Finding Balanchine's Lost Ballets : Exploring the Early Choreography of a Master [1 ed.] 9780813057668, 9780813066646

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Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets Exploring the Early Choreography of a Master Elizabeth Kattner Foreword by Patricia Barker

University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa Boca Raton · Pensacola · Orlando · Miami Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Copyright 2020 by Elizabeth Kattner All rights reserved Published in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kattner, Elizabeth, author. | Barker, Patricia, active 1988, author of foreword. Title: Finding Balanchine’s lost ballets : exploring the early choreography of a master / Elizabeth Kattner ; foreword by Patricia Barker. Description: Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020017648 (print) | LCCN 2020017649 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813066646 (hardback) | ISBN 9780813057668 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Balanchine, George. | Ballets—Stories, plots, etc. Classification: LCC GV1790.A1 K37 2020 (print) | LCC GV1790.A1 (ebook) | DDC 792.8/4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017648 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017649 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 2046 NE Waldo Road Suite 2100 Gainesville, FL 32609 http://upress.ufl.edu

For Stefan, Maximilian, and Alexander

C ONTENTS

List of Figures ix Foreword xi Acknowledgments xvii 1| Envisioning Funeral March 1 2| The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? 18 3| The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps 38 4| The Puzzle’s Picture: Assembling What We Know 60 5| The Missing Pieces: Rechoreographing What We Don’t Know 77 6| One Final Note: What We Have Learned 103 Appendix I. Summary of George Balanchine’s Russian Choreography (1920–1924) 121 Appendix II. Score of “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” 141 Notes 151 Works Cited 159 Index 167

FIGURES

1. Members of the Young Ballet 2 2. Silhouette of dancers in Eugene the Unfortunate (1923) 5 3. Vera Kostrovitskaya in Funeral March (1923) 43 4. Nina Stukolkina in Funeral March (1923) 43 5. Poster for Evening of the Young Ballet, June 1, 1923 47 6. Meeting of Petrograd Soviet at the Duma Auditorium in 1917 49 7. Example of dance score from Appendix II 57 8. Example of dance score from Appendix II 57 9. Lydia Ivanova in Valse Triste (1922 or 1923) 72 10. Rehearsal of Funeral March by Grand Rapids Ballet (2018) 74 11. Entrance of the cortège in Funeral March by Grand Rapids Ballet (2018) 76 12. Yuka Oba as the Angel in Funeral March by Grand Rapids Ballet (2018) 80 13. George Balanchine and Tamara Geva in Étude (1923) 88 14. Cassidy Isaacson and Steven Houser as Deceased and Mourners in Funeral March (2018) 91 15. Olga Mungalova and Peter Gusev in Waltz and Adagio (1922) 92 16. Nathan Young in Funeral March by the Grand Rapids Ballet (2018) 95 17. Hand-painted poster for Theatre School Graduation Performance, May 19, 1921 107 · ix

F OREWORD

The legacy of George Balanchine has been a large part of my life and career, first as a dancer, and now as an artistic director who has been granted permission to stage his beautiful works by The George Balanchine Trust. When Elizabeth approached me with the idea of reconstructing, or envisioning, Funeral March on the dancers of the Grand Rapids Ballet, I was immediately interested. The project further connected me to all that I had learned from dancing and staging Mr. B’s works. The Trust has been very kind in allowing me to dance roles all over the world in galas, to guest, and to stage his breathtaking ballets on companies for audiences around the world. This project gave our organization and dancers the opportunity to do something that was out of the ordinary, something unique. The Grand Rapids Ballet is fortunate to own a theatre, which allows us to easily take part in special projects that give scholars like Elizabeth the chance to imagine outside the box, and choreographers and artists in general, a platform for exploration and creativity. I saw this project as an opportunity to dive into our history of dance and start conversations about our foundation, where we came from, and where we can go. Reconstruction is one of our ways of passing ballets onto the next generation while remembering our history and providing a foundation. The importance of staging the intent and musicality of a step, while maintaining the correctness of connected movements in a Balanchine ballet, was impressed upon me by many of Balanchine’s former dancers and stagers. I was heavily influenced daily by Francia Russell, who introduced me to Balanchine’s choreography: Francia was the artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, alongside Kent Stowell, when I was · xi

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first an apprentice with the company. As a dancer, and later as a répétiteur, I learned from Francia the importance of having Balanchine’s works be staged by someone who had danced the ballet or been in the room during its creative process. As a ballet mistress for New York City Ballet under Balanchine, Francia was one of the first individuals he allowed to stage his works worldwide. It was thrilling to be in the room with Francia and Kent. Some of my fondest memories are of the two of them in the studio together, when Francia would be staging a ballet that they knew intimately. Often, they would be up at the front of the room, dancing the roles as we were dancing behind them, learning with delight. Francia had been coached by Balanchine himself to teach and to restage ballets in the ways that they were staged for New York City Ballet. She had been in the room during the creation of some of his works. It was an incredible experience to learn Agon from Francia, a member of the original cast. She would say, “Well. George liked it like this.” Then, when the music would play, she knew exactly where that moment was in the choreography and what the steps were. Francia would often say to me, “You have to remember this for the future; you have to know what is right.” Her point was that someday it would be our turn to pass our knowledge onto the next generation of dancers. I was very fortunate that during my career at Pacific Northwest Ballet, thanks to Kent and Francia, I was often coached by original cast members of ballets. Karin von Aroldingen came to PNB many times, and I especially treasure the memory of working with her on Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Bart Cook, Peter Frame, Suzanne Farrell, Patricia McBride, Violette Verdy, Susan Hendl, Sara Leland, and, of course, Francia herself: so many wonderful artists passed on their knowledge and passion to us. Suzanne Farrell was a highlight for me; she came to stage Balanchine’s last version of his Mozartiana, to Tchaikovsky. We worked with a plethora of other choreographers, too, among them Glen Tetley, Mark Morris, Nacho Duato, and Ronald Hynd. Kent himself, PNB’s resident choreographer, created many roles for me. All of these incredible people came to share their talents, creating stepping stones for our careers and artistry and for us to carry that knowledge on to the next generation. As an artistic director, I want my dancers to have this experience. Providing this for young dancers was an important motivation in my desire to play a role in passing along Balanchine’s ballets. I am very

Foreword · xiii

fortunate that The Trust has allowed me to stage a few of Balanchine’s ballets on the companies I have worked with. I started out with Serenade for the Boston Ballet School when I was an instructor during their summer program. I asked The Trust if I could stage the very beginning of Serenade on the students during my repertory classes. I wanted to bring a work to the students that had meant so much to me, a work in which I had danced every female role. They agreed, and that first experience catapulted me into other areas. I worked with Slovak National Ballet for four years, and I staged Serenade there. Later, The Trust allowed me to stage Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. I also staged The Four Temperaments on Grand Rapids Ballet a few seasons ago, and Francia came to guide me in the staging. Having her there was a dream come true. I have also worked with Judith Fugate on staging Concerto Barocco and Who Cares?. I am honored to be a part the next generation of stagers who keep Balanchine’s ballets alive. Although I did not learn the ballets from Balanchine personally, I did learn them from dancers on whom he created the choreography. My sense of responsibility for passing on our history and our heritage as dancers to future generations is part of my DNA as a stager. Each person who carries on a choreographer’s legacy must also take great care in passing it along correctly. As I said about Serenade, I danced every single role, and I danced them for over twenty-seven years, so they were embedded in me. I remember which role I danced at which time in my career, and I can hear the counts and I can see the canons in my head right now. Our art form itself is a tribal art form: all knowledge is passed down through individuals from one generation to the next through human interaction. We have always passed down dance and, at the same time, the story of our lives. Reconstruction projects, such as envisioning Funeral March, give us another way to keep our traditions and history alive. When Elizabeth and I discussed her work with the textual and photographic information we had on Funeral March, I considered how these pieces fit into my experience with the Balanchine ballets that are still staged and performed today. There is a visible energy in Balanchine works. “One” is a very important count in his musicality, often an “upcount,” but just as often a preparation. There is also a sense of energy in the upper body, in the hands and the face, where our eyes are looking and where the body is facing. His movement is expansive and covers

xiv · Foreword

space with musical precision. We do not move small; we run far, we jump, we leap, and each movement has a sense of energy. We do not pose, and there is very little pantomime in any of Mr. B’s works. We seldom look under the arm as if to look for something but always looking out as if the sun is warming our face. For me, there is a sense of freedom of movement. So as long as we keep those things, we have the essence of his work. This idea, finding the essence of his work, is something that has to be kept in mind when working with a lost ballet like Funeral March. To keep the essence of a ballet—as an entire work, as a step, as energy, as timing—does not mean that a dancer needs to copy or emulate another’s talents. A Balanchine ballet has a life, and that life is seen in each dancer who performs it, whether the dancer learned it during the era that Balanchine first created the role, or when he or another stager brought the role back for another person. Even with different casts on different nights, while Balanchine was still alive, dancers danced a little bit differently at every performance, because he liked to see their personalities on stage. I was always encouraged by Balanchine stagers to put my personality into the role—not to change the step, or the intent of the energy, but to put myself into the role and to bring myself fully into rehearsal or performances every day. If I felt happy or energetic or romantic, then I could bring these facets of my personality to that role. So, when dances are passed on, you are going have a difference of opinion with dancers who dance the same role in different eras. Sometimes there are discrepancies in, for example, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, depending on whether it was taught by Patricia McBride or Violette Verdy. Yet Balanchine worked directly with each of them on that ballet. These differences apply to ballets that have been passed along generation to generation, as well as to those, like Funeral March, that were lost. The lead role in Funeral March was alternated between two very different dancers, Tamara Geva and Olga Mungalova, and each interpreted it in her own way. Once I experienced a situation where there were different versions of a dance I was learning. I was very fortunate to be included in the “Dinner with Balanchine” that concluded the two-month-long Balanchine Celebration, in 1993 in New York. New York City Ballet invited dancers from different companies and different countries to participate. I was invited to dance Polyhymnia in Apollo. Previously, I had danced Terpsichore with Pacific Northwest Ballet, so I needed to go to New York

Foreword · xv

early to learn Polyhymnia. I got to New York, and I was in the studio in rehearsal, and there were quite a few ballerinas in front of me. On that day, the building was ecstatic with so many people coming in, flying in, being part of that evening. There were rehearsals going on in every single studio. In my rehearsal, there were a few who had danced that role during the time that Balanchine was alive and whom he personally worked with. There was a little discrepancy in the front of the studio as to what I should do and how I should do it. Sometimes I just stood and waited for them to decide on how they wanted me to dance a step. In reflection, I would live that day again and again if possible. In the end, it all worked out. However, unintentionally I did add to a step a little slide that was not in the original, which dancers sometimes try to put in, and sometimes not. I guess I put my own stamp on it. In dance today, there is a lot of discussion about what it means to be “contemporary.” Balanchine at one point was contemporary. Agon created an enormous amount of dialogue, and our contemporary choreographers continue to provoke discussion today. This happens not because the dancer rolls on the ground or pushes through the body or is in pointe shoes or in socks, or anything else. The discussion happens inevitably because the choreographers are our contemporaries and they are creating works that stimulate dialogue and discussion. In Russia, in 1923, Funeral March was this kind of ballet. The audiences were always moved by it, and the dancers were still talking about the experience decades later. Balanchine brought this element to America; his work spoke to us. We became like a sand box, a playground for his energy. American dancers had little inhibition regarding what classical ballet was. We had nothing that stopped us from believing that we could move faster, run further, jump higher. We were open-minded for something new. Balanchine created most of his ballets in America, and his works have connection globally. When I was at the Slovak National Ballet, there was a beautiful little dancer named Yuka Oba from Japan, who had just gotten into the company, and whom I cast for the staging of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. I later hired her at the Grand Rapids Ballet. In this staging of Funeral March, she danced the role of the Angel, originally danced by Alexandra Danilova. From the beginning I saw her potential to recreate a role that Balanchine had created especially for a particular performer, for Danilova, whose spirit had to be captured along with her choreography.

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The important qualities in a dancer are not just physical, like long legs, pointed feet, hyperextension, extended arms, a beautiful épaulement. They include the spirit of the performer. Yuka has the spirit of a butterfly in many ways. If she was reincarnated, I believe that is what she would be, the most beautiful butterfly. She would be able to embody the role of the Angel both in spirit as well as in her technical strengths. By working on a project such as Funeral March, by envisioning a dance that has been lost and learning about our history by putting it on the stage, we demonstrate hope that young dancers can gain a sense of pride, of belonging—an understanding of how precious the art form is—and an excitement to take it forward. I am excited about dance, and I am excited about this art form. It has given me my life, who I am, my personality. It has given me a lot of joy. I met my husband through it—my lifelong partner. I have toured the world and met some incredible people just because of dance. I look at dance as a way to communicate without the spoken word. It is the only art form where I can go into any theatre around the world and enjoy the performance, without reading or listening to a different language, and understand the meaning. Just by watching, I know what is going on. Dance is often a young person’s first step into a theater. When ballets have children’s roles, kids in the auditorium see them dancing and think, “Oh, maybe I can do that!” or “What is this theatre?” Maybe they’ll become a scenic designer, or a lighting designer, or even a dancer, stager, choreographer, director. Dance creates imagination and sparks curiosity. That is where our next generation of dancers and creators comes from. I am passionate about passing along what I have been given to the next generation of dancers, and it is my hope that the vision of bringing Funeral March back to the stage, and my contribution to that project, as well as to this book, will help bring dancers into conversation about ballet— our past, our present, and our future. Patricia Barker

ACKNOWLED GMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank the artists who collaborated with me on “Envisioning Marche Funèbre”: Patricia Barker, Christian Matijas-Mecca, and Christa Koerner. Each of them contributed their time, talent, and experience. The project would not have been possible without the Grand Rapids Ballet, and I would like to especially thank Artistic Director James Sofranko, Executive Director Glenn del Vecchio, Ballet Mistress Dawnell Dryer, and the dancers who performed: Yuka Oba, Cassidy Isaacson, Steven Houser, Jade Butler, Cheriline Guzman, Michaelina Ritschl, Lydia Slack, Gretchen Steimle, Benjamin Waldvogel, Lauren Yordanish, and Nathan Young. Many people gave input and assistance throughout both my traditional and studio research. Gabrielle Brandstetter mentored early stages of research. Reconstructors Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer kindly shared their knowledge and experience in reconstructing Balanchine’s lost ballets over many years, including reading and giving input on this manuscript. Meredith Babb and Nancy Goldner provided input and assistance in the final phases of the project. Fellow faculty members from several universities assisted me in my studio research, including Emma Davis, Mariame Diange, Thayer Jonutz, Kerro Knox III, and Stephanie Pizzo. I am also grateful for the contribution of many students, in particular Adrian Navarro, Abby Smith, Bridget Vander Hoff. My research assistant, Katherine Calleja, spent many hours assisting me in the final phases of the project. Translator Irina Jesionowski worked with me in interpreting handwritten Russian documentation and proofreading the transliterations in this book.

