9. What Price Originality? The Original Ballet Russe

THE condition of the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe in 1941 being as I have described it, it became imperative for me to try to improve the situation as best I could. It was a period of perplexity.

The “Colonel,” once more installed in the driver’s seat of his company, with its name now changed from Educational Ballets, Ltd., to the Original Ballet Russe, had been enjoying an extended sojourn in Australia and New Zealand, under the management of E. J. Tait.

Although I knew deterioration had set in with the old de Basil company—so much so that it had been one of the salient reasons for the formation of the new Monte Carlo Ballet Russe, quite apart from the recurring personality clashes—I was now faced with a deterioration in the latter company, one that had occurred earlier in its history and that was moving more swiftly: a galloping deterioration. As I watched the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo company performances, I was acutely conscious not only of this, but I saw disruption actively at work. The dancers themselves were no longer interested. They day-dreamed of Broadway musicals; they night-dreamed of the hills of Hollywood and film contracts. Some were wistfully thinking in terms of their own little concert groups. The structure was, to say the least, shaky.

From the reports that reached me of the Original company’s success and re-establishment in Australia, I sensed the possibility (and the hope) that a rejuvenation had taken place. Apart from that, there had been new works added to the repertoire, works I was eager to see and which I felt would give the American ballet-goer a fresh interest, for that important individual had every right to be a bit jaded with things as they were.

Since I had taken the precaution to have the “exclusivity” clause removed from my Universal Art contract, I was free to experiment. I therefore arranged to bring de Basil and his Original Ballet Russe to America from Australia. They arrived on the Pacific Coast, and we played an engagement in Los Angeles, another in Chicago, yet another in Canada. Then I brought them to New York.

This was a season when the Metropolitan Opera House was not available for ballet performances. Therefore, I took the Hollywood Theatre, on Broadway, today rechristened the Mark Hellinger.

I opened the season with a four weeks’ engagement of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, followed immediately by the Original Ballet Russe, making a consecutive period of about fifteen weeks of ballet at one house, setting up a record of some sort for continuous ballet performances on Broadway.

Christmas intervened, and, following my usual custom, I gave a large party at Sherry’s in honor of Mrs. Hurok’s birthday, which occurs on the 25th December, at which were gathered the entire personnel of the company, together with Katherine Dunham, Argentinita, and other distinguished guests.

If I should be asked why I again allied myself with the “Colonel,” I already have given a partial answer. There was a sentimental reason, too. It was a case of “first love.” I wanted to go back to that early love, to try to recapture some of the old feeling, the former rapture. I should have realized that one does not go back, that one of the near impossibilities of life is to recapture the old thrill. Those who can are among the earth’s most fortunate.

This ten-week season was expensive. The pleasure of trying to recapture cost me $70,000 in losses.

There were, however, compensations: there was the unending circus of “Mutt and Jeff,” the four-feet-seven “Sasha” Philipoff and the six-feet-two “Colonel.”

There was a repertoire that interested me. It was a pleasure once again to luxuriate in the splendors of Le Coq d’Or, although the investiture had become a shade or two tarnished from too much travel and too little touching-up. It was refreshing to see Baronova and Toumanova in brisk competition again in the same company, for the latter had already become one of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo defections.

It is difficult for me to realize that Irina Baronova no longer dances. She was the youngest of the “baby ballerinas.” Gentle, shy, with honey-colored hair, Irina was born in Leningrad, and eventually reached Paris, with her family, by way of the Orient. About her was a simple, classical beauty, despite the fact that she always found it necessary to disguise (on the stage) her rather impudent little nose in a variety of ways by the use of make-up putty. It was so when she started in as a tiny child to study with the great lady of the Maryinsky, Olga Preobrajenska, whose nose also has a tilt.

To George Balanchine must go the credit for discovering Baronova in Preobrajenska’s School in Paris, when he was on the search for new talents at the time of the formation of the de Basil-Blum Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. About her work there was always something joyful and yet, at the same time, something that was at once wistful and tender.

