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Western ballet without Ballets Russes?


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Reading some histories of Ballets Russes, I gather there was a funding problem early on, caused in no small part by Mathilde Kschessinska having a hissy fit. I might be misunderstanding, but apparently Mikhail Fokine was wanting the Ballets Russes to go in a different direction from the Mariinsky tradition of ballets showcasing ballerinas, who appeared in all their finery including their jewels that were gifts from rich and influential admirers, and Her Highness wasn't happy. Seems as though Fokine wasn't a great admirer of Kschessinska and wasn't intending for the Ballets Russes to basically be a backdrop for her, and when she found out she pulled strings to try and get the company's funding cancelled. (I remember reading her justification of this as "but really I had no choice..." which is what she always seemed to say when she was poking someone in the eye.) Diaghilev managed to get funding from an alternative source and the first season went ahead.

 

But it did get me wondering how ballet in Western Europe might have developed if she'd been successful and had managed to get the first season cancelled and had also managed to discredit Diaghilev and Fokine with the Powers That Be that made decisions about the ballet, such that the Ballets Russes never did appear and Fokine wasn't such a major influence. Obviously there'd still have been the influx of dancers and teachers into Western Europe once the Russian revolution got under way, but that was nearly a decade later and might not have included the sorts of ballets that were already familiar in Europe as a result of the Ballets Russes.

 

There was already a tradition of ballet in the UK, largely due to Adeline Genee and her followers, but Ballets Russes had a massive impact when they appeared in London. So I've been wondering what British ballet in particular and Western European in general would have looked like over the 20th century if it had developed without the influence of Ballets Russes.

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Probably much the poorer, Melody! You ask a very interesting question to which there is of course no definitive answer. But I think that the Ballets Russes brought a varied mix of influences, what with its own more 'contemporary' style, plus the influence of Russian imperial ballet, which in turn had been influenced by French and Italian ballet. Without all this as a comparator and something from which to learn and build upon, I don't know where ballet would have gone in this country in the 20th century. The influence of the BR on Western ballet cannot be underestimated.

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Ballet in the West would have been far poorer without Diaghilev's Ballets Russes , the companies which laid claim to his heritage and the composers, artists and dancers who worked for them.In fact it is almost impossible to imagine what ballet  in the Europe would have looked like without Diaghilev and his successors or whether, apart from Paris and Copenhagen, there would have been anything worth talking about.  The position in the English speaking world is even more stark.Diaghilev and the other members of his artistic circle transformed an art form which was only taken seriously in Russia and Denmark and which in the West had degenerated into mere superficial  entertainment.

 

Diaghilev turned ballet into an art form which attracted both avant garde artists and composers and the social elite. It was members of the elite who bankrolled the enterprise after Russian state funding and support was withdrawn. If you really want the source of the ideas which eventually produced the Ballets Russes you need to go back to the 1890 production of Sleeping Beauty. There would have been no Ballets Russes without it. It was the initial production of Petipa's ballet which persuaded the men who were part of "The World of Art" movement of the importance of ballet and its potential to develop as a serious art form. It was the members of the "World of Art" movement who in due course became the advisory group at the centre of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

 

Without the Ballets Russes would the West have seen the ballets of Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine or Nijinska? Even if a number of major Russian choreographers and dancers had decided to leave Russia after the Revolution  would they necessarily have found anyone who was interested in employing them? If they were lucky they might have found employment in a Western European opera house but they would not have been able to perform or stage ballets of the type which Diaghilev staged let alone those on a scale comparable to that of  the Imperial theatres. They might have ended up performing in cabaret or in variety shows.The Diaghilev company attracted a large number of innovative artists and they generated an artistic critical mass which influenced the lyrical arts and ballet in particular; set the parameters and created the aesthetic landscape in which ballet was to operate for the next sixty or seventy years.   

 

Here are a few examples of people who played a significant part in the development of ballet in the West and whose absence would have made us all significantly poorer.

 

Frederick Ashton.

What would his career look like without Diaghilev ? He might still have seen Pavlova in South America and come to  London but if there was no Massine in London to teach him and no Rambert to continue his dance education and encourage his first steps as a choreographer what would his career looked like? How would he have gained experience as a dancer? What ballets would he have seen or appeared in? It is most unlikely that he would have found himself dancing in a company in Paris which had Nijinska as its resident choreographer. Remember he always said that he learned everything he knew about choreography from her. He might have gone to the US but would there have been any demand for him there?

