It is difficult for me to realize that Irina Baronova no longer dances. She was the youngest of the “baby ballerinas.” Gentle, shy, with honey-colored hair, Irina was born in Leningrad, and eventually reached Paris, with her family, by way of the Orient. About her was a simple, classical beauty, despite the fact that she always found it necessary to disguise (on the stage) her rather impudent little nose in a variety of ways by the use of make-up putty. It was so when she started in as a tiny child to study with the great lady of the Maryinsky, Olga Preobrajenska, whose nose also has a tilt.
To George Balanchine must go the credit for discovering Baronova in Preobrajenska’s School in Paris, when he was on the search for new talents at the time of the formation of the de Basil-Blum Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. About her work there was always something joyful and yet, at the same time, something that was at once wistful and tender.
As a classical dancer there was something so subtle about her art that its true value and her true value came only slowly upon one. There was no flash; everything about her, every movement, every gesture, flowed one into another—as in swimming. But not only was she a great classical dancer, she was the younger generation’s most accomplished mime.
I like to remember her as the Lady Gay, that red-haired trollop of the construction camps, in Union Pacific, with her persuasive, characteristic “come-up-and-see-me-sometime” interpretation; to remember her in the minor role of the First Hand in Le Beau Danube, carefree, innocent, flirting at the side of the stage with a park artist. I like to remember her in Jeux d’Enfants, as she ran through the gamut of jealousy, petulance, anger, and triumph; in Les Présages, as the passionate woman loving with her whole being, fighting off the evil that threatens love; in the mazurka in Les Sylphides; in The Hundred Kisses, imperious, sulky, stubborn, humorously sly; and as the Ballerina in Petroushka, drawing that line of demarcation between heartless doll and equally heartless flirting woman.
Performance over, and away from the theatre, another transformation took place; for Irina was never off-stage the grande artiste, the ballerina, but a healthy, normal girl, with a keen sense of humor.
After a turn or two as a “legitimate” actress and a previous marriage, Baronova now lives in London’s Mayfair, the wife of a London theatrical manager, with her two children. The triumph of domesticity is ballet’s loss.
I should like to set down from my memory the additions to the repertoire of the Original Ballet Russe while they had been absent from our shores.
There were some definitely refreshing works. Chief among these were two Fokine creations, Paganini and Cendrillon.
The former had been worked out by Fokine with Sergei Rachmaninoff, utilizing for music a slightly re-worked version of the latter’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Serge Soudeikine had designed a production that ranked at the top of that Russian designer’s list of theatre creations. The entire ballet had a fine theatrical effectiveness. Perhaps the whole may not have been equal to the sum of its parts, but the second scene, wherein Paganini hypnotized a young girl by his playing of the guitar and the force of his striking personality, thereby forcing her into a dance of magnificent frenzy, was a striking example of the greatness of Fokine. Tatiana Riabouchinska rose to tremendous heights in the part. I remember Victor Dandré, so long Pavlova’s life-partner and manager, telling me how, in this part, Riabouchinska reminded him of Pavlova. Dandré did not often toss about bouquets of this type.
Cendrillon was Fokine’s retelling of the Cinderella tale. The score, by Baron “Freddy” d’Erlanger, was certainly no great shakes, but Fokine illuminated the entire work with the sort of inventiveness that was so characteristic of him at his best. It would be unjust to compare this production with the later Frederick Ashton Cinderella, to the Prokofieff score, which he staged for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet; the approach was quite different. The de Basil-Fokine production nevertheless had a distinct charm of its own, enhanced by a genuine fairy-tale setting by Nathalie Gontcharova.