As a classical dancer there was something so subtle about her art that its true value and her true value came only slowly upon one. There was no flash; everything about her, every movement, every gesture, flowed one into another—as in swimming. But not only was she a great classical dancer, she was the younger generation’s most accomplished mime.

I like to remember her as the Lady Gay, that red-haired trollop of the construction camps, in Union Pacific, with her persuasive, characteristic “come-up-and-see-me-sometime” interpretation; to remember her in the minor role of the First Hand in Le Beau Danube, carefree, innocent, flirting at the side of the stage with a park artist. I like to remember her in Jeux d’Enfants, as she ran through the gamut of jealousy, petulance, anger, and triumph; in Les Présages, as the passionate woman loving with her whole being, fighting off the evil that threatens love; in the mazurka in Les Sylphides; in The Hundred Kisses, imperious, sulky, stubborn, humorously sly; and as the Ballerina in Petroushka, drawing that line of demarcation between heartless doll and equally heartless flirting woman.

Performance over, and away from the theatre, another transformation took place; for Irina was never off-stage the grande artiste, the ballerina, but a healthy, normal girl, with a keen sense of humor.

After a turn or two as a “legitimate” actress and a previous marriage, Baronova now lives in London’s Mayfair, the wife of a London theatrical manager, with her two children. The triumph of domesticity is ballet’s loss.

I should like to set down from my memory the additions to the repertoire of the Original Ballet Russe while they had been absent from our shores.

There were some definitely refreshing works. Chief among these were two Fokine creations, Paganini and Cendrillon.

The former had been worked out by Fokine with Sergei Rachmaninoff, utilizing for music a slightly re-worked version of the latter’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Serge Soudeikine had designed a production that ranked at the top of that Russian designer’s list of theatre creations. The entire ballet had a fine theatrical effectiveness. Perhaps the whole may not have been equal to the sum of its parts, but the second scene, wherein Paganini hypnotized a young girl by his playing of the guitar and the force of his striking personality, thereby forcing her into a dance of magnificent frenzy, was a striking example of the greatness of Fokine. Tatiana Riabouchinska rose to tremendous heights in the part. I remember Victor Dandré, so long Pavlova’s life-partner and manager, telling me how, in this part, Riabouchinska reminded him of Pavlova. Dandré did not often toss about bouquets of this type.

Cendrillon was Fokine’s retelling of the Cinderella tale. The score, by Baron “Freddy” d’Erlanger, was certainly no great shakes, but Fokine illuminated the entire work with the sort of inventiveness that was so characteristic of him at his best. It would be unjust to compare this production with the later Frederick Ashton Cinderella, to the Prokofieff score, which he staged for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet; the approach was quite different. The de Basil-Fokine production nevertheless had a distinct charm of its own, enhanced by a genuine fairy-tale setting by Nathalie Gontcharova.

A lesser contribution to the repertoire was a symbolic piece, The Eternal Struggle, staged by Igor Schwezoff, in Australia, to Robert Schumann piano music, orchestrated by Antal Dorati. It served the purpose of introducing two Australian designers to America: the Misses Kathleen and Florence Martin.

There was a duo of works by David Lichine, one serious and unsuccessful, the other a comedy that had a substantial audience success and which, since then, has moved from company to company. The former, Protée, was arranged to Debussy’s Danses Sacré et Profane, in a Chirico setting and costumes. The latter, Graduation Ball, Lichine had staged during the long Australian stay. Its music was an admirable selection and arrangement of Johann Strauss tunes by Antal Dorati. Its setting and costumes were by Alexandre Benois. Much of its humor was sheer horseplay and on the obvious side; but it was completely high-spirited, and was the season’s comedy success.