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I also would like to thank the archives and collections that allowed me access and have given me permission to use their materials. In particular, I am indebted to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the St. Petersburg State Museum for Theatre and Music, the Vaganova Ballet Academy, and the Central Government Archive for Literature and the Arts of St. Petersburg. Special thanks to Sergei Laletin, Svetlana Lavrova, and Oksana Skylarova for the time they spent tracking down photographs and other materials for this project. I would also like to thank Kim Alexandra Kokich for allowing me to use the materials of Alexandra Danilova, and Julia Gruen for giving permission to quote from the interviews of her father, John Gruen. Financial support for this project came from the University of Michigan–Flint Research Department, Oakland University Faculty Fellowship, Oakland University Research Grant, The Judd Family Endowment, the Oakland University College of Arts and Sciences, and the Oakland University School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. I am also grateful for the generosity of the Grand Rapids Ballet in partnering with me on this project. In addition, I am indebted to The George Balanchine Trust for allowing me to pursue my research on the early works of Balanchine and for having granted me permission on many projects, which have culminated in this book. Ellen Sorrin, Director of The George Balanchine Trust, and Nicole Cornell, Manager, have worked with me, given input, and made it possible for me to pursue this research over many years. Finally, “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” would not have existed had it not been for the encouragement and support of Mindy Aloff. She gave vital advice throughout the final studio phases of the project and generously offered her time and expertise in the completion of the final manuscript.

1

Envisioning Funeral March

Choreographer George Balanchine, one of the greatest dance artists of the 20th century, came of age during the tumultuous years of the Russian Revolution. He began as a ballet student under the confines of the Imperial Theatre School in St. Petersburg, and ended his studies in a world of free expression and experimentation as he immersed himself in the art movements and discussions of post-Revolution Petrograd.1 This book explores the work of Balanchine in these experimental years, from his first pas de deux, La Nuit (1920), choreographed while he was still a student, to his first ensemble works, Funeral March (1923) and The Twelve (1923), performed by the Young Ballet, an informal group of fifteen students and young Mariinsky2 dancers who looked to him as their leader. Their most memorable performance took place at the Duma Auditorium at Nevsky Prospect on June 1, 1923. Of the dances performed that evening, Funeral March in particular showed Balanchine experimenting with elements that distinguished much of his mature choreography. His early work reflected his environment. Funerals were a daily occurrence in Petrograd between the years 1917 and 1924; every aspect of life existed in a world of paradox and extremes. In the midst of chaos, deprivation, and death, one of the most creative periods of artistic experimentation and development in Russia took place. Balanchine’s generation stood at the juncture of two eras (Mikhailov, The Young Years: 5). The grip of the tsar with strict rules for artistic endeavors was gone, and the restrictions placed on the arts, as they were consolidated between 1928 · 1

2 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

Figure 1. Members of the Young Ballet with George Balanchine seated. Courtesy of St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music.

and 1934 when Soviet Realism was proclaimed the official style, were not yet in place (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 2). In the explosion of ideas and innovations, the future of the ballet, as a relic of a corrupt regime, was uncertain, and its place in the revolutionary society was hotly debated. Balanchine was an enthusiastic participant in these debates (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 34). The ballet did survive, and during the 1920s, both the classics and experimental dance works thrived, largely due to Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoly Lunacharsky, who promoted the idea that the ballet could create heroic spectacles for the masses (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 279). He was, however, not a “cultural iconoclast” like many of his contemporaries, and he still believed that there was a place in the new society for the old forms, like ballet (O’Conner: 68). New ideas led to

Envisioning Funeral March · 3

experimental works with revolutionary themes, while, at the same time, classical performances and the training of young dancers continued. From 1922 to 1924, Fyodor Lopukhov, artistic director of the Mariinsky, restored the classics, which had been regularly performed, but had fallen into disrepair during the years directly following the Revolution (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 257). As a member of the corps de ballet, Balanchine participated in these revivals, giving him a direct connection to the classics, even as he tried out new forms in his own work. While Lopukhov’s most lasting legacy was his work in preserving the classical repertory, during the 1920s he and other Soviet choreographers, like Kasyan Goleizovsky and the young Balanchine, began experimenting with new ideas, incorporating elements from the circus, folk dances, athletics, and themes from the theatre and visual art movements that were blossoming. At the time that the Young Ballet came together in the year 1921, much experimental work was taking place outside of the Academic Theatres, with individuals, as well as with small groups, like the Young Ballet (Souritz, “The Path Begins”: 36). Many, if not most, of these dancers also performed regularly on the stage of the Mariinsky, and their participation with the outside projects was frowned upon by the Academic Theatre (Danilova, Interview by Gruen). The Young Ballet’s first concert at the Duma Auditorium contained classical works as well as choreography by the members. Funeral March stunned the audience; they received it with such enthusiasm that the dancers repeated the entire dance on the spot (Kostrovitskaya). This was only its first public performance, and it was performed in many locations in Petrograd. Balanchine also taught it for his audition for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1924, but those dancers never performed it (De Valois: 86). In evaluating this dance along with a duet that Balanchine had shown Diaghilev (Danilova, Choura: 66), the impresario once again showed his knack for spotting genius, and he hired the twenty-year-old as choreographer. One of his first assignments was to choreograph a full-length, full-company ballet, The Song of the Nightingale—quite a leap from Funeral March, which had a cast of eleven dancers and was fewer than ten minutes in length. Outside of the Young Ballet, he had gained a bit more experience working with a larger group of dancers; in the 1923–1924 season, he had been a ballet master with the Maly Opera Theatre and had choreographed three works

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on a group of eighteen dancers (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 57). One of these was to Ernst Toller’s Eugene the Unfortunate, an important play at the time, but neither this nor any of the other work he had done up to that point compared to choreographing a full-length ballet. However, the seeds of many elements that later defined Balanchine’s choreography were already present in Funeral March; in The Song of the Nightingale and other ballets he created over the next few years, he reworked and refined these elements until he choreographed his breakthrough masterpiece, Apollon Musagète in 1928.3 In my initial encounters with accounts of Funeral March, it was evident that this ballet represented a combination of many of Balanchine’s earliest experiments in his use of music, the inclusion of acrobatics into ballet, and the creation of dynamic group formations, so I began to research this dance intensely. It became clear that, not only was this dance one of the best-recorded of Balanchine’s dances from the era, but that reconstructing sections would also give important clues to us as dance artists, scholars, and audiences, enabling us to better understand how Balanchine became the choreographer that he did. Researching the choreography from this time period is challenging; difficult circumstances prevented the proper recording of dances, and there is a dearth of information on Balanchine’s early works in comparison to the information we have on his ballets from just a few years later, when he was chief choreographer of the Ballets Russes. Slonimsky describes the challenge: “Much has been forgotten, much is perceived differently today, and much was not even properly evaluated at the time” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 48). As my research progressed and I realized that it might be possible to reconstruct Funeral March, I took his words with the utmost seriousness. Slonimsky, as a witness to the dances, lifelong friend of Balanchine, and Soviet historian who was doing his research on site, was much more qualified than I to study this subject. I was working with materials that recorded events decades after they occurred. Additionally, my own personal perceptions, as well as cultural differences, had to be considered. My interest in dance reconstruction began when I attended a lecture by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer and saw the premiere of their reconstruction of Balanchine and Lydia Ivanova’s solo, Valse Triste (1922),4 in Helsinki, Finland, in 2004. I had begun to study Balanchine’s early choreography, and was interested in how their work could add to

Figure 2. George Balanchine’s choreography for Ernst Toller’s Eugene the Unfortunate (1923) at the Maly Theatre. Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Courtesy of St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music.

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my own research. This lecture proved to be a breakthrough for me. Up to that point, I had not considered how historical research could be used on the stage, creating a kinesthetic history and providing a bridge between scholars and artists. I was impressed by the idea that lost works could be recovered, even if only partially, giving us a tangible sense of dance history. In the lecture, Hodson and Archer discussed the process they used in researching Valse Triste, and I was hooked. A few months later, I attended another premiere, the reconstruction of Balanchine’s Le Bal (1929), at the Rome Opera Ballet in 2005. At the same performance, their reconstruction of La Chatte (1927) was also presented, along with Apollo (1928), Balanchine’s first ballet to have survived in the repertory. When I first began to explore Balanchine’s early work, I realized that there was more evidence about Funeral March than most of the others. I eventually began to work with students in the dance studio, putting the text and photographs of the dance into steps, and I realized that the potential of this work was far more than theoretical studies. My research became twofold, presenting the perspective of a dance scholar as well as that of a dance artist. This book details my traditional research on the subject as well as studio work. As the project progressed, I began to work with Balanchine répétiteur and Artistic Director of the Grand Rapids Ballet, Patricia Barker, and her dancers. I describe our work together in this book, giving the reader an inside view into our process.5 The question of the authenticity of any revival or reconstruction is one of the main controversies surrounding work such as this. It is believed by some that because we can never know exactly what the original looked like, and because we cannot perceive it as it was in its original context, it should be left alone (Rudnitsky: 7). Using memory as an important source is problematic; many of the written and oral accounts were recorded decades after the dances were performed and must be handled with care. This challenge is also addressed in Slonimsky’s book on ballet in Petrograd in the 1920s, and it was noted that much of his information came from his own and the memories of others recorded decades after the events (The Miracle: 11). However, because these accounts contain information not available elsewhere, they are indispensable, and Slonimsky even says that he would not have been able to complete that book had it not been for the accounts of numerous other people. I take the stand that despite the problematic context presented by the sources and other

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difficulties surrounding dance reconstruction, what is to be gained far outweighs the shortfalls. While we can never have a perfect reproduction of the dances of another era, by approaching them from a variety of angles, including kinesthetically, we can understand them better as a living art, beyond just photographs and words. This concept is one we use for dances that have survived. Important ballets like The Sleeping Beauty have undergone vast changes since their original production, but remain among the most important parts of the repertory.6 Our knowledge of Funeral March comes primarily from those who worked with Balanchine in Petrograd, both those who remained to develop Soviet ballet, and those who were instrumental in building American ballet. In 1924, one year after the performance at the Duma, four dancers who had formed part of the core group of the Young Ballet left Petrograd for what was to be a two-month educational tour of Germany. Billed as the Soviet Dancers,7 they could not have imagined the turn their lives would take. They expected to see the world outside of Russia and give a few recitals to showcase some classical pas de deux as well as their own choreography. As the time came for them to return home, George Balanchine, Alexandra Danilova, Tamara Geva, and Nicholas Efimov decided to stay in Western Europe, despite having no jobs, money, or visas. Ivanova was to be part of this group; her suspicious death days before the group left most likely impacted their decision not to return to Russia, but Geva says that their decision to stay was not logical but simply a realization that they could not return to the “dreariness, the privation, and the restrictions” of their past lives (Geva, Split Seconds: 330).8 Diaghilev tracked them down and offered them jobs, the next step in distinguished careers. Geva became a Broadway star and was the first person to perform Balanchine’s works in America, in 1927. He created three dances for her to perform in New York: Grotesque Espagnol, Sarcasm, and Romanesque (Martin). Danilova followed in Anna Pavlova’s footsteps, and as the star of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, danced in hundreds of small towns and cities for audiences that had never before seen ballet. She also became a revered teacher at the School of American Ballet in New York where she taught and coached generations of dancers. Efimov, and other men who had danced in the corps de ballet of La Chatte, joined Serge Lifar at the Paris Opera Ballet after Diaghilev’s death (Danilova, Interview by Conway).

8 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

These dancers knew they were somehow destined for greatness. One of their early concerts was overconfidently titled “From Petipa, through Fokine to Balanchivadze: The Evolution of Ballet”—Balanchine comparing himself, a young corps de ballet dancer and experimental choreographer, with two masters whose works were in the Mariinsky repertory. This title was presumptuous, but it did foreshadow both his own future and the path that 20th century ballet in general would take. Along with several dances by him and other members, Balanchine presented Funeral March at this concert. One of his first group works, it showed the experimental direction that much of his early choreography had taken, and it bore marks of his future work. It was through these future works—ballets like Jewels and his last version of Apollo—that I first discovered Balanchine. When I was about ten years old, I had a small calendar with an American ballerina featured each month. To my eyes, these women were glamorous, but their beauty went beyond their pointed feet, perfect hair and makeup, and luscious costumes. Their faces exuded joy and energy. I cut out these pictures and hung them in my room. Only later did I understand that these women were not just any dancer; they were Balanchine’s dancers, and much of their strength and energy came from his training and dancing in his ballets. As a young person I was fascinated with the Balanchine who had founded and led the New York City Ballet for decades, but as a scholar I became equally fascinated with his life when he was still a student. During the years of the Civil War directly following the Revolution in 1917, societal norms, as well as the systems that supplied the daily needs of the citizens of Russia, collapsed (Borrero: 20–21). The deprivation is a historical fact, but in my research, I focused on a close group of young people who had grown up in a society fraught with chaos and privation. Danilova vividly recalled how they had only dirty water instead of tea, two spoons of brew for lunch and dinner, and one small piece of bread every two days: “All of us were hungry and began to develop boils—at one time I had five, but that was nothing compared with George who had thirty. There was no nourishment” (Danilova, Choura: 47). Lack of heat in the cold Russian winter was also a problem; the boys went to the attic of the school to collect boards and whatever furniture there was in storage for firewood (48). Danilova believed that their art saved them: “The

Envisioning Funeral March · 9

theatre was a refuge for us, almost a paradise. Outside lay only the chaotic aftermath of the war and the Revolution. But regardless of how the government had changed, what went on inside the theatre was more or less the same” (51). The students became close in their hardship as well as in their training, forming a “primitive tribe” that supported one another in all things (Kendall: 131). As they graduated and joined the company, Lopukhov became an important mentor to them, helping them to not lose sight of their goals despite the desperate times. He helped them to explore life outside of the theatre; according to Danilova, he guided them, and told them to “go to the theatre, go to the museums, see everything! Study languages, study history. Go to concerts” (Danilova, Choura: 53). The ballet provided a needed respite for those outside the theatre as well. No performances were cancelled; in fact, the ballet became so popular that the number of performances was increased. The audience had changed as well, with people from all walks of life attending; they packed the theatre, and according to critic Konstantin Ostrozhsky, “applauded and howled with such violence that all the old theatre rats scurried off in horror” (quoted in Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 43–44). One reporter described that, “During the years of cold and famine performances were staged at the Grand Theatre with the thermometer registering at six degrees below zero. The dancers’ bare shoulders steamed. Their breathe floated like clouds. The audience, composed of Red soldiers and workmen dressed in sheepskin coats and felt boots, stamped their feet in the orchestra stalls to keep warm” (McLove: 9). The dancers themselves were idealistic young people in the midst of a revolution with the potential of defining the world as they wished it to be. Their lives and work were built upon the best of both worlds; they had trained at the Imperial School and spent their early careers performing the classical repertory at the home of its birth, the Mariinsky Theatre, while at the same time partaking in the greatest period of creativity in the history of Russia. The concert at the Duma foreshadowed the future success of those dancers both in the Soviet Union and beyond. With his new image of a dancer, Balanchine combined elements of classical ballet with those of the Soviet avant-garde movement in theatre and dance. Later, when Diaghilev took him to museums throughout Europe as he did to educate each of his protégés (Lifar: 25), Balanchine refined and

