I have placed Bolm in this book among the “Imperialists” because he had his roots in the Imperial Russian Ballet, where he was conditioned as child and youth; he was a product of the School in Theatre Street and a Maryinsky soloist for seven years; he was a contemporary and one-time colleague of the three other members of this quartet, either in Russia or with the Diaghileff Ballet Russe.
Born in St. Petersburg in 1884, the son of the concert-master and associate conductor of the French operatic theatre, the Mikhailovsky, Bolm entered the School at ten, was a first-prize graduate in 1904. He was never a great classical dancer; but he had a first-rate sense of the theatre, was a brilliant character dancer, a superlative mime.
Bolm was the first to take Anna Pavlova out of Russia, as manager and first dancer of a Scandinavian and Central European tour that made ballet history. He was, I happen to know, largely responsible in influencing Pavlova temporarily to postpone the idea of a company of her own and to abandon their own tour, because he believed the future of Russian Ballet lay with Diaghileff. Although the Nijinsky legend commences when Nijinsky first leapt through the window of the virginal bedroom of Le Spectre de la Rose, in Paris in 1911, it was Prince Igor and Bolm’s virile, barbaric warrior chieftain that provided the greater impact and produced the outstanding revelation of male dancing such as the Western World had not hitherto known.
Bolm was intimately associated with the Diaghileff invasion of the United States, when Diaghileff, a displaced and dispirited person sitting out the war in Switzerland, was invited to bring his company to America by Otto H. Kahn. But, owing to the war and the disbanding of his company, it was impossible for Diaghileff to reassemble the original personnel. It was a grave problem. Neither Nijinsky, Fokine, nor Karsavina was available. It was then that Bolm took on the tremendous dual role of first dancer and choreographer, engaging and rehearsing what was to all intents and purposes a new company in a repertoire of twenty-odd ballets. The Diaghileff American tours were due in no small degree to Bolm’s efforts in achieving what seemed to be the impossible.
After the second Diaghileff American tour, during which Bolm was injured, he remained in New York. Unlike many of his colleagues, his quick intelligence grasped American ideas and points of view. This was evidenced throughout his career by his interest in our native subjects, composers, painters.
With his own Ballet Intime, his motion picture theatre presentations of ballet, his Chicago Allied Arts, his tenure with the Chicago Opera Company, the San Francisco Opera Ballet, his production of Le Coq d’Or and two productions of Petroushka at the Metropolitan Opera House, he helped sow the seeds of real ballet appreciation across the country.
My acquaintance and friendship with Adolph Bolm extended over a long time. His experimental mind, his eagerness, his enthusiasm, his deep culture, his capacity for friendship, his hospitality—all these qualities endeared him to me. If one did not always agree with him (and I, for one, did not), one could not fail to appreciate and respect his honesty and sincerity. During a period when Ballet Theatre was under my management, I was instrumental in placing him as the régisseur general (general stage director to those unfamiliar with ballet’s term for this important functionary) of the company, feeling that his discipline, knowledge, taste, and ability would be helpful to the young company in maintaining a high performing standard. Unhappily, much of the good he did and could do was negated by an unfortunate attitude on the part of some of our younger American dancers, who have little or no respect for tradition, reputation, or style, and who seem actively to resent achievement—in an art that has its roots in the past although its branches stretch out to the future—rather than respect and admire it.
A striking example of this sort of thing took place when I had been instrumental, later on, in having Bolm stage a new version of Stravinsky’s Firebird, for Ballet Theatre, in 1945, with Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin.
My last meeting with Bolm took place at the opening performance of the Sadler’s Wells production of The Sleeping Beauty, in Los Angeles. I shall not soon forget his genuine enthusiasm and how he embraced Ninette de Valois as he expressed his happiness that the great full-length ballets in all their splendor had at last been brought to Los Angeles.
In his later years, Bolm lived on a hilltop in Hollywood; in Hollywood, but not of it, with Igor Stravinsky and Nicholas Remisoff as two of his closest and most intimate friends. One night, in the spring of 1951, Bolm went to sleep and did not wake again in this world.