A third work, credited to Lichine, was The Prodigal Son, a ballet that was the outstanding creation of the last Diaghileff season, in 1929. Set to a memorable commissioned score by Serge Prokofieff, by George Balanchine, with Serge Lifar, Leon Woizikovsky, Anton Dolin and Felia Dubrowska in the central roles, it had striking and evocative settings and costumes by Georges Rouault. De Basil had secured these properties, and had had the work re-done in Australia by Lichine. Lichine insisted he had never seen the Balanchine original and thus approached the subject with a fresh mind. However, Serge Grigorieff was the general stage director for both companies. It is not beyond possibility that Grigorieff, with his sensitive-plate retentive mind for balletic detail, might have transferred much of the spirit and style of the original to the de Basil-Lichine presentation. However it may have been, the result was a moving theatrical experience. My strongest memory of it is the exciting performance given by Sono Osato as the exotic siren who seduces the Prodigal during his expensive excursion among the flesh-pots.

During this Hollywood Theatre season we also had Le Cotillon, that had served originally to introduce Riabouchinska to American audiences. We also, I am happy to remember, had Fokine’s Firebird, in the original choreography, and the uncut Stravinsky score, together with the remarkable settings and costumes of Gontcharova. Its opening performance provided a few breath-taking moments when Baronova’s costume gave way, and she fought bravely to prevent an embarrassing exposure.

During their tenure of the Hollywood Theatre, we managed one creation. It was Balustrade. Its choreography was by George Balanchine. Its music was Igor Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, played in the orchestra pit by Samuel Dushkin, for whom it was written. Stravinsky himself came on from California to conduct the work. As is so often the case with Balanchine, it had neither story nor theme nor idea; it was simply an abstraction in which Balanchine set out to exploit to the fullest the brittle technical prowess of Tamara Toumanova. The only reason I could determine for the title was that the setting, by Pavel Tchelitcheff, consisted of a long balustrade. Unfortunately, despite all the costs, which I paid, it had, all told, one consecutive performance.

The close of the season at the Hollywood Theatre found me, once again, in a perplexed mood. The de Basil organization, riddled by intrigue and quite out of focus, was not the answer. Its finances were in a parlous state. I disengaged my emotions and surveyed both the negligible artistic accomplishments and the substantial financial losses. I turned a deaf ear to de Basil’s importunings to have me undertake another American tour, although I did sponsor engagements in Boston and Philadelphia, and undertook to send the company to Mexico and South America.

As matters stood, neither the company nor the repertoire was good enough. I still had one more season tied to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and that, for the moment, was enough of trouble. I argued with myself that the Denham difficulties were sufficient unto one day, without deliberately and gratuitously adding those of the “Colonel.”

Fresh troubles arose in Philadelphia, from which point the company was to depart for Mexico City. Tamara Toumanova’s presence with the company was one of the conditions of the Mexican contract.

It will not be difficult, I think, for the reader to imagine my feelings when, on my arrival in Philadelphia, I was greeted by Toumanova with the news that she was leaving the company, that her contract with de Basil had expired, and that nothing in her life had given her greater happiness than to be able to quit.

De Basil was not to be found. He had gone into hiding. I went into action. I approached “Gerry” Sevastianov and his wife, Irina Baronova, to help out the situation by agreeing to have Baronova go to Mexico in place of the departing Toumanova. She consented, and this cost me an additional considerable sum.

Having succeeded in this, de Basil emerged from his hiding place to hold me up once again by demanding money under duress. He had no money and had to have cash in advance before he would move the company to Mexico. Once there, he raised objections to the Baronova arrangements, did not want her to dance or as a member of the company; and there was a general air of sabotage, egged on, I have no doubt, by a domestic situation, wherein his wife wanted to dance leading roles.

Somehow we managed to get through the Mexico City engagement and to get them to Cuba. There matters came to a head with a vengeance. Because of de Basil’s inability to pay salaries, he started cutting salaries, with a strike that has become a part of ballet history ensuing.

Once more I dispatched my trusty right hand, Mae Frohman, to foreign parts to try to straighten matters out. There was nothing she could do. The mess was too involved, too complicated, and the only possible course was for me to drop the whole thing.

