Sol Hurok

“ We are now reaching a time in America when artistic achievement has become something more than casual entertainment, although, in my opinion, artistic endeavor must never lose sight of the fact that entertainment there must be if that public so necessary to the well-being of any art is not to be alienated. The role of art and the artist is, through entertainment, to stimulate and, through the creative spirit, to help the audience renew its faith and courage in beauty, in universal ideals, in love, in a richer and fuller imaginative life. ”

“ The composer of some sixty-odd ballets, it is the most imposing record in modern ballet’s history, perfectly amazing productivity. No one but himself is capable of restoring them. When produced or restaged without his fine hand, they are a shambles.
I should like to offer my friend, Leonide Massine, a hope that springs from my heart. I can only urge him, for his own good and for the good of ballet which needs him, to rest for a time on his beautiful island in the Mediterranean and to spend the time there in study and reflection, crystallizing his ideas. ”

“ It has been thanks to David Webster’s sympathetic guidance that ballet has grown in popularity until its audiences are larger than are those for opera.
A man of firm purpose, few words, eclectic taste, and great personal charm, David Webster is a master of diplomatic skill. I can honestly say that some of the happiest days of my life have been spent working closely with him. Had it not been for his warm cooperation, his unquenchable enthusiasm, America might easily have been denied the pleasure and profit of Sadler’s Wells, and our lives would have been the poorer. ”

“ I am not so foolish as to insist that government subsidy is the complete and final cure for all the ills to which the delicate body is heir; but it can provide, in a great national theatre, a roof for the creative and performing artists of ballet, opera, theatre, and music. More than anything else, the American ballet artist needs a roof, under which to live, to create, and hold his being in security. ”

“ The truly great are those who, through something that can only be described as personality, electrify the public. The public, once electrified, will come to see them again and again and again. There are, perhaps, too many good talents. There never can be enough great artists.
Vaslav Nijinsky was one of the great ones—a great artist, a great personality. There are those who can argue long and in nostalgic detail about his technique, its virtues and its defects. Artistry and personality transcend technique; for mere technique, however flawless, is not enough. ”

“ There was an unconscionable confusion in the darkened opera house as the audience rattled down the aisles, chattering, greeting friends, and shattering the spell of the Prologue, disturbing those who had taken the trouble to arrive on time as much as they did the artists on the stage. My concern on this point is as much for the audience as for the dancers. A ballet, being a work of art, is conceived as an entity, from beginning to end, from the first notes of the overture, till the last one of the coda. ”

“ No amount of technique, no amount of technical brilliance or recondite knowledge will hide the paucity of emotion or intellect in an artist’s make-up. Technique, after all, is no more than the alphabet and the words of an art, and it is only the difficulty of acquiring a superlative technique that has led so many astray. But along what a fatal path they have been led! How often are we told that the true artist must devote her whole energies to her art, without the realization that art is the highest expression of mankind and has value only in so far as it is enriched with the blood of life. ”

“ Diaghileff was a man of deep culture, vast erudition, an inspirer of all with whom he came into contact. De Basil was a sharp business man, a shrewd negotiator, an adroit manager. He was a personality. In the history of ballet, I venture to suggest, he will be remembered as the man who was the instrument by which and through which new life was instilled in the art of the ballet at a time when it was in dire danger of becoming moribund. ”

“ It is in Giselle and The Nutcracker that Markova can bring joy and pleasure to an immense public, that joy the public always receives, whether they know the intricate details of ballet or not, by seeing a great classical ballerina at her best. One of Markova’s best characterizations was that of Taglioni in Dolin’s Pas de Quatre, a delightful cameo, yet today, or, at least, the last time I saw it, it, like her Prelude in Sylphides, suffered from an accretion of manner, until it bordered on the grotesque. ”

“ Markova is never shown to her best advantage with any other male dancer than Anton Dolin. My opinion, on which I make no concessions to any one, is that Dolin is one of the finest Albrechts in the world today. Without Dolin, Giselle remains but half a ballet.
As a re-creator, he has few peers and no superiors. I can think of no one better qualified to recreate a masterpiece of another era, with regard to the creator’s true intent and meaning, nor do I know of any choreographer who has a greater feeling, a finer sense, or a more humble respect for “period and tradition.” ”

“ Whereas Kchessinska’s career was, for the most part, a rose-strewn path, Preobrajenska’s road was rocky. Her climb from a corps de ballet dancer to the heights was no overnight{70} journey. It was one that took a good deal of courage, an exhibition of fortitude that happily led to a richly deserved victory. Blessed with a dogged perseverance, a divine thirst for knowledge, coupled with a desire ever to improve, she forced herself ahead. She danced not only in every ballet, but in nearly every opera in the repertoire that had dances. ”

“ A picturesque figure, Lambert was a great conductor, a great musician, a composer of superior talents, a critic of perception, a writer of brilliance and incisiveness, a life-long student of the ballet. Lambert’s contribution to the making of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet has, I suspect, been given less credit than it deserves. I have said that, in my three decades-and-more of ballet management, I have never known a ballet company with such high musical standards. ”

