S. Hurok Presents; A Memoir of the Dance World

by Sol Hurok

The party over and Wigman back in her hotel, I sat up to await the press notices. They were splendid. No one dared describe her “meaning,” but all were agreed that here was a dynamic force in dance that drove home her “message.” The notice I awaited most eagerly was that of the New York Times. The first City Edition did not carry it, something which I attributed to the lateness of the final curtain. I waited for the Late City Edition. Still not a line about Wigman. I simply could not understand.

For years I had struggled to have the dance treated with respect by the press. Through the Pavlova days I talked and tried to convert editors to a realization of its importance. Any readers who are interested have only to turn up the files of their local newspapers and read the “reviews” of the period of the Pavlova and Diaghileff companies to find that ballet, in most cases, was “covered” by disgruntled music critics, who had been assigned, in many cases obviously against their wills, to review. You would find that the average music critic either overtly disliked ballet and had said so, or else treated it flippantly.

At the time of Wigman’s arrival in America, the ice had been broken, as I have said, by the appointment of John Martin at the head of a full-time dance department at the New York Times. Mary Watkins, eager, enthusiastic, informed, was fulfilling a like function on the New York Herald-Tribune. Thus dance criticism was on its way to becoming professional; and the men and women of knowledge and taste and discernment who criticize dance today, I cannot criticize. For I have respect for the professional.

The New York Times review of Wigman’s opening performance did not appear. Since John Martin had urged me to bring Wigman to America, it was the more baffling. Prior to Martin’s engagement by the New York Times, that remarkable and beloved figure, William (“Bill”) Chase, for so many years the editor of the music department of the Times and formerly the music critic of the Sun, and to the end of his life my very good friend, had “reported” the dance. Since he insisted he knew nothing about it, he never attempted to criticize it. I had frequently suggested to “Bill” that the Times should have a qualified person at the head of a bona fide dance department. Eventually John Martin was engaged, and I am happy to have been able to play a part in the beginnings of the change on the part of the American press.

I have mentioned that the change was gradual, for Martin’s articles at first were unsigned and had no by-line. In the early days, Martin merely reported on dance events. To be sure, at that time, there was little enough to report. Then Leonide Massine was brought to the Roxy Theatre by the late Samuel Rothapfel to stage weekly presentations of ballet; and then there was something about which to write. Since then John Martin has helped materially to spread the gospel of ballet and dance.

It was at approximately the Massine-Roxy stage of the dance criticism development that I searched the Times for the Wigman notice. Most of the newspapers carried rave reviews, and because they did, I was the more mystified, since in the Times there was not so much as a mention even that the event had taken place. However, out-of-town friends, including the late Richard Copley, well-known concert manager, telephoned me from New Jersey to congratulate me on the glowing review they had read in the Suburban Edition, and read it to me over the telephone. There were dozens of other calls from suburban communities to the same effect.

I called the editorial department of the Times to enquire about its omission from the New York City edition. There was some delay, but eventually I was informed that it would seem that the night city editor had read John Martin’s story in the Suburban Edition, saw that it carried no by-line, no signature; read its glowing and enthusiastic account of the Wigman première; and because it was so fulsome in its enthusiasm, assumed it was merely a piece of press-agent’s ballyhoo, and forthwith pulled it out of all other editions.

Armed with this information, I proceeded to bombard the Times with protests. One of these was directly to the head of the editorial department, whom I asked to reprint the notice that had been dropped. I was rather summarily told I was not to try to dictate to the Times what it should print. By now utterly exasperated, I got hold of my friend “Bill” Chase, who drily counselled me to “keep my shirt on.” Chase immediately went on a tour of investigation. He called me back to tell me that the Board of Editors at their daily meeting had gone into the matter but were unwilling to print the notice I had asked, since they had been “scooped” by the other newspapers and it was, therefore, no longer news: but, they had decided that, in the future, Martin would have a by-line. Then Chase added, with that wry New England humour of his for which he was famous, that, with the possession of a by-line, no editor would dare “kill” a review. It might, of course, be cut for space, but never “killed.”

The next Sunday the readers of the New York Times read John Martin’s notice of Mary Wigman’s first performance, and it was uncut. But it was a paid advertisement, bearing, in bold-faced type, the heading: “THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO REPRINT.”

As a result of the New York première, the “pencilled” tour was “inked,” and I traveled most of the tour with the Priestess. Newspaper men continued to demand to know the “meaning” of her dances. Since Wigman, most literate of dancers, refused any explanation, I made up my own. I told a reporter that Wigman was continuing and developing the work of Isadora Duncan. The reporter wrote his story. It was printed. Wigman read it without comment. From then on, however, Wigman’s reply to all queries on the subject was: “Where Isadora Duncan stopped, there I began.”