 

Antony Tudor.

I wonder what he would have become without Rambert to train him and without the possibility of work in London or in the US?

 

George Balanchine.

There is no guarantee that he would he have left Russia at all. Without Diaghilev there is no guarantee that his little dance group would have obtained a foreign dance contract.The chances are that he might have ended up a bit like Yacobson or Lopukhov who he admired. Both of these men were in and out of favour at regular intervals and prevented from creating innovative works .In the absence of Diaghilev the establishment of the NYCB becomes rather less certain.

 

Ninette de Valois.

She might have seen Pavlova dance "The Swan". She might have danced it on the end of every pier in England but without the Ballets Russes she is unlikely to to have learned about the classical repertory,how to run a company or about the overwhelming benefits of classical ballet training  It is quite possible that she would have been a fully fledged expressionist choreographer.The Vic-Wells Ballet and its successor companies sound unlikely as do BRB and the RBS.

  

London has a long history of involvement in the development of ballet but it did not have a permanent school.While it is true that the ballet company at the Alhambra and Genee were London institutions but the repertory was not that demanding. Genee had managed to persuade the management to stage Coppelia but that is as far as the repertory went.Whether she would have been able to do more is unlikely

 

Here are a few radical thoughts. As the RDB has no contact with the Ballets Russes  a much wider range of the Bournonville repertory is retained including some of those ballets based on Norse mythology. The company does not alter its performance style of that repertory in the way which actually happened.Serge  Lifar never becomes  director of the Paris Opera and as a result the company remains without Giselle to this day. It does not acquire Act 2 Swan Lake either.

 

Although he feels totally frustrated with the Soviet system Nureyev has no obvious place to escape to while he first visits Paris with the Kirov. There is little obvious interest in ballet in the US. Nureyev stays with the Kirov.The same is true of the other later star defectors.

Edited by FLOSS
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Western ballet without Ballets Russes would be very different, I am not even sure it would exist today. Kshessinska's (possible) influence on its fortunes, however, should not be overestimated. Even Fokine's influence -- Diaghilev was a difficult man himself, he didn't want to be dependent on anybody, and he was ready to part with anyone, including the ones who seemed the fortunes of his Ballets Russes depended most. Fokine and Pavlova departed early, Nijinsky was abandoned. It was always Diaghilev that was setting the trends and shaping the artistic image of his company. There is absolutely nobody today who is comparable with him. I frequently think of Diaghilev who was first of all interested in truly talented people, who was investing in them, even if they were totally unknown and inexperienced, unlike modern artistic directors who stick opportunistically with very limited choices provided by "critically acclaimed" choreographers irrespective of the quality of their work.

Edited by assoluta
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I don't think that the position of the artistic director is an easy one.He/she is answerable for his artistic policy and its economic consequences to his board and although in this country politicians have no direct control over the appointment of ADs if their programming does not attract audiences and a company continually make losses politicians will complain about the profligate waste of public money.Private sponsorship does not necessarily guarantee the freedom to programme whatever the AD wants to stage either.

 

I am not convinced that they are merely being "opportunistic" when they commission works from the limited pool of choreographers who everyone else seems to commission I think that it shows a lack of artistic vision

which is a very different thing from "opportunism".Perhaps people with the wrong skill sets are being recruited to be ADs. ADs are usually former dancers but are even those retired dancers who have had management training and experience and are able to read a spreadsheet really best suited for the role? They have credibility with their dancers because they know what they are talking about when it comes to performing.They may know about the company's history and its repertory, they may know about what is happening elsewhere but do they know enough about other art forms such as music and the visual arts? I am not sure that they do,

 

By the very nature of their training and work patterns few dancers are likely to have the breadth of cultural knowledge and experience which we might think essential for the role of AD.Like so many other people engaged in activities which call for total commitment to the task in hand there is a tendency for dancers to be part of a community made up of others engaged in the same profession.I imagine that the world of dance is as small and incestuous as any other small group of people working in a closely defined area of specialism. Dancers are recruited and trained for their physical characteristics and potential and while selection on this basis may ensure a supply of dancers of the requisite qualities it does not and cannot ensure that those who graduate and are recruited into a company will have potential  to be choreographers or  ADs. Please note I am not suggesting that there are no dancers who are interested in arts other than ballet merely that young dancers are more likely to be interested in developing their technique and their career and could well be too tired for much else at the end of their working day while their working day may not give them much opportunity to pursue other interests.Diaghilev came from the leisured cultured class who were not expected to earn a living and were, if they were lucky, awarded a court sinecure of some sort.

