Not finding itself expected to take rank with the ballets of other great opera organisations, the Metropolitan’s department of dancing has gone its comfortable gait. It has been under the direction of excellent ballet-masters; but they become easy-going, especially after proving to themselves that girls cannot successfully be asked to perform steps for which they lack the foundation of training. To other mollifying influences is added that of a slippery floor in the room dedicated to ballet rehearsal; a room so beautiful and a floor so perfect that to resin it would be a desecration. The dancers, in fear for the intactness of their bones, walk through their numbers as best they can, and ultimately perform them in a manner consistent with rehearsals.
As a step toward relieving the scarcity of ballet people, the Metropolitan founded, about five years ago, a ballet school—an enterprise from which, up to the present, the pupils have rather monopolised the material profits. The arrangement between management and pupil is, in brief, that the pupil shall remain under the school’s (free) tuition four years, at the end of which period the Opera has an option on her services for three years, at a salary of twenty dollars a week, a little more or less. If she appears in the corps de ballet during her period of study, she is paid proportionately. The school work occupies two hours per day, about nine months of the year. The atmosphere of both school and Opera is wholesome and good; no fault can be found with the arrangement on a basis of fairness; but the number of individuals the school has added to the Opera’s ballet is shockingly small. Every revue, musical comedy, and other light musical production includes a collection of young women called a ballet; and each year of increased general intelligence in dancing matters adds to the desirability that these ballets should justify the name. The pretty girl, plus coloured lights, drapery, and lively cavorting, no longer constitutes a perfectly secure grip on public approval (except always in burlesque, with which we are not concerned). The result is an insatiable demand for girls who can even half dance. And that demand, in its turn, is a steady drain on the Opera’s school. Before she has studied two years, a girl can qualify for a position in an outside concern—a condition of which she never remains in ignorance very long. She thinks it over. Two years more work in the school would insure her a position in the Opera, at weekly pay no greater than the present offer, for a comparatively short season each year. Now, if the Metropolitan ballet had great prestige as a choreographic organisation—a prestige like that of the Russian ballet, for instance—its more capable members would be sought after as teachers. A connection with it would confer artistic honour and material profit. Unfortunately, such prestige is one of the elements that are lacking. In résumé: continuance with the school insures employment for about half of every year, beginning at a later time, with the chances of advancement almost zero. Whereas, musical comedy and the like offer the probability of employment the year round, minus the time of rehearsing new productions. Present profits are more attractive than the deferred kind; and, a consideration by no means unimportant, a pretty face and a pleasing manner are reasonable grounds on which to hope for a “part.” Her contract? The young girl of the present generation has had her own way about everything since the hour of her birth. Experience teaches her that the worst penalty reasonably to be expected is a harmless reproof, soon ended. And her experience is a true guide in this case. As a matter of sentiment, no one likes to oppose the wishes of a girl. As a matter of business, it would be of doubtful advantage for the opera company to take legal steps to enjoin its contract-breaking pupils from appearing in other concerns. Happenings connected with opera and the theatres have a high value in the newspapers; no motive is more popular than that of the persecution of the poor but beautiful girl; the publicity force of the musical comedy employing said girl would busy itself creating for her the rôle of victim. The opera management would find difficulty in securing a true and therefore comparatively uninteresting public statement of its case; indeed, it would be likely to be made to appear, in the eyes of the multitude, as a sort of ogre.
The Metropolitan school furnishes a complete and conclusive test of the possibilities of an opera organisation, as such, in the province of dancing. But even if the Metropolitan ballet were right now at the highest conceivable pitch of perfection, a radical change of policy would be necessary as a preliminary to giving the school its proper power to hold its pupils’ allegiance. That is to say, the opportunity to appear in an occasional divertissement is not sufficient to hold an ambitious and capable young man or woman through long years of study. In St. Petersburg, the Imperial Opera House dedicates two nights a week to mimetic ballet. The dancers’ art on those occasions is subordinate to none. The dance is the thing; and the dancers, according to ability, are given the opportunity to interpret character and motive. In short, they are given the opportunity to express their art as individuals.
Now, one or another of the American opera companies might be willing and able to duplicate the above conditions—conditions without whose aid no ballet reaches a high plane of development. The undertaking, however, would have at least twice the weight of the administration of either ballet or opera alone; it would be accompanied, too, by a risk that the twofold interest would result in confusing or displeasing a portion of the music-lovers who constitute opera’s support. The creation, development and maintenance of standards of a great ballet is a combined task and opportunity for dance-lovers themselves, and an end to be reached through the medium of a ballet institution. It may be added that the Russian régime puts music and ballet under the charge of two distinct and separate institutions.
