1904. Newmarch, Rosa. [1916]. The Russian Arts. New York: E. P Dutton & Co. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Tr. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books (German 1873, 1888). Nordau, Max. 1993. Degeneration. Tr. from 2nd German edn. George L. Mosse. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press (1895, German 1892). Noverre, Jean Georges. 1968. Letters on Dancing and Ballets. Tr. Cyril W. Beaumont. New York: Dance Horizons (1930, from 1803 St. Petersburg edition). Pater, Walter. 1986. The Renaissance. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press (1873). Simmel, Georg. 1957. “Fashion.” The American Journal of Sociology 63:6, 541–58 (1904) [German 1904]. Spengler, Oswald. 1927. The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality. Tr. Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf [German 1918]. St.-Johnston, Reginald. 1906. A History of Dancing. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co. Symons, Arthur. 1906. Studies in Seven Arts. London: Archibald Constable and Company, Ltd. Tolstoy, Leo. 1904. What is Art? and Essays on Art. Tr. Aylmer Maude. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co. [1899, Russian 1897]. Wagner, Richard. 1895. “The Art-Work of the Future.” In Prose Works, vol. 1. Tr. William Ellis. S.l., (German 1849), 69–213. The Wagner library, http:// users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagartfut.htm [21 July 2005]. Wagner, Richard. 1898. “The Virtuoso and the Artist.” In Prose Works, vol. 7. Tr. William Ashton Ellis. S.l., (German 1840), 108–22. The Wagner library, http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagartfut.htm [21 July 2005]. Wilde, Oscar. 2001. The Soul of Man under Socialism & Selected Critical Prose. Ed. Linda Dowling. London: Penguin. Woolf, Virginia. 1973. A Room of One’s Own. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books (1928). 292 Bibliography

Secondary sources

Unpublished manuscripts Acocella, Joan Ross. 1984. The Reception of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes by Artists and Intellectuals in Paris and London, 1909–1914. PhD thesis, Rutgers University. Bullard, Truman Campbell. 1971. The First Performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps. PhD thesis, vol. 1, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Gutsche-Miller, Sarah. 2010. Pantomime-Ballet on the music-hall stage: The popu- larisation of classical ballet in fin-de-siècle Paris. PhD thesis, McGill University. Hodson, Millicent Kaye. 1985. Nijinsky’s New Dance: Rediscovery of Ritual Design in Sacre du Printemps. PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley. Holt, Ulle Viiroja. 2000. Style, fashion, politics, and identity: The Ballets Russes in Paris from 1909 to 1914. PhD thesis, Brown University. Hoogen, Marilyn Meyer. 1997. Igor Stravinsky, Nikolai Roerich, and the Healing Power of Paganism: The Rite of Spring as Ecstatic Ritual of Renewal for the Twentieth Century. PhD thesis, University of Washington. Levy, Suzane Carbonneau. 1990. The Russians Are Coming: Russian Dancers in the United States, 1910–1933. PhD thesis, New York University. Lomax, Sandra. 1979. ’s Les Sylphides: The Ballet’s History and Significance. MFA thesis, Yale University. Pasler, Jann Corinne. 1981. Debussy, Stravinsky, and the Ballets Russes: The Emergence of a New Musical Logic. PhD thesis, University of Chicago.

