Volinine returned to the United States in 1912-1913, when, after the historical break between Pavlova and Mordkin, the latter formed his “All-Star Imperial Russian Ballet,” with Ekaterina Geltzer, Julia Sedova, Lydia Lopokova, and Volinine. This was an ill-starred venture from the start for no sooner had they opened at the Metropolitan Opera House than Mordkin and Sedova quarrelled with Geltzer and, so characteristic of Russian Ballet, the factions, in this case Polish and English versus Russian, took violent sides. Volinine was on the side of the former. As a result of the company split, the English-Polish section went off on a tour across the country with Volinine, who augmented their tiny salaries by five dollars weekly from his private purse. After they had worked their way through the Deep South and arrived at Creole New Orleans, the manager decamped for a time, and a tremulous curtain descended on the first act of Coppélia, not to rise.
By one means or another, and with some help from the British Consul in New Orleans, they managed to return to New York by way of a stuffy journey in a vile-smelling freighter plying along the coast. By quick thinking, and even quicker acting, including mass-sitting on the manager’s doorstep, they forced that individual to arrange for the passage back to England, which was accomplished with its share of excitement; once back in England, Volinine returned to his place as Pavlova’s first dancer.
Volinine was the featured dancer with Pavlova in 1916, when I first met her at the Hippodrome, and often accompanied us to supper. As the years wore on, I learned to know and admire him.
As a dancer, Volinine was a supreme technician, and, I believe, one of the most perfect romantic dancers of his time. In his Paris school today he is passing on his rare knowledge to the men of today’s generation of premières danseurs. His teaching, combined with his quite superb understanding of the scientific principles involved, are of great service to ballet. Michael Somes, the first dancer of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, is among those who go to Volinine’s Paris studio for those refining corrections obtainable only from a great teacher who has been a great dancer.
“Sasha” Volinine has, perhaps, spent as much or more of his professional life in England, Australia, and other English-speaking countries, as any Russian dancer. On the other hand, he speaks and understands less English, perhaps, than any of the others.
Often in America and London we have gone out to dine, to sup, often with a group. “Sasha” invariably would be the first to ask the headwaiter or maître d’hôtel for a copy of the menu. Immediately he would concentrate on it, poring over it, giving it seemingly careful scrutiny and study.
All the others in the party would have ordered, and then, after long cogitation, “Sasha” would summon the waiter and, pointing to something in the menu utterly irrelevant, would solemnly demand: “Ham and eggs.”
I am happy to count “Sasha” Volinine among my old friends, and it is always a pleasure to foregather with him when I am in Paris.
ADOLPH BOLM
If my old friend, Adolph Bolm, were here to read this, he probably would be the first to object to being classified with this quartet of “Imperialists.” He would have pointed out to me in his emphatic manner that by far the greater part of his career had been spent in the United States, working for ballet in America. He would have insisted that he neither thought nor acted like an “Imperialist”: that he was a progressive, not a reactionary; and he would, at considerable length, have advanced his theory that all “Imperialists” were reactionaries. He would have repeated to me that even when he was at the Maryinsky, he was a rebel and a leader in the revolt against what he felt were the stultifying influences of its inbred conservatism. This would have gone on for some time, for Bolm was intelligent, literate, articulate, and ready to make a speech at the drop of a ballet shoe, or no shoe at all.