 

I think that we have to accept that there will never be another Diaghilev quite simply because someone like Diaghilev  with no background in dance would ever be considered for appointment today.Diaghilev was a man of great culture with extraordinarily wide artistic interests. He came from a family interested in literature, theatre and music. Diaghilev lived in a house in which music was performed regularly; he received a musical education and he had a great interest in the fine arts. Ballet was not his first or only interest and he had little connection with it before 1900. Before that time he had seen few ballets and had shown little interest in the art form. Today we tend to think of him only in connection with the Ballets Russes but he first made his mark in high cultural circles in St Petersburg as the editor of an arts journal which represented the progressive face of Russian art and as the organiser of art exhibitions including the first major exhibition of Russian historic portraits which drew its exhibits from across Russia.He had received a musical education and had an interest in contemporary music and the arts. His were not exactly a set of skills and knowledge that you can  hope to find in every generation let alone every list of candidates for the post of AD of a ballet company. He would not last five minutes running a company today because he was so dictatorial but he would have made a lot of lawyers very happy.

Edited by FLOSS
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Today we tend to think of him only in connection with the Ballets Russes but he first made his mark in high cultural circles in St Petersburg as the editor of an arts journal which represented the progressive face of Russian art and as the organiser of art exhibitions including the first major exhibition of Russian historic portraits which drew its exhibits from across Russia.He had received a musical education and had an interest in contemporary music and the arts.

To this it can be added that apart from publishing a magazine and organising exhibitions Diaghilev presented “Historic Russian Concerts” where Rachmaninov, Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov conducted their own works and Chaliapine sang. His original Russian Seasons included also full productions of operas some of which have not been performed in the West before: “Khovanshchina”, “Boris Godunov”, “The Maid of Pskov”, “Prince Igor”, “The Nightingale”, “Rusalka” (by Dargomyjsky).

With his sharp “nose” for talents he knew whom he wanted and always succeeded in getting the best. The times have changed so much now that hardly even a man of such an outstanding ability would have had a chance to run on all four cylinders as he did.

Edited by Amelia
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Colman,

It seems to me that because Nijinsky looms so large in the story of the Ballets Russes  that there has been a tendency to overemphasize the part that Diaghilev's sexual orientation played in his identification of potential  choreographers and the opportunities which he gave to those he commissioned to create ballets and develop their talents. It is too easy to overlook the fact that during the twenty year existence of the Ballets Russes Diaghilev had not one, but five major choreographers who made ballets for his company, namely Fokine,Nijinsky, Massine, Nijinska and Balanchine. I have no doubt that the main reason for this cultural amnesia is that few of the works which they created for Diaghilev survive and remain in the living repertory of companies while Nijinsky's story continues to resonate. .

 

This loss of repertory does not seem to be a simple story of the march of history, changing tastes and aesthetics or of institutional indifference or neglect. In the case of choreographers like Fokine and Massine the disappearance of their works seem to be attributable as much to the attitudes and abilities of their heirs and right holders as stagers and coaches as to changing tastes. Massine himself was difficult to deal with as Sir Peter Wright's account of his company's experience of the choreographer's revival La Boutique Fantasque makes clear.I am not sure whether Lorca Massine has the necessary skills but the neglect of his father's works suggests that there may be problems with his abilities as a stager while what I have seen of Isabella Fokine's revivals have left me wondering how ballets with which I am familiar can be so lifeless and unengaging in performance. The neglected works of long dead choreographers demand careful casting,skilled stagers and coaches if they are  to be transformed into effective, engaging theatrical works. In the absence of such assistance the neglected work shrivels and dies leaving the audience wondering why the choreographer in question had any sort of reputation and believing that the choreographer's ballets are best left undisturbed. . 

 

 

It seems to me that in the absence of so much of the Ballets Russes repertory which survived into the 1970's as viable theatrical works, the tragedy of Nijinsky over shadows and distorts the story of Diaghilev's incredible ability to identify real choreographic talent  more than it did when some of the era's masterpieces were readily accessible to Western audiences .The story of the choreographic revolutions which Diaghilev enabled now get lost in the story of Nijinsky's decline into mental ill health. From what I have read about Diaghilev  the development of neophyte choreographers involved exposing them to cultural and artistic stimuli which would develop and expand their imagination and their artistic horizons and a great deal of traipsing round museums and art galleries.