10 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

incorporated innovations through his enriched understanding of visual art. By the time he choreographed his pivotal work, Apollo, in 1928, he had transformed the face of ballet, both in terms of expanding its vocabulary, as well as advancing choreographic convention. It was no longer the art form that had all but died out in Western Europe and had stagnated in Russia in the decade before the Revolution. He created an entirely new direction in the art of dance, with ramifications extending far beyond his own company of dancers, making ballet a viable art form for the 20th century. This book meets Balanchine as a young choreographer and examines his dances through his important early group work, Funeral March. In it, I share my own journey with the choreographer and his work as I have studied it over the past several years from my first encounter with it in Slonimsky’s article “Balanchine, The Early Years,” to my work with a company of highly professional dancers at the Grand Rapids Ballet. It examines not only the dance from the viewpoint of a scholar but also from the viewpoint of the dance artist, detailing studio work as well as traditional research. My work combines these two, and, in this book, I attempt to show how studying dance history by working out lost dances gives us a kinesthetic history; we approach movement through movement to gain an understanding that we would not otherwise have. In this way, dance scholarship and dance art become one field, enriching and supporting one another. In the following chapters, I will examine Balanchine’s early choreography, using Funeral March as an example and putting his other dances into context with it. Documentation on these works will be analyzed in detail, primarily using information passed on to us by witnesses. This will include oral histories, written memoirs, photographs, newspaper reviews, musical scores, and other historical documentation. My approach to this kind of work and the process I use in my traditional research and my studio research is described in chapters two and three. My first short studio session with college students and then the intensive studio work in setting the entire dance on the Grand Rapids Ballet is documented in chapters four and five. Chapter six contains analysis of my research, as well as the reconstruction, demonstrating how the combination of these methods allows a clearer picture of Balanchine’s growth as a choreographer.

Envisioning Funeral March · 11

The Approach In this book, I tell the story of my journey not just as a scholar of Balanchine, but as a dance artist. The skills I used began with the piano lessons I had as a child, where I learned to read musical notes, my first ballet lesson, where I learned to demi-plié in first position, to my college studies where I learned to do research and to choreograph. I consider myself first as an educator; scholarship and choreography serve my ability to pass along my passion for this art to the next generation. There will most likely be objection to a person with my background doing this kind of project. I never met Balanchine, nor did I see New York City Ballet perform while he was still alive. I did not train at the School of American Ballet, and I never danced in a Balanchine ballet. My own choreography is primarily created for and on my students as I see where they need to grow as dancers. However, I believe that this background does not exclude me from doing this work. In fact, it allows me to explore the subject from another frame of reference. Because I am not directly part of the lineage of dancers who learned from Balanchine, my view of his work is not based on what he would have done many years later. In this sense, I am able to be more objective when I approach his works from the 1920s. It is my hope that examining the subject from this different perspective would allow for more understanding and discussion as to who Balanchine was and how he developed as a choreographer. There are many who are much more familiar with his entire body of work. I hope to add to what they know and give them the opportunity to explore his artistry from another vantage point. The legacy of Balanchine is carefully protected by The George Balanchine Trust, and the question might arise as to how I, as a complete outsider, would gain permission to do this kind of project. The answer is simple—I was in contact with The Trust regarding my research from the very start, beginning with requests regarding the use of copyrighted photographs and quotations. The Trust guided me through the legal process and ensured that my work was up to standard. They reviewed videos of my academic presentations and my studio research and gave important input. To be clear, before I embarked on setting my vision of Funeral March on dancers in the studio, I had done years of research which they

12 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

had reviewed. I explained to them my sources, my processes, and what I wanted to accomplish. When I made the request to set the entire eight-minute ballet on the dancers of the Grand Rapids Ballet and to give a public presentation, I explained my research, including references for all my sources, and how I put together the choreography phrase by phrase. Because there is no film or dance notation of Funeral March, or any of Balanchine’s Russian ballets, we decided to call the result my vision, rather than a reconstruction, which can refer to many approaches. In our agreement, the rights to the imagery of the original ballet belong to The Trust, and the rights to the research I had done as well as the presentation on November 3, 2018, contractually, belong to me. Because of the controversial nature of this work, the kind of sources I used and how I approached them is fundamental. Any sort of reconstruction work has a necessary creative element, and that is certainly the case in my work, but it is also based on years of research. Any materials written directly by Balanchine have been used; however, in regard to his earliest choreography, he had little to say. As a starting point for Balanchine’s choreography, the most complete listing can be found on the website of the George Balanchine Foundation under Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Work (Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné). It was compiled with the help of Balanchine, dancers, and dance historians in the United States, Western Europe, and Russia. In addition to this compilation, I have utilized both oral and written accounts. The first complete source of information on Balanchine’s life and work in Russia is Slonimsky’s essay, “Balanchine: The Early Years,” which was translated into English by John Andrews and published in Ballet Review in 1976. Some of the information that Slonimsky used in this article was also used in his book, The Miracle Was Next to Us: Notes on the Petrograd Ballet in the 1920s (Chudesnoe bylo riadom s nami: Zametki o petrogradskom balete 20-x). This book is focused on the entire ballet scene in Petrograd in the 1920s, and does not contain much information about Balanchine, whereas the Ballet Review article is strictly focused on Balanchine’s early life and choreography. Correspondence between Balanchine and Slonimsky clarifies that one of the goals of this essay was for Slonimsky to write about his early work, as Balanchine felt that accounts of his life up to that point were neither accurate, nor did they contain “anything

Envisioning Funeral March · 13

useful to the art of choreography” (Balanchine, Western Union Cable to Slonimsky; Slonimsky, Western Union Cable to Balanchine). In addition to Slonimsky’s own recollection and the memories of other witnesses, including Vera Kostrovitskaya, Peter Gusev, and Olga Mungalova, the essay contains essential information from newspaper reviews, as well. These reviews say little about Balanchine as a performer (“Balanchine”: 30), but Slonimsky does include reviews of his choreography. In regard to choreographic details on Balanchine’s earliest works in the Soviet Union, this article remains the most comprehensive. Slonimsky serves as both a primary source and as a historian in this article. Of the other dancers who gave accounts of the ballets, Kostrovitskaya is the most important, as Slonimsky included long quotations of her descriptions of the dances, particularly a description of all three sections of Funeral March. In her personal papers, located at the Central State Archive of Literature and the Arts in St. Petersburg, Kostrovitskaya left handwritten accounts of the Young Ballet, which seem to form the basis for her account in Slonimsky’s article. It is notable that, in all these accounts, Funeral March is the only dance she described in detail. Because I am looking for choreographic details in my work, I consider each separate account carefully, as different accounts by the same person often give details in one place that they did not mention elsewhere. By this I mean that I compare Kostrovitskaya’s published English language account in Slonimsky’s article with her own notes, to see if there are additional details that can add to the work.9 I take this approach with the other witness accounts, in particular with Danilova and Geva.10 Until recently, most biographies that contained chapters on Balanchine’s Soviet years were based largely on Slonimsky’s article. In a 1987 Russian-language article, “George Balanchine’s Creative Origins” (“George Balanchine: Istoki Tvorčestva”), even Elizabeth Souritz was obliged to cite the English translation of Slonimsky’s article (Souritz, “George Balanchine’s Creative Origins”: 78, 79). She later added to Slonimsky’s essay in a short, English-language article in 1990 in Ballet Review, “The Young Balanchine in Russia.” This article also contains important context and clarifies many of the sources of Balanchine’s early inspiration, including Vsevolod Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, Director of the Institute of the Living Word school for actors. He provided Balanchine with his unique performance space at the Duma for the first major

14 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

concert by the Young Ballet on June 1, 1923. In her book, Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s, first published in Russian and then translated into English in 1990, Souritz also wrote a short section on Balanchine and the Young Ballet, putting his work into context with other Soviet choreographers, in particularly that of Goleizovsky (73–78). One other member of the Young Ballet, Mikhail Mikhailovich Mikhailov, wrote two books, each with one chapter dedicated to the Young Ballet dancers. In The Young Years of the Leningrad Ballet (Molodye gody leningradskogo baleta), he wrote a chapter on Ivanova and gave a precise description of Valse Triste, which Hodson and Archer used for their reconstruction of this ballet. In the chapter “My Classmate George Balanchine,” from Mikhailov’s book, My Life in Ballet (Zhizn’ v baleta), he talks about his encounters with Balanchine; however, this chapter does not contain as much choreographic information as he gave in his other book on Valse Triste. Parts of this chapter were translated into English and published in a three-part series in Dance News in 1967. There are a few newspaper accounts; however, these are not as plentiful as one might assume. Even the well-known public rivalry between Balanchine and dance critic Akim Volynsky, detailed by Slonimsky, comprise only a very small portion of Volynsky’s writings on dance (“Balanchine”: 44–46).11 In conclusion, Mikhailov and Slonimsky’s accounts, Kostrovitskaya’s long quotation in “Balanchine: The Early Years,” and Kostrovitskaya’s own personal notes provide the majority of choreographic information known on Balanchine’s Soviet ballets from Russian primary sources. All of these are largely based on witness accounts written decades after the events. I began to study this topic using only English sources, but soon concluded that in order to conduct serious research, I would need to learn Russian. Although my language studies have enabled me to navigate archival and printed sources more proficiently, I am nonetheless grateful to the scholars at the Central State Archive of Literature and the Arts, the archive of the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music, and the Vaganova Ballet Academy for their assistance. I am also indebted to Irina Jesionowski, translator and native Russian speaker, who assisted me in double-checking my sources for accuracy in translation, reading handwritten documents, and understanding connotations not clear to foreigners. As I worked through the Russian language sources

Envisioning Funeral March · 15

on Balanchine’s earliest works, I discovered something that I did not expect. While it seems counterintuitive, there simply is much more choreographic information on Balanchine’s Soviet ballets in the English language than in Russian. Slonimsky’s article was published in English in Ballet Review, but not in Russian, and included the only published version of Kostrovitskaya’s accounts until Oleg Levenkov published the same account in Russian in his book George Balanchine in 2007. Three of Balanchine’s closest collaborators were Ivanova, who died young without leaving any written descriptions of her choreography, and Danilova and Geva, who both left Russia with Balanchine and settled in the United States; their many articles, memoirs, interviews, as well as biographies, were in English. In addition to interviews of Balanchine and his biographies, the numerous recollections, both written and oral, of Geva and Danilova, are vital to this study. As two of Balanchine’s first muses, they were members of the Young Ballet, the Soviet Dancers, and the Ballets Russes along with him. Several of Balanchine’s early ballets were choreographed for them, and some were choreographed for others but later performed by Danilova and Geva. Still others were “worked out” on the two women, but then given to someone else to perform. They performed the solo roles in Funeral March. Both of these dancers left several articles, interviews, and oral history recordings, and gave choreographic details in their autobiographies. These materials are used extensively in this study. Many of their personal accounts are taken from the Dance Oral History Project and are part of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. In hours of unpublished taped interviews of those who knew and worked with Balanchine, a picture of him as a young man begins to emerge. Although these interviews have been used for many projects, this book specifically analyzes them for their choreographic content. Comparison of these interviews with various published interviews, memoirs, biographies, and other accounts helps to provide a more complete view of Balanchine’s life and work as perceived by his closest friends and collaborators. As has been noted, because of his approach to the material as a scholar, Slonimsky’s article is the most accurate source of information on Balanchine’s early choreography. Therefore, I use it in this project as a basis for the choreographic analysis of the dances Balanchine created in the

16 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

Soviet Union between 1920 and 1924. In cases where accounts of events or choreography differ, I have attempted to reconcile the differences or explain possible reasons for the discrepancies. When inconsistencies are so large that only one can be correct, Slonimsky’s material is given precedence. Slonimsky’s essay ends with the death of Ivanova, friend and fellow dancer who was to be the fifth person on the Germany tour of the Soviet Dancers. Her life and untimely death followed her friends for the rest of their lives. Elizabeth Kendall’s book, Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer, presents Balanchine’s early life in the context of their relationship. My book covers a similar time span; however, my focus is on choreographic development—while Danilova and Geva were important muses for Balanchine, Ivanova was perhaps something more. She was Balanchine’s equal in her “insatiable appetite for knowledge” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 34), and her work with him is significant to all his early choreography. My research method and the impetus for my work owes much to Hodson and Archer’s carefully researched reconstructions of several of Balanchine’s early works, including Valse Triste (1922), The Song of the Nightingale (1925), La Chatte (1927), Le Bal (1929), and Cotillion (1932). I have used their work as a springboard of sorts for my own, and am indebted to them for having been kind enough to advise me throughout this project. The research method of this project directly results from the choice of sources. Using their general procedure for dance reconstructions, I began to examine all kinds of materials, looking for clues as to how to proceed. According to Hodson, when she spoke with choreographer Léonide Massine about reconstructing Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring, she discussed with him the idea of approaching this dance “as a puzzle, putting together all the diverse documents, if only to see what was then still missing” (Hodson, Nijinsky’s Crime: xx). Similarly, I look at evidence on Funeral March as a puzzle and put together as many accounts as possible. Hodson notes that each dance is different, and that for each we have different sources and types of sources. Therefore, each reconstruction is approached with a somewhat different method (Archer and Hodson, “Ballets Lost”: 101). There are no living witnesses to Funeral March; of the Balanchine ballets Hodson and Archer reconstructed, only Valse Triste, choreographed at approximately the same time, was done without

Envisioning Funeral March · 17

the direct help of the original dancers. When I approached the missing sections of the dance, I looked at the other dances he created during this time period, including La Nuit (1920), La Poème (1921), Valse Triste (1922–1923), Étude (1923), and Enigma (1923), as well as those he created a few years later for Diaghilev—in particular, The Song of the Nightingale (1925), La Chatte (1927), Apollo (1928), and Prodigal Son (1929). All of these give us clues to the missing sections of Funeral March. The lack of living witnesses is the greatest hurdle in this work. However, because many different people wrote about the dance, or recalled it in their memoirs, both oral and written, we have many accounts, and these contain sufficient information for productive studio research. This realization first struck me as I worked with college students in a studio workshop on reconstruction methods. We were witnessing a ballet by a master, danced for the first time in almost ninety years. Both the teachers and students who participated were part of kinesthetic history; we were not reading about early Balanchine, we were experiencing it. Dance is fleeting—dancers’ bodies and even codified techniques change. However, it is movement, and, as such, can only truly be understood through movement. For this reason, it is my hope that participation in the kinesthetic history of one of Balanchine’s earliest ballet will enrich and deepen our understanding of lost ballets as well as those remaining in the repertory.

