The Russian Ballet:
It Sojourns in a Strange Land
CHARLES ZWASKA
We were disappointed—and we had no right to be. Authorities say this organization brings the music of the nineteenth century to its logical conclusion. Logical—see? Authorities are always that. So let’s be logical and philosophical and reason that what belongs to the nineteenth has no place this far into the twentieth century. Granted. “Well, then, what do you want?” they question. I should answer The Faun or something beyond this, finding its manner and inspiration in this form—interpretive, impressionistic, compressed, emotional. Of all the Ballets presented by Diaghileff’s Ballet Russe that is, to me, the most indicative of what the future is to be, so far as ballet and ballet music is concerned. We’ve had Isadora Duncan, and Jacques Dalcrose has been at work. Following are some impressions.
L’Oiseau de Feu.—The setting an irritating green: scroll-work gates in the background. Mere finical, petty child’s scribbling in its conventionalized balancing. The characters and their work about on the same level. Bakst costumed them, but the strength of the Hunter’s garb is not carried into his action—he’s a most unvirile huntsman. And the finale! a coronation: quite the proper climax for this. Rather interesting though to have curtain fall on the incoming procession. The music—Stravinsky’s—fascinating.
Schéhérazade.—“Barbaric” they say—yes, it’s a harem scene, you know. But broad and daring as Bakst’s color is it’s not very far from the usual harem scene. The lighting was not as good as it should have been. A serious offense, for the shadows interfered with the action several times; but they aided the bizarreness of the kaleidoscopic whirl at the height of the “barbarities.” This is known as “good ensemble work”—good, yes, but unusual? No longer so. They say there are no “principals” in this very modern ballet, but it seems that one person gets the “principal parts”—I refer to Bolm. Right here I’d like to quarrel with his work—he is “principaled” too often to escape notice. His Le Negre was lithe, one necessity of the role, but it was nothing else! His supposedly ecstatic whirls would break annoyingly. A tiny dressed-up monkey. The end of his leap to Zobeide’s couch was most ungraceful, awkward. These same broken whirls, leaps, and evident stumblings—they seemed nothing else—appeared in Prince Igor. Seeing these two ballets on the same bill emphasizes this persistent failing. He, as the Desired One and the Desiring in Schéhérazade, made the infatuation rather absurd, inhuman. The Grand Eunuch, strange to say, was the human one—his wavering and final surrender of his duty to the caresses of the females! As a whole: all the passion, all the “lust,” superbly expressed human-ness—“barbaric,” perhaps, but human.
Carnaval.—A deep blue background—a background that backs. Two settees, weak spots they seemed. But nevertheless, against and into this blue came Pierrot, Schumann music, and Colombine. Pierrot seemed grotesque, absurd—lovers usually do. Excellent pantomime, then other lovers come upon the scene. Pierrot steps out of the picture into the dark outer stage, his white and spots of springtime green lying in a heap in the center. The lovers maneuver. After their not vain pursuits, momentary, yet so poignant, Colombine returns to a most itching, subtle, ecstatic melody—and with her is Arlequin!! The knave! see the curve of his back and the curve of his thighs and legs! Pierrot must be in on this! and Carnaval proceeds. Arlequin is now and then out of the picture posing on the frame, the dark fore-stage, looking on: and in such moments we have all—everything for our eyes, our ears and our hearts: color, movement, sound, in themselves emotions but also emotions of hearts that are seeking.
Les Sylphides.—Genee. In what years was she at her height? And how many generations preceded her as exponents of her particular form of the Dance? I dare say “in those days” when the “people wanted” such things they wanted them well done. “People” still want it, but evidently not done well. The background—Belasco!—well, never mind that. The Chopiniana that Rabinoff’s Russians did had at least finesse; this one has terrible ragged edges. Even the solo works, waltzes, and prelude seemed chosen with little taste—the presenting of the thing at all was offensive taste.
Prince Igor.—The red of the tents not “barbaric,” the paganism of the costumes a trifle faded, and the leaps of the warriors (Bolm, the “chief warrior,” you remember) not convincing. The mob, or “ensemble,” if you must, properly wild and abandoned. The music is the kind that you beat time to with your feet, you know—primitive I think they call it. Well, the “very moderns” failed us again—do you see?