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Abramtsevo 205, 271 authenticity 6, 59–61, 64, 68, 86, abstract art 23, 78, 85, 103, 104, 113, 119, 156, 164, 194, 229, 246, 109, 218, 241 272 Adam, Alphonse 78, 254 Aestheticism (see also Decadence) 33, Bakst, Léon (Rozenberg, Lev) 51, 52, 43, 248 55, 60, 62, 71–2, 74–5, 101, 127, aesthetics, as evaluative (see also 131, 132, 187, 202, 204, 217, 221, barbarism, entertainment) 3–6, 14, 227, 237, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 29, 32–3, 35–6, 41–2, 43–51 passim, 271, 275, 280 60, 64, 67–8, 84, 86, 105, 112, 113, Balakirev, Mili 270, 279 119, 121, 156, 161, 222–3, 227, ballet, ‘classical’ 22–3, 92, 98, 106, 238, 246, 262 135, 163, 167, 192, 215–16, 219, aesthet ics, of old ballet (see also ballet) 225, 228, 230–4 passim, 237, 255, 210–12 279, 280 aesthetics, of new ballet (see also ballet, hegemony of 88 ballet) 212, 214–17 ballet master 22, 45, 60, 66, 85–6, affective responses (see also emotion) 88, 90, 93, 101, 155, 156, 164, 172, 6, 43, 46–7, 50–1, 67–8, 74, 136–8, 193, 197, 213–8 passim, 235, 240–1, 143, 148, 164, 253, 259 243, 255, 268, 274 Allan, Maud 59, 115, 259, 281 the Ballets Russes, revolutionary androgyny 121, 125–9, 138, 188 narrative of 20, 40, 192, 202, 211, animals 62, 67, 75–6, 146–8, 160–1, 221–3, 225, 227–9, 235, 238, 239, 171, 174, 253, 258 243, 277, 281 Appia, Adolphe 210, 262 barbarian, Nijinsky as (see also the L’Après-midi d’un Faune 1, 3, 5, savage) 120–1, 123, 132, 140, 143, 78, 101, 127, 129, 131, 135, 163, 148 168, 171, 182, 184, 217, 219, 223, barbarians, Russians as 19, 29, 55, 238–39, 241, 244 57, 61–2, 64, 68, 71, 74, 76, 77, 97, art, as ‘high culture’ (see also elitism, 105, 112, 142, 204, 223, 225, 228, entertainment) 29, 32, 33–4, 35, 236, 253, 254, 278 39–41 passim, 89, 96, 108, 160, Barbier, Georges 49, 52, 132, 133, 161, 165, 168, 172, 211, 214, 232, 255, 262 238, 248, 274 Beaumont, Cyril W. 12, 99, 125–6, Arts and Crafts Movement 69, 72, 129, 160, 170, 179, 246, 249, 264, 204, 207–8, 270 266, 282 asexuality, of genius 117–18, 121, La Belle au Bois Dormant 22, 23, 93, 126, 132, 187, 260 197, 213, 216, 229–30, 280 Astruc, Gabriel 38, 40, 53, 54, 70, La Belle au Bois Dormant Blue Bird 96, 110, 160, 249, 256, 266, 275, pas de deux (L’Oiseau de Feu, 276, 277, 278, 279 L’Oiseau d’Or, L’Oiseau et le Prince, La atavism, reversion to type (see also the Princesse Enchantée) 97, 216 primitive) 47, 61, 62, 74, 76, 118, Bellows, Henry Adams 66, 216, 238, 148, 226 255

317 318 Index

Bennett, Arnold 31, 36, 63, 248, class status 30, 33–42 passim, 48, 251, 252 52, 53, 71, 87, 89, 100, 122, 134, Benois, Aleksandr 11, 13, 14, 21, 91, 138–9, 142, 169, 199–201, 203, 92, 173, 176, 178, 196, 202, 203, 238–9, 251, 261 204, 205, 213, 214, 218, 224, 225, Cléopâtre (Nuits d’Egypte) 43, 44, 63, 229, 232, 257, 258, 261, 270, 271, 64, 68, 97, 105, 135, 221, 231, 232, 272, 273, 275, 278, 279, 280 233, 258, 275, 276, 280 Binshtok, Vladimir 234 Cocteau, Jean 11, 12, 53, 61, 132, Blanche, Jacques-Émile 12, 41, 94, 168, 171, 187, 247, 251, 262, 263 97, 99, 123, 137, 144, 170, 187, 235, colonialism (see also imperialism) 245, 246, 247, 261, 263, 265, 281 16, 56–9, 63, 127, 128, 144 Bolm, Adolf 125, 130, 257, 272 connoisseurship, expertise 4–5, 7, Bonnard, Abel 60–1 10, 12–14 passim, 19, 20, 27, 33–6, Bonnard, Pierre 44 38, 41, 46, 59–60, 74, 84, 86, 89, Boris Godunov 208, 229, 254 90–2 passim, 126, 131–2, 136–8, Borodin, Aleksandr 97, 270, 275, 144, 148, 156, 