2

The Scholar’s Conundrum Should We Reconstruct?

When I considered doing studio research on the early works of Balanchine, and explored the possibility of reconstruction, the problematic of reconstructing a dance for which there is no notation or film was always at the forefront of my mind. First, I would need to be in close contact with The Trust for every step of the project, and demonstrate that this project was worthwhile in understanding Balanchine’s early dances, and that it would not compromise the integrity of his work. Rather, it would increase our knowledge of his development as a young choreographer, and add to another facet of our appreciation of both his early ballets and his mature repertory.1 Second, I would need to address the controversy surrounding reconstruction itself. The idea of reconstructing and restaging works that have been lost in the repertory is contentious, and scholars take stands ranging from finding the process vital to understanding the history of dance, to advocating that, because of its shortfalls, it should not be done. My work on Funeral March is an example of the sort of project for which there can be strong objections. There is no film or notational score of Funeral March, and while there are two extant photos and textual accounts of the dance, there is only partial information on how it looked. All dancers and witnesses to the performance are long gone. In the minds of some scholars, a ballet staged with only partial information can never be authentic. A second, equally strong objection is that, removed from its original time and context, a dance can never have the same meaning as 18 ·

The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? · 19

it did in the original performance. These questions are legitimate, and I realized that to move forward with this project, I would need to address them for myself, for the dancers, and for the audience and other scholars. Despite this challenge, my work is based on one fundamental concept: as a kinesthetic art form, dance cannot be understood absent of movement. In her introduction to Apollo’s Angels, Homans explains that in her research for the book, she went to the studio and tried to perform what we do know about past dances. She explored different eras of dance, and “did the steps . . . and watched them performed by others in an attempt to analyze and understand what dancers thought they were doing and why” (xxiv). My work goes one step further. By taking my research from individual work in the studio to dancers, and then to presentation, I hope to make the material more accessible and to provide dancers with a kinesthetic experience, and audiences with the emotional experience they seek in the theatre.2 In the following chapter, I will define what is meant by various forms of staging dance works, and discuss differing points of view on the subject. I will explain why I concluded that dance reconstruction is and will remain an important aspect of the study of dance history. The shortfalls of dance reconstruction should not be minimized, and, throughout this book, I will attempt to explain how I dealt with the challenges as I approached both my traditional research, and my work in the studio. I hope to show that what it brings far outweighs the problematic and why it should be included as part of the field of dance history.

What Do We Mean by “Reconstruction”? What do we mean when we say reconstruction? How do we differentiate this term from others such as updating, restaging, revival, or re-creation? These terms are often used interchangeably, and different scholars use them in somewhat different contexts. In Metelitsa’s Marius Petipa: La Dansomanie, Vol. 2 After Petipa (Marius Petipa: tanzmanija tom ii. posle Petipa), which was published by the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music, different versions of Petipa’s ballets are listed with the names of the stagers and the kind of production: revival, revised production, new production, reconstruction (115). Petipa is the choreographer of the original productions, and subsequent versions are presented in a way that shows how they were built upon the work of each previous

20 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

choreographer. Helen Thomas discusses the different ways various scholars define revivals, re-creations, and reconstructions in her article “Reconstruction and Dance as Embodied Textual Practice” (36–39). Susan Manning uses the term in a broader sense. In Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman, she calls her detailed narratives of the dances reconstructions. She also differentiates between dances that rely primarily on research, such as the work of Hodson and Archer, and those that are motivated by the creative process, and hopes to recreate a dance in the spirit of the original (12–13). Her example of the second is the reconstruction of Dora Hoyer’s Affectos Humanos by Susanne Linke. Mark Franko uses this particular reconstruction as a starting point for his article, as he notes that Linke presented the dance in a way that distanced herself from the work of the artist she was reconstructing. In his article “Repeatability, Reconstruction and Beyond,” Franko promotes the idea that understanding historical dances and theory leads toward new work (60), a concept also promoted by Hodson and Archer (Hodson, Nijinsky’s Crime: xxi). Terminology was an important topic when I met with The Trust regarding this project. Because I was working with relatively little information, and there was no film or notational score of Funeral March, we arrived at using the term “envision” for the presentation of the dance, rather than reconstruction. In this way, it would be clear from the beginning that neither I nor The Trust considered this work to be an exact replica of the original dance. Calling what I was hoping to achieve “envisioning” is a good description, as my goal was to make the dance as accurate as possible, while at the same time being cognizant that it would not be possible to replicate it with 100 percent certainty. As I describe my journey with the material in this book, I attempt to clarify which parts I believe to be accurate representations of Balanchine’s choreography, and why I reached that conclusion. In sections where I have used his vocabulary from the era to fill in missing sections, I also look to be transparent so that the reader can understand my thought process. Another scholar or reconstructor may arrive at a different conclusion, or she may have another vision of this dance. This is how I have envisioned it, my hope being to capture the spirit of the dance and give the audience, dancers, and scholars a glimpse into the early works of this master.

The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? · 21

I use the term reconstruction to describe my process as well as the subject in general, as it is the most used, and therefore, most understandable term. It is, however, controversial, because it is sometimes used to imply that the work is closer to the original choreography than is actually possible. However, it is notable that the transmission of all dances in the repertory have many of the same challenges that reconstructions do. Most terms used for passing along dances are fluid in how they are used. Staging is perhaps the most common, and is generally used for works that have remained in the repertory and are put into a production, either by the original choreographer, or by someone who was taught the dance by him or subsequent generations. Having remained in the repertory by no means implies that the dance does not change; on the contrary, dances are changed to accommodate different dancers, spaces, or because the choreographer wants to make changes, as was the case with Balanchine’s Apollo. His final version in 1979 is visually very different from the original 1928 Diaghilev production.3 He removed the entire first section of the ballet, including the birth of Apollo and his dance with the two goddesses, saying he removed the “garbage” (Gruen: 165). Different generations of dance artists were taught different versions of this dance by the choreographer himself. Patricia Barker’s experience learning the role of Polyhymnia, in the presence of various former casts who discussed the accurate interpretation, is an example of the mark that each generation of dancer leaves on a ballet. The discussion among the former dancers of the role and Patricia’s interpretation of the choreography resulted in a production that was more than successful. Of the performances done during that evening, attended by Balanchine experts from all over the world, hers was noted by critics as having been one of the best, describing her performance as “elegantly dynamic” (Kisselgoff). This example shows that it is possible for works to live beyond the life of the choreographer, and that being passed down to subsequent generations who leave their mark on them is an important part of both the process of transmitting the repertory and the continual renewal of the art form.4 Staging a ballet, even one that has been consistently performed and staged by the choreographer himself, in no way means it is identical to the original. Re-creation is also a fluid term, and is sometimes used synonymously with rechoreographing. I use these terms to describe a dance that may

22 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

have some, or even many, similarities to previous productions; for example, the music, costumes, and libretto. However, choreographically, it has been reworked. The dance may or may not have remained in the repertory. I would use this term to describe Massine’s re-creation of The Rite of Spring in 1920, which was done to Igor Stravinsky’s score, and used, but rearranged, the original costumes by Nicholas Roerich. The choreography, however, was not based on Nijinsky’s 1913 version. Similarly, Balanchine’s The Song of the Nightingale in 1925 was done to Stravinsky’s score, and he used, but reduced, parts of the original sets and costumes by Henri Matisse. Massine’s choreography had been done independently of the rhythm of the music, making it appear that the dancers were making mistakes (Goodwin: 45). Balanchine’s Nightingale choreography, however, bore no resemblance to Massine’s original version from a few years earlier. Rechoreographing to music, or even reusing costumes is rarely a subject of controversy among dance artists and scholars, since the intention behind it is to create a completely new choreographic work. Stravinsky’s score of The Rite of Spring has been choreographed numerous times by both ballet and modern dance artists, but none of these new choreographies has brought about the criticism that the Hodson/Archer reconstruction of Nijinsky’s choreography has brought. However, this reconstruction is one of the most successful in promoting the early–20thcentury repertory and expanding studies of Nijinsky. Although it is not a perfect replica of the original, what has been gained through this work far outweighs the problematics of the process and, arguably, the product.5 Sometimes a ballet undergoes a revival so that it can be updated for contemporary audiences. The choreographer may use a little or all of the original choreography, but his intention is to keep a particular ballet alive. One of the most obvious ways this is done is simply by having dancers use the technique they have been taught, rather than trying to mold themselves into the styles of the past. The concept is not about dancing in the Romantic style, or learning Balanchine’s repertory from a répétiteur. Rather, it refers to changing body types and techniques. The physique of a dancer today is longer and thinner, and different training methods produce ballet dancers who do steps that have the same names as they did in the past, but look very different (Horosko: 168). Danilova also noted that dancers have longer lines, higher extension, and dance

The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? · 23

more quickly than the dancers at Theatre School did (Danilova, “A Conversation, Part II”: 58–59). However, when she compares the training these dancers have had to the training she received, specially developed to perform the ballets of Petipa, she notes that dancers now dance less “tightly,” and have difficulties properly performing those roles (Danilova, Choura: 183).6 Sometimes, revivals are intended to update previous choreography for a new generation of dancers and audiences. This kind of update has been done by many of the greatest choreographers of each generation: Marius Petipa updating the original Jean Coralli/Jules Perrot Giselle, or Alexander Gorsky updating Petipa’s repertory for the Bolshoi, placing a stronger emphasis on dramatic components. Balanchine and Danilova followed this pattern in their restaging of Coppélia for the New York City Ballet in 1974. Danilova describes what they did: “I did the first two acts and he did the last. In my acts, the choreography remained basically the same as before, but sometimes we found it too simple—there were empty places, and Balanchine filled them in. He made the dancing a little more up to date and complicated the movement, mostly in the variations and parts of the adagio. The dances between Swanhilda and her friends and the business with Coppélius and the doll he didn’t touch. In the third act, everything was Balanchine’s idea—all the movements were new, but of course in the classical style” (Danilova, Choura: 184–185). More recently, Alexei Ratmansky won the MacArthur Genius award for “revitalizing classical ballet with a distinctive style that honors that past while infusing a modern sensibility to interpretations of the standard repertoire as well as his own works” (MacArthur Foundation). As opposed to restaging, recreating, reviving, or updating, reconstruction refers to a more rigorous method of researching lost dances and involves using a variety of sources. The intent of this kind of work has the goal of recovering as much of the original choreography as possible and remaining true to it. The intention of the original choreographer is vital—the reconstructor does not try to improve upon the choreography, or to insert her own aesthetic. Rather, she is trying to discover the voice of the original choreographer. It is impossible for the reconstructor to not leave her mark on it, but the intention is to have the voice of the original choreographer come through, rather than her own.

24 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

Should We or Shouldn’t We? Much of the controversy surrounding the attempt to recreate an original, and the question of whether it should even be attempted, stands at the beginning of every potential project. Manning is very positive toward Hodson and Archer, and refers to their breakthrough reconstruction, Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring, as brilliant (13). Their method involves looking for any piece of evidence they could find regarding the dances that are no longer part of the repertory, in particular, dances from the early 20th century. They approach the dance as they would a puzzle with missing pieces—known pieces are assembled, and unknown parts are choreographed in a way that completes the picture. Working with the medium of dance, movement phrases that logically and artistically can fit into the known sections surrounding it are used. Hodson and Archer draw from any manner of source: photographs, costume designs, remaining sets and costumes, music score, notational scores of any kind, and accounts by the dancers and other witnesses such as audience members and critics. When possible, they work directly with dancers who had performed the original roles, like Danilova and Alicia Markova,7 who worked closely with Balanchine. Although it was decades later, they had strong recollections of many of the dances they had done. Danilova still had clear memories of dances she had done since she was ten years old (Danilova, Interview by Day), and Geva concurs, saying that “Danilova remembers everything” (Geva, Interview by Reynolds). They told Hodson and Archer that they could learn a great deal from the surviving ballets, Apollo and Prodigal Son, saying that there were similarities in the “steps, sequences, performance style and atmosphere” (Archer and Hodson, “Balanchine’s Twenties”: 75).8 In general, Hodson and Archer only work on dances for which there is documentation for at least 50 percent of the dance. Some dances have sources that others do not; Maria Rambert’s choreographic notes on the musical score for The Rite of Spring helped in that reconstruction. There were film fragments for Balanchine’s Le Cotillion, which were not available for other dances. There were no living witnesses for Balanchine and Ivanova’s Valse Triste, so they used Mikhailov’s detailed account of the dance (The Young Years: 119–121). Because the extant material for each dance is different, each will have its own unique method. However, the goal is the same, to hold as closely as possible to

The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? · 25

the voice of the original choreographer, and to add to the dance only when necessary. In contrast to Manning’s positive view of The Rite of Spring, Homans states that “there is no reason to believe that Hodson’s choreography has anything to do with Nijinsky’s. Her new Rite . . . is American postmodern dance masquerading as a seminal modernist work” (545). Her objection is that we cannot know if this really was the way it was danced, and that it cannot be authentic, because the reconstructors will, by default, bring too much of themselves into the dance. This argument is not without merit. It is impossible for a dance artist to not bring herself into her work. The difficulty of contemporary artists, who live in a very different context, and have been trained differently, reviving a work from previous generations is unavoidable. Scholar of early Soviet theatre, Konstantin Rudnitsky, describes the dilemma of taking a dance out of its original time and context as he discusses theatre reconstructions9 from the era, “I personally have no confidence in such undertakings. This is not only because the authenticity of a ‘copy’ separated from the original by the space of fifty years is clearly dubious . . . the main reason is that any theatrical event which is isolated from the social situation that engendered it, torn from the artistic soil where it was originally rooted and artificially transplanted to another, inevitably loses almost all its energy and beauty” (Rudnitsky: 7). Rudnitsky’s argument is one that I kept clearly in my mind as I approached Funeral March. Slonimsky himself addressed this idea in his article. Tatiana Bruni, a friend of Balanchine, who was instrumental in the formation of the Young Ballet (Levenkov: 49), was also in the audience and believed that it was so moving that it could have been performed “even today,” today being when Slonimsky’s article was written more than fifty years after its original performance. Slonimsky disagreed with that assessment, but did note its importance to that generation (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Rudnitsky argues that revivals and reconstructions from the past can never hold the “magic” that they held for the original audience, and should not be revived at all, relegating them to the pages of history. He differentiates other art genres, saying, “As distinct from painting, architecture, sculpture, poetry, prose or music, the art of the theatre is always, by its very nature, contemporary and cannot live a full-blooded existence outside its own time [italics in the original] . . .” (Rudnitsky: 7).