L’Après Midi d’un Faune.—Green. Some how I was expecting purple, the hazy opaque purple of a woodland when the sun enters it from one side; and still I think that purple would have fitted the Debussy music and the mood of the faun,—a mood, of course dependent on the music. But it was green, with rather weak spots of red. This scene framed by a Greek border of pale and dark blue and white. In front of this frame, looking into the picture at the languid, piping faun, moved nymphs. They seemed part of the border—a decoration from an urn or from the walls of some temple. The faun leaves his knoll and moves into the decorative sphere of the maidens. Beautiful movement, repressed, conventionalized. A scarf is left by one of the maidens; they have all left the faun. He has nothing but this to remember them by. Returning to his mossy rock he possesses the scarf. No lover more delicately held the body of his love or with more reverence knelt toward her. The curtain lowers here—the faun is left to dream. “Now, look here, my friends,” as the Lecturer would say, stamping across the stage; “away with all this nonsense and hypocrisy, this clatter about ‘indecent,’ ‘revolting,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘offensive,’ ‘decadent,’ and such blabber! Admit that your life, you critics, living for art as you pretend to, is made up of just such things—in fact if you were honest you’d admit your entire life is wholly, first and last, rooted, aye, dwelling on just this episode, and yet you cry aloud unto the heavens ‘indecent,’ ‘revolting,’ ‘offensive’ when it is beautifully simple and much more perfectly presented before you than you’ll ever experience it yourself. And as for the substitution of the scarf, well, the psychology of the incident is perfect and the whole thing is heightened by art, my friends, art—and you of course, living as you do amongst the fleshpots and the Market Place and knowing not of the Groves of Dionysius and the Temples on the hillsides at Athens—can’t see it. Well. The gods have pity on you and may you be shown joy in the hereafter—God knows your chastity will keep you from it here.”
Le Spectre de la Rose.—Fragmentary concession to those who “loved” Les Sylphides and, botanically speaking, a “shoot” from that ballet and the (unpresented here) Papillons of Schumann. Necessary, no doubt, to remind us of our ballet history and, like historical data, necessary but uninteresting. Bakst’s bedroom setting does justify the presenting of this, however.
Soleil de Nuit.—M. Leonide Massine—Youth! If you were present at creation’s turmoil perhaps les Bergers would always have been delightful and les Paysannes always happy and colorful—and, of course, we would have had many more serious and glorious Bouffons! The purity of this ballet—color, music (Rimsky-Korsakov), dancing and pantomime—is astounding, and beautiful!
Cleopatre.—I have been to Egypt! All ages have known Cleopatra—her evil and magnificence; and none will forget that she had slaves. No age since hers can know of her allurements and the grandeur of her reign of the souls of two of her slaves as the Russians have shown them to ours! A temple in Egypt: of pillars once believed eternal, along the then sacred Nile. Amoun, one of her slaves, loving and loved by another, Ta-or, craves the caresses of the great Cleopatra! He succeeds: they are granted midst colorful revels, music made by Assyrians and dancing by dancers from Greece. The moment is too short ... he pays for it with his life. The revelers leave, and none in their indifference so cold as the Queen herself. In the thickness of a red evening, the hall deserted, one heart still beats. Ta-or grieves over her lost love—alone. I have been to Egypt ... learned the ways of women—and the world!
Petrouchka.—Primary things: red, blue, yellow; love, hate, jealousy; people and artists. All told together in a ballet whose dramatic unification finds its remarkable inspiration in the music. No doubt Stravinsky’s most important music for the stage. Pétrouchka, eternal paradox of beauty encased in ugliness. His jealousy of the Moor, who also loves the Ballerine, is the ballet, and the music. Foremost the music! Pétrouchka, in whirling frenzy alone with night and the stars; the Ballerine haunting him with piercing notes blown from a silver horn; his discovery of the Moor with his love; and the mannekins entering into the public square, halting the folk-music of the peasants and squires; Pétrouchka’s death in the snow and the appearance of his spirit. All these episodes are music. Here one gets the ingenious use of an orchestra, extraordinary combinations of instruments. Carpenter attempted this, you remember, in his Perambulator. Igor Stravinsky has accomplished it. He with Leon Bakst, is the most important figure of the Russian Triumph. They worked together to achieve Pétrouchka.
The agonizing lack of an audience excuses Diaghileff in laying aside a completely perfect matinee program in favor of one that would attract modern children with their innocent parents, but, artistically, there is no justification of this bowing to the “public” and to “morals” in the reasoning that moved them to tone down the color of the slaves in Schéhérazade. The contrast was needed: black was in the color plan, especially for Le Negre. This makes us suspicious that the other uneven and faulty spots were caused by just such managerial schemings. Seeing some the second and third times strengthened these suspicions! The journalistically “notorious faun” on its third performance (a matinee) moved less lithely and, that there be no “effrontery of good taste,” posed stupidly, stiffly, while the tense vibrating music panted for movement—for entry into life. And Cleopatre! Much as it was Americanized by being “less sensuous, etc.,” the second performance descended to mere Grand Opera pageantry, or nearer, to a Grand Opera Gala Performance vaudeville. The actual center of interest, the Queen’s couch, was draped by a still, unamourous—yet Decency and the Parents’ League be praised!—unoffensive lover.
In a strange land; so strangely treated! That prophets might be understood in another land their priests distort them that barbarians may comprehend!