Balanchine in Russia

Spring2011 Ballet Review From the Spring 2011 issue of Ballet Review Elizabeth Souritz on the Young Balanchine in Russia On the cover: Mark Morris’ Festival Dance. 4 Paris – Peter Sparling 6 Boston – Jeffrey Gantz 8 Stupgart – Gary Smith 10 San Francisco – Leigh Witchel 13 Paris – Peter Sparling 15 Sarasota, FL – Joseph Houseal 17 Paris – Peter Sparling 19 Toronto – Gary Smith 20 Paris – Leigh Witchel 40 Joel Lobenthal 24 A Conversation with Cynthia Gregory Joseph Houseal 40 Lady Aoi in New York Elizabeth Souritz 48 Balanchine in Russia 61 Daniel Gesmer Ballet Review 39.1 56 A Conversation with Spring 2011 Bruce Sansom Editor and Designer: Marvin Hoshino Sandra Genter 61 Next Wave 2010 Managing Editor: Roberta Hellman Michael Porter Senior Editor: Don Daniels 68 Swan Lake II Associate Editor: Joel Lobenthal Darrell Wilkins 48 70 Cherkaoui and Waltz Associate Editor: Larry Kaplan Joseph Houseal Copy Editor: 76 A Conversation with Barbara Palfy Mark Morris Photographers: Tom Brazil Costas 87 London Reporter – Clement Crisp 94 Music on Disc – George Dorris Associates: Peter Anastos 100 Check It Out Robert Greskovic George Jackson Elizabeth Kendall 70 Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds James Supon David Vaughan Edward Willinger Sarah C. Woodcock CoverphotobyTomBrazil: MarkMorris’FestivalDance. Balanchine in Russia great nineteenth-century ballets: the Tchai - kov sky and Glazunov ballets, also Giselle, Le Corsaire, and Esmeralda plus Fokine’s ballets. And during the time that Balanchine worked in the company, there were important revivals Elizabeth Souritz of the ballets that suffered during the difficult years of civil war, when most of the great danc - Balanchine, as we know, left Russia in July ers of the Imperial Ballet went abroad. 1924. The years 1921-1924, which were his for - Balanchine had the opportunity to dance in mative ones, were also a important period for the Fyodor Lopukhov revivals of the The Sleep- Russian art in general. Even during the first ing Beauty and Raymonda (both 1922) and The years after the revolution of 1917, when every- Nutcracker(1923). He also not only watched per- one suffered terrible deprivations – cold and formances by the great Olga Spessivtzeva, but hunger – artistic life was never interrupted. danced with the lovely Elisaveta Gerdt, whose On the contrary, avant-garde artists took ad- style must have had a strong influence on him. vantage of the new freedoms. Even greater op- It was classical dancing at its purest, all beau- portunities were offered when the NEP (new ty and harmony, performed with no attempt economic policy) was inaugurated in 1921. That at dramatization. was the moment when Balanchine graduated Balanchine thus acquired the best in ballet from the Imperial Theaters school. that Rus sia possessed, but he also had the op- Balanchine’s years in Russia have been well portunity to watch, and even participate in, researched in the United States. Ballet Review important experiments. The time just before has published several articles, including in Balanchine left Russia was extraordinarily 1975-76 a substantial piece by Yuri Slonimsky, rich in achievements in all the arts. It is im- who knew Balanchine personally. I think these portant to remember that during the time Bal- re min is cences were never published fully, anchine worked at the GOTOB (Maryin sky), even in Russia: only the small part that Slonim- Lopukhov staged some of his important work: sky inserted into his 1984 book Chudesnoye Bylo The Firebird (1921), the dance-symphony Mag- Riadom s Nami (The Miracle Was Right Next to ni ficence of the Universe (1923), and Night on Bald Us). Some portions of the Mikhail Mikhailov Mountain (1924). book, Life in Ballet (1966), have also been pub- I went through the Petrograd newspapers lished in the States. to discover what Balanchine might have seen A lot of investigating by people in different during 1921-1924. At the beginning of the 1920s countries (including Russia) was done for the there were many exhibitions by avant-garde early dances listed in Choreography by George artists, for example, at the Museum of Art Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works (1984, now on Culture at Isaakievsky Square. This museum the Internet). We have in English the memoirs hosted concerts of modern music, Casimir of Tamara Geva and of Alex an dra Danilova. Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin spoke there, and Solomon Volkov interviewed the choreogra- performances by theater groups were given: pher for Balanchine’s Tchai kov sky, and Fran cis Sergei Radlov’s group performed a play by Mason published I Remember Balanchine(which Velimir Khlebnikov, Zangesi, with sets by reprints the Slonimsky). There is not much to Matiu shin and Malevich, in October 1922. add to this. Balanchine worked with Radlov in 1923 on Of course the most important influence on a play by Ernest Toller, Hinkemann (called in the young Balanchine was the ballet school Russia Eugene the Unfortunate). Balanchine also and the Theater of Opera and Ballet, now once probably saw productions staged by the three again called Maryinsky. At the time the com- greatest Russian theater directors of the time pany still had in its repertory many of the – Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and 48 ©2011 Elizabeth Souritz Lydia Ivanova and Nicholas Efimov in a Balanchine pas de deux, c. 1923. Evgeny Vakhtangov – whose companies per- performances, including participation in the formed in Petrograd in 1922–1924 with impor - chanting of Alexander Blok’s poem “The tant plays: The Magnanimous Cuckold and Give Twelve” in 1923. us Europe(Meyerhold), Phèdreand Giroflé-Girofla Of course, just as important for Balanchine (Tairov), Turandot and The Dybbuk for the Jew- were the dance performances by groups that ish Habimah Theater (Vakhtangov). worked in studios and did experimental cho- We know that Balanchine was associated reography. There were an especially large with the FEKS (Factory of the Eccentric Actor) number of these in Moscow, which Balanchine that staged plays in Petrograd in fall 1922 and may have seen when he traveled there, but in 1923. Balanchine and his dancers worked some troupes came to Petrograd and gave per- with Vsevolod Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, who formances there. Also he must have heard had an experimental Eth nographical Theater about groups such as Vera Maya’s, with her that used the hall of the former Duma in the acrobatic dances in the early 1920s; Inna Cher- Nevsky Prospect. It is in this hall that Bal- netskaya, who flirted with Ausdruckstanz; anchine’s Young Ballet gave some of its own and Ludmila Alex e yeva, who developed Isado- spring 2011 49 ra Duncan’s ideas. Isadora herself danced in gan to change, sometimes it meant reverting Petrograd in February 1922, while her school to ideas from the 1920s. What Bernard Taper, (under Irma) performed there in May 1923. probably using Balanchine’s own account, tells Another group Balanchine very likely saw us about Balanchine’s 1962 visit to Russia is because we know that they gave performanc- very important: He saw the Goleizovsky Skri- es in Petrograd was Lev Lukin’s Free Ballet, in a biniana and was profoundly disappointed. It April 1924. Lukin was a dilettante in dance (he was more or less the same as what had been had had no academic training) but a profes- performed in the 1920s, and for Balanchine sional musician who used Skriabin and Pro - it was incredibly old-fashioned, obsolete. He kofiev for his etudes. They were highly emo- had moved so far in those forty years, but tional, with a hint of ero ticism, for which he Go lei zovsky, because of his circum stances, was soon to be strongly attacked. had hardly any opportunity to develop his Working alongside Balanchine in Petrograd style. were the Heptachor group, which derived Balanchine’s return in 1962 was to a coun- from Duncan, and the studios of Tamara try that had little in common with the one he Gleb ova and Zinaida Verbova. But the great- knew in his youth. He had come at an impor- est influences on Balanchine were two groups: tant moment in Russian politics, Russian art, Kasian Goleizovsky’s Chamber Ballet, which and Russian ballet. The end of the 1950s was came in 1922 with a large repertory of the most the time of the so-called “thaw” (ottepel’), the famous Goleizovsky works, like The Faun, Sa- first years after Stalin’s death in 1953, after the lome, and so forth; and to perhaps a lesser ex- Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956, tent Nikolai Foregger’s Mastfor (Workshop) when Khru shchev denounced the “cult of per- with its “machine dances.” sonality” of Stalin. Things were changing, but The years 1921-1923 were rich in experi- the changes went rather slowly, especially in mental dance, but by 1924 one senses official foreign affairs. pressure becoming stronger. On August 24, In the 1960s, the Cold War that began at the 1924 (about six weeks after Balanchine had end of the 1940s was still in force, even at its left Russia) a decree was issued that mandat- height. It was in 1962, exactly at the time when ed the closing of all private dance schools and New York City Ballet was in Russia, that the studios. Of course, many managed to survive Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. To understand by attaching themselves to state institutions. the tenor of the times, I looked through news- In Moscow, one of these was GAKhN (State papers that appeared in autumn 1962, espe- Academy of Art Science), which did a lot of cially Pravda, the principal paper of the Com- research on experimental dance. It, too, was munist Party. Now, all these years later, we closed five years later. have forgotten the journalistic style of the Lukin’s company did not survive 1924; Go - time, the rhetoric used.

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