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mperfect Partners August 1935, after months of rumors, Edward Johnson hired George Balanchine and the Ameri­ n can Ballet to rake over the Metropolitan Opera's "dance features and diverrissements." Johnson, the Met's new general manager, had vowed to revive its Depression-era fortunes by Americanizing the personnel and democratizing the audience. In engaging the company, he said, the Mer "was deriving the benefit of needed young blood and a fresh viewpoint." The American Baller was definitely a young organization. Dreamed up by Lincoln Kirstein, funded by Edward M. M. Warburg and directed by Balanchine, whose centenary we celebrate this year, the compa­ ny was barely six months old. The dancers, too, were young - their average age was nineteen - and all were American-born or -raised. Just as fresh was Balanchine's choreography. Although he had been creat­ ing ballers for more than a decade - first in Perrograd, then in Paris, London and Monte Carlo - only in March 1935, with the American Ballet's debut season in New York, did Americans see a body of his LYNN GARAFOLA charts the rocky course of George Balanchine's ,,, career at the Met during the Ed ward Johnson years work, including his first ballets choreo­ graphed in the U.S. Johnson's invitation thrilled Kirstein. "I fell Clockwise from above: Ruthanna Boris and promptly in love with the whole dusty fabric William Dollar rehearsing Bartered Bride at the Met. 1936: of the Met," he wrote years later. "Here histo­ Balanchine: American Ballet ballerina Holly Howard: ry lived, as it must have for nearly a hundred Lew Christensen as Balanchine's Apollo. a feature years, in a genuine nineteenth-century house, a dinosaur in amber, static yet breathing .... [E]verything ... merged in a heady potion to poison me further with another serious attack of red-and-gold disease. " Alas, for Kirstein, the relationship soon foundered, and in the spring of 1938 the American Baller left the Met. The parting was front-page news. "The tradition of the ballet at the Metropolitan is bad ballet," Balanchine declared. "I cannot do bad ballet. That is why I can­ not stay." It wasn't the only reason. Three weeks earlier, Johnson had declined to renew the American Ballet's contract. The choreographer's bitterness notwithstanding, his three Met seasons witnessed several milestones. Among them were Balan­ chine's dances for operas such as Carmen, Aida, Tannhauser, Sam­ son et Dalila, The Bartered Bride and Lakme; his luminous - if controversial - production of Orfeo ed Euridice, his first Stravin­ sky Festival; the revival of his signature work, Apollo, and his first American baller, Serenade (both still danced by New York City Baller). Finally, thanks to the Met, the American Baller grew up. By 1937, critic Edwin Denby observed in Modern Music, it had become "the first-class institution it was meant to be." From the first, Balanchine's Met appointment was controver­ sial. John Martin, the influential dance critic of The New York Times, regretted "that once again American artists have been passed by for a high artistic post for which at least half a dozen of them are eminently fitted." Balanchine had taken to heart 43 Johnson's desire to freshen up the ballet. contract, but it was understood by the In Aida, he abandoned the traditional dancers. As the Newark Ledger reported "Oriental" and "Egyptian" motifs in in an article about American ballet favor of constructivist gymnastics and an members "lured" from New Jersey, "at acrobatic adagio that had Holly the end of the season, the ballet will Howard, Balanchine's muse of the probably have several weeks of just its moment, slithering in a ring pose down own programs." her partner's entire body. He spiced up Throughout the year, the company the Persian dance in Lakme and brought took part in the Met's regular Sunday real fire to the Spanish dances in Car­ concerts. It also danced on programs that men. In Tannhduser, boys rolled on top paired short operas with ballets from the of girls, and in one particularly athletic company's repertory, including Reminis­ duet, sexy Daphne Vane lost her top, revealing a modest bosom cence, Serenade, Chopin Concerto, Mozartiana and Errante. In that caused the old chorus men to sigh "piccinina." February 1936, listeners as far away as Los Angeles could hear a Aida split the critics down the middle. One who applauded live radio broadcast of Tchaikovsky's music for Serenade, along Balanchine's changes was the New York American's Leonard with Gianni Schicchi and Pagliacci. Soon, rumors were flying Liebling. "Lovers of the dance had been offended and bored for about an all-ballet evening. One idea was Rimsky-Korsakov's Le years by the Metropolitan custom of having girls dressed as Coq d'Or, staged with huge success