Since my contract with Ballet Theatre had had one more year to run, the transcontinental bookings for the Ballet Theatre company had been made for the entire season. It was necessary for me to keep faith with the local managers who had built their seasons around ballet and, since local managers have faith both in me and in the quality of the ballet I present, I was on a spot. The question was: what to do?
Something had to be done to fulfil my obligations. I had no regrets about the departure of Ballet Theatre, other than that personal wrench I always feel at parting company with something to which I have given so much of myself. The last weeks with Ballet Theatre added nothing but trouble. There was a ludicrous contretemps in the nation’s capital. Jascha Horenstein, for some reason known only to himself, put down his baton before the beginning of the long coda at the end of Swan Lake, and walked out of the pit. As he departed, he left both the dancers and the National Symphony Orchestra players suspended in mid-air, with another five minutes left for the climax of the ballet. As a consequence, the performance ended in a debacle.
Matters balletic were in a bad way. It is times such as these that present me with a challenge. There is no easy solution; and frequently, almost usually, such solutions as there are, are reached by trial and error. This was no exception.
I began the trial and error period by building up, as an experiment, the Markova-Dolin company, with a group of dancers, including André Eglevsky and soloists, together with a corps de ballet largely composed of Ballet Theatre personnel that had broken away because of dissatisfaction of one sort or another. In addition to Markova, Dolin, and Eglevsky, the company included Margaret Banks, a Sadler’s Wells trained dancer from Vancouver, Roszika Sabo, Wallace Siebert, and others, with young John Taras as choreographer and ballet-master. The reader who has come this far will realize some of the problems involved in building up a repertoire. Here we were, starting from scratch.
The two basic works were a Giselle, staged by Dolin, with Markova in her best role, and Swan Lake. In staging the second act of Swan Lake, Dolin used a setting designed by the Marquessa de Cuevas for the International Ballet. Dolin also mounted the last act of The Nutcracker. John Taras staged a suite of dances from Tchaikowsy’s Eugene Onegin; and the balance of the repertoire was made up from various classical excerpts.
Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit were selected as try-out towns in the spring of 1946. The celestial stars that hung over the experiment cannot be called benign. The well-worn adage that it never rains but it pours, was hardly ever better instanced than in this case. It was the spring of the nation-wide railway strike, and the dates of our performances coincided with it. By grace of the calendar we managed to get the company to Milwaukee, where the company’s first performances were given at the old Pabst Theatre. By interurban street-car and trucks we got the company to the Chicago Opera House. There the difficulties multiplied. Owing to the firm restrictions placed upon the use of electricity in public places, in order to conserve the dwindling coal supply, it was impossible to light the Opera House auditorium or foyers, which were swathed in gloom, broken only by faint spots of dull glow emanating from a few oil lanterns. The current for the stage lighting was supplied from a United States Coast Guard vessel, which we had, with great difficulty, persuaded to move along the river side of the Opera House, to the engine-room of which vessel we ran cables from the stage. The ship could generate just enough “juice” for stage purposes only. That “just enough” might have been precisely that in computed wattage; but it was direct current. Our lighting equipment operated on alternating current, and, by the time the “juice” was converted, the actual power was limited to the point that, try as the technical staff did, the best we were able to obtain was a sort of passable low visibility on the stage.
To add to the general fun, the Coast Guard vessel broke loose from its moorings, floated across the Chicago River, destroyed some pilasters of the Chicago Daily News and jammed the Randolph Street drawbridge of the City of Chicago, adding to the general confusion, to say nothing of the costs.
When it came time for the company to move to Detroit, no trains were running, and buses and trucks would not cross state lines. It took some master-minding on the part of our staff to arrange to have the company, baggage cars and all, attached to a freight train, which was carrying permitted perishable fruits and vegetables. In Detroit, the slump had set in. The feeling of depression engendered by the darkened buildings and streets, the dimly-lighted theatres, the murk of stygian restaurants, together with the fact that the Detroit engagement had to be played at one of the “legitimate” theatres rather than at the Masonic Temple which, for years, had been the local home for ballet, played havoc with the engagement; people, bewildered by the situation, one which was as darkness is to light, were discouraged and daunted. They remained away from the theatre in droves and the losses were fantastic.
Using the word in the best theatrical sense and tradition, it was a catastrophe. Perhaps it was as well that it was; somehow I cannot entirely reject the conviction that things more often than not work out for the best, for as the company and the repertoire stood, it would not fill the bill. Nor was there anything like sufficient time to build either a company or a repertoire.
The projected Markova-Dolin company was placed in mothballs. The problems, so far as the ensuing season was concerned, remained critical.