The Russian Ballet

by A. E. Johnson

The theatrical ballet is comparatively a modern institution, but its real origin is to be found in the customs of very early times. The antiquity of dancing as a means of expression is well known, of course, and concerted movements on the part of a number of dancers, which constitute the ballet in its simplest form, are recognised to have been a feature of religious ceremonial in the furthest historic eras. The evolutions of the Greek chorus occur at once to the mind, and there is evidence that among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Phœnicians, the formal dance was a part of religious ritual. Representations occur, on early vases and other relics, of dancers revolving round a central person or object, standing for the sun, and it may reasonably be surmised that some such ceremonial occurred among the most primitive pagan peoples.

Rites of this kind, indeed, form the theme of “Le Sacre du Printemps,” the most remarkable of the Russian dancers’ more recent performances, which may be regarded as a deliberate attempt at reversion to type. That provocative ballet is discussed elsewhere in the present volume, but it may be remarked in passing that M. Nijinsky, who is responsible for the “choreography” of it, has endeavoured to restore to that word something more of its original significance than its use in modern times, to describe the general planning and arrangement of a ballet, ordinarily confers.

Choreography or orchesography amongst the Egyptians and the Greeks was the art of committing a dance to writing just as a musical composition is registered and preserved by means of musical notation. M. Nijinsky considers that music and the dance being closely allied and parallel arts—the one the poetry of sound, the other the poetry of motion—a ballet should be as much the work of one creative mind as a piece of orchestral music. The principle he has embodied in “Le Sacre du Printemps” is that the dancers shall execute only those gestures and movements pre-ordained by the “choreographist,” and in the particular manner and sequence directed by the latter. The polyphony of orchestral music is to be paralleled by the polykinesis, if such a phrase may be coined, of the ballet.

Leaving this digression, one may ascribe the immediate parentage of the modern theatrical ballet to the Court Ballets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which in turn arose out of the mediæval mystery plays, pageants, and masques. Ballets were a favourite diversion of the French Court of the period, where they underwent a gradual refinement in style from the relative coarseness which at first distinguished them. The opera-ballet was the next stage of development; then, towards the end of the eighteenth century, singing was omitted, and the ballet attained a dignity of its own.

The founder of what may be termed the dramatic ballet, which is the form the Russians have developed so magnificently, was Noverre, a great celebrity of his day, who took London as well as Paris for his field. After the fashion of his time, Noverre went to the classics for his themes, and very banal, it would seem, were his efforts to interpret them in terms of the ballet. But though his ambition as a maître de ballet outran his perceptions as an artist, at least he initiated and firmly established a new form of art which was capable of being brought subsequently to a high degree of perfection.

Vestris and Camargo were among the more familiar names associated with the ballet, both before and at Noverre’s period. These were the great dancers of the eighteenth century, to whom succeeded Pauline Duvernay, the celebrated Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Ellsler, Fanny Cerito, and others of the nineteenth century. It is barely thirty years since Taglioni died at the age of eighty, and it is possible there are still persons alive who remember her at the zenith of her career. Pauline Duvernay died even more recently (in 1894), but she preceded Taglioni on the stage, and as her retirement took place at the time of Queen Victoria’s accession, there can be few, if any, who are able to recall her performances.

It is difficult to form a clear impression of what the ballet was like in Taglioni’s day. One imagines, however, that it was less the ballet in which she appeared than the individual art, or at least skill, of the dancer herself, which attracted the spectator. At all events the ballet, after Taglioni, steadily declined, and one suspects that in her the tendency towards specialisation, which is everywhere inevitable in a highly civilised state, had reached its climax. The ballet had become a mere background, of no great significance or importance, to the dancer, and there being no one to maintain the standard of virtuosity set by so skilled an executant, the result was inevitable. There have been other dancers since Taglioni, probably as fine and perhaps finer, but their distinction has been of a peculiarly personal and, of necessity, somewhat limited kind. The decay of the ballet as a vehicle of expression has bereft them of opportunities for the full display of their art; they have been in the situation of a singer who for lack of an operatic stage whereon to give vent to mature, full-blooded powers, would perforce have to be content with the comparatively limited opportunities of the platform.

For a long time before the Russian revival the ballet had been all but extinct in this country; it was scarcely better abroad, save in Russia itself, of course, where the existence of a State school of dancing since the end of the seventeenth century has produced a quite different state of affairs. It is to be noted that even now the art of Anna Pavlova has only been seen under restrictions of the kind just mentioned. Her perfect skill in technique has been abundantly demonstrated; to judge of her quality as an artist (though she has given more than one suggestive hint of it) it is necessary to see her in ballet—a privilege hitherto denied.

This lapse of the ballet into desuetude accounts very largely for the extraordinary success of the Russians, who burst dazzlingly upon the gaze of a listless public, and demonstrated that ballet, which had come to be synonymous with banality, could be made both a forceful and a beautiful vehicle of artistic expression. There had been forerunners of the “Russian invasion”—brief appearances of one or two of the most distinguished dancers in isolated performances at a London variety theatre; but it was not until the complete Russian Ballet, as organised by M. Serge de Diaghilev, made its bow, en grande tenue, at the Covent Garden Opera House, that the London public awoke to recognition. The descriptive power of music it knew, “wordless plays” were not unfamiliar, pas seuls and pas de deux it had seen performed in countless number by accomplished dancers of every nationality and style. But the art of the ballet, which combines music, pantomime and the dance, was a revelation, and its enthusiasm was great.

In Russia the ballet has never been allowed, as elsewhere, to die of starvation and inanition. Apart from State encouragement of the dancer’s art, an outlet has been provided for the musician and the decorative painter and designer. The result is that a ballet, as understood in Russia, is no mere excuse for the exploitation of individual talents, but a work of art in itself, to the achievement of which the energies and abilities of all concerned are subordinated. Undoubtedly it is the unity of purpose, the wonderful ensemble, which the Russian ballets exhibit that catches the imagination of the spectator. It is significant that their best performances are those which are wholly, or at least in chief part, of native production, and deal with native or closely kindred subjects. Indeed, for their success in attaining coherence and unity the Russians have to thank, perhaps, their comparative isolation and remoteness from Western European civilisation. Their art is strong because native. Endorsement of this suggestion is to be found in the virility of the Russian operas of Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, which made as profound an impression on their first performance in London as did the Russian ballets before them. Beside such works of art as “Boris Godounov,” “La Khovantchina,” and “Ivan the Terrible,” the modern French and Italian operas seem pitifully patched and thin, sadly lacking in balance and proportion.