23. Bournonville, My Dearly Beloved Wife, 59, 117; Bournonville, My Theater Life, 611.
24. Bournonville, My Dearly Beloved Wife, 108.
25. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 226.
26. Saint-Léon, Letters from a Ballet-Master, 106.
27. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 569.
28. Ibid., 570.
29. Ibid., 582.
30. Oakley, A Short History of Denmark, 176.
31. McAndrew, “Bournonville: Citizen and Artist,” 160; Bournonville, My Theater Life, 162–63.
32. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 258.
33. Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen, 269; Bournonville, My Theater Life, 205.
34. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 210.
35. Quoted from scenario of A Folk Tale reprinted in Bournonville, “The Ballet Poems,” Dance Chronicle 4(1):187.
36. Windham, ed., “Hans Christian Andersen,” 154.
37. Études Chorégraphiques, ms. autograph (incomplete), 38 pages, 30 Janvier 1848; Études Chorégraphiques, ms. autograph dated Copenhagen, 7 March 1855; Études Chorégraphiques, ms. autograph dated Copenhagen, 1861. The ballet masters Despréaux and Adice also had an almost cabalistic interest in the number five, and Bournonville may have derived some of his ideas from their work.
38. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 275. Mlle. Pepita was the grandmother of the British writer Vita Sackville-West, who wrote an admiring biography, Pepita, in 1937.
39. L’Europe Artiste, Aug. 26, 1860, 1. I am indebted to Knud Arne Jürgensen for sharing this with me.
40. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 344–45, 405.
Chapter 6: Italian Heresy
1. Hansell, Opera and Ballet, 600.
2. Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 118.
3. Bournonville, My Theater Life, 20 (“violent” and “exaggerated”); Magri, Theoretical and Practical Treatise, 187 (“splendid body” and “hidden control”); Hansell, Opera and Ballet, 662.
4. Sgai’s attack on Magri is documented in Bongiovanni, “Magri in Naples.”
5. Magri, Theoretical and Practical Treatise, 47–49; Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 209, 230 (“lowest of all genres” and “danza parlante”).
6. Stendhal, Life of Rossini, 222, 246, 300, 447–48.
7. Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 221.
8. Ibid., 257.
9. Touchette, “Sir William Hamilton’s ‘Pantomime Mistress,’ ” 141.
10. Celi, “Viganò, Salvatore.”
11. Poesio, “Viganò,” 4; Stendhal, Life of Rossini, 447; on The Titans generally see especially Prunières, “Salvatore Viganò,” 87–89.
12. Hansell,“Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 269.
13. Plato, Laws, 2:93, 91.
14. Hornblower and Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1107.
15. Lucian, The Works of Lucian of Samosata, 2:250, 255.
16. Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 254.
17. Letter dated Jan. 30, 1844, Milan, held in the Royal Danish Library, DDk NKL 3258A, 4, #445.
18. Blasis, Notes upon Dancing, 89.
19. Blasis, Storia del ballo in Italia; Blasis, Leonardo da Vinci.
20. Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore, 205–6.
21. Blasis, L’Uomo Fisico, 219, 225; Falcone, “The Arabesque,” 241; see also Blasis, Saggi e Prospetto.
22. Scafidi, Zambon, and Albano, Le Ballet en Italie, 45 (“pléiade”).
23. Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 281; caricature of Boschetti from NYPL, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, Cia Fornaroli collection, *MGZFB Bos AC1.
24. Scafidi, Zambon, and Albano, Le Ballet en Italie, 45.
25. Quoted in Monga, review of Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, 153.
26. Hansell, “Theatrical Ballet and Italian Opera,” 300; Scafidi, Zambon, and Albano, Le Ballet en Italie, 49; unidentified news clipping, probably from the 1880s, NYPL, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, clippings file “Excelsior”; Pappacena, ed., Excelsior, 235, 242–43.
27. Pappacena, ed., Excelsior, 235. The Suez scene did not appear in the original libretto but was added in 1883. The dances for Verdi’s Aida at La Scala were choreographed by the French ballet master Hippolyte Monplaisir and included a temple scene with fifty women as dancing priestesses—an impressive display, but one that paled by comparison to Manzotti’s crowded extravaganzas.
28. Pappacena, ed., Excelsior, 305, 247, 312.
29. Choreographic sketches for the ballet (archived at La Scala) are reproduced in Pappacena, ed., Excelsior.
30. Poesio and Brierley, “The Story of the Fighting Dancers,” 30; “Luigi Manzotti,” Domenica del Corriere, Milano, 12 Feb. 1933.
