Balista

“ Ballerina is a term greatly misused in the United States, where any little dancer is much too often referred to both in the press and in general conversation in this way. Ballerina is a title, not a term. The title is one earned only through long, hard experience. It is attained only in the highly skilled interpretation of the great standard classical parts. Russia, France, Italy, Denmark, countries where there are state ballets, know these things. We in the United States, I fear, do not understand. A “star” is not one merely by virtue of billing. ”

“ Just as the Spanish have their Mauzai, the Hindoos their Nautch girls, the Japanese that remarkable dance travellers have written so frequently and so much about, and each country its own particular sway or 237whirl, so this country seems to have taken kindly to the ballet. When a ballet dancer—one of the famous dancers of the beginning of the century—presented herself for the first time to an Albany, New York, audience, the ladies rushed from the stage and there was almost a panic. ”

“ I said, "you must begin your lessons tomorrow. Mdlle. Vesian stops at my hotel."
The young girl, full of wonder at my plan, began to laugh heartily, and said,
"But can an opera dancer be extemporized like a minister of state? I can dance the minuet, and my ear is good enough to enable me to go through a quadrille; but with the exception of that I cannot dance one step."
"Most of the ballet girls," said Baletti, "know no more than you do."
"And how much must I ask from M. Lani? I do not think I can expect much."
"Nothing. The ballet girls are not paid." ”

“ If the two others had not revealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, she would have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to the second line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential in the Chamber. And see! there’s a danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one more journalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power ”

“ With pretty Kshesinskaya, Bogdanova, Breobrashenskaya, Sokolova, Pavlova, Karsavina, Lopokova and Fokina as the prima ballerinas many new ballets became thrilling novelties to the Russian audiences. The ballet in the eyes of the Petipa school became a mute drama with music, and at once took a high position artistically and poetically. People grew to find the ballet far more alluring than the pessimistic drama. ”

“ The whole Court, glittering with precious stones, was present at a concert in the palace, and at the ballet which followed it. The reception-rooms of the Tuileries were thronged with a brilliant and gorgeous company; there were ambassadors, the greatest nobles of all Europe, princes, and many kings who, although new-made, appeared in becoming state. There, too, were lovely women, magnificently attired, who, together with the first musicians in the world, and all that the opera-ballets could lend of grace and elegance, combined to form a scene of Oriental splendor. ”

“ The ballet at the Marionette is a triumph of choreographic art, and is extremely funny. The prima ballerina has all the difficult grace and far-fetched arts of the prima ballerina of flesh and blood; and when the enthusiastic audience calls her back after the scene, she is humanly delighted, and acknowledges the compliment with lifelike empressement. I have no doubt the corps de ballet have their private jealousies and bickerings, when quietly laid away in boxes, and deprived of all positive power by the removal of the cords which agitate their arms and legs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Russian ballet is, in fact, an outgrowth of the folk-dance just as Russian music emanates from the folk-song. While watching the Russian ballet, you see glimpses of the racial traits. It is not like the music, however, a picture of the gloom of lonely moujik life, in which only here and there a beam of light breaks through the melancholy. It is a succession of brilliant pictures of the mediæval Boyars, the semi-barbaric nobility. Every part of the ballet is meant to show the rich Byzantine colors, and primitive passions as set forth in a half-civilized garb. ”

“ If the fashion in Russian ballet should age elsewhere I feel sure it will not in England, the last country to adopt it. So these notes by an enthusiast have a good chance of being seasonable for many years. Yes, I claim to be an enthusiast, although, perhaps, the fact that I am not an English enthusiast but one who is half Irish and half Scotch makes me more canny than some of my fellow-admirers. I have never opened my mouth and swallowed the new ballet and all its works without thinking. These are, all the same, impressions rather than criticisms. ”

“ Circe was captured, and her wand presented to the King. Then the Naiads and Dryads danced fifteen 'passages' as the 'entrée du grand ballet', and forty more of a geometrical character for the 'grand ballet' itself. Finally, they presented the King and gentlemen with 'choses de mer' and appropriate 'devises' or mottoes, and took them out for 'le grand bal' followed by 'bransles' and other dances.
So far as published documents go, the Balet Comique is closely the prototype of the fully developed 'ballet' or court mask, as we find it both in France and in England. ”

“ From this you may guess, that, in this city, as in some other towns in Italy, little attention is paid to the music by the company in the boxes, except at a new opera, or during some favourite air. But the dancers command a general attention: as soon as they begin, conversation ceases; even the card-players lay down their cards, and fix their eyes on the Ballette. Yet the excellence of Italian dancing seems to consist in feats of strength, and a kind of jerking agility, more than in graceful movement. There is a continual contest among the performers, who shall spring highest. ”

“ To this native spirit, however, the ballet owes little or nothing. Doubtless it has in a manner fertilised the soil, created a public interested in the dance and, if heredity counts for anything, provided a raw material ready for the ballet-master to mould to his will. But the ballet, as I have said before, is in its origin aristocratic, and nowhere more so than in Russia. The Russian ballet is entirely the product of the Court. ”

“ All the Pavlova ballets that have been given in America, all the elaborate ballets of the Russian classic school, all the ballets of the Diaghileff-Fokine group, are and remain dances to preconceived plots, dances to a style or a mood, but rarely dances of the music. We should like to have any of the celebrated dancers show us where there is expression of the music in all the spectacular pirouettes of Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky and Fokina, in their dramatic acting to a musical composition, even in the most modern ballets of Stravinsky. ”