26 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

The other forms, however, are able to give “aesthetic pleasure to people of many generations” (ibid.). He separates these art forms from theatre, which, like dance, is dependent on live performance. However, his argument against revivals of theatre pieces can be applied as much to music and art. As with theatre and dance, these art forms neither give the same magic, nor do they have the same meaning they had with their original recipients. However, just as he says that their value lies in the fact that they can give aesthetic value to many generations, the same is true of many theatrical productions. The plays of Shakespeare give aesthetic pleasure hundreds of years after they were initially performed. The same can be said of the ballets of Petipa. Swan Lake certainly does not mean the same thing to an American audience in 2019 that it did to the audiences of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1895, or to Soviet authorities and visiting diplomats in 1955.10 It does have meaning, though, and this ballet has lived, and continues to live, far beyond its original audiences.11 In the same way, reconstructions may not have the same meaning to a contemporary audience that they did for the original audience, but that does not mean that they have no meaning.12 Dance does have an additional challenge in maintaining the “fullblooded existence outside its own time.” Change in the basic material of a dance artist, the body of the dancer, updates a dance automatically. Some see these changes, extended beyond individual dancers to generations of dancers, as challenging the authenticity of ballets. The body type and technical advances of today’s dancers create an end result that is very different from the first production, the same steps create an entirely different aesthetic. Chris Challis addresses this issue, noting that this change happens quickly in ballet, and that there are those who contend that after a relatively short period of time, a company cannot claim to dance the works of one of its own choreographers. As an example, he uses The Royal Ballet ten years after the death of choreographer Frederick Ashton, saying that the technical level and style of the company had changed enough to question if the company was really performing his choreography. Challis then presents the idea that Balanchine being performed by The Royal Ballet cannot really be “Balanchine,” because his choreography is not just a style, but a new way of moving, a change in body concept, line, spatial orientation, speed, and musicality (Challis: 147). Danilova also addresses this issue regarding Petipa’s works

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only twenty-five years after the Revolution. She says that “some of our younger dancers . . . dance Petipa as they dance Fokine or Balanchine ballets, and that’s not right . . . technically, however, the dancers are excellent (Chujoy: 10). She emphasizes that it is a matter of more than just technical capacity. If I were to extend these ideas to the last century, one could say that the ballet dancers of today, regardless of whether they have been trained at The Royal Ballet School, the School of American Ballet, or the Vaganova Ballet Academy,13 resemble one another more in their physique, line, technical ability, and motion dynamics, than dancers trained at the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre School in 1917 resemble those who graduated from the Vaganova Ballet Academy in 2017. Challis sees this as one of the fundamental issues of dance reconstruction. He says that it is “a pressing consideration concerning the total contextualisation [sic] of the work” (150), not just socially and historically, but in the training of the dancers and the specific abilities they have to reproduce past choreography. A clear example of this concept can be seen in the differences between the 1928 Ballets Russes production of Apollon Musagète and later versions. Important formations are created by the three Muses as they hold hands with one another and Apollo and perform penchées, first toward one another, with their heads inside of the circle, then heads outward, feet touching in the middle, forming a sort of pyramid. In the original production, the dancers performed this formation with their legs slightly above ninety degrees, consistent with the training of the era. In later versions, the dancers of the New York City Ballet performed almost full-split penchées, creating a formation visually very different from the original production. However, each was staged by Balanchine—in this case, only updated by the way the dancers were trained. It was clear to him that his choreography would change in this way as each generation of dancers changed. This process is a natural part of our art form, and should not necessarily be viewed as creating a lack of authenticity as dances are passed along by any method. In my work on Funeral March, I did not consider that the dancers would do the steps using the technique of dancers in 1923. It was clear that arabesques would be above ninety degrees where applicable, and that the dancers would not try to tighten their moves to more closely imitate the style of those trained at the Imperial School. Rather, I wanted

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them to dance the steps as they normally would. This, I believe, is consistent with Balanchine’s work over the decades. He did not ask dancers to dance Apollo with the technique that the original cast had used. In fact, he and the original cast, including Danilova and Felia Doubrovska, taught new generations of dancers in the new style, which they had helped Balanchine create at the School of American Ballet. In addition to the general changes in physique and technique, choreography is often changed to accommodate different dancers, making more than even one or two versions equally authentic. For example, when Hodson and Archer reconstructed La Chatte, they worked with materials from three versions for three different dancers for the role of the Cat in the first production. Originally choreographed for classical ballerina Olga Spessivtseva, the dance was performed by her only one time in Monte Carlo. The role was then given to Alicia Nikitina who learned it the day of the Paris premiere, and who was not as technically strong as some other dancers in the company (Doubrovska, Interview by Gruen), but who danced the role well, interpreting it with the feel of a 1920s flapper. Although the role was given to Nikitina, Balanchine had urged Diaghilev to use Danilova as a substitute since he had initially tried out many of the Cat’s moves on her. However, she never performed the role. Balanchine also choreographed another version of the role for Markova, who was technically more capable than the other two dancers (Hodson and Archer, “Hot Purrrsuit”: 46). The ballet was performed dozens of times in London, as well as Paris, with Nikitina and Markova alternating. This opens an important question: which La Chatte is Balanchine’s original? Is it the classical Spessivtseva, the flapper Nikitina, whom the composer believed best exemplified his ideas of the music (Archer and Hodson, “La Chatte”: 1109), or the most technically capable and adventuresome Markova, who fulfilled Balanchine’s choreographic ideals? In this case, it is impossible to assign the term “original” to any of the versions. However, each is authentically Balanchine. Knowing that there are often variations within a dance does not negate its authenticity. Most of Balanchine’s ballets were created with the intent that they be performed more than once on different stages in different cities. The very nature of a touring company or a large company like New York City Ballet automatically implies that there will be alternate casts. This is a premise for choreography in such a setting, even

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when a ballet is choreographed with a specific dancer in mind. In his long career as a choreographer, Balanchine not only proved that he was effectively able to change dances to fit alternate casts or later generations of dancers, but he was able to rearrange dances on different dancers in a way that showed off their strengths, while always maintaining the integrity of the original work. The work of The Trust has shown that his dances can maintain their authenticity through the generations, exemplified by répétiteurs like Patricia Barker, who did not learn the dances directly from Balanchine, but have been carefully taught to continue to pass along what they have learned. The most important works that Balanchine created in Russia were danced by more than one cast. Valse Triste was created by Ivanova and Balanchine for her, but was shown in the West by Geva during the tour of the Soviet Dancers in 1924, and was performed at the Vaganova school up until the 1990s (Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné: 10).14 La Nuit, Poème, Enigma, and Étude were also danced in Russia long after Balanchine left, as dancers from the Young Ballet continued to perform them. The role of the Deceased was alternated between Mungalova and Geva, although Danilova was the only one to have danced in the role of the Angel. Using multiple casts is the nature of ballet, and gives reconstructing ballets a different element than reconstructions of works by solo artists like Isadora Duncan or Mary Wigman. In these cases, the works are largely dependent upon the dancers themselves, their dynamic performances, and the intent behind the works. A reconstruction of these dances would not replicate the dynamism of a performer’s “incomparable genius” (Rudnitsky: 7). Certainly, no one can compare to Duncan or Wigman. This does not, however, make reconstructing these dances meaningless. They may not be able to communicate the same message as the original, but many do still resonate with audiences, and from an aesthetic point of view have much to offer in being revived and maintained in the repertory.

The Myth of the Original The notion of there being an absolutely correct way to perform a dance is a myth, even for dances that have never been “lost.” Every performance is different, and even the same performers on the same stage with the same costumes will have small and large variations on different nights. This is

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the nature of our art. I recall as a young ballet student learning the classical variations, and hearing from some teachers that this is the “right” choreography. Then, learning the same dance from another teacher in a way that was somewhat or even very different, I would be told, that no, this is the “right” choreography. I was puzzled as to why one was right and the other not, and quickly learned that whatever that instructor said on that day was “right.” Some instructors would explain that there are several versions, sometimes by different schools of ballet, like the Russian or the British. In retrospect, I see that what was “right” was rarely referring to any sort of original version by a particular choreographer. One of the things that makes dance reconstruction puzzling is that we are somehow trying to recover the original work by the artists, while at the same time knowing that there is no exact version of any dance in this ethereal art. There is no original. We can speak of a première, but even that may or may not reflect the intent of the choreographer or dancers. The fact that dance is a living art form which is ever-changing, could free us, rather than restrict us. We could consider what would happen if we approach other ballets in the repertory with the same rigor. For example, to whom should a production of Giselle be credited? A discussion could be opened as to what parts could be credited to the Coralli/Perrot original, the Petipa revival, or the Gorsky update. Of course, this history is sometimes discussed in the program notes, but usually not in the details of which part come from whom. It is likely that the dancers do not know. Should we say that this ballet is not really Giselle, due to the changes and updates that have been left by each generation of stagers and dancers? Which one is the real Giselle? Would the existence of several versions, changed and updated by several choreographers, justify no longer performing it because it is not really authentic? Or, should we simply say that each generation built upon the next? Not only do we not consider this ballet to be less valuable because of the changes and updates, but we laud those who keep the old ballets alive by updating them to our tastes. In the same way, I contend that the idea of reconstruction should be considered in this light, and not dismissed for reasons that we do not apply to the rest of the repertory. While most audiences are interested in the experience of seeing a concert and not the details of who choreographed which section, for the sake of integrity, changes made should be noted and artists properly

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credited. Especially in the Internet age, passing along dances should not be a free-for-all. Lophukov’s complicated relationship to Petipa’s works demonstrates why proper crediting is important. As Artistic Director of the Academic Theatre, he is credited with saving much of the repertory during the years directly following the Revolution. There was never a season when the ballets were not performed, despite the chaotic and often violent circumstances of the era. According to Souritz, the classical repertory had become, in part, unrecognizable, and Lopukhov set out to fix the dances, and return them to their former glory. While he was doing this important work, he was also developing his own ideas of choreography, in particular, his approach to music. In addition to working with the classical repertory, in 1923 he presented his Dance Symphony: Magnificence of the Universe. Lopukhov describes his ideas of music and how he incorporated them in the Dance Symphony in his book The Path of the Ballet Master (Puti baletmeistera), parts of which were translated into English and published in Writings on Ballet and Music.15 He laid out his ideas on how dance should more closely reflect the orchestra, including his criticism of Petipa’s choreography. Musically, he believed that Petipa had failed to completely represent the music in his dances. Rehearsals generally took place with a first and second violin and a piano, but these instruments could not properly imitate the timbre of other instruments. In The Sleeping Beauty, Petipa made mistakes “because he failed to understand the music as a whole and because he interpreted individual musical themes incorrectly; consequently, the whole production is wrong. The rehearsal trio could not accurately convey the mood or instrumentation . . .” (Lopukhov: 62). In his mind, since neither Petipa nor his assistant, Lev Ivanov, properly referred to the complete orchestral scores, they could not create choreography worthy of the music. The classical repertory was saved, and much was restored to its earlier state, but it was never the “original” by the standards that are often used to measure reconstructions. This situation is particularly interesting in light of how it was presented at the time. The Theatre announced that “The new management has, for the most part, chosen the most vibrant classical creations of Marius Petipa as the basis of the repertory. The management will devote special care to the thorough conservation of the original choreographic text, which, unfortunately, was noticeably soiled in the past decade by

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various interpolations and revivals from notations. The management has as its goal to reject all that is alien and foreign to the ballets of Petipa . . .” (quoted in Scholl, Sleeping Beauty: 107). According to Souritz, this statement was directly aimed at Nicholas Sergeyev, who had emigrated to Western Europe after the Revolution, taking with him the archive of Stepanov notation for many ballets from the repertory (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 258). In Lopukhov’s revivals, in which he says he was trying to restore Petipa’s heritage, he was lacking a valuable tool, but he still had access to innumerable dancers and other witnesses who had either seen or participated in the previous productions. Lopukhov restored most of the repertory, but he also did have some failures in the process. In particular, his changes to Ivanov’s “Waltz of the Snowflakes” in The Nutcracker resulted in its being lost. His work in his revivals becomes problematic not because he did not use the notation in his restoration of the productions, but because he purposefully altered the choreography of many of the dances (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 259–261).16 Altering the choreography is not the problem. It is clear that choreography is regularly changed for a variety of reasons. Lopukhov was able to rechoreograph what had been lost while maintaining the style of the ballet. Without this component of reconstructions, a stage-worthy production cannot be achieved. This process was also used by Danilova, who had been in the cast of several of the ballets that Lopukhov reconstructed, in her 1949 staging of Paquita for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She describes how she followed the same process: “We needed a classical ballet to close the program, so I pieced together what I remembered of Petipa’s choreography from the Mariinsky production and filled in the holes” (Danilova, Choura: 166). While the story of Lophukov’s revivals of Petipa’s works is problematic, it cannot be understated that had he not done this work, ballet would not have been able to reach the heights it did in the Soviet Union in the decades that followed. We can, however, look at his process and determine what parts of it will help us to move forward, and what parts should not be repeated. I wanted to use this process, while avoiding the pitfalls, as I choreographed sections of Funeral March, in particular the middle, Lyric Section, where I had little information on the original dance. I hoped that by using vocabulary from Balanchine’s other dancers from the 1920s, the dance would evoke the voice of Balanchine, not mine.

