Only one première marked the autumn season at the Metropolitan. It was one done by Balanchine, called Waltz Academy, the first work he had created for Ballet Theatre, in contrast to numerous revivals I have mentioned. It was not a very good ballet, static in effect, although classical in style. Its setting was a reproduction of the ballet room at the Paris Opera, by Oliver Smith. The music was a dry orchestration of dance melodies, largely waltzes, by Vittorio Rieti, who composed a pair of latter-day Diaghileff works. A ballet that could have been entertaining and lively, just missed being either.
The lack of new works and the necessity to stimulate public interest made it necessary to add guest stars, particularly since Markova and Dolin had left the company to appear in Billy Rose’s revue, The Seven Lively Arts. Consequently, Tamara Toumanova, Tatiana Riabouchinska, David Lichine, and André Eglevsky made guest appearances.
The subsequent tour compounded internal complications until the only ameliorating feature of my association was the wise and understanding cooperation of J. Alden Talbot, who was, I knew, on the verge of resigning his post, for reasons not entirely different from my own in considering writing a book to be called To Hell with Ballet!
On tour, during 1944-1945, Tudor rehearsed the only new work to be offered during the 1945 spring season at the Metropolitan. It was Undertow, the story of an adolescent’s neurosis, suggested to Tudor by the well-known playwright, John van Druten. It was packed with symbols, Freudian and otherwise; and my own reaction to its murky tale dealing with an Oedipus complex, a bloody bitch, a lecherous old man’s affair with a whore, a mad wedding, a group of drunken charwomen, a rape of a nasty little girl by four naughty little boys, and a shocking murder, was one of revulsion. The score was specially commissioned from the present head of the Juilliard School, the American William Schuman. The settings and costumes, as depressing as the work itself, were by the Chicago painter, Raymond Breinin.
The rigors of war-time ballet travel were considerable, a constant battle to arrive on time, to be able to leave in time to arrive in time at the next city. Each day presented a new problem. But it had its comic side as well. We had played the Pacific Northwest and, after an engagement in Portland, there followed the most important engagement of the west thus far, that at the War Memorial Opera House, in San Francisco.
There was immense difficulty in getting the company and its properties out of Portland at all. It should be remembered, and there is no harm pointing out that the entire railway transportation system of our country from Portland, Oregon, in the far Northwest, to New Orleans, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, is in the hands of a single railway, thousands of miles of it single-track line, with no competition, and thus a law unto itself. For a long time, during this particular tour, this railway insisted, because of military commitments, it could not handle the company and its baggage cars from Portland to San Francisco in time for the first performance there.
The reader should know that there are no reduced fares or concessions for theatrical or ballet companies. First-class fares are paid, and full rates for Pullmans and food. My representative, with a broad experience in these matters, continued to battle, and it was eventually arranged that the company would be attached in “tourist” coaches to a troop train bound for the south, but with no dining facilities for civilians and no provision for food or drink. At least, it would get them to San Francisco in time for the opening performance.
So, the rickety tourist cars were attached to the troop train and the journey commenced. The artists were carefully warned by my representative that this was a troop train, that no food would be available, and that each member of the company should provide himself enough food and beverage for the journey.
At daybreak of the next morning, cold and dismal, the train stopped at a junction point in the Cascades to add a locomotive for the long haul over the “divide.” Opposite the station was a “diner.” Twelve members of the company, including four principal artists, in nightclothes—pyjamas, nightgowns, kimonos, bed-slippers, with lightweight coats wrapped round them—insisted on getting down from the train and crossing to the little “diner” for “breakfast.”
Our company manager warned them not to leave the train; told them that there would be no warning, no signal, since this was not a passenger train but a troop train, and that they risked missing the train altogether. He begged, pleaded, ordered—to no avail. Off they went in the cold of the dawn, in the scantiest of nightclothes.