157, 161, 171–4 280 passim, 177, 182–6 passim, 192, Botkin, Sergei 271, 277 211, 213, 221, 229, 235 Bourman, Anatole (Kuchinsky) 136, connoisseurship, as innate quality 142, 178, 225, 247, 264, 265, 267, 35, 89 269, 280 corporeality, the body as matter 3, Brussel, Robert 65, 97, 271 17, 19, 52–3, 62, 66, 72, 84–5, 89–91, 109, 111, 112, 116–18, Calvocoressi, Michel-Dimitri 48, 121–5, 132–5, 140, 141–8, 151–2, 146, 147, 192, 273 155–6, 159, 164, 167, 168, 172, canonisation (see also canons) 2, 27, 173–4, 177, 182, 185, 243, 250, 40, 42, 87–8, 99, 172, 239, 243, 246 252, 264 canons, of art 4–9 passim, 15–16, 20, cosmopolitanism 35, 38, 119, 249, 23, 30, 43, 64, 84, 87–8, 95, 119, 253 182, 185, 215, 250 costume 6, 8, 32, 39, 60, 64, 71–2, Capell, Richard 107, 222 96, 98, 101, 102, 106 126–7, 131, Capus, Alfred 223, 263 132, 140, 143, 146, 152, 157, 160, Carter, Huntly 88, 252 166, 197, 206, 211, 213, 214, 216, Cecchetti, Enrico 101, 197 217, 219–21 passim celebrity 19, 41, 90, 135, 140, 146, Craig, Edward Gordon 89, 260, 272, 153, 180, 244 280 censorship 34, 72, 129, 134, 196, 201, 203, 209, 270 dance, as graceful 30, 46–7, 68, 75, Chagall, Marc 99 103–4, 112, 116–17, 122, 124–6, Chantavoine, Jean 112, 173 129, 131, 132, 139, 146, 148, 149, Chekhov, Anton 209, 252, 271 158, 161, 162, 168, 240, 260, 262, child prodigy – see prodigy 264 Chopin, Frédéric 77, 98, 166, 213, dance, ragtime 43, 47, 135 233 dance, (significance of ) technique of choreographer – see ballet master 18, 22, 23, 29, 30, 106, 110, 113, choreography, as idealist model of 116, 124, 152, 157–64 passim, 215, authorship 85, 157, 241 228, 231, 233, 237, 246, 258, 260, circus (see also music hall) 160, 161, 281 165, 191, 196, 199, 234, 237, 281 dandyism 127, 138–40, 199, 263 Index 319

Danse Siamoise (Les Orientales) 98, Ellis, Havelock 56, 114, 260 123, 125, 126, 245 Elssler, Fanny 39, 197 Les Danses Polovtsiennes 63, 65, 97, emotion, as instinctive and 110, 130, 198, 224, 275 uncivilised 19, 33, 62–4, 66, 67, Debay, Victor 108, 254 107, 115, 122, 125, 252, 253 Debussy, Claude 41, 77, 78, 181, emotion, as codified and gendered 207, 219, 244, 254, 266 102–4, 122, 134, 137 Decadence 138, 248 emotion, expression of 155, 162–3, degeneration 57, 59, 62, 63, 72, 114, 170, 171 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 128, 129, empire – see imperialism 130, 132, 134, 138, 187, 244, 248, entertainment, as ‘low culture’ 260, 261, 267, 269 opposed to art 18, 20, 29–36, Delsartism 213, 258, 261, 274 41, 46, 67, 70, 84, 86–9, 108, 113, Denis, Maurice 235, 281 119, 138, 160, 161, 165, 191, 234, desire 31, 53–4, 63, 110, 117, 126, 236–8, 248, 250 127, 130–8 passim, 141, 148, 184–5, ephemerality, of performance (see also 187, 247, 251, 260, 261 nostalgia) 5–6, 39, 43, 50, 88, 186, Diaghilev, Sergei 1, 9–22 passim, 29, 251 37–43 passim, 51–4 passim, 69, 70, (La) Esmeralda 88, 212, 214 77, 91–3, 96–100 passim, 113, 130, eugenics 121, 128, 185, 267 132, 133, 139–40, 152, 153, 163, 166, 168, 170–1, 173–4, 177, 178–9, Fedorova, Sophia 95 181, 184, 187, 188, 191–3, 195, Le Festin 97, 98, 216, 232, 233, 234, 199–201, 202–10, 212, 214, 217, 275, 280, 281 218, 219–23 passim, 225, 227–32, La Fête chez Thérèse 248 233, 236–9 passim, 246, 248, 249, La Fille de Gudule 214 254, 255, 256, 266, 267, 268, 269, La Fille Mal Gardée 98, 212 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 276, 277, La Fille du Pharaon 239, 280, 282 278, 279–81 passim Filosofov, Dmitry 