Meanwhile, I lived up to my contract with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and presented them, in the autumn of 1941, at the Metropolitan Opera House, and subsequently on tour.
In order to prepare the new works, Ballet Theatre went to Mexico City, returning to New York to open at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre, on 12th November, 1941. In addition to the existing Ballet Theatre repertoire, four works were added and had their first New York performances: Psota’s Slavonika, and Dolin’s re-creation of Princess Aurora, which I have mentioned, together with Le Spectre de la Rose, and Bronislava Nijinska’s The Beloved One. The last was a revival of a work originally done to a Schubert-Liszt score, arranged by Darius Milhaud, for the Markova-Dolin Ballet in London. In the New York production it had scenery and costumes by Nicolas de Molas. It was not a success.
The season was an uphill affair. Business was not good, but matters were improving slightly, when we reached that fatal Sunday, the seventh of December. Pearl Harbor night had less than $400 in receipts. The world was at war. The battle to establish a new ballet company was paltry by comparison. Nevertheless, our plans had been made; responsibilities had been undertaken; there were human obligations to the artists, who depended upon us for their livelihood; there were responsibilities to local managers, who had booked us. There was a responsibility to the public; for, in such times, I can conceive no reason why the cultural entertainment world should stand still. It is a duty, I believe, to see that it does not. In Russia, during the war, the work of the ballet was intensified; in Britain, the Sadler’s Wells organization carried on, giving performances throughout the country, in camps, in factories, in fit-ups, as an aid to the morale both civilian and military. There could be no question of our not going forward.
Leaving New York, we played Boston, Philadelphia, a group of Canadian cities, Chicago. With such a cast and repertoire, it was reasonable to expect there would be large audiences. The expectation was not fulfilled. The stumbling-block was the title: Ballet Theatre. The use of the two terms—“ballet” and “theatre”—as a means of identifying the combination of the balletic and theatrical elements involved in the organization, is quite understandable, in theory. As a practical name for an individual ballet company, it is utterly confusing and frustrating. I am not usually given to harboring thoughts of assassination, but I could murder the person who invented that title and used it as the name for a ballet company. Ballet in America does not exist exclusively on the support of the initiated ballet enthusiast, the “balletomane”—to use a term common in ballet circles to describe the ballet “fan.” The word “balletomane” itself is of Russian origin, a coined word for which there is no literal translation. Ballet, in order to exist, must draw its chief support from the mass of theatregoers, from the general amusement-loving public, those who like to go to a “show.” The casual theatregoer, when confronted with posters and a marquee sign reading “Ballet Theatre,” finds himself confused, more likely than not believing it to be the name of the theatre building itself. My own experience and a careful survey has demonstrated this conclusively.
My losses in these days of Ballet Theatre were prodigious. Both Chase and Sevastianov were aware of them. Other managements, in view of such losses, might well have dropped the entire venture. In view of the heavy deficits I was incurring and bearing single-handed, I felt some assistance should be given.
An understanding was reached whereby I agreed to reduce the number of new productions to be furnished for the next season, in order that their expenses might be minimized. In consideration of this a certain amount was refunded. At that moment it was a help; but not a sufficient help to reduce my losses to less than $60,000. As a matter of fact, the agreement was beneficial to both sides. In my case, it temporarily eased the burden of meeting a heavy weekly payroll at a time when there were practically no receipts; as for Ballet Theatre, it substantially reduced their investment in new productions.
The continuing war presented additional problems. Personnel changes were frequent on the male side of the company owing to the war-time draft. There was an increasing demand for ballet; but a new uninformed, uninitiated public was not in the market for ballet companies, but for ballets—works about which they had somehow heard. I had two companies, Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and I presented them, one after the other, at the Metropolitan Opera House. In my opinion, many of the problems could have been solved by a merger of the two groups, had such a thing been possible, thus preserving, I believe, the best properties and qualities of each of them.
During the spring of 1942, two new works were presented: Tudor’s Pillar of Fire, on which he had been working for a long time, and Fokine’s Russian Soldier. The latter was done at a time when we were all thrilled by the tremendous effort the Russians were making in their battles, their heroic battles, against the Nazi invader. In discussing the idea with Fokine, himself Russian to the core, we emphasized the symbolic intent of the tragedy, that of the simple Russian peasant who sacrifices his life for his homeland. Although we of course did not realize it at the time, this was to be the last work Fokine was to complete in his long list of balletic creations. Russian Soldier had some of the best settings and costumes ever designed by the Russian painter, Mstislav Doboujinsky. For music, Fokine utilized the orchestral suite devised by Serge Prokofieff from his score for the satirical film, Lieutenant Kije, which was extremely effective as music, but with which I was never entirely happy, since Prokofieff, the musical satirist, had packed it with his own very personal brand of satire for the satiric film for which the music was originally composed. At the same time, I doubt that any substantial portion of the audience knew the source of the music and detected the satire; the great majority found the work a moving experience.
Aside from being perhaps Tudor’s most important contribution to ballet, Pillar of Fire—with its settings and costumes by Jo Mielziner, his first contribution as a noted American designer to the ballet stage—served to raise Nora Kaye from the rank and file of the original company to an important position as a new type of dramatic ballerina.
Leonide Massine, parting with the company he had built, joined Ballet Theatre as dancer and choreographer before the company’s departure for a second summer season at the Palacio des Bellas Artes in Mexico City, as guests of the Mexican Government.