Opera companies whose traditions have been formed during recent years have naturally felt the force of the renaissance of dancing; they have invested their ballets with an importance that would have been considered disproportionate if their formative period had coincided with the mid-Victorian period. The Philadelphia-Chicago company has had a better corps de ballet than could logically be expected in view of the limitations of American material; credit is due Sr. Luigi Albertieri, the ballet-master. As première danseuse the same company for some years has had Signorina Rosina Galli, a delightful little product of la Scala. In 1913 Sr. Albertieri took the post of ballet-master of the new Century Opera Company, with Miss Albertina Rasch, formerly of the Vienna opera, as première. The public’s readiness to recognise good work was demonstrated during the Century’s first presentation of The Jewels of the Madonna. After the act in which the Tarantella is danced, the audience demanded that Miss Rasch respond, with the two principal singers, to the curtain-calls.
In Canada, the influence of the times may be noted in the Canadian Royal Opera Company’s engagement of Madame Pavlowa and her company to provide the ballet portion of eight performances. Of present interest in the dance throughout North America, there is no manner of doubt. It is perfectly clear that appreciation of choreographic beauty and discernment of skill are rapidly advancing. London has shown its capacity to support four great ballet attractions through the same season, and that a long one; the United States is influenced by England’s taste in entertainment. Dancing exhibitions and pageants are now a part of the entertainments of smart society. A masque produced by Mrs. Hawkesworth, in one of the private gardens of Newport, was of a nature to recall the historic festivals of Catherine de Medici. And the nation’s taste in entertainment is influenced by smart society. All signs point to a continued and even growing interest in dancing. And it is possible, without other aid or guidance than that interest in dancing in general, that dancing as a great art, an art of deep emotional interpretation, will take its proper place in this land. But, with the multitude of forces of vulgarity, get-rich-quick commercialism, and heedlessness opposed to it, it is doubtful. At the present moment, the high art of dancing is pleasing, and its emotional message partly comprehended. If it were fully comprehended, that art would be an indispensable source of refreshment to the American mind. Consistently repeated for a few years, its idiom would be familiar to a large part of the population. The conditions which this chapter has analysed show, however, that the sufficient and adequate repetition of ballet drama is by no means certain. And this chapter’s motive is to emphasise two things: first, if American lovers of dancing wish to insure for themselves the continuous opportunity to see fine representations of that art, they must found a ballet, and an academy upon which it may depend for its artists; second, for such a step no time can be more propitious than the present.
If the vision of an endowed ballet institution in the United States seems lacking on the practical side, it is not amiss to recall a few facts of American history in its relation to music—than whose ambitions of yesterday nothing was thought to be less practical. Thirty years ago the attitude of the United States (particularly the West) toward classical music was less indifferent than scornful. To confess a liking for orchestral or operatic compositions was to brand oneself as queer. Anything connected with music or musicians was deemed a fair mark for newspaper jokers; and they knew their readers. Inevitably, organisations that ventured a tour did so at their financial peril.
Individual singers and performers were protected somewhat by their lesser expenses and their preparedness to render popular ballads; but they too knew well the look of empty benches.
Theodore Thomas pointed out to a group of Chicago people that never, under such conditions, would the adequate performance of great works be other than at rare and uncertain times; that, without fairly frequent hearing of those great works, public taste never would improve. Obviously, the programmes that Mr. Thomas proposed to give, and the manner and frequency with which he proposed to give them, brought up the prophetic vision of considerable money loss; but the funds were subscribed. The result is the Chicago Orchestra: a source of unending happiness to lovers of good music, just pride to the city, and material benefit in no slight degree. Chicago finds itself the place of residence of several thousand music students, and a centre of attraction for many more thousands of occasional pilgrims to the Orchestra’s concerts. Lastly, as though to show that idealism is not the idle dissipation that it seems, the Orchestra was reported several years ago to have reached a basis of self-support.
The same history has been virtually duplicated in perhaps a score of cities, needless to enumerate. Even “practical” people admit that most of the orchestras so endowed, though they may have passed through a period of begging people to accept passes to concerts, are now paying their own expenses. The general history of the Metropolitan Opera has already been outlined. Opera in other cities has gone through much the same train of events, slowly changing indifference to interest, and having now arrived at the stage of independence made possible by a demand that grows steadily in volume and intelligence. The number of performances in each city shows a consistent annual growth.