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Why We Should The reason that dance reconstruction is considered by many to be a vital part of dance history is that it provides a tangible product. As an art form passed on from teacher to student, from one generation to the next, there is no perfect continuum of dance works. For some eras, there are written records including dance notation, which allows the dances to be reconstructed with a fair amount of certainty. Many Baroque era dances, which are far less complicated than full-length ballets from the Petipa era, have been reconstructed with what can be considered a large degree of authenticity. Most dances, however, do not fall into this category. Ballet’s history extends further in the past to the time before dances were regularly filmed than it does after, leaving us with more lost works than those that have survived. Some, like La Fille mal gardée, have remained in the repertory in name only; the versions performed have little relation to the original from 1798, with the exception of the general story line. Others, such as Giselle, have maintained the musical score, the libretto, and the basic choreographic structure over generations, but have still been revived, reconstructed, and updated many times. Many of Petipa’s ballets were recorded in Stepanov notation, but even the existence of these do not always override oral tradition. In the early 20th century, Labanotation was first used by the German Ausdrucktänzer, and is considered by some to be the most accurate and effective way to record dances (Guest: 5). Many ballet choreographers opt for Benesh notation, preferred by The Royal Ballet. The difficulty here is clear: there is no standard notation used by all dancers to enable us to communicate our dances through generations; even in the 21st century, our field remains one of hands-on training and oral tradition. Dances have been regularly filmed since the 1980s, but even this method is far from perfect. Film also falls short in that the dancers may make mistakes or need to alter steps for a specific performance, or the choreographer may have changed them for a specific dancer. In recent years, William Forsythe’s Synchronous Objects, a pilot project for the Motion Bank, uses extensive technology to record his dance One Flat Thing, reproduced from a variety of perspectives. The dance is filmed from several angles, with computerized notation as well as narration by Forsythe, in an attempt to give a complete record of this dance. Moving

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forward, dance artists and scholars will continue to have more and more accurate means of recording, staging, and studying past works. However, works prior to the use of technology, even film, leave us with the remnants of the dances in the form of photographs and descriptions, with texts giving a scattered written record. Large gaps are left in our history. The previous examples show the complication in dance transmission, and the lack of consensus on authenticity. The vast majority of theatrical dances created over the centuries were not passed along and, in one generation, became lost. It is understandable why many contend that it is not possible to take a dance, which has not been passed along, and for which there is no notation or living witness, and authentically reconstruct it. Art forms with a static product, such as visual art and literature, produce lasting works. Dance history can rely on no such thing, a contrast Manning clearly describes: “The dance scholar has no choice except to pursue the elusive and uncertain text of performance. An event bound in space and time, a performance can be read only through its traces—on the page, in memory, on film, in the archive. Each of these traces marks, indeed distorts the event of performance, and so the scholar pursues what remains elusive as if moving through an endless series of distorting reflections” (Manning: 12). Generally, there are not several versions of published Victorian novels, nor are there paintings that Picasso painted, then several generations of artists painted upon. Even music and theatre, the other performing arts, that is, the living arts, have maintained a more standard way of preserving works, through script and standard music notation. This deficit in dance, as an art as well as an academic subject, leaves us with special challenges. Ballet is first and foremost a kinesthetic art form, and must be studied through motion. Jack Anderson writes about how even unsuccessful revivals are important in that “they indicate how much ballet taste changes over the years—which we may forget. . . . Sometimes revivals show us glories we were foolish to let fade. Sometimes it seems incomprehensible that revived ballets were ever taken seriously. But, good or bad, they cast light upon where we are by showing us where we have been” (Anderson: 61). Those who write about dance, even dances of other epochs, are still inclined to approach it through some sort of movement, whether by viewing it or moving themselves. This kind of study is not necessarily a precursor to reconstruction, and can be used

The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? · 35

as Homans did in her research, executing the movements in the studio to help her in her historical study. Others write about the dances they have seen, either as soon as it happened—for example, the decades of written records we have from historians like Souritz, or later in recollection— as we have in Kostrovitskaya’s notes or Mikhailov’s books. Still others, like Manning, use their own dance experience and textual, notation, and photographic evidence, to re-envision lost works. Those who take reconstructed dances to the stage take this one step further, envisioning the dance by setting it on dancers, and this is where the controversy begins. While I believe that it is vital to address the objections to this process, I believe that it is both a necessary part of our study and a way of preserving our art. If we chose to relegate dances of the past to only photographs, pictures, and textual references, they are no more useful than paintings stored in a vault, or books in a library that are not read. For this reason, many dance artists and scholars turn to reconstruction as an imperfect alternative to allowing the past to remain relegated to the dusty pages of text. Dance is movement—to fully understand a work, it has to be danced. By taking the remnants we have of a dance and putting them to movement, we are able to get a more complete, albeit never exact, rendition of a work. Reconstruction has an important place beside other ways of preserving and passing along our heritage. As noted, the idea of there being a perfect original that either can or cannot be replicated, is not really a relevant argument in dance. Nor do reconstructors consider their works to be so. Archer calls the reconstructions he has done with Hodson “reasonable facsimiles” of the originals (Hodson, Nijinsky’s Bloomsbury Ballet: xiv). All dance, from the second performance by the same dancer in a production overseen by the choreographer is, in some form, a copy of the première, not an exact replication. Dance artists do not create dances intending to have this sort of perfection. I refer once again to Danilova, a dancer who worked closely with Balanchine for decades in every capacity. Danilova explained how her own variation in Apollo changed so much just in Balanchine’s lifetime. Her variation was changed for Suzanne Farrell, who was taller and did not jump as well as she did (Choura: 99). She also believes that the dancers who performed the roles in subsequent generations missed the original intent of the dance. According to her, many dancers today “emphasize the angular aspects and accelerate everything in between” and that she

36 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

“was as light on [her] heels as I was on my toes. Now dancers go very light on their toes but then stamp their feet when they go on their heels” (ibid.). She explains what Balanchine was trying to achieve with his choreography: “Balanchine was doing something new, but he was not simply trying to shock. . . . The idea was to make all these things part of a whole, not to show the contrast between them. Going up on the toes was what everybody expected to see in a ballet; going down on the heels wasn’t” (ibid.). Danilova’s descriptions of these changes are not a criticism of the dancers who performed her roles after she did. Rather, she says that she and the other dancers were the first ones to interpret Balanchine’s movements, and that it was the role of the second and future generations to build on what they had done: “After seeing somebody else perform a role, you can think, ‘Oh, I know how I can do it better. . . . ’ The dancers who came after us in Apollo could look to our performances and copy what we did or dismiss it. That was their privilege, but not ours—we had a hard-enough time grasping that new style and finding a way to express it” (ibid.: 100). Danilova describes the issues that make restaging, reviving, recreating, and reconstructing dances challenging from an academic standpoint. They are, however, the very same things that make dance a living, dynamic, art form, allowing works that may otherwise fall into obscurity to remain available to new generations. I take the stand that dance reconstruction should be pursued. Not every dance can be fully put back together, and not every dance should be presented in every venue. However, if choreographers, dancers, and audiences cannot access our history, our art cannot attain the depth that other forms have, such as visual art and music. The history of those art forms is accessible through the works themselves and through the performances based on script or standard musical notation. Lacking this in dance, we must look to other ways of maintaining and expanding our understanding, no matter how imperfect. This does not mean that we should ignore semantics, nor should work be falsely credited. However, in order for us to move forward and to learn as much as we can about our past, so that future dancers and choreographers can create works of greater depth than they would otherwise, reconstruction is and must remain an important part of the process.

The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? · 37

Envisioning Funeral March The earliest works of Picasso and Mozart are held in regard because of who created them, and how they presage the great artists they became. Although several of the ballets that Balanchine choreographed for the Young Ballet were performed for years after he emigrated, Balanchine himself did not revive works in his own repertory until his breakthrough, Apollo. The importance of Funeral March lies in how it foreshadows future masterpieces, including Apollo, Prodigal Son, Serenade, and many others. Having read my statement supporting the notion of dance reconstruction, the reader may wonder why, then, did I call my work “envisioning,” rather than reconstructing? As I mentioned in the beginning, my process was based on the work of Hodson and Archer, and, like them, I used the materials available and approached the dance as a puzzle with missing pieces. In the most general sense of the word, I did do a reconstruction. In the sections where the descriptions of the dance were clear, I believe my work to be reasonably accurate. However, this dance is my vision of what it looked like; I leave open the idea that another reconstructor may use the same materials to envision this dance differently. We cannot know with 100 percent certainty how this dance looked, but we can envision it. We can take the steps of the ballet canon and our understanding of Balanchine’s early vocabulary to get an idea of what it looked like, to try to capture its spirit. We can look at many aspects of this dance and see a reflection of the great choreographer Balanchine became. This is what my goal was, and in the rest of this book, I will describe my journey as I search for Balanchine’s lost ballets.

3

The Dancer’s Discovery Finding the Steps

As my research transitioned from traditional work into the studio, I kept the idea that I would be striving for authenticity, while at the same time knowing that a perfect replication was not possible. Examining textual, oral history, photographic, and musical materials, along with finding and analyzing piecemeal information about the choreographies, proved to be the most time-intensive aspect of the entire undertaking. The initial idea of setting Funeral March on dancers emerged as part of my traditional research into Balanchine’s Russian ballet; kinesthetically, I saw working on his lost dances as the next step in understanding how he grew as a choreographer. As I was looking for any clues to his earliest dances, particularly choreographic details, I realized that his dances were not created fully independently of one another, or independently of the dancers with whom he worked. As I saw these connections, I realized that more work was possible in this area of study. For Balanchine, the years 1920–1923 were incredibly productive in terms of experimentation and finding his choreographic voice. His ballets show a clear progression as he worked with and kept some elements, like Goleizovsky’s sixth position, “when both a person’s feet are on the floor, touching one another closely at the heels and big toes” (Goleizovsky: 73). He continued to refine another aspect, the building of bodies into kinetic sculptures which we see in his breakthrough Apollo (1928) and in Prodigal Son (1929), the first of his works to have survived in the repertory in the 21st century. In other works, he experimented 38 ·

The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps · 39

with different concepts, then moved on. Among these ballets are barefoot dances like Étude and Enigma, and dances done to poetry like The Twelve, which was accompanied by a vocal performance. I began to see Balanchine as a young artist absorbing the ideas around him, transforming them, and making them his own. As I approached these ballets, I was cognizant that they were created in the context of a society in the midst of Revolution, and I was fascinated by the idea of Balanchine as a young, rebellious artist, living in a world very different from my own. I saw not the mature ballet master who had, in many ways, dominated the world of ballet for decades, but a young man, barely out of his teens, trying new things and pushing boundaries. Balanchine, together with his friends, had the enthusiasm and energy of young people eager to conquer the world. His closest collaborators recalled the work they did together; in retrospect, it did achieve what the title of their first performance—“The Evolution of Ballet: From Petipa to Fokine to Balanchivadze”—had announced. Danilova remembers that there were “many evenings of experiment [sic] then” (Tracy and DeLano: 23). Geva and Balanchine worked evenings and Saturdays, Balanchine creating “combinations that freed the body from the strict bondage of classical form without destroying that form, but in fact, extending and expanding it.” She continued, “We had many engagements, and no sooner had we tried out a dance in public than George would start choreographing a new one” (Geva, Split Seconds: 279). Gusev recalled that Balanchine worked out duets with him and Mungalova: “It was fun to be a kind of guinea pig to him. He always used Mungalova and me like this; and then later he would give the particular work in question to others. We didn’t mind in the least. We knew that the next day he would drag us back on stage and torment us until night with more experiments. What a joyous torment it was!” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53). Gusev’s fondness for his youth is palpable. In the bibliography compiled by Souritz and Slonimsky on Russian dancers, All About Ballet (Vse o Balete), he is one of the few who listed his short work with the Young Ballet along with his decades-long successful, career (ibid.: 203). While my own circumstances could not possibly imitate those times—the deprivation, along with the excitement of artistic breakthrough—as I read their memoirs, I found myself catching on to the excitement of experimenting in the studio, and looked forward to working with young dancers, trying out

40 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

the choreography. In a small way, I felt connected with the experimental spirit that motivated the dancers in the original group. Between 1922 and 1924, students from the Mariinsky Theatre School and young members of the company formed a group that called themselves the Young Ballet, with Balanchine as their leader. Most of their dances were solos and duets, performed in various venues throughout Petrograd (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 73). Two of the dancers, Danilova and Ivanova, were the most established in the Mariinsky, and well known to the Petrograd public (Mikhailov, The Young Years: 15). Both were regularly cast as soloists, and Danilova had begun to be cast in principal roles earlier than she would have been before the Revolution. Some critics bemoaned that younger, less-experienced dancers were dancing roles that had previously been performed only by ballerinas; however, there were fewer dancers in the company, and to keep up with all the performances scheduled, younger dancers had to take on the more difficult roles. It was also common knowledge that, in addition to the higher workload within the Academic Theatres, many dancers worked outside as well to meet their expenses (Krasovskaya, Vaganova: 89). Officially, outside performances were not permitted, but this policy was overlooked, as dancers were often paid in much needed salt or flour.1 The year 1923 was a productive one for the members of the Young Ballet. Many of them worked with Lopukhov in his experimental ballet, Dance Symphony: Magnificence of the Universe, a work that proved to be pivotal in Balanchine’s development. That same year, they gave their first performance at the Duma Auditorium, where Balanchine’s first ensemble work, Funeral March, was presented along with several other works (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 75). After this production, the dancers of the Young Ballet gave regular presentations throughout Petrograd. Balanchine often choreographed something new for him and Geva to perform, and also played the piano while she sang at small venues to earn extra money (Geva, “Tamara Geva”: 105). He created many small dances, performed them once or twice, then he moved on, discarding elements or refining them. The accounts left by the dancers and other witnesses for both the large Duma production and the short dances performed in small venues provided a basis for my research, and often clues left about small duets gave important insight. Just as Hodson and Archer relied on textual

The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps · 41

information and one extant photograph in their reconstruction of Valse Triste, so did my process with Funeral March proceed without notation or living witnesses. There is more documentation for these two dances than any other of Balanchine’s Russian works. Neither of them has complete information, but when put in context with other early, as well as later, ballets by Balanchine, a picture of them emerges. Details by Mikhailov, Slonimsky, and Alexandre Tcherepnin were used by Hodson and Archer when they reconstructed Valse Triste in 2004 (Archer and Hodson, “The Sad Twist of Valse Triste”: 1). In my work on Funeral March, I focused on the accounts of dancers Kostrovitskaya, Danilova, and Geva (Kattner, “Marche Funèbre”). My initial work on this dance was exploring it only through text, and as I progressed it became clear that there was much to be learned. Similar to Manning’s textual reconstructions, I used the materials to create a mental picture of these ballets. However, my real breakthrough came when I set phrases on college dancers in the studio. My first foray into studio work on this dance was in 2011 when I requested permission from The George Balanchine Trust to present a studio workshop, describing reconstruction methods, working with the materials from the first section of Funeral March. To prepare for these first sessions, I collected as much information as possible, analyzed it, and then, as I outlined in Chapter 2, put the pieces together like a puzzle. I was not attempting to reconstruct the dance; rather, my focus was on the learning process, showing students how history can be relevant to their future careers as dance artists. I allowed them to work with the text and the music in groups, to discover on their own what the dance could have looked like (Kattner, “What Does Dance History Have to Do with Dancing”: 7–8). The intention of the workshop was to show connections among texts, photographs, music, and oral records, and to demonstrate that traditional historical research can be taught kinesthetically in a studio. I believe that my pedagogical goals for the workshop were attained, and I gained something significant for my work. The students not presenting sat in various spots around the room to watch the phrases from all sides; Balanchine had created it to be viewed on a rounded stage at the Duma Auditorium. As the dancers came forward to present their work, I was struck with the knowledge that this was the first time this dance had been seen in almost ninety years. Thousands of dances have been lost over the centuries, but this was one of the first group works by a master,

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and a dance that revealed many elements that he used throughout his career. I was highly motivated to continue to see how much could be recovered. Two other workshops followed, each focusing on the first section of the dance in which the corps de ballet enters, laying a foundation for my pursuit of reworking the other two sections of the dance. .

