Arc de Triomphe From London the Diaghilev company went to Monte Carlo, dancing in opera~ballets and divertissements, and readying new works for the Paris spring season. In the years that fol­ lowed Balanchinewould choreograph dozens Lynn Garafola of opera-ballet numbers, in new works as well as old. The Monte Carlo repertory was inter­ France occupied a special place in the life national, butwith a definite French flavor. For and work of George Balanchine. It was where Balanchine this meantan intense engagement he spent nearly a decade after leaving Russia with French music. in 1924; where he created his oldest extant In the winter of 1925 alone he set dances ballet, Apollo, in 1928; where he founded his to Bizet (Carmen), Massenet (Thai's , Manon , first Western company, Les Ballets 1933; and and Herodiade), Gounod (Faust), and Berlioz where he choreographed one of his greatest (La Damnation de Faust). Later seasons added ballets, Le Palais de Cristal, in 1947. Delibes (Lakme) , Offenbach (The Tales ofHojJ­ Balanchine loved French perfume and mann), and Saint-Saens (Samson et Dalila) as French wine, French cuisine and French cou­ well as additional works by Gounod (Romeo et ture. Many of his closest collaborators, in­ Juliette,Jeanne dl1rc , and Mireille). cluding Stravinsky, the painter Pavel Tcheli­ Balanchine did not treat these jobs as mere tchew, and the costume designer Karinska, hack work. "He charged these dreary experi­ were Russian emigres who came to America ences with a new life and interest, and no de­ only after an extended sojourn in France. Af­ mands on him could curb his imaginative ter Russians, he liked French composers best facility," Ninette de Valois would later remi­ - Faure, Bizet, Delibes, and above all Ravel. nisce. "How refreshing was his originality!"S Balanchine first saw Paris in November Not all these works belonged to the histori­ 1924, with the small, if grandly named Rus­ cal repertory. But barely three months after sian State Ballet that had sailed with him joining the Ballets Russes, he choreographed from Petro grad, toured the German Rhine­ L'Enfant et les Sorti/eges, a brand new work by land, and spent October in London at the France's leading composer, Maurice Ravel, to Empire Theatre, dancing on a music-hall bill. a text by Colette. "How could I ever forget How Diaghilev first heard of them is un­ th[ose] rehearsals," he marveled to a French known. Perhaps it was the ballerina Lydia Lo­ interviewer forty years later, "when the man pokova who alerted him (she had invited them atmyside .. was Ravel himself?,,6In theyears to Bloomsbury for tea with Nicolas Legat)/ or to come Balanchine would revive this lyric Arnold HaskelVor someone connected to The fantasy, not once but three times, as if to res­ 3 Dancing Times . urrect those happy days. 7 An audition was hastily arranged at the Between 1925 and 1929, when he served as Paris apartment of Misia Sert. Diaghilev, Diaghilev's in-house choreographer, Balan­ saying they would hear from him, swept off chine worked with many eminent French art­ to London, where his company was about ists. His first major assignment, Le Chant du to open. Meanwhile, Balanchine's group ran Rossignol (1925) , introduced him to Matisse, out of money, and he sold his best suit so Jack in the Box (1926) to Derain, and Prodigal Son they could eat. 4 Finally, a telegram arrived (1929) to Rouault. La Pastorale (1926) had a with money and a contract to join the Ballets score by Auric, La Chatte (1927) by Sauguet. De­ Russes in England. rain, in particular, struck a sympathetic chord First presented in slightly different form as a lec­ in the young choreographer, who commis­ ture at The New York Public Library for the Per­ sioned designs for several ballets from him in forming Arts at Lincoln Center. 1932 and 1933.8 Both were interested in film, © 2007 Lynn Garafola 73 Olga Spessivtseva and Serge Lifar in La Chatte (1927), music by Henri Sauguet. 72 BALLET REVIEW and according to Balanchine, speaking to In 1929 when Diaghilev died and the Bal­ Arnold Haskell in 1934, he had "worked out lets Russes collapsed, Balanchine's destiny many ideas" with Derain that he hoped to use seemed to lie in France. Jacques Rouche, the now that he was in the "land of films.,,9 Auric, director of the Paris Opera, invited him to too, kept reappearing in Balanchine's life, stage Beethoven's Les Creatures de Promethie both as composer 10 and as an administrator: for the Opera's ballet troupe, with Serge Lifar on Derain's watch as director of the Paris as guest artist. Lifar was the deco god of the Opera from 1962 to 1968, the Opera Ballet late Ballets Russes, Balanchine's first Apollo mounted its first all-Balanchine program.ll and Prodigal Son, a charismatic performer, Another collaborator of Balanchine' s early with a ferocious capacity for hard work and years in France was Boris Kochno, who wrote an ego to match. However, Balanchine had the libretti for La Chatte, Prodigal Son, and most developed tuberculosis. He went to a Swiss of Balanchine's other Diaghilev ballets. Like sanatorium to recover, while Lifar completed Balanchine, Kochno was an emigre; an aspir­ the ballet. When Balanchine returned, he ing poet, he had joined Diaghilev's entourage found himself "barred from the office" and in the early 1920S and become his trusted lieu­ Lifar installed as ballet master. 