31. Ugo Peschi quoted in Pappacena, ed., Excelsior, 253.
32. “Novel Electrical Effects by the Edison Electric Light Company,” newspaper clipping held in the NYPL, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, clippings file “Excelsior.”
33. Peschi, “Amor,” 138–69.
34. Pappacena, ed., Excelsior, 333–35.
35. Arruga, La Scala, 175; Fabbri, “I cent’anni di L. Manzotti,” Sera Milano, Feb. 2, 1935 (“brains, heart, muscle”).
36. Mack Smith, Modern Italy, 14.
37. Ugo Peschi, “Amor: poema coreografico di L. Manzotti” (“revolution”); “Messo in scena al Teatroalla Scala carnevale del 1886,” L’Illustrazione Italiana, Milano, Fratelli Treves, 21 febbraio 1886, 140.
Chapter 7: Tsars of Dance
1. Hughes, Russia, 189 (see also 192), 203.
2. Custine, Letters from Russia, 105; Gautier, Russia, 213; Tolstoy, War and Peace, 582–83.
3. Saint-Léon, Letters from a Ballet-Master, 65.
4. Karsavina, Theatre Street, 89.
5. Wiley, ed., A Century of Russian Ballet, 20.
6. Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts, 141; Frame, School for Citizens, 33; Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts, 26.
7. Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts, 196; Swift, A Loftier Flight, 140.
8. Wiley, ed., A Century of Russian Ballet, 78.
9. Swift, A Loftier Flight, 171.
10. Frame, School for Citizens, 61, 62.
11. Swift, A Loftier Flight, 171.
12. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 298.
13. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, 77; Custine, Letters from Russia, 621, 181.
14. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 293, 301–2.
15. Guest, Jules Perrot, 227.
16. Wortman, Scenarios, I: 413.
17. Hardwick, “Among the Savages” (“bovine”); Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 14 (“I love ballet”).
18. Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 178.
19. Beaumont, A History of Ballet, x; Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet, 272.
20. Vazem, “Memoirs of a Ballerina,” 1:10; Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet, 269–70; Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, 111.
21. Gautier, Russia, 209, 212–14. For a marvelous description of Eoline, see Gautier, Voyage en Russie, 189–96. The report on theaters is discussed in Frame, “ ‘Freedom of the Theatres.’ ”
22. Slonimsky, “Marius Petipa,” 118; Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 36; Krasovskaya, “Marius Petipa and ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ ” 12.
23. Gautier, Russia, 212–14 (“slightest awkwardness”); Wortman, Scenarios, 1:328–30.
24. Wortman, Scenarios, 2:176.
25. Ibid., 2:226.
26. Frame, “ ‘Freedom of the Theatres,’ ” 282.
27. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 93, 94.
28. Poznansky, Tchaikovsky, 57.
29. Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 22.
30. Scholl, Sleeping Beauty, 27 (“appealing” and “replace” quoted), 99 (“ballet as circus” and “machines”); Wiley, The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov, 163, 177–78 (“steel points” and “sharp gestures” quoted); Khudekov in Wiley, “Three Historians,” 14 (“correctness and beauty”).
&
nbsp; 31. Wiley, A Century of Russian Ballet, 271; Krasovskaya, “Marius Petipa,” 21; Legat, “Whence Came the ‘Russian’ School,” 586.
32. Scholl, Sleeping Beauty, 30. There were other precedents for The Sleeping Beauty, but they were very much in the old, French Romantic style: in 1825 La Belle au Bois Dormant was mounted as an opéra- féerie in Paris, and in 1829 the story was staged as a ballet-pantomime-féerie. It starred Marie Taglioni as a seductive naiad who tempts the prince with a voluptuous dance as he makes his way to the sleeping princess. The ballet had a complicated mimed plot with comic overtones and mismatched identities; in true fairground style, the evil fairy’s curse was written out and displayed on large placards.
33. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 156; Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 31.
34. Scholl, Sleeping Beauty, 179 (“too luxurious” and “a ballet”).
35. Brown, Tchaikovsky, 188 (“the miracles” and “very nice”); Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, 39.
36. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 388; “enchanted palace” quoted from a program for the second act written in Petipa’s hand, Bakhroushin Museum, Moscow.
37. Wiley, The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov, 141; the sketches of the snow scene are also reprinted in Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 387–400.
38. Wiley, The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov, 19, 54.
39. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 388.
40. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets; Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
41. Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 38.
42. Ibid., 57, 327 (“on the calm lake” quoted from the libretto).
43. Ibid., 248.
44. Ibid., 269.
45. Ibid., 264.
46. Petipa, Mémoires, 67; Leshkov, Marius Petipa, 27.
Chapter 8: East Goes West
1. Volynsky, Ballet’s Magic Kingdom, 17.
2. Cecchetti’s handwritten manuscript, Manuel des Exercices de Danse Théâtrale à pratiquer chaque jour de la semaine à l’usage De mes Elèves, St. Petersburg, 1894, held at NYPL, Jerome Robbins Dance Division (MUS.RES.*MGTM).
3. Smakov, The Great Russian Dancers; Nijinska, Early Memoirs, 381; Volynsky, Ballet’s Magic Kingdom, 47. Pavlova’s shoes are at the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow.
4. Smakov, The Great Russian Dancers; Wiley, Tchaikovsky’s Ballets, 11.
5. Beaumont, Michel Fokine and His Ballets, 23.
6. Gregory, The Legat Saga, 66 (“doubt”); Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, 61, 60.
7. Kurth, Isadora, 104, 154, 248.
8. Roslavleva, Era of the Russian Ballet, 169.
9. Fokine, Memoirs, 51, 49. Footage of Pavlova dancing The Dying Swan is in 100 Years of Russian Dance, 2000, held at the NYPL, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, MGZIA 4-4816. The tape also includes footage of Karsavina c. 1920. The dating of this ballet is uncertain. In his memoirs, Fokine recalls creating the ballet in 1905, but records for this performance—if they ever existed—have been lost. We know that the ballet was performed at the Maryinsky Theater in 1907.
10. Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 98; Nesteev, “Diaghilev’s Musical Education,” 26.
11. Nesteev, “Diaghilev’s Musical Education,” 34, 36–37.
12. Bowlt, The Silver Age, 54.
13. Buckle, Diaghilev, 18; Croce, “On ‘Beauty’ Bare.”
14. Garafola and Baer, eds., The Ballets Russes, 65; Karsavina, Theatre Street, 338; Bowlt, The Silver Age, 169.
15. Buckle, Diaghilev, 135. Anna Pavlova left the Ballets Russes shortly after its first season to form her own touring company.
16. Les Sylphides had a long gestation period. It began as Chopiniana in 1907 at the Maryinsky, which featured (among other dances) a polonaise in Polish national dress, a nocturne in which the poet was pursued by monks, and a waltz danced by Pavlova and Anatole Obukhov, which became the basis for the revised, “white” Chopiniana performed at the Maryinsky in 1908, subsequently retitled Les Sylphides.
17. Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 272–73.
18. Ibid., 276.
19. Ibid., Natasha’s Dance, 279.
20. Buckle, Diaghilev, 162.
21. Ibid., 180.
22. Fokine, Memoirs, 187, 191.
23. Ibid., 188–89; Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2:970.
24. Nijinska, Early Memoirs, 293–94, 400.
25. Buckle, Nijinsky, 107.
26. Rambert, Quicksilver, 61–62; Buckle, Nijinsky, 333.
27. Nijinska, Early Memoirs, 353.
28. Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 64.
29. Ibid., 67; Craft, “Nijinsky and ‘Le Sacre’ ”; see also Hodson, Nijinsky’s Crime Against Grace, x. Bronislava later became pregnant and in spite of Nijinsky’s protestations had to be replaced.
30. Shead, Ballets Russes, 70.
31. Hodson, Nijinsky’s Crime, vii; Craft, “Nijinsky and ‘Le Sacre.’ ”
32. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Swann’s Way, 7; Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 36.
33. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, 419 (“sang, no screamed”); Spurling, Matisse the Master, 53 (“caveman”).
34. Spurling, Matisse the Master, 101, 94.
35. Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 35 (“red”); Buckle, Nijinsky, 160 (“undulating”); Acocella, Reception of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 324 (“old, tired”), 336 (“this voluptuous”), 342 (“too civilized”).
36. Buckle, Diaghilev, 226.
37. Buckle, Diaghilev, 253–55; Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 9–54.
38. Jacques Rivière, Nouvelle Revue Française, Nov. 1913, 730.
39. Eksteins, Rites, 54.
40. Nijinsky, Diary, xx, and Buckle, Nijinsky, 495.
41. Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs, 2:242.