Searching and Finding Lost Choreography The process of reconstruction began with carefully working through sources. Below, I detail the process of how I worked with various materials in envisioning the first section of Funeral March. Each of the elements fits together like a puzzle, and the reader will note that what we have is partial knowledge of the whole. It is when pieces are put together that a mental image of the ballet emerges, and we get a glimpse of the dance that moved the original audience so much that the dancers immediately reperformed it that very evening (Kostrovitskaya). Although this puzzle is not complete, we do have enough information to determine many of the feet and arm positions, dance steps and their relation to the music, and the overall use of space.

Photographic Evidence Important to this work are photographs—not only of the dance itself, but also of the space in which the work was performed. There are two posed studio shots of Mourners, the female corps de ballet role. We have no images of the actual performance, nor do we know how the stage was built in the auditorium, but there are numerous photos of this auditorium in other uses from the time period. While few, these photographs provide important parts to the puzzle, and when carefully analyzed, give details about the costumes, choreographic hints, and amount of space available to the dancers in specific sections of the dance. Two extant photographs of Funeral March, one of Vera Kostrovitskaya (Figure 3) and one of Nina Stukolkina (Figure 4), show us the costumes, as well as two positions of the dance. Additionally, most of the dancers vividly recalled the costumes worn by the female dancers for this performance. Kostrovitskaya said that they sewed their own costumes from old calico they had found at home. The “short, gray, close-fitting, sleeveless dresses had a black and silver pattern. The plain gray caps with small

The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps · 43

Figure 3. Vera Kostrovitskaya in Funeral March (1923). Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust.

Figure 4. Nina Stukolkina in Funeral March (1923). Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust.

discs on the sides over the ears were also embroidered in black and silver. The usual ballet tights and slippers completed the costume” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51).2 Danilova described that they “looked like Amazons” and “all had tunics, like they have more or less now with short skirts” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). It is notable that these descriptions bear some resemblance to the costumes worn in Goleizovsky’s funeral march in Medtneriana (1922), in which the dancers’ costumes were outlined with crosses and they wore black caps (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 172–173). It was one of the dances Balanchine and the other dancers of the Young Ballet had seen in Goleizovsky’s Chamber Ballet’s Petrograd performance in 1922. Danilova also addressed the idea that the costumes helped to create a connection to the audience: “We wore caps and our hair was under inside of caps which really unites every dancer, because you couldn’t see different color of hair [sic]” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). The

44 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

theme of death, in which every person becomes equal to every other person, was reflected in the dancers being united, and their individual traits, such as their hair color, being covered up. Slonimsky saw the connection the dance made visually and musically between the audience and the performers (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51–52). I interpreted the comments of the witnesses as expressing both our own experience as mourners and our common fate in the certainty of death. Headpieces such as these show up in later ballets as well, including the Muses in the first Apollo costumes, and the Revelers in Prodigal Son. When Oakland University dance costume designer Christa Koerner and I looked at the description of the costumes in conjunction with the photographs, it was not difficult to create a rough rendering of a possible female costume based on designs created by Boris Erbshtein or Vladimir Dimitriev,3 who were close friends with both one another and Slonimsky (Slonimsky, The Miracle: 27). There were, however, no descriptions or photographs of the men’s. Because Danilova had talked about the dancers being united, I believed that the men’s costumes were probably very similar to the women’s costumes. In La Chatte, the men wore costumes with the same basic cut as the women’s in Funeral March, with one shoulder connecting the front and back of the bodice, and then leading under the opposite arm. In La Chatte, the men were wearing shorts, a costuming theme that often reappeared in ballets created in the 1920s in Russia. Caps that appear to our modern eyes to look like swim caps, were part of the original costumes for Apollo in 1928, but also appear on male dancers in Russia. An extant photograph on display in the exhibit for Constructivist theatre and dance at the St. Petersburg State Museum for Theatre and Music shows the original Sports Quartet from The Golden Age (1930).4 The men are wearing costumes with similar caps and shorts. Looking at all this material, Christa designed a costume that resembled a male version of the women’s dresses. We did decide on a few modern things. Rather than using redyed cotton cloth, which would have been stiff and uncomfortable for the dancers, Christa used gray lycra, so that it would be flexible as the dancers moved. In her design for the men, she also made the shorts form-fitted, rather than loose as they were normally made in the 1920s, to update the style for the modern audience. Kostrovitskaya says that the women wore tights and pointe shoes, but the men’s costumes did not look quite right with tights, because we had made the

The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps · 45

leg tight, like biker shorts. In photographs of another Balanchine ballet from this era, Waltz and Adagio, Gusev is barelegged, while Mungalova has on tights and pointe shoes, and we could have followed this pattern. However, we opted for the legs of both the men and women to be bare and for the women’s pointe shoes to be pancaked. In retrospect, while we did not believe that any of these small changes violated the integrity of the piece, in future presentations, I now believe that it would be better to have the men barelegged and the women in tights. These photos also show arm positions of the corps de ballet. Kostrovitskaya said that, during the entrance, they were “bowing their heads with sorrow and crossing their arms downward” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). In Figure 3, the dancer is standing in fourth position en pointe, and it is likely that this picture shows how the Mourners “stepped out slowly on pointe, one after another” (ibid.). From this picture, I concluded that the six corps de ballet dancers would come out following one another, en pointe, fourth position to fourth position. This kind of entrance, one in which the corps performs a repetitive step for several measures of music, harkens back to the formulas of Petipa and Ivanov in, for example, the entrance of the Swans in Swan Lake, Act I, Scene 2, and the entrance of the Shades in “The Kingdom of the Shades” in La Bayadère. This reference to the choreography of the Imperial Ballet, the traditional formation and steps, is meant to demonstrate, as Souritz noted: that despite his extreme experimentation, Balanchine never intended to completely abandon classical dance (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 76). Later sections of Funeral March are more experimental. This section does diverge from the ballets mentioned above in one aspect: both these groups enter from upstage left, but the direction of Kostrovitskaya in Figure 3 led me to conclude that the corps in Funeral March entered from stage right. Likewise, the other photograph (Figure 4) shows Stukolkina on two knees parallel, rather than on one, as is described in the text. Kostrovitskaya mentions that, in the middle section of the dance, after being awakened from their sorrow, the corps de ballet did “arabesques on the floor with the body bent forward followed by deep back bends” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Putting the accounts together with the photograph, I concluded that sometimes the dancers were on one knee, other times, on two knees. The arms in this photograph also show what is described as the ballet ended. The dancers “went slowly from stage one after another,

46 · Finding Balanchine’s Lost Ballets

as in the beginning, stretching their arms forward in a gesture of hope” (ibid.). The photographs gave valuable clues, but working with dancers in the studio proved to be a breakthrough in understanding the choreography. Not only were we able to see the formations and positions in person, but dancers and observers also made important contributions. In studio sessions, I made large posters of these photographs so the dancers could work with them. In my 2015 workshop at the Free University Berlin, a graduate student, Adrian Navarro, noted the similarities to the arm position in Figure 3 and the classical pantomime for “death.” Balanchine had changed the position: the fingers are extended rather than fisted. However, given the subject of the dance, I believe that he was correct in his assessment. It also raised the question of how each dancer entered stage. Were their arms already in this position, or did they put them into position as they stepped into the light, doing a version of a pantomime that the audience, many of whom were familiar with the classical repertory, would recognize and be able to interpret? Again, we cannot know exactly how it was performed, but I did see that more studio work on the entrance step of the Mourners would be productive. Navarro also mentioned the head position of the dancer. The text says that they had their heads bowed, Figure 3 shows her head slightly tilted. It is possible that they came on stage in this position, but it is also possible that this position was for the picture only and that the photographer asked her to tilt her head slightly for a better angle. I took note to follow up with this idea the next time I worked with dancers.

The Duma Auditorium: Exploring the Space Examining the space that Funeral March was created for is pivotal in understanding the structure of the dance. At the Duma performance, in addition to classical and newly choreographed solos and duets, Balanchine’s Funeral March was presented and several dancers vividly recalled details. One of the outstanding aspects of this ballet was that it was choreographed specifically to be performed on a circular stage, but in a way that it could be adapted to a normal stage (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). Geva recalled that, at that time, Balanchine “contended that dancing, like sculpture, should be complete and interesting to view from all four sides” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, the leader of

Figure 5. Poster for Evening of the Young Ballet on June 1, 1923. Courtesy of St. Petersburg State Museum for Theatre and Music.

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the experimental Ethnographic Theatre in Petrograd, was instrumental in inspiring Balanchine’s earliest ensemble works. First, he provided the vehicle for Balanchine to experiment with his idea of dance being viewed from all sides. Souritz said that he was “obsessed with the idea of an amphitheater for performance—a circular stage surrounded on all sides by seats,” and he built this kind of stage at the Duma Auditorium, where the Young Ballet performed (Souritz, “The Young Balanchine”: 68). At a performance a few weeks later of The Twelve, another group work, Balanchine experimented with an element that he chose not to keep in his work; his dancers performed steps similar to Russian folkdance to a chorus recitation of Vsevolodsky-Gerngross’ dramatic interpretation of the poem by Alexander Blok (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). Geva said that fifty voices “all spoke in rhythm, in different keys, overlapping, stopping” (Geva, Interview by Reynolds). Vsevolodsky-Gerngross certainly was influential in this piece,5 but his influence on Balanchine’s future work is more evident in how he used the stage in Funeral March. While the tower of the original building still stands, the inside of the building has been rebuilt and is used for several other purposes. There are no photographs of the stage as it was constructed for this performance, but there are photographs of the auditorium during this era. Figure 6, taken in 1917 from where the stage would have been placed for the Young Ballet’s performance, shows several aisles running through the auditorium. Balanchine used these aisles to create a connection between the dancers and the audience. When we compare the photograph of the auditorium with descriptions of the dance, a picture emerges of how the dancers connected with the audience: “The slightest opportunity was taken to lay a bridge between the audience and the stage, emphasizing the unity of what was being performed and what had been experienced, the unity of spirit between the audience and the stage heroes. This explains the passage of the dancers followed by light through the audience and the modeling of sculptural groups as if to generalize individual experience. In this respect, Meyerhold was the teacher of everyone—including Balanchine” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 52).6 Bruni also described the dance: “As best I recall, the cortège came onto the stage through the audience under a spotlight in the dark” (ibid.:

The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps · 49

Figure 6. Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet at the Duma Auditorium in 1917, taken from the direction of the speaker at the podium. Photographer unknown.

51). From multiple sources, we learned that the Deceased is carried by three men, and this group did not come directly from backstage to the stage itself. Because Kostrovitskaya describes the third section as analogous to the first, it is possible that Slonimsky was referring to the dancers’ exit from the stage as well. If we compare this description with the photograph of the auditorium, we see the aisles between the seats and are able to tell an approximate distance that the dancers would have covered in the sections of the dance when they were walking through the audience. Also of importance to this dance is that these aisles were stairs, rather than flat, which would have determined the way the dancers moved. Both Slonimsky and Bruni mentioned the use of a spotlight in Funeral March. Valse Triste, choreographed in 1922, also used this device. This auditorium afforded much simpler lighting effects than could be achieved at the Mariinsky, but from some accounts it is clear that the spotlight was used very effectively. In Funeral March, it lit the group of dancers who carried Geva overhead, highlighting the sculptural nature of this formation. The spotlight, round stage, and the notion of dance being viewed from all sides are vital to Balanchine’s development as a choreographer, and it is significant that he had the opportunity to actually put these ideas into practice in this work. The year before Funeral March, 1922, Petrograd witnessed three significant events that shaped art and, I suggest, Balanchine’s choreography.

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Sculptor Naum Gabo was realizing, through his work Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (1921–1922), his notion that sculpture should break out of its static state, and a new element, kinetic rhythms, be emphasized (Gabo and Pevsner: 214). This simple sculpture, created out of steel, wood, and a small motor, is only complete when it is in motion. In their manifesto, Gabo and his brother, Anton Pevsner, rejected the concept that visual art must be static, resulting in the creation of moving sculptures; this provided a natural bridge to the performing arts, predicting their later collaboration with Balanchine in La Chatte in 1927 at the Ballets Russes. This ballet contained not only choreographic innovations that resulted from Balanchine’s contact with Constructivist artists in the Soviet Union, but also Gabo and Pevsner’s creation of a set using the newly developed plastics, including a plastic tutu to complement the plastic shields carried by the all-male corps de ballet.7 Likewise, director Vsevolod Meyerhold worked toward a new kind of theatre, achieving a fully Constructivist production in 1922 with his breakthrough staging of Fernand Crommelynk’s Magnanimous Cuckold. Textile artist Lyubov Popova brought costume designs that were similar to the clothing that workers wore, and that allowed for complete range of motion, complementing both the acrobatic movements of the actors, as well as sets built out of industrial materials (Lodder: 150). The idea of the kinetic sculpture was brought to the stage as actors were placed on multilevel platforms with machine-like moving structures. In this play, Popova and Meyerhold expanded on the kinetic possibilities of set design. Having performed in Michael Fokine’s Carnaval in 1910, Meyerhold’s connection to ballet was strong (Garafola: 30). Actors’ movements, along with their scripts, created an overall rhythm to his plays, much like a dance. Balanchine was familiar with the Constructivist movement, and it influenced the ballets he created between 1920 and 1922, before he had seen the work of Constructivist choreographer Goleizovsky.8 In La Nuit (1920), done while he was still a student, Balanchine incorporated an overhead lift, and according to Mungalova, it was the first time “acrobatic lifts appeared in our school” (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 74). Balanchine and his friends saw Goleizovsky’s Chamber Ballet perform in 1922, and his friends reported that they talked endlessly about it; it prompted Balanchine to go further in his experiments than he had up to that point. Danilova recalled that Balanchine received important impetus