13 This was not · tenant, taking the pulse of the younger gen­ the last time their paths would cross. eration. In 1946 Balanchine reached an agreement By the earlyl930s, Kochno had largely aban­ with Georges Hirsch to spend six months the doned the emigre ghetto, creatively as well as following year at the Paris Opera staging culturally. In his libretti for Balanchine, one ballets. Lifar, who had directed the troupe encounters something akin to surrealism - its during the 1930S and the German occupation inexplicable happenings and strange encoun­ that followed, was accused of collaboration ters with fate - without the theories and pro­ and "purged." Balanchine was excited about Soviet politics of the Surrealists themselves. returning to the Opera; his old friend Roger Kochno teamed Balanchine with composers Desormiere would be conducting the orches­ like Chabrier, Sauguet, and Milhaud, and tra, and both his old flame, Tamara Toumano­ with visual artists like Derain, Christian Be­ va, and his new wife, Maria Tallchief, were rard, and Tchelitchew, who had now settled in engaged as guest artists. Paris - nearly all of whom contributed to Les In a letter to Desormiere, Balanchine wrote Ballets 1933. By then Balanchine, no less than about staging Apollo, Symphonie Concert ante, a Kochno, had become a citizen of the French new production of Firebird, and even The Sleep­ artistic polity. The New York Times critic, John ing Beauty, while in the press there was talk of Martin, was not so far from the mark in 1935 a ballet to Vittorio Rieti.14 of these projects when he called Balanchine's first American only Apollo materialized. Instead, Balanchine company "Les Ballets Americains.,,12 presented a mini-retrospective of his work, Every spring, beginning in 1925, Balan­ beginning with Apollo, followed by Serenade chine presented new work in Paris. Occasion­ and Le Baiser de IiI Fie, both choreographed in ally, there was a second season in December, the United States in the 1930S, and culminat­ but it paled beside the annual rite of spring, ing in a brand-new masterpiece, Le Palais de when the Ballets Russes left its winter head­ Crista!' quarters in Monte Carlo and entrained for The French press followed his work with in­ Paris. Here was the fickle, sophisticated, and terest. World War II had put an end to trans­ cosmopolitan audience that Diaghilev had so atlantic touring and interrupted the flow of assiduously cultivated, the coterie public that news, except for military bulletins. Although applauded the first performances ofApollo and Balanchine had no company of his own for Prodigal Son and later the debut of Les Ballets most of the 1940s, these were intensely cre­ 1933 · ative years. In 1941 he choreographed Concerto 74 BALLET REVIEW Tamara Toumanova and Roger Ritz in Le Palais de Cristal (1947), music by Georges Bizet. Barocco and Ballet Imperial, plotless works that dancers. For the "prestige of Paris," as one made peace with the nineteenth-century Rus­ reporter wrote, Balanchine had taken a sub­ sian tradition of Petipa, and Balustrade, the stantial pay cut, leaving a "situation of $2,500 first of several important works in the 1940S a week" in New York for" 80,000 francs [some that Balanchine would stage to Stravinsky. In $666] a month" at the Opera.15 1946 alone he choreographed The Night Shad­ Balanchine was no stranger to Paris, nor ow (La Sonnambula), an abbreviated version of was Toumanova. At a party not long after they Raymonda (with Alexandra Danilova), a revival arrived, they were feted by old acquaintainces of L'Enfant et les Sortileges (as The Spellbound - Sauguet, Auric, Poulenc, Rouche - as well as Child), and The Four Temperaments, eventually dance critics and journalists.16 the first of the stripped-down "leotard" bal­ Nineteen years had elapsed since the pre­ lets of the 1950S. miere ofApollo, and to some atleast, it showed Amazingly, he did all this without the re­ its age. Veteran critic Leandre Vaillat wrote, sources of a major company. No wonder the "Apollon Musagete is not a novelty for the men offer from Paris was so tantalizing. Here was of my generation, who applauded it ... dur­ a company schooled in a magnificent tradi­ ing the last era of the Diaghilev company...