40, 202, 270 Don Quixote 88, 213, 214, 215, Filosofova, Anna 195, 204 274 Finck, Henry T. 248 Dostoyevsky, Fiodor 48, 195, 207 Flitch, J. E. Crawford 46–7, 67, 101, dress, significance of (habitus) 31, 104, 107, 115, 116, 120, 141, 152, 36, 52–3, 55, 71–3, 140, 142–3, 180, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 221, 227, 199 238, 250, 253, 260, 264, 265, 266, dress reform 71–3 276, 281 Dryden, Elizabeth 118, 134 Fokine, Mikhail (Michel) 10, 11, 14, Duff, Lady Juliet 175, 278 42, 45, 48–9, 60, 64, 85, 91, 93, 96, Duncan, Isadora 32, 68, 72, 77, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 110, 103–4, 114, 116, 212–13, 215, 220, 130, 133, 135, 156, 160, 182, 212, 227, 258, 259, 260, 274 213, 215–18, 222, 224, 228, 229, Duncan, Raymond 47, 260 231, 232, 233, 239–41, 253, 255, dusha 48, 118, 195 256, 257, 258, 259, 261, 265, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, Edwards, Misia – see Sert, Misia 282 effeminacy 55, 123, 125, 127–8, 129, Foyer de la danse 31, 53–4 131–2, 146, 195, 262 Franco-Russian alliance (1893/1894, effort, hiding of 112, 124, 126, 140, see also Entente cordiale or Triple 157, 161, 165, 176–7, 262, 266 entente) 207 320 Index free-form dance 19, 32, 47, 77, 88, Godebska, Misia – see Sert, Misia 108, 113, 114–16, 156, 159, 213, Gorsky, Aleksandr 23, 213–18, 241, 233, 248, 260, 274, 281 274, 275, 276 Freud, Sigmund 134, 184 Graham, Martha 15, 274 Fuller, Loïe 32, 77, 115, 213, 262, Greffuhle, Élisabeth Countess de 38 274 Grigoriev, Sergei 11, 13, 14, 101, 233, 258, 271, 275 Galton, Sir Francis 185 Grisi, Carlotta 39, 197 Gauthier-Villars, Henri 33, 39, 109, Gross, Valentine 52, 169, 251, 264 110, 226 Geltzer, Ekaterina 108, 246 Hahn, Reynaldo 53, 78, 248, 279 gender, conferring authority (see also hegemony, functions of 7–8, 13–16, connoisseurship, genius) 19, 31, 58, 89–90, 92, 128, 129, 176, 179, 34, 64, 85, 108, 109, 112–18, 122, 180, 182, 191–2, 223, 250 134, 136–8, 165, 201, 267 history, as ‘progress’ 57–9, 63, 122, gender roles, in ballet 3–4, 52–4, 123, 226 63–4, 98–9, 113, 122, 126–32, 133, Hoffmann, E. T. A. 44, 233 135–6, 144, 166, 195, 234, 281 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 162, 249 Genée, Adeline 151, 226 homosexuality, as degeneration, ‘generation of the 1860s’ (see also perversion 14, 16, 31, 114, 117, narodniki) 195, 210 125, 187, 259 genius 2–5, 9–10, 18–19, 28, 34–5, homosexuality, as inversion, 40–1, 49, 64, 70, 74, 83–91, 94, 98, androgyny 126, 129, 130, 138 107, 108–13, 114–17, 118–20, 121, homosexuality, in law 53, 200 124–6, 128, 131, 132, 136, 140, homosexuals, in audience 53–4, 141–46, 148, 151–52, 155–9, 161–2, 136–7, 251 164–7, 169, 171–2, 173–7, 182–8, Huysmans, Joris-Karl 33, 53 221, 235, 241, 243–244, 248, 260, 267, 276, 281 icons 204, 208, 272 genius, as inexplicable 5–6, 108, Imperial Theatres 20, 22, 39–41 112, 141–2, 174–7, 183, 241 passim, 75, 92, 104, 108, 150, 156, genius, as unlearned 19, 34–3, 162, 178, 192, 193, 196–9, 205, 107–9, 111, 151, 155–7, 161–2, 164, 206, 207, 209–17 passim, 219–30, 177, 241 232–4, 236, 239, 268, 273, 274, genius, gender of 19, 34, 85, 108, 276, 277, 279, 282 112, 113–18, 121, 125–6, 131–2, Imperial Theatres, Moscow Bolshoi 146, 165 ballet 213, 214, 216, 218, 219, Gerdt, Pavel 96, 276 268 Gesammtkunstwerk (see also total Imperial Theatres, St. Petersburg work of art) 70 85, 93, 98, 99, Ghéon, Henri (Vangeon) 74, 108, 196, 197, 199, 214, 216, 219, 220, 115–16, 131–2, 144, 253, 259, 278 222, 230, 231, 275, 277 Giselle 39, 43, 78, 96, 98, 99, 103, imperialism (see also colonialism, 133, 166, 176, 212, 218, 219, 221, race) 22, 56–9, 67, 118, 191, 224, 224, 229, 230, 233, 254, 256, 258, 252 274, 279 individualism, as anti-Russian 194, Glazunov, Aleksandr 230, 280 203 Glinka, Mikhail 197, 207, 280 individuality, as a characteristic (see Glushkovsky, Adam 232, 268 also personality) 64, 79, 83–6, 108, Index 321