at the Met in 1918. There Negro boys furnishing unconvincing entertainment for Amner­ was talk of Afternoon ofa Faun and even Act II of Giselle. Anoth­ is. Now that function is done by a group of black youths who er tide bandied about was Cluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. In mid­ indulge in a becomingly savage and lively dance." In the 1930s, April, the Met signed the company for the "popular" season ($3 cross-dressing, not blacking-up, was a problem. top!) that began in May. Along with incidental dances, the com­ Danton Walker lined up with the naysayers. "The first Aida of pany agreed to "furnish" up to four ballets "for independent per­ the Metropolitan Opera's New Deal brought forth cheers, formances in conjunction with short operas." applause, laughter and - believe it or not - hisses," he report­ The Bat, the first of the new works, was a critical and popular ed in the Daily News. "The laughter and hisses were for the success. It was set to Strauss's Die Fledermaus music and paired American Ballet, which, in its effort to be different, executed improbably with Lucia di Lammermoor. Holly Howard and Lew some of the most astonishing figures that ever shocked a Met Christensen played the eponymous bat, each with a huge wing audience. Many disparaging things have been said about Rosina of smoky China silk. There was a luminous blue-green back­ Calli's old-regime ballet, but at any rate Mme. Galli never intro­ ground, against which the dancers "romped fast and merrily" (as duced snake-hips into the temple dances, had her ballerinas Pitts Sanborn wrote), although "the orchestra played Strauss's doing splits, or permitted the boys and girls to go piggy-back or music none too well." The "audience ... received [the whole jump between each other's legs in the victory scene." show) with unstinted enthusiasm." Balanchine retaliated by inviting columnist Dorothy Kilgallen Orfeo, two days later, was another story. The production was the to the huge Fortieth Street rehearsal studio. "Mr. Balanchine's brainchild of Pavel T chelitchew, a Russian emigre artist who had ballet," she told readers of the New York Evening journal, "kicked worked with Balanchine in Paris and recently moved to New the music critics in their aisle seats and sent them choking to York. "I am a mad Russian," he told the Met's chief carpenter, their midnight typewriters with words formerly used only in Carl Steinmetz. "In the spring, we will work together. Drink this reviewing Harlem floor shows. It was this which delighted, if whiskey. In April, you remember who I am and what I want." also slightly disturbed, Mr. Balanchine today. The critics don't The new Orfeo put the dancers onstage and the singers in the know anything about dancing,' he declared in gentle Russian pit. "The vision was radical," wrote Kirstein. "We saw Hell as a accents. 'They are like prima donnas. They think only of the concentration-camp with flying military slave-drivers lashing singing, the singing .... What they called snake hips in Aida is the forced labor; the Elysian Fields as an ether dream, a dessicated way Ethiopians danced in those days. Not on the toes, in night­ bone-dry limbo of suspended animation, and Paradise as [a self­ gowns, but with the hips."' illuminated Milky Way)." It made terrific copy for a choreographer who had just landed Ruthanna Boris, a charter member of the American Ballet, his first job on Broadway. But it didn't halt the complaints about remembers Hell as full of "monkey business." Dancers slithered the temple dance. Within days, the "danse du ventre," as the on the wide, shallow steps, while male devils on wires flew over­ Tim es delicately referred to belly dancing, had "undergone some head. By contrast, the Elysian Fields was beautifully choreo­ alteration." It took two more revisions, the last signed "after Peti­ graphed, with the dancers shrouded in veils that Orpheus lifted pa," before "official silence gratefully closed," as Kirstein put it, searching for Eurydice. over those scandalous snake-hips. The critics hated it. According to Anatole C hujoy, a Russian-speaking dance Samuel Chotzinoff, in the New York Post, was reminded of the writer who enjoyed Balanchine's confidence, the choreographer "poses and gestures ... one sees in the usual solemn ballets of our agreed to the Met contract because it offered the possibility of numerous dance groups" - a reference to the flourishing mod­ presenting evenings of ballet. This was not spelled out in the ern-dance scene. "Amor was entrusted to Mr. William Dollar, a 44 OPERA NEWS strong and muscular gentleman who, at the finale, was hoisted up in the flies by visible cables. The scenes ... expressed, no doubt, something deep and cosmic, since they elud­ ed identification.

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