“ The men are trained on the "ballon" system, not on that which is known as the "parterre," and it is "ballon" dancing which is one of the most beautiful features of the Russian ballet. After we have watched interminable exercises ingeniously performed "sur les pointes," with what relief have we seen Nijinsky, perhaps the greatest "ballon" dancer who has ever existed, bound on to the stage, rise high in the air, descend slowly and with such art that when he touches the ground he can use it again for a still higher flight. ”

“ The Russian ballet, which had become so popular a feature of the last few pre-war Covent Garden seasons, has always been one of the most fashionable meeting-places of Petrograd society. I often went to the ballet and thoroughly enjoyed those evenings, being extremely amused always in contemplating the varied expressions on the physiognomies of both my young and old bachelor friends, with their eyes lost in rapt admiration—absolutely embedded in their opera-glasses. ”

“ In speaking of the English ballet, Mr Max Beerbohm has gaily admitted his inability to master the meaning of formalised gesture: “When a ballerina lays the palms of her hands against her left cheek, and then snatching them away, regards them with an air of mild astonishment, and then swaying slightly backwards, touches her forehead with her finger-tips, and then suddenly extends both arms above her head, I ought of course to be privy to her inmost meaning. ”

“ Their limbs exist only for grace and suppleness, and are never stiffened by any other use. All their lives are devoted to dancing; and it is the constant occupation of their minds. A ballet-master is not an accident or sport of nature, but one who is acknowledged by his comrades to excel them in the sort of imagination in which they all share. A certain Russian, living in St Petersburg, was frequently puzzled by the strange behaviour of the guests in a flat across the street. ”

“ The curtain rose on the ballet, which was one of those excellent specimens of the Italian school, admirably arranged and put on the stage by Henri, who has established for himself a great reputation throughout Italy for his taste and skill in the choreographic art — one of those masterly productions of grace, method, and elegance in which the whole corps de ballet, from the principal dancers to the humblest supernumerary, are all engaged on the stage at the same time ”

“ An Englishman, Scandinavian or Dutchman could never dance a Tarantella. It is the dance of a temperamental race.
Like the ancient Romans, the Italians are fond of pantomimes and spectacular effects, with little discrimination for poetry and poise. We can see the same traits in the Italian ballet, which has an outspoken tendency to the acrobatic. All the Italian ballet teachers in Russia are kept there only for their acrobatic specialties. You find in Italy everywhere singing parties, but comparatively little dancing. ”

“ But there is good reason to believe that the English ballet is on the eve of a renaissance. The success of the Russians must have taught the managers that a gorgeous spectacle is not really necessary for the delight of the public,—in the Russian repertory probably the simplest ballets were the most appreciated. Already in the Dance Dream the Alhambra has produced a ballet which, if the theme was insipid, at any rate had the crowning virtue of breadth and simplicity of treatment. ”

“ The growth, the development, and the appreciation of ballet in America are the result of a number of things, both individually and in combination. There may exist a variety of opinions on the subject, but one thing, I know, is certain: the present state of ballet in America is not the result of chance. In 1933 I had signed a contract with de Basil to bring ballet to America; yet there was an element of chance involved in that my publicity director, vacationing in Europe, saw a performance of the de Basil company, and spontaneously cabled me an expression of his enthusiasm. ”

“ The night was dark, and in the darkness of the night Balkis looked very small.
She led Balthasar to one of the taverns where wastrels and street porters foregathered along with prostitutes. The two sat down at a table and saw through the foul air by the light of a fetid lamp, unclean human brutes attack each other with fists and knives for a woman or a cup of fermented liquor, while others with clenched fists snored under the tables. The tavern-keeper, lying on a pile of sacking, watched the drunken brawlers with a prudent eye. ”

“ Thus, the surprise was great, when, thanks to this story-teller, we still found among us something resembling poetry—feasts, intoxication, the light o' love giving her caresses amidst an orgie, the brimming punch-bowl crowned with blue flames, the yellow-gloved politician, scented adultery, the girl indulging in pleasure and love and dreaming aloud, poverty clean and neat, surrounded with respectability and happy hazard—we have seen all this in Balzac. The Opera with its lemans, the pink boudoir and its flossy hangings, the feast and its surfeits ”

“ Italian. Maria Carmi, Canti pop. Emiliani, Archivio, XII, 189. Brunetina, after she has been rescued by her lover, is informed, while she is dancing at a ball, that her mother is dead. Bury her, she replies, I will dress in complete red, and she goes on dancing. So of her father. But when told that her lover is dead, she says she will dress in complete black, and bids the music stop, for she wishes to dance no more. ‘La Ballerina,’ Nigra, No 107, p. 469, is no doubt the last half of this ballad corrupted at the conclusion. ”

“ Georges Marest, with thirty thousand francs a year, and a handsome face, courted Florentine. Every danseuse makes a point of having some young man who will take her to drive, and arrange the gay excursions into the country which all such women delight in. However disinterested she may be, the courtship of such a star is a passion which costs some trifles to the favored mortal. There are dinners at restaurants, boxes at the theatres, carriages to go to the environs and return, choice wines consumed in profusion,—for an opera danseuse eats and drinks like an athlete. ”