118–20, 121–2, 139, 167, 171–2, Lieven, Prince Peter 2, 12, 92, 96, 201, 203, 241, 248, 260 159, 214, 240, 250, 256, 258, 265, inorodtsy 178, 195, 202, 203, 267, 267, 268, 269, 273, 279 278 Lifar, Serge 13, 186, 207, 233, 251, intellect, significance of 19, 66–7, 256, 270, 280, 282 83, 85, 90, 109, 111, 113, 116–17, Lombroso, Cesare 114, 120, 185, 187 121–2, 165, 177, 182, 260 lubochnaia kartinka, lubok 204, 270 Iribe, Paul 52, 168, 251 Lunacharsky, Anatoli 73 Lvov, Prince Pavel 199–200, 269 Jeux 1, 5, 37, 44, 48, 68, 77, 78, 101, 131, 169, 184, 223 madness – see mental illness Johnston, A. E. 62, 65, 97, 111, 113, Mamontov, Savva 204, 206, 209, 162, 238, 253 271 Jullien, Adolphe 254 Mamontova, Elisaveta 205, 206 Manzotti, Luigi 30 Karalli, Vera 96, 281–2 Marnold, Jean 74 Karsavina, Tamara 4, 53, 75, 88, 96, Marty, André Edouard 75, 251 99, 105, 112, 127, 133, 151, 160, Massine, Leonid 263, 264 163, 170, 173, 175, 198, 212, 217, masterwork 4, 15, 30, 43, 83–4, 87 220, 229, 234, 250, 256, 257, 258, Mauclair, Henri 45, 69, 77, 101, 250, 259, 260, 277, 280, 282 255, 278 Kessler, Count Harry 249 mental illness 2, 5–6, 19, 145, 171, Kinney, Troy & Kinney, Margaret 182–7, 200, 243, 246, 267 West 60, 72, 76, 104, 213, 229, de Meyer, Baron Adolph 94, 99, 168, 252, 260, 264, 265, 274, 280 257 Klimt, Gustav 99 de Meyer, Baroness Olga Kokoschka, Oscar 99, 168 Caracciolo 53 Korovin, Konstantin 203, 214 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 262, 273 The Krotkov (Mamontov) Private The ‘Mighty’ Five (kuchkists) 203, Opera 209, 212, 215 270–1, 273 Kshesinskaia, (Romanovsky- Ministry of Court 205, 219, 272 Krassinsky) 93, 163, 199, 229, 255, Minsky, Nikolai (Vilenkin) 73, 223, 257, 276, 281 236, 270, 273 Kugel, Aleksandr (‘Homo de Miomandre, Francis (Durand, Novus’) 281, 282 François) 49–50, 157, 162, 177 kustari and kustarnichestvo 204–5, Mir iskusstva, miriskusstniki 20, 22, 207, 271 37, 40, 43, 48, 69, 91, 202–6, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214, 218, 226, 233, Le Lac des Cygnes 85, 214, 229, 275 248, 249, 262, 270, 271, 272, 273 Lalo, Pierre 166, 198, 223, 253, 254, misogyny (see also gender) 125 255 modernisation 247 Laloy, Louis 48, 117, 273, 278 modernism 41–5 passim, 73, 193, Larionov, Mikhail 12 203, 205, 206, 210, 223, 243, 247, Legat, Nikolai (Nicolas) 93, 198, 274, 254, 279 276 modernity, as inaesthetic 46–8, 68 Levinson, André (Andrei) 73, 98, Moderwell, Hiram Kelly 279 111, 112, 114, 126, 192, 214, 233, Molineau, Jane 94, 134, 149, 151, 235, 253, 259, 279, 280 181 Lewis, Wyndham 99 Montenegro, Robert 125 322 Index