De Basil, looking for new worlds to conquer, started for South America. His adventures in the Southern Hemisphere have no important place in this book, since the company was not then under my management. They would, moreover, fill another book. The de Basil South American venture, however, enters this story chronologically at a later point. Let it be said that the “Colonel’s” adventures there were as fantastic as the man himself. They included, among many other things, defection after defection, sometimes necessitating a recruiting of dancers almost from the streets; the performances of ballets with girls who had never heard of the works, much less seen them, having to rehearse them sketchily while the curtain was waiting to rise; the coincidence of performance with the outbreak of a local revolution; flying his little company in shifts, since only one jalopy plane, in a dubious state of repair, was available. I shall not go into his fantastic financing, this being one of the few times when, as I suggested at the beginning of this book, the curtain might be lowered for a few discreet moments, in order to spare the feelings of others rather than my own.

In the quiet of the small hours of the morning, I would lie awake and compare the personalities of the two “organizers,” de Basil and Denham, reviewing their likenesses and their differences. As I dozed off, I came to the conclusion that most generalizations about personality are wrong. When you have spent hours, days, months, years in close association and have been bored and irritated by a flamboyant individual, you are apt to think that restraint and reticence are the only virtues. Until you meet a quiet fellow, who is quiet either because he has nothing to say or nothing to make a noise about, and then discover his stillness is merely a convenient mask for deceit.

Massine, unable to continue any longer with the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe management, severed his connection with the company he had made, in 1942. Save for a few undistinguished creations, de Basil was skating along as best he could on his Diaghileff heritage; classicism was being neglected in the frantic search for “novelties.” Both companies were making productions, not on any basis of policy, but simply for expediency and as cheaply as possible. Existing productions in both companies were increasingly slipshod. While it is true that a good ballet is a good ballet, it is something less than good when it receives niggardly treatment or when it is given one less iota than the strictest attention to detail.

That is exactly what happened when the companies split, and split again: the works suffered; this, together with the recurring internal crises, boded ill for the future of ballet. There was the ever-present need for money for new productions. Diaghileff had one Maecenas after another. By the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century, a Maecenas was becoming a rare bird indeed. Today he is as dead as the proverbial Dodo.

I had certain definite convictions about ballet, I still have them. One of them is that the sound cornerstone of any ballet company must be formed of genuine classics. But these must never take the form of “modern” versions, nor additionally suffer from anything less than painstaking productions, top-drawer performances, and an infinite respect for the works themselves. Ballet may depart from the classical base as far as it wishes to experiment, but the base should always be kept in sight; and psychological excursions, explorations into the subconscious, should never be permitted to obscure the fact that the basic function of ballet is to entertain. By that I do not mean to suggest ballet should stand still, should chain itself to reaction and the conservatism of a dead past. It should look forward, move forward; but it must take its bearings from those virtues of a living past, which is its heritage: all of which can be summed up in one brief phrase—the classical tradition.

There are increasingly frequent attempts to create ballets crammed with symbols dealing with various aspects of sex, perversion, physical and psychological tensions. In one of the world’s great ballet centers there have been attempts to use ballet as a means to promulgate and propagandize political ideologies. I am glad to say the latter have been completely unsuccessful and they have returned to the classics.

I should be the last person to wish to limit the choreographer’s choice of subject material. That is ready to his hand and mind. The fact remains that, in my opinion, ballet cannot (and will not) be tied down to any one style, aesthetic, religion, ideology, or philosophy. Therefore, it seems to me, the function of the choreographer is to express balletic ideas, thought, and emotion in a way that first and foremost pleases him. But, at the same time, I should like to remind every choreographer of a distinguished authority, when he said, “Pleasure, and pleasure alone, is the purpose of art.” But pleasure differs in kind according to the way that individuals and groups of individuals differ in mental and emotional make-up. Thus ballet provides pleasure for the intellectual and the sensualist, the idealist and the realist, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Atheist. And it will remain the function of the choreographer to provide this infinite variety of pleasure until such time that all men think, feel, and act alike.

Ballet was at a cross-road. I was at a cross-road in my career in ballet. It was at this indecisive point there emerged a new light on the balletic horizon. It called itself Ballet Theatre. It interested me very much.