To-day the training is just as severe and much the same. For the Russian ballet pupils enter the Academy at Petrograd at the age of nine and remain till eighteen. Madame Karsavina, one of the most finished dancers in the world, has told us how, even now, she continues to practise a couple of hours or more every day.
A well-known Italian maître de ballet at a famous West End theatre once told me that he always practised dancing from two to three hours a day, and “pantomime” or “mime,” as it is usually called, from one to two hours. Mlle. Génée, too, has stated that she practises from two to three hours daily. Such practice is necessary, not merely to a pupil, but to a finished and successful dancer to keep the limbs absolutely supple and enable the artist to give that impression of consummate ease in performing the most difficult steps, which is the true test of the really great dancer; while the study of “miming” is equally necessary, since it is the art which gives life and expression to the dance.
Before a dancer has achieved the distinction of becoming a “star,” it may be safely reckoned that she has had from eight to ten years daily drudgery, and that her earlier years have been without financial reward, and may even have involved her parents or relatives in considerable expense for her training or apprenticeship. Given the physique, the instinct for dancing, and the intelligence, what then must the prospective “star” expect before she can become a première danseuse, or even a “seconde”?
Go into any large school where “toe-dancing” is taught and what will you see? A large, barely furnished room, on one or two, or perhaps on all sides of which is fixed a bar or pole, some four feet from the ground. Here, having already been thoroughly grounded in the “five positions,” which every dancer learns, the pupils, perhaps a dozen or more in number, ranging from eight upwards, will be found at “side practice,” as it is called, going through the various “positions” and steps, while one hand rests on the bar. Here she goes through the fatiguing and endless training known as practice “on the bar,” learning “battements,” which consist in moving one leg in the air, now forward, now back, while the other, on tip-toe, supports the body; learning the even more difficult ronds de jambes, or circles made by one leg while resting on the other; learning all the while to get the legs free and supple, to keep the shoulders down and the elbows loose, before proceeding to the more complex steps and poses.
After incessant drilling at the bar comes the “centre practice,” in which many of the same positions and steps are repeated with new and more difficult ones, away from the bar; until little by little after months, indeed, it may be years, of incessant practice, the young dancer becomes qualified to take a place in the minor ranks of the ballet where, in watching the more finished work of the première danseuse, she is further inspired to yet more arduous practice in the school or at home, in the hope of achieving a perfection that shall bring her similar rewards—a princely income, unlimited bouquets, and the clamorous applause of an adoring audience.
All this is severe enough training; but the dancer’s training always has been severe. The hard thing, from the ballet composer’s point of view is—that the individuality and artistic spirit of the dancer is, only too often, crushed by the training or at least subordinated to an exaltation of mere technique. Technique is a necessity, of course. But it was in the power of such men as Noverre and Blasis to inspire in their disciples something more than an emulation for technical efficiency, and to give them an artistic ideal which made the drudgery of their training seem worth while as a means of attaining to greater ease of artistic expression. Blasis’ influence undoubtedly ran like a quickening spirit through the capitals of Europe and led the way to that great revival of romantic ballet which marked the era of the ’forties and found its fullest and most poetic expression in the idealism of Taglioni.
CHAPTER XXVI
MARIE TAGLIONI (“SYLPHIDE”)
The great theatrical sensation of the mid-’forties was the famous Pas de Quatre, composed of Lucile Grahn, Fanny Cerito, Carlotta Grisi, and Marie Taglioni, the last-named making a welcome return to the stage after an absence of some years. This was in 1845. Taglioni’s reappearance and a dispute between the dancers as to the order of their entrée gave the event a handsome advertisement.