S. Hurok Presents; A Memoir of the Dance World

by Sol Hurok

From then on the dancing was general, the gaiety waxed higher. I was doing a schottische with the two-hundred-fifty pound Cockney Chief Carpenter, Horace Fox, when one of my staff who was responsible for transportation slid up to the orchestra leader and whispered “The King!” We all stood silently at attention for the last time. It was well past four in the morning, and it was to be yet another case of “touch and go” if the “Sadler’s Wells Special” could make Montreal in time for the departure of the special BOAC planes which were to take the company back to London.

The company changed into traveling clothes as quickly as possible, and buses slithered down the steep slopes of Quebec to the Station, where harried railroad officials were holding the train. There was yet another delay for one person who was left behind on urgent business, finally to be seen coming, with two porters carrying his open bags and yet another bellboy with unpacked clothes and toilet articles. As the last of the retinue was pushed aboard, the train started. But it was long before sleep came, and for another two hours the party continued up and down the length of the train, in compartments, bedrooms, washrooms, as staff, orchestra, stage-hands broke all unwritten laws of fraternization.

All were asleep, however, when the train swayed violently and with groaning and bumping came to a sudden stop. It was the last journey and it, of course, simply had to happen. The flanges on the wheels of two of the baggage cars that had made the 21,000-mile journey gave way just as the train started the long crossing of the Three Rivers Bridge between Quebec and Montreal. Fortunately, we were moving slowly at the approach to the bridge, slowing down for the crossing, or else—I shudder to think what might have occurred if we had been trying to make up time—the greatest tour of history would have ended in a ghastly tragedy.

As a result of the derailment taking place on the bridge, we were hours late arriving in Montreal. But the tour was over!

Here was a tour where every record of every sort had been broken. It had reached the point where, if there was a pair of unoccupied seats in any auditorium from coast to coast and back again, we were all likely to feel as if the end of the world was at hand. I have mentioned the mundane matter of the financial returns. From a critical point of view, I cannot attempt to summarize the spate of eulogy that greeted the company in every city. Cynics may have something to say about this, to the effect that the critics had been overpowered by size and glamor. But a careful consideration of it all, a sober analysis, disproves any suggestion that this was the result of any uncritical rush of blood to the head. On the contrary, it reveals that the critical faculty was carefully exercised and that the collective testimony to the excellence of Sadler’s Wells was based on sound appreciation.

It is impossible for me to bring to a close this phase of the concise history of the association in ballet of which I am the proudest in my life without sketching an outline of the quartet that makes Sadler’s Wells the great institution it is, together with a few of the outstanding personalities that give it color and are such an important part of it.

The list is long, and lack of space limits my consideration to a few. First of all, let me pay tribute to that directorial triumvirate to whom, collectively and individually, Sadler’s Wells owes its existence and its superior place in the world of ballet in our time: Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, and Constant Lambert. Lamentably, the triumvirate is now a duo, owing to the recent untimely passing of the third member.

NINETTE DE VALOIS

I have more than once indicated my own deep admiration for Ninette de Valois and have sketched, as best I can, her tremendous contribution. In all my experience of artists, I have never known a harder worker, a more single-purposed practical idealist, a more concentrated and devoted human being. In addition to being the chief executive of Sadler’s Wells, burdened with the responsibility for two ballet companies and a school, she is a striking creator.

Living with her husband-physician down in Surrey, she does her marketing before she leaves home in the morning for the Garden; travels up on the suburban train; spends long hours at her work; goes back to Surrey, often late at night, sometimes to prepare dinner, since the servant problem in Britain is acute; and has been known to tidy up her husband’s surgery for the next morning, before herself calling it a day. All this, day in and day out, is done with zest and vigor.