Montesquiou, Count Robert de 38, Nijinska, Eleanora (Bereda) 1, 92, 52, 53 93, 200 Mordkin, Mikhail 102, 108, 250, 251 Nijinsky, Romola (de Pulzsky) 9, 10, Moreau, Gustave 33, 44 14, 90, 136, 165, 167, 168, 171, The Moscow Art Theatre 207, 209, 174, 179, 180, 185, 187, 245, 246, 210, 212, 213 247, 259, 266, 267, 276 Moses, Montrose J. 112, 228, 265, Nijinsky, Stanislav 245 274 Nijinsky, Thomas 1 music hall, variety theatre 19, 20, Nijinsky, Vaslav as choreographer 1, 29, 31–42 passim, 70, 78, 87, 89, 3, 5, 9–16 passim, 18, 20, 40, 42, 99, 100, 108, 128, 135, 158, 161, 45, 64, 67, 68, 74, 78, 85, 90, 97, 209, 211, 237–9, 250, 273, 274 99, 101, 105, 137, 169, 172, 186, Mussorgsky, Modest 205, 207, 208, 193, 219, 223, 228–9, 238, 241, 229 242–4, 246, 247, 274, 275, 278, 279 Narcisse 44, 52, 99, 101, 125, Nijinsky, Vaslav as genius 2–5, 9–10, 129–30, 131, 158, 166, 257, 262 18–19, 49, 83–5, 89–91, 98, 107–13, narodniki (Populists, see also 115–16, 118, 120, 121, 124–6, 128, ‘generation of the 1860s’) 194–5, 131–2, 136, 140, 141–2, 143, 144, 203, 209 145–6, 148, 151–2, 155, 157, 158, Narodny, Ivan (Sibul, Jaan) 265 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166–7, narrative, in ballet 4, 23, 30–1, 169, 171, 172, 173–7, 182–8, 221, 33–4, 54, 56, 63, 98, 102–6, 111–12, 235, 241, 243–4, 267, 281 133, 135–6, 139, 211, 216–18, 229, Nijinsky, Vaslav as star dancer 1–4, 233–4, 238, 240, 248, 280 18–19, 27–8, 52, 54, 83–92, 94–6, Natanson, Misia – see Sert, Misia 99, 101, 107–8, 113, 115, 121, nation, as race 57–8, 118, 128, 142 127–32, 134–7, 144–6, 148, 152–5, nationalism and genius 28, 118–20 159, 162, 164–72, 179, 180–1, 184, nationalisms, Russian 193–5, 268 187–8, 191, 198, 200, 202, 219–20, natural movement 19, 46–8, 63, 222, 228, 238, 267 65–8, 72, 103–5, 107–8, 111, 113, Nijinsky, Vaslav as virtuoso 4, 9, 13, 116, 120, 143, 148, 156, 159, 161–2, 18–19, 63, 83, 89–90, 93–4, 97–8, 163–4, 250, 258, 259 101, 108–9, 111–13, 116, 121, 137, natural talent, genius as 34, 108, 155–62, 164, 166, 234, 257, 265, 111, 143–4, 155–7, 161–4, 241, 255 281 nature, as inexplicable 65–8, 107–8, Nijinsky, Vaslav gendering of 19, 63, 116 121, 123–32, 132–3, 146, 258, 260 neo-nationalism (see also kustari) Nijinsky, Vaslav leap 3, 98, 109–12, 204–5, 210 118, 124, 137, 143, 151, 158, 160, neo-realism 210, 273 161, 167, 175, 176, 259, 262, 264, Nicholas II 193, 199, 205, 207, 252, 266 272 Nijinsky, Vaslav youth 19, 49–50, Nietzsche, Friedrich 187, 270 85, 93–4, 108, 116, 126, 128, 131, Nijinska, Bronislava 12, 13, 23, 92, 140, 178, 180–1, 186, 199, 219–20, 93, 98, 150, 161, 177, 178, 196, 251 198, 200, 220, 222, 230, 240, 245, nijinskymania 1–5, 14, 17, 28 247, 255, 256, 258, 262, 266, 267, de Noailles, Countess Anna 134, 268, 269, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 136, 147, 250 280, 282 Nordau, Max 76, 122, 260 Index 323 nostalgia 19, 42–51, 61, 156, 186, the primitive 45, 56–8, 61–4 passim, 214, 223, 225, 229 74, 76, 114, 118, 144, 207–8, 252, Nouvel, Walter 13, 178, 202, 203, 253, 260 204, 246, 269, 270, 276 primitivism 64, 119, 247, 272, 278 novelty 29, 38, 40, 75, 77, 94, Prince Igor 97, 125, 224, 275 117, 201, 217, 223, 226, 231, 243, Le Prince Jardinier 98 249 prodigy 19, 50, 91–3, 107, 108, 112, L’Oiseau de Feu 77, 99, 130, 224, 258, 151, 161–2, 175, 280 278 Proust, Marcel 41, 44, 53 The Orient, geography of 59–60 psychoanalysis 134, 182, 183–7 Les Orientales 78, 123, 125, 126, 233, passim, 266 245 psychiatry 172, 183, 185–6, 246 Pushkin, Aleksandr 204, 232 Orientalism 16, 19, 29, 33, 43, 49, 55, 56–79, 225, 237, 247 race, concept of 19, 28, 53, 118, 252 racism, examples of in the Ballets Paganini, Nicolò 86 Russes works cover, 97, 133, 142, pan-Slavism 195 256 Parker, Henry Taylor 259, 260, 279 racism 19, 28–9, 45, 46, 47, 55, patronage (Maecenas) 31, 34, 35, 57–9, 61–2, 64–5, 73–5, 78–9, 38–42, 43, 96, 97, 100, 140, 195–6, 