42. Frame, The St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters, 170; Souritz, Soviet Choreographers, 43–44.
43. Quoted in Isaac Deutscher’s introduction to Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes, 13; Schwarz, Music and Musical Life, 12 (“pure landlord culture”).
44. Lopukhov, Writings on Ballet and Music, 63–65; Volkov, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky, 162.
45. Souritz, Soviet Choreographers, 267–73.
46. Kelly, “Brave New Worlds”; Slonimsky, “Balanchine: The Early Years,” 60; Volkov, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky, 162.
47. Banes, “Kasyan Goleizovsky’s Manifestos,” 72; Souritz, Soviet Choreographers, 176.
48. Tracy, Balanchine’s Ballerinas, 30; Gottlieb, George Balanchine, 24; Blok, The Twelve, and Other Poems, 35–36.
49. Kessler, Berlin in Lights, 273.
50. Massine married in 1921 and Diaghilev cut him off. The impresario later relented, however, and Massine created several new works for the Ballets Russes from 1925 to 1928.
51. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 420.
52. Spurling, Matisse the Master, 231; Kurth, Isadora, 248.
53. Kessler, Berlin in Lights, 282; Shead, Ballets Russes, 119.
54. Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, 117–18.
55. Buckle, Diaghilev, 393 (“suicide”); Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 343 (“Bank Holiday” and “delighted”).
56. Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 400.
57. Nijinska, “On Movement,” 80; Baer, Bronislava Nijinska.
58. Buckle, Diaghilev, 411–12 (“resemble”); Fergison, “Bringing Les Noces to the Stage,” 187 (“automatized” and “look like machinery”); Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 126 (“Marxist”).
59. Nice, Prokofiev, 214–15. In 1929 Meyerhold hoped to use Prokofiev’s score for Pas d’acier for a new ballet at the Bolshoi. Goliezovsky thought it was a terrible idea: “I find that the music of this piece cannot be danced.” The authorities accused the composer of formalism and trickery, and Meyerhold’s idea was dropped. See Surits [Souritz], “Soviet Ballet.”
60. Joseph, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 98; Reynolds, Repertory in Review, 47; Nabokov, Old Friends and New Music, 83.
61. Reynolds,
Repertory in Review, 48; Balanchine, “The Dance Element in Stravinsky’s Music,” 150–51.
62. Kessler, Berlin in Lights, 366.
Chapter 9: Left Behind?
1. Plisetskaya, I, Maya, 140.
2. Ross, The Rest Is Noise, 227.
3. Berlin, Personal Impressions, 163.
4. Montefiore, Stalin, 148. Montefiore gives the figure of two million killed from 1934 to 1937.
5. Tertz, The Trial Begins and On Socialist Realism, 148; The Aviators’ March quoted in Enzensberger, “ ‘We Were Born to Turn a Fairy Tale into Reality,’ ” Grigori Alexandrov’s The Radiant Path, in Taylor and Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, 97.
6. Stanislavsky, My Life in Art, 330.
7. Souritz, Soviet Choreographers, 140. Gorsky staged new versions of Giselle in 1907 and again in 1913 and in 1921–22 (performed at the New Theater and transferred to the Bolshoi in 1924). In 1934 the Bolshoi returned to a more traditional staging of the ballet.
8. Souritz, Soviet Choreographers, 241, 251.
9. Shostakovich later referred to Asafiev as “the musical equivalent of Lysenko” for his pandering musical deference to the Party line in his music. See Wilson, Shostakovich, 303–4.
10. For example, Ulanova, “A Ballerina’s Notes,” in USSR, No. 4.
11. Soviet Press Department VOKS, NYPL, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, *MGZR Res. Box 11.
12. Beresovsky, Ulanova and the Development of the Soviet Ballet, 50. Lubov Blok also wrote her own book, The Origin and Development of the Technique of Classical Dance, but it was not published until the 1980s.
13. The dancer P. Gusev quoted in Litvinoff, “Vaganova,” 40.
14. Swift, The Art of the Dance, 109–116.
15. Swift, The Art of the Dance, 109–10, 114; Roslavleva, The Era of the Russian Ballet, 238 (“correct path”).
16. Zolotnitsky, Sergei Radlov, 115; Morrison, The People’s Artist.
17. Roslavleva, The Era of the Russian Ballet, 275.
18. Figures for servicemen shot in Montefiore, Stalin, 395; Pasternak quote in Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” in Taylor and Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, 120; Ulanova, “A Ballerina’s Notes.”
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