So it was that, in the autumn of 1947, that I gave a short season of ballet there. It was not a season of great ballets, but of great artists. The programmes centered about Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, André Eglevsky.
From this emerged a dance-group company, compact, flexible, the Markova-Dolin Company, which toured the country from coast to coast with a considerable measure of success. This was not, of course, ballet in the grand manner. It was chamber ballet; a dozen dancers, a small, well-chosen group of artists, together with a small orchestra and musical director. In addition to the two stars, the company included Oleg Tupine, Bettina Rosay, Rozsika Sabo, Natalia Condon, Kirsten Valbor, Wallace Siebert, Royes Fernandez, George Reich, with Robert Zeller, young American conductor, protegé of Serge Koussevitsky and Pierre Monteux, as Musical Director.
The repertoire included three new works: Fantasia, a ballet to a Schubert-Liszt score, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska; Henry VIII, a ballet by Rosella Hightower, to music of Rossini, arranged by Robert Zeller, and costumes by the San Francisco designer, Russell Hartley; Lady of the Camellias, another balletic version of the Dumas tale, choreographed by Anton Dolin to portions of Verdi’s La Traviata, arranged and orchestrated by Zeller; the Jerome Robbins Pas de Trois, to the Damnation of Faust excerpts, in costumes by the American John Pratt; and two classical works, viz., Famous Dances from Tchaikowsky’s The Nutcracker, staged jointly by Markova and Dolin, with costumes by Alvin Colt; and Suite de Danse, a romantic group, including some of Les Sylphides, in the Fokine choreography; a Johann Strauss Polka, staged by Vincenzo Celli; Pas Espagnole, to music by Ravina, by Ana Ricarda; Vestris Solo, to music by Rossini, choreographed by Celli; and Dolin’s delicious Pas de Quatre.
Henry VIII, Rosella Hightower’s first full work as a choreographer, was no balletic masterpiece, but it provided Dolin with a part wherein, as the portly, bearded, greatly married monarch of Britain, he was able to dance and act in the great tradition of Red Coat, Devil of the Ukraine, Bluebeard, Gil Blas, Tyl Eulenspiegel, Sganarelle, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, and all the other picaresque heroes of ballet, theatre, and literature. While Dolin, of course, confined himself to the choreographer’s patterning, I should not have been surprised if he had resorted to falling over sofas, squirting Elizabethan soda water syphons in the face of Katherine Parr, or being carried off to the royal bedchamber in a complete state of intoxication.
While such an organization is far from ideal for the presentation of spectacular ballet, which must have a large company, eye-filling stage settings, and all the appurtenances of the modern theatre, since ballet is essentially a theatre art, it nevertheless permitted us to take a form of ballet to cities and towns where, because of physical conditions, the full panoply of ballet at its most glamorous cannot be given.
The highlight of this tour occurred at the War Memorial Opera House, in San Francisco, where, because of an unusual combination of circumstances, an extremely interesting collaboration was made possible. The San Francisco Civic Ballet, an organization that promised much in the way of a civic supported ballet company of national proportions, had just been formed, and with the cooperation of the San Francisco Art Commission, and with the full San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, was undertaking its first season. At its invitation, it was possible for us to combine its first productions with those of the Markova-Dolin company, and, in addition to the San Francisco Civic Ballet creations, a splendid production of Giselle was made, staged by Dolin, with Markova, according to all reports, including that of the informed critic, Alfred Frankenstein, giving one of the most remarkable interpretations of her long career in the title role. This tribute is the more remarkable, since Giselle is one of Frankenstein’s “blind spots” in ballet. No critic is entirely free from bias or prejudice, and since even I admit that—countless examples to the contrary notwithstanding—the critic is also a human being, why should he be utterly free from those very human qualities or defects, as the case may be?
The artists of the Markova-Dolin company supplemented the San Francisco company, with the local company supplying the production, the two groups merging for substantial joint rehearsal. I have said the San Francisco Civic Ballet promised much. It is to be regretted that means could not be forthcoming to insure its permanence. Its closing was the result of the lack of that most vital element, proper subsidy. These things shock me.
The Markova-Dolin company was no more the ultimate answer to my balletic problem than was the Original Ballet Russe. It was, however, something more than a satisfactory stop-gap; it was also a very pleasant association.
Markova and Dolin are a quite remarkable pair. For years their stars were congruent. Until recently there were indications that they had become one, a fixed constellation, supreme, serene, sparkling. Those gods in whose hands lie the celestial disposition have seen fit to shift their orbits so that now each goes his or her separate course. I, for one, cannot other than express my personal regret that this is so. One complemented the other. I would go so far as to say that one benefited the other. Both as individual artists and in partnership, the distinguished pair of Britons are an ornament to their art and to their native land.
ALICIA MARKOVA