 

Although he did not discover Fokine Diaghilev gave him the opportunity to make ballets in an extraordinary wide range of styles. Perhaps it is a want of imagination on my part but it is difficult for me to imagine Fokine with his versatility, vivid imagination , theatrically and musicality making ballets like The Firebird or Petrushka for the Mariinsky in the years immediately preceding World War I.

 

While it is true that the abrupt termination of his relationship with Nijinsky created a need to identify and develop a new choreographer I am not sure that Diaghilev's homosexuality had as much to do with his activity as an enabler of choreographers as is sometimes suggested. Did Diaghilev's attitude towards Fokine's choreography cool because he was infatuated with Nijinsky or because he had come to regard Fokine as an unexciting choreographic safe pair of hands who was only suited to Stravinsky's ballet music as long as Stravinsky was pretending to be Rimsky-Korsakov ? Those in the pro Fokine camp might suggest that it was infatuation which prompted the attempt to "turn" Nijinsky into a choreographer. Those in the modernist camp would probably say that it would be difficult to find anyone less suited to choreograph L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune or Sacre than Fokine. A century after the events you still have to pick your way through the partisan accounts to try to uncover the facts but it is perhaps worth noting that it was at about the same time that Diaghilev dropped the conservative Alexandre Benois in favour of Leon Bakst. Again the promotion of Massine as a choreographer can be portrayed as an example of Diaghilev severing his relationship with one boy and selecting another and then promoting his career.That seems far too simple and simplistic an account to me.I am sure that there must have been plenty of other young men in the company who Diaghilev could have selected to share his bed but did they have the experience of working in the spoken theatre which Massine already had?

 

As comparatively few people have seen Massine's ballets in performance let alone well cast performances of them it is easy to believe that he was an over promoted favourite and forget his range and his ambition as a choreographer and that his ballets dominated the international repertory well into the 1940's when he finally seems to have lost his touch. His output ranged from a successful Rite of Spring to the symphonic ballets of the 1930's such as Choreatium and Symphony Fantasque to the demi-character ballets in which he appeared and for which he is best known such as Le Tricorne and La Boutique Fanatasque.

 

As far as Nijinska is concerned we have two masterpieces from her time with Diaghilev Les Biches,. a witty satire, and Les Noces, a monumental work in which the dancers are transformed into human geometry both of which are in the Royal Ballet's repertory. Her influence on others in her use of formal patterns and gesture is significant. Ashton said that he learned everything he knew as a choreographer from watching her make ballets when he worked with the Ida Rubinstein company for which she was the choreographer. Balanchine encountered her during his time with Diaghilev's company and some assert that although he did not acknowledge it he too was influenced by her return to formal patterns and that he borrowed her movement motifs.

 

Given his longevity and his substantial choreographic output it is easy to overlook the fact that whatever Balanchine may have learned from being involved in Lopukhov's banned ballet Dance Symphony (The Greatness of the Universe)(1923) or the works which he created in Russia for his Youth Ballet he established his reputation as a choreographer working for Diaghilev for whom he made his earliest masterpieces The Prodigal Son and Apollo. In addition Balanchine first met a considerable number of his future collaborators, including Stravinsky, while working for Diaghilev.

 

Strangely I can only think of one other person who has run a ballet company who has had the same eye for choreographic talent and potential as Diaghilev and that person is Marie Rambert who joined the Diaghilev company to assist Nijinsky to stage his Rite of Spring by analysing and breaking down the Stravinsky score. Part of the Ballets Russes' diaspora she identified,developed and encouraged a significant number of her dancers to become choreographers.They include Frederick Ashton, Christopher Bruce, Walter Gore, Andre Howard,Norman Morrice, Frank Staff and  Antony Tudor to whom she gave a cultural education.Two of her discoveries  Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor are generally considered to be among the greatest choreographers of the twentieth century and her other choreographer discoveries are generally thought to have produced works of considerable distinction.The only thing that I can think of that Diaghilev and Rambert had in common were extraordinarily wide cultural interests and hinterland.

Edited by FLOSS
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I wasn't thinking only of Diaghilev. I was more making a point about becoming too nostalgic for the good old days while forgetting the bad sides. Who'd want their kids to work in the environment described in what I've read of ballet around that time?

 

I wonder if ballet russes hadn't arisen whether someone else would have done the same job? Great man theory or pressure of history? How long would we have waited for quantum theory and relativity if Einstein hadn't been around?

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