Studies in Ballet

The dance is more than a mere symbol, however great the signi ficance it as such possesses. It is the dance, and the dance alone, which brings out in full measure all the essential and fundamental properties of the human organism its delicacy and its strength, its intelligence and its skill, brain a [...]
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The dance is more than a mere symbol, however great the signi ficance it as such possesses. It is the dance, and the dance alone, which brings out in full measure all the essential and fundamental properties of the human organism its delicacy and its strength, its intelligence and its skill, brain and body working together in the achievement of beauty through the very substance of the human animal A Shakespeare or an Einstein, and many an athlete, may overwhelm us by some special prodigious manifestation of strength in art or intellect. But here alone we may properly exclaim What a miracle is Man The dance is the final justification of Man, and the justification of whatever Power it was that made Man The Significance of the Dance from My Confessional HAVELOCK ELLIS For My Mother CONTENTS PAGE OVERTURE II CHOREOGRAPHY 21 I. THE CREATORS OF MOVEMENT 21 II. THEMES AND SCENARIOS 32 GISELLE AND THE ROMANTIC BALLET 40 I. HVE GISELLES 45 II. THE SKULL AND THE IVY LEAVES 51 THE SADLERS WELLS BALLET. 58 I. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY AT COVENT GARDEN 58 II. MASSINE WITH THE BRITISH BALLET 72 THE ENTRY OF THE DANCERS 79 THE TRAINING AND PHYSIQUE OF THE DANCER 95 THE BALLET PUBLIC 108 PAS-DE-TROIS 117 L TAMARA KARSAVINA II 8 II. PEARL ARGYLE 122 III. MARGOT FONTEYN 127 BALLET COSTUME 133 BALLET DESIGN 142 EPILOGUE 151 7 ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM CHAPPELL Frontispiece Between pp. 32 and 33 1. OLGA SPESSITSEWA 2. ANNA PAVLOVA IN THE SLEEPING BEAUTY 3. IDZIKOWSKY IN BLUE BIRD JEAN BABILLEE IN jEUNE HOMME ET LA MORT 4. NATHALIE PfflLLIPART IN jEUNE HOMME ET LA MORT 5. MARGOT FONTEYN AS THE CREOLE GIRL IN RIO GRANDE, HER HRST ROLE AT SADLER S WELLS 6. FREDERICK ASHTON IN LES MASQUES BALLET CLUB PRODUC TION 7.ROBERT HELPMANN AND WILLIAM CHAPPELL IN FACADE BRONISLAVA NIJINSKA IDA RUBINSTEIN COMPANY, MONTE CARLO, 1930, ARTHUR MAHONEY, WILLIAM CHAPPELL, FREDERICK ASHTON, LICfflNE FREDERICK ASHTON, DUNCAN GRANT, LYDIA LOPOKOVA, WILLIAM CHAPPELL, 1933 8. MARGOT FONTEYN Between pp. 64 and 65 9. PEARL ARGYLE IN LE BAISER DE LA FEE 10. KARSAVINA 11. MARGOT FONTEYN AS GISELLE KARSAVINA IN LE PAVILLON 12. SPESSITSEWA IN GISELLE 13. ALEXANDRE BENOIS, 1947 14. CHRISTIAN BERARD 9 STUDIES IN BALLET effect was the same whether we had been undergraduates, business men, coal miners, shopkeepers, leisured people or ballet-dancers. The past, and ones own personal past in particular, had become a legend in the mind. In the same way the news from the ballet world that reached me periodically had taken on a legendary quality. The descriptions of the fresh triumphs of the ballet company with which I had worked until the outbreak of war the reports of the clamouring, crowding audiences the louder, longer applause. The bigger ballets ... die better ballets Even stranger, far more unreal, shining with that particular gloss that only America gives to the theatre, was the information on the ballet from the new world. From the new world, but not in new terms, the articles, the cap tions beneath the photographs, describing in rhapsodical print the successes of dancers and choreographers with whom I had worked in pre-war days, and who now, happily removed from European chaos, were flung skywards on the wind raised by a shriek of adu lation, even more piercing and hysterical than the note which had so often shocked my ears in England. These articles had the fami liar nonsensical ring, but the pretentious cliches seemed tohave less meaning than ever. It struck me as fabulous not so much the extremes of success, as the mere fact that it was going on at all. But it was true. Ballet was booming. I regarded the signs and portents of that boom thoughtfully, not altogether happily...