“ All these things, so far as I am concerned, add up to a ballerina absolutely unique in my experience.
Margot Fonteyn is, to me, the true artist, because a great dancer must be a human being before she is an artist; her art must, in the last resort, be the expression of her personal attitude to life. She is many-sided; and the wonder is that she is able to have this breadth of cultural outlook when so much of her time has had to be spent in acquiring technique, dealing with its problems and the means of expression. ”

“ I have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing England and the English for a great many years and, as a consequence, I venture to assume the pleasing privilege of informing a deluded world that, whatever else there may or may not be in England, there is more fun and laughter to the square acre than there is to the square mile of any other known quarter. My observation has been that even if an Englishman does achieve a gravity alien to the common spirit about him, he is not able to keep it up for long. Dolin is the possessor of a brilliant sense of humour and much wit, both often biting ”

“ Ballet cannot pay for itself, for new productions, for commissioned works, by its box-office takings, any more than can opera or symphony orchestras. The only future I can see is some form of Government subsidy for ballet and the other arts. Some of our leading spirits in the fields of art are opposed to this idea. This is difficult for me to understand. I cannot conceive how there could be any hesitancy on that score. We know that in Great Britain and in most countries of Europe the arts, including ballet, are subsidized by the Government. These countries are not Communist-dominated. ”

“ In all my wide experience of Swan Queens, Fonteyn today is unequaled. With the Sadler’s Wells company, there is no dearth of first-rate Swan Queens: Margot Fonteyn, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey, Violetta Elvin. Altogether, in case the reader has not already suspected it, Swan Lake is, I think, my favorite ballet. It is not only a classical ballet; it is a classic. The haunting Tchaikowsky score, its sheer romanticism, its dramatic impact, all these things individually and together, give it its pride of place with the public of America as well as with myself. ”

“ But it was as Argentinita that she was known to and loved by all lovers of the dance of Spain, and recognized by them as its outstanding interpreter of our time. Her story will bear re-telling. My enthusiasm, my utmost admiration for the Spanish dance, and for the great art of Argentinita is something that is not easy for me to express. Diaghileff is known to have said with that unequivocation for which he was noted: “There are two schools of dancing: the Classic Ballet, which is the foundation of all ballet; and the Spanish school.” ”

“ Toumanova’s whole life, career, and story have been, for the most part, the thrice-familiar tale of the White Russian émigré. Like all émigré stories, hers is extremely sentimental. Sentiment and sentimentality play a big part in Tamara’s life.
She is, I feel, unbreakable, unquenchable. She is, in her maturity, even more beautiful than she was as a “baby ballerina.” She is, I suppose, precisely the popular conception of what a glamorous ballerina is, or at least should be. Her personality is that of a complete theatrical extrovert. The last row of the gallery is her theatre target. ”

“ The Mordkin venture had been too small, too limited in its scope, too reactionary in thought, so Mordkin himself was pushed into the background, soon to be ousted altogether, and the tremendous undertaking went forward on a scale the like of which this country had never seen. In a Utopia such a pretentious scheme would have a permanent place in the cultural pattern, for the company’s avowed policy, at the outset, was to act as a repository for genuine masterpieces of all periods and styles of the dance; it would be to the dance what a great museum is to the arts of sculpture and painting. ”

“ Cultural relations are basically a matter of links between individuals rather than links between governments, and such a tour as Sadler’s Wells made, bringing the richness of British ballet to hundreds of thousands of individuals, helps develop those private relationships; and the sum of them presents a comprehensive picture of Britain to the world. In our struggle for peace in the world, nothing is more essential than cultural understanding. ”

“ Here was a man about whom there was nothing of the academic recluse, but a man who loved life as he loved music, ballet, fully, strongly, with ever-growing zest and with ever-deepening understanding; the man who had done so much for ballet, its music, its standards; who had been of such vital importance in the fashioning of Sadler’s Wells. ”

“ Serge Soudeikine had designed a production that ranked at the top of that Russian designer’s list of theatre creations. The entire ballet had a fine theatrical effectiveness. Perhaps the whole may not have been equal to the sum of its parts, but the second scene, wherein Paganini hypnotized a young girl by his playing of the guitar and the force of his striking personality, thereby forcing her into a dance of magnificent frenzy, was a striking example of the greatness of Fokine. Tatiana Riabouchinska rose to tremendous heights in the part. ”

“ The Marquis, a colorful gentleman of taste and culture, is, perhaps, the outstanding example we have today of the sincere and talented amateur in and patron of the arts. He is a European-American, despite his South American birth. He had a disastrous season of ballet in New York, in 1944, with his Ballet International, for which he bought a theatre, and lost nigh on to a million dollars in a two-months’ season—which may, to date, be the most expensive lesson in how not to make a ballet. Today the Marquis’s company functions as a part of the European scene. ”