107–8, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128, 198–200, 203, 205–6, 210, 212, 249, 129, 133, 138–9, 142, 144, 186, 270, 271 226, 229, 232, 244, 252, 254, 260, Pavillon d’Armide 39, 43, 44, 63, 64, 263, 267 75, 93, 97, 98, 107, 111, 126, 146, Rambert, Marie (Miriam 176, 200, 224, 230, 231, 232, 239, Ramberg) 12, 166, 167, 171, 173, 245, 253, 257, 261, 275, 275, 276, 245, 263, 264, 282 279, 280, 282 Ravel, Maurice 41, 77, 78 Pavlova, Anna 2, 91, 96, 99, 135, raznochintsy 194–5, 202 163, 168, 212, 226, 234, 235, 237, Realism 29–30, 34, 203, 208, 209, 238, 246, 250, 256, 259, 264, 265, 226 269, 272, 281 realism in dance (see also natural Perros, Jean 67, 253 movement, verisimilitude) 47–8, personality (see also individuality) 5, 78, 210, 213–15, 241, 257, 273 86, 89, 108, 112–13, 115, 133, 155, recapitulation theory (see also 164, 167–72, 201 Russians) 57, 252 Petipa, Marius 22, 23, 192, 195, 196, reconstruction 5, 8, 15–16, 243, 247 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217, 230, Repin, Ilia 204, 270 232, 233, 239, 268, 273, 274, 279, Ricketts, Charles 52, 154, 250, 251 280, 282 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai 77, 208, Le Petit Cheval Bossé 214, 232 233, 254, 270, 279, 280 Petrouchka 22, 44, 48, 77, 78, 99, Ripon, Lady Constance Gwladys 101, 103, 105, 130, 131, 162–3, Robison de Grey, Marchioness 166, 171, 176, 184, 198, 216, 217, of 52, 174–5, 249, 276 222, 238, 256, 258 Rivière, Jacques 73–4, 76, 151, 180, Poiret, Paul 71, 251, 253 182, 254, 257 de Polignac, Princess Winnaretta Roberts, Mary Fanton 262 Singer 38, 53 Rodin, Auguste 99, 122, 140, 235, Preobrazenskaia, Olga 255, 281 257 324 Index

Roerich, Nicholas (Rerikh, Nikolai) silencing 7, 11, 13, 37, 53, 85, 91, 271, 275 100, 171, 174, 177, 182, 266 Romanov, Boris 218 slaves, in ballet 48, 63, 97, 98, 126, Romanov, Dowager Empress Mariia 127, 130, 133, 166, 224 Fedorovna 221, 276 slavophiles 193, 194, 204, 233 Romanov, Grand Duke Vladimir The Society of Travelling Exhibitions, Aleksandrovich 206 the Wanderers (peredvizhniki) Romanov, Grand Duke Paul 203–4, 208–9, 270, 271 Aleksandrovich 39 Sokolova, Lydia (Hilda Romanov, Grand Duke Sergei Munnings) 13, 48, 152, 246 Mikhailovich 199, 276 Le Spectre de la Rose 4, 22, 43, 44, Rubinstein, Ida 99, 105, 132, 135, 75–6, 78, 98, 106, 111–12, 125, 127, 198, 224, 233, 256–7, 262, 266 131, 132, 135, 136, 146–7, 154, Russia, as Third Rome 193–4, 278 160, 166, 168, 169, 171, 176, 198, Russian soul – see dusha 246, 259, 262, 280 Russians, as children 57, 61–2, 143, St.-Johnston, Reginald 46, 63, 88, 144, 147, 168, 169, 253, 254, 258, 253, 259, 274 260, 263, 264 St. Denis, Ruth 59 Russians, as savages, St. John-Brenon, Algernon 181, 251 primitives 56–65, 74–6, 111, 118, Staats, Leo 66 144, 147, 207–8, 225, 226, 252, Stanislavsky, Konstantin 253, 260, 272, 278 (Alekseev) 209, 273 Russians, as Slavs 58, 65, 142–4, the star, stardom 1, 2, 4–5, 18–19, 194–5, 253, 263, 268 27, 28, 30, 41, 52, 54, 83–90, 91–6 Le Sacre du Printemps 1, 5, 15, 73, 77, passim, 99, 100, 101, 105, 107, 108, 101, 172, 182, 186, 218, 223, 243, 113, 115, 121, 127, 129–32, 134–6, 246, 267, 278 137, 144–6, 148, 152–5, 156, 159, 162, 164–72, 179–81, 184, 188, 191, Saint-Léon, Arthur 232, 268 194, 197–200 passim, 202, 212, 215, Sandoz, Maurice 152, 175, 246 216, 219–22, 228, 229, 234, 236, Sargent, John Singer 41, 99, 126, 238, 244, 266, 267, 269, 276, 282 168, 257 the star, body of 19, 30, 84–5, the savage (see also primitive) 46, 89–91, 131–2, 144–6, 167–8, 171–2, 47, 57–62, 65, 111, 147, 225, 247, 188 252, 260 the star, imaginary personas for 19, Schéhérazade 43, 44, 64, 68, 71, 75, 54, 130–1, 134–5, 145–6, 165, 171, 77, 97, 105, 127, 129, 130, 132, 266 134, 135, 153, 160, 176, 198, 216, Stasov, Vladimir 203, 270, 272 224, 233, 237, 240, 254, 256, 262, Stendhal syndrome 89, 255 278, 282 Strachey, Lytton 53, 171 Schneider, Louis 192, 278 Strauss, Richard 77, 78, 162, 254, Schumann, Robert 43, 78, 233, 265 254 Stravinsky, Igor 11, 13, 15, 42, 54, Sem (Goursat, Georges) 53, 160 77–8, 140, 173, 174–5, 178, 181, Sert, José María 132 217, 246, 247, 258, 260, 273, 275, Sert, Misia 2, 40, 41, 42, 132, 278 277, 278, 280 Shawn, Ted 128, 159 Struss, Karl 99 silence, of the dancer 13, 65, 134, Suarès, André (‘Yves Scantrel’) 50, 173–7, 183, 186 67–8, 117, 138 Index 325 subconscious, significance of 175–6 Valberg, Ivan 232 Svetlov, Valerian (Ivchenko) 192, Valentino, Rudolph 135 213, 223, 237, 239–40, 246, 271, Valse Fantasie 218, 275 273, 276, 279, 281, 282 Van Vechten, Carl 144, 157, 163, La Sylphide 135 174, 258, 261, 266, 282 Les Sylphides (Chopiniana) 39, 43, 44, variety theatre – see music hall 77, 85, 97, 98, 103, 124, 166, 176, vaudeville – see music hall 216, 218, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, Vaudoyer, Jean-Louis 43, 45, 49, 61, 275, 279, 280, 282 71, 147, 156, 232, 255, 278 Sylvia 205 verisimilitude (see also natural Symons, Arthur 41, 62, 248, 265 movement, realism) 48, 60, 68, 78 Véron, Louis-Désiré 31 tableau (stage picture) 102, 104–5, Vestris, Auguste 93, 97, 256, 268 253 Un Vie pour le Tsar 197 Taglioni, Marie 39, 297, 218 the virtuoso, virtuosity 4, 13, 18–19, Talashkino 205, 208 30, 33, 69, 83, 86–8, 89, 90, 93, 94, Tchaikovsky, Piotr 195, 196, 204, 97, 98, 101, 108–9, 111–16 passim, 211, 212, 230, 273, 280 121, 132, 133, 137, 155–62, 164, Tcherepnin, Aleksandr 280 166, 192, 197, 230, 233, 234, 244, Teliakovsky, Vladimir 199, 205, 257, 265, 271, 281 212–14, 219, 220, 225, 226, 276, the virtuoso, as trained 18, 33, 86, 277 88–9, 90, 108–9, 113, 115, 133, Tenisheva, Princess Maria 204–5, 155–62, 164, 234, 265 208, 255, 270, 271 the virtuoso, improvisation as Terry, Ellen 98, 116, 118, 158, hallmark of 87, 116 162–3, 174, 181 Volkonsky, Prince Sergei 73, 205, Thamar 64, 68, 74, 99, 135, 224, 253 240–1, 265, 267, 282 Till Eulenspiegel 1, 5 Volynsky, Akim (Flekser) 234, 279, Tolstoy, Lev, Tolstoyanism 139, 140, 281 150, 200, 246 the total work of art 66, 69, 70, Wagner, Richard 31, 69–70, 87, 89, 73–4, 76, 78, 79, 100, 134, 154, 248, 250, 270 209, 215–16 Weininger, Otto 185 Touchard, Maurice 61 Whitworth, Geoffrey 50, 78, 124, tradition, significance of 19–20, 23, 143, 162, 168, 217, 261, 264, 282 32–3, 41, 88, 98–9, 115, 120, 191, Wilde, Oscar 14, 33, 51–3, 72, 125, 192, 198, 225–34, 239–41, 279, 282 139, 224, 242, 251, 261, 262 La Tragédie de Salomé 99, 218 travesty dancing 128–9 youth, loss of 43, 45, 49–50 Triple entente (1907, see also Franco- youth, of dancers 19, 49–50, 68, Russian alliance) 39, 208, 222 91–3, 98, 108, 118, 128, 160, 180–1, Troubridge, Una 99, 137 199, 251, 253, 260, 262, 280 Trouhanova, Natalia 256 youth, of mankind (see also the Tugenkhold, Iakov 198, 214, 222, primitive, primitivism) 19, 74, 274, 280 122, 254 urban life, as opposed to nature 34, zapadniki (Westernizers) 22, 193, 45–7, 51, 59, 119, 123, 132, 138, 195, 204, 208 209 Zucchi, Virginia 92, 212