The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps · 51

from seeing Goleizovsky’s choreography and meeting with him, but believed that Balanchine went further in his expansion of what ballet could be (Tracy and DeLano: 23). Three of Goleizovsky’s ballets performed in Petrograd in 1922—Salomé, Faun, and Medtneriana—bear special attention. Souritz’s description of Goleizovsky’s funeral march in Medtneriana has some similarities to the opening of Balanchine’s. In Goleizovsky’s funeral march, “danced by five women . . . the dancers moved slowly, with heavy steps and bowed heads, forming a compact group; then their tight formation broke apart” (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 172). According to Kostrovitskaya, in Balanchine’s Funeral March, “six female dancers stepped out slowly on pointe, one after another . . . reaching the center of the stage, all of them separated with the same steps into a large circle” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). In Salomé, Goleizovsky placed his soloist on a high platform. Faun, which he choreographed to Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, also used utilitarian platforms, but in a way that was more influential on Funeral March and the choreographic devices Balanchine used later. Goleizovsky was the first to set dancers upon Constructivist-type platforms (Mason: 11), placing them on ledges, one above another, with two sets of stairs on the sides. The dancers remained there for the entire dance, each connected to one another, “swaying, bending, and flowing,” creating, in essence, a kinetic sculpture (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 175). Souritz describes a photograph of the dance: Acrobatic and gymnastic elements were widely used in the dance; it was built on shifting poses that were extravagant, affected, tense, and unfamiliar . . . two platforms of the set are visible; on the upper one Ualenta . . . is standing in a mannered pose; the faun . . . supports her with one hand. The ballerina’s bare leg is lifted and forms a sharp angle; her bare foot rests on the head of another dancer (a nymph), positioned a step lower. The latter is half reclining, lifting a bent leg upward and resting the other on a lower step of the set. On the lower step, yet another dancer repeats this pose, slightly altered. Alongside stands a fourth, grasping her lifted bare leg in her hand. All this together forms a complex, interwoven pattern of lifted legs, arms, heads, and bodies wound and braided with a cord . . . this

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pattern constantly changed, although the dancers almost never left their places. (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 174–175) The simple scaffolding reflects Popova’s sets from Magnanimous Cuckold on a much smaller scale, as well as pointing toward Gabo’s Kinetic Construction. There are also similarities to the simple scaffolding used in the first section of Apollo,9 as well as the multipurpose fence/table that is moved around the stage in Prodigal Son.10 Soviet dance scholar George Mamontov later described how Goleizovsky’s dancers created sculptures by remaining connected by different body parts (59–60). These sculptures are kinetic, in constant motion, reflecting Gabo’s Kinetic Construction. Both are breaking out of the traditional notion of visual art; Gabo created his kinetic sculpture out of wood and steel; Goleizovsky, out of dancers’ bodies. In studying accounts of the choreography of Funeral March, I concluded that Balanchine took these concepts and expanded them even further, both the ideas of kinetic sculpture, as well as placing dancers on different levels. Rather than use platforms for these levels, he used the bodies of the dancers. These sculptures moved through the space and down the aisle under a spotlight, representing a funeral cortège that created a great impression on the audience. Kostrovitskaya describes this position: “three young men carried away a girl lying on her back, whom they had lifted high on extended arms . . . they proceed slowly across the entire stage, slowing down even more at moments of forte, and lowering the girl to the floor at the opposite exit” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50–51). Danilova mentioned the group was overhead, rather than on the floor (Interview by Conway), and Geva, who performed this role, said that she was held high in the air in a bridge (Geva, Interview by Reynolds). Her description of the position is a bit different, but in examining the materials together, I concluded that it was likely that the Deceased entered in a flat-back corpse position, but exited the stage in a high bridge, a position that the dancers would have been familiar with from the circus. According to Slonimsky, Balanchine “introduced . . . brilliant acrobatic elements into the pas de deux; high lifts and the upward flight of the female dancer expressed joy and exhilaration. He made frequent use of splits, the ‘bridge,’ and other devices from clown or acrobatic acts . . . he did indeed

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introduce into the structure of ballet everything which had previously been considered alien” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 62). It would have been consistent with the entire piece for the Deceased to be in a slightly different position for her exit; the corps de ballet exited the stage in the same formation it entered, but with a different arm position, one that reached upward in hope, as seen in the Stukolkina’s arm pose in Figure 4. A bridge position, rather than a stiff, flat, corpse position, also represents hope in the flexibility of the body, as well as the position that reached upward. Kostrovitskaya also mentions the newness of these high lifts, saying that “everyone was still afraid of then and didn’t know how to do [them] properly” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). Common in the circus, high overhead lifts, as well as multilevel sculptural formations created out of bodies, were just beginning to be used by ballet choreographers in the 1920s (Garafola: 135–136). Balanchine developed this particular position in various forms in La Chatte, in which a cortège was created out of several men, with the main male role, the Man, lying flat, but on his side. In one of my initial conversations working with Patricia Barker, we discussed the similarities of the flat “corpse” position from Funeral March and a position in which the woman is similarly held overhead by three men in La Valse, choreographed by Balanchine in 1951.11 This multilevel group formation in Funeral March looks forward to Balanchine’s future work, both at the Ballets Russes and at later companies. In La Chatte, he used the dancers to build sculptures, with a corps de ballet of six men and one male soloist forming several complicated structures in which the dancers are in various positions, from on the floor to being carried away. In Apollo, Balanchine created several threedimensional, kinetic structures. In these, however, the dancers are not lifted into position or held higher than shoulder level. He returned to carrying the dancer in a high overhead position reminiscent of Funeral March and La Chatte in the role of the Prodigal and the Siren in Prodigal Son. In the second scene, the Siren “stands upright on a man’s shoulders, her arms akimbo” (Balanchine and Mason: 485). The earliest version of Apollo ended with Apollo and the Muses ascending a detailed mountain set in the rear; later versions used a simple platform, strikingly similar to the sets used by actors in Meyerhold’s Magnanimous Cuckold, before Balanchine discarded this element altogether. In his first American ballet, Serenade (1934),12 we see direct connections to both Funeral March

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and La Chatte. In the final tableau of Serenade, three men hold a woman upright, carrying her offstage. The configuration is the same as in Funeral March, three men and one woman. Rather than flat, she is carried upright. The upright position reflects one of the structures from La Chatte. Here, the man is also upright, carried by his comrades in a chariot formation. It is also likely that the final tableau in Serenade represents a cortège as well, although there are differing interpretations among dancers and scholars (Macaulay: 83). From the group formations, as well as the experimentation with overhead lifts that were common for circus acrobats, but not ballet dancers, we see that Balanchine was greatly expanding on what dance could be. I found this to be particularly relevant to my work as I began to visualize how he would have incorporated these ideas into his choreography, based on the description of Funeral March and other dances, particularly his early duets. The space at the Duma Auditorium allowed him to experiment with these multileveled, moving sculptures, viewed from all sides, making it important to consider the multiple perspectives given to various members of the audience. Onlookers from various points in the theatre viewed the entrance of the dancers slightly differently. From the studio workshop where the students viewed their classmates’ interpretation of the choreography from various points in the room, I saw that approaching the dance as one would a sculpture was vital to Funeral March, as well as to Balanchine’s future choreography. The idea of creating sculptures out of the bodies of dancers remained in his mature work, even though most were choreographed for a proscenium stage.

Using the Music to Recreate Phrases Kostrovitskaya’s description follows the three sections of the dance according to the corresponding musical passages, explaining the choreography section by section. Costumes and theatre space give important details to this work; however, the musical score provides the most important element in envisioning this ballet, as music was the foundation of all Balanchine’s work. His musicality was not simple counts—he was working toward the dance symphony introduced to him by Lopukhov, as Souritz explained. During the time Balanchine was choreographing his first works, he pursued a musical education at the Petrograd Conservatory. Although

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he did not complete the degree, he became a highly trained musician, able to work expertly with music in his choreography. At the same time, he and many other members of the Young Ballet danced with Lopukhov in his Dance Symphony: Magnificence of the Universe (1923), which, according to Slonimsky, was one of the “most memorable and important events of their creative lives and a springboard for further development” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 42). In this dance, Lopukhov worked to create images that corresponded directly to the music. Balanchine incorporated Lophukov’s concepts into his learning of music and choreography. As the dancers rehearsed Dance Symphony, Balanchine understood the complexity of what Lopukhov was trying to accomplish and translated his ideas for the other dancers. Gusev recalled, “When we were preparing Dance Symphony, Lopukhov did not fully explain to us the structure and composition of his work. He showed us what to do and we did it. We would not have understood all of the finer points of the choreography (two, three, and four parallel ‘voices’ in choreographic counterpoint, the leading ‘voice’ in the accompaniment and so on) if Balanchine had not given it deep thought and had not interpreted it for us. . . . In his treatment of Chopin’s Funeral March, I see Lopukhov’s Dance Symphony” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 54). According to Danilova, it was in this dance that she first encountered syncopation, a rhythm new to the dancers (Twysden: 45). Gusev saw connections between how the music was used in Funeral March and the Dance Symphony. In approaching my work, I saw these as fundamental connections, especially to the second section of the dance where there are three different groups: the soloist, the three men and the woman they carry in, and the six dancers in the corps. It proposed the question as to how Balanchine used the different voices of Chopin’s music, as he had seen Lopukhov do in Dance Symphony. Interestingly enough, Lopukhov abandoned future plans he had made for more similar projects (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 276), whereas Balanchine developed the notion of the dance symphony, becoming a master of it. At the time, Balanchine was a great admirer of Chopin, even going so far as to imitate him in his clothing and hairstyle, as he presented himself in a cover photograph on the December 11, 1923, edition of Theatre (Teatr). Gusev also recalled that Chopiniana (Les Sylphides in the West), which Fokine had choreographed to Chopin’s music, was “his

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favorite ballet, and he often by himself performed various dances from it” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 26). It is likely that his fascination with that dance and his love of Chopin provided some of the inspiration for choosing to choreograph Funeral March. The March was used at funerals for those who had fought in the Revolution, and Balanchine had created a ballet that reflected the times (ibid.: 52). In her description, Kostrovitskaya said that in the first section, “Six female dancers stepped out slowly on pointe, one after another, bowing their heads with sorrow and crossing their arms downward. Reaching the center of the stage, all of them separated with the same steps into a large circle. Raising their crossed arms into the air for a second, they dropped to one knee, facing the outer part of the stage. They bent forward, arms and head toward the floor” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). In Figure 3, Kostrovitskaya is standing in fourth position en pointe, arms crossed, head lowered. Geva stated that they were “building a design of uncompromising grief to the dark downbeat” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). This statement clarifies at which point in the music the dancer took steps. The placement of the foot into fourth position en pointe occurred at the downbeat of the music, both in the initial entrance, in the circle that followed, and in the dancers’ final exit from the stage.13 Kostrovitskaya described the next phrase: “Then, to a new musical phrase from the same passage, three young men carried away a girl lying on her back, whom they had lifted high on extended arms. . . . They proceed slowly across the entire stage, slowing down even more at moments of forte, and lowering the girl to the floor at the opposite exit. At the same time, they dropped to their knees in the same pose as the others” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50–51). The position of the girls seemed to imply that the woman was lying flat on her back and being carried across the stage as pallbearers would carry a coffin. Using the description of the first section alongside the musical score, I worked out a preliminary idea as to how the choreography and music fit together. I made notes on the musical score as to when it would have been logical for the dancers to enter the stage, also noting the placement of the dancers onstage at each measure. Measures are labeled, and illustrations show the dancers’ position on the stage. Figure 7 shows the corps de ballet entering stage, and Figure 8 shows the same dancers breaking out of their initial group.14

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Figure 7. Example of score in Appendix II. Mourners enter stage. Digital Art by Maximilian Ulrich.

Figure 8. Example of score in Appendix II. Mourners break into circle. Cortège enters. Digital Art by Maximilian Ulrich.

The entrance of the cortège is also noted. The new musical phrase begins at the fifteenth measure; this is the point when Geva was carried by the three men and moved through the audience under a spotlight. The moments of forte when the dancers slowed is also marked. By my estimation, at measure twenty, the group would reach the front of the auditorium and then continue onto the stage. This section of music ends as the dancers move across stage and lay the woman on the floor (shown in Appendix II). Kostrovitskaya continued, “The middle, lyric section of the March began. With a radiant face Danilova appeared; with light, flying steps she went around each kneeling figure as if to waken the pure, human soul from an eternal sleep. Scarcely touching them, she gave them life and,

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making them rise slowly one by one, she executed slow turns in attitude. Everything somber disappeared; the folded arms became straight; the expression of the faces changed; their eyes became bright, focused on something beautiful far away. . . . There were arabesques on the floor with the body bent forward followed by deep backbends . . .” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). The description of this section of the dance contains the fewest specifics on how the steps were executed, but when I put Kostrovitskaya’s description together with Geva’s, I found that a clearer, but by no means exact, picture emerged. We know that at the end of the entrance of the corps de ballet, the dancers lowered to the floor on one knee. It is possible that the dancers remained up on one knee, or were lower to the floor, leaning back onto their buttocks. Figure 4 shows Stukolkina on two knees, giving us another variation. Geva recalled that their bodies were “twisting into arches and crosses” and she described “whirling spirits,” implying turns, not limited to just simple backbends (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). She also mentions Giselle, and these movements could have been similar to the “Dance of the Wilis” in Act II as the corps took poses on the floor. Although Kostrovitskaya only specifically mentioned the floor work, the dancers may have performed steps standing as well, since she said that Danilova made them “rise.” The statement “whirling spirits” could also refer to Danilova’s pirouettes in attitude; however, Kostrovitskaya said hers were slow. It is feasible, however, that, after rising, the dancers also performed these same pirouettes. Another interesting aspect in this section of the dance was the different ways witnesses interpreted this section. Geva said they built a “design of uncompromising grief to the dark downbeat, changing from the mourners into the dead, into whirling spirits, our bodies twisting into arches and crosses” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). This description, “whirling spirits” that “twisted into arches and crosses,” seems to continue the theme of death without hope, the notion that the dead are merely joined by all the living, their fate sealed. Kostrovitskaya’s description, however, gives a completely different picture: “Everything somber disappeared . . . the expression of the faces changed; their eyes became bright, focused on something beautiful far away” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Perhaps these different interpretations merely reflected the speakers’ own personal feelings toward death itself, or were an indication of their personal way of dealing with the catastrophic situation surrounding their

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everyday lives. In any case, I believe that Kostrovitskaya’s interpretation of this section is closer to Balanchine’s original intentions, since he seems to have had a generally positive disposition, even in difficult times. This is, however, only my opinion; people are complex and it is not possible to know exactly what Balanchine was thinking at the time. The third and final section of the ballet is similar to the first section, and the overall pattern is relatively clear: “In the third section of the March, musically analogous to the first, all of the dancers—Danilova first, followed by the young men with the girl on their arms and the other six girls—went slowly from the stage, one after another, as in the beginning, stretching their arms forward in a gesture of hope” (Slonimsky, ibid.). Again, Kostrovitskaya described the “gesture of hope,” shown in the photograph of Stukolkina. It is also probable that this was the section Geva meant when describing that she was held high in the air in a bridge. There is no mention of this girl dancing at any other point; perhaps she did simply play the role of the dead, who is later joined in death by those mourning her passing. As I considered earlier in this chapter, at this point in my research I had not yet worked this section out on dancers, other than basic ideas. Because the music and the formation of the corps de ballet is analogous to the first section, I believed that the dancers performed those same steps with their feet, but held their arms in the gesture of hope as shown in the photograph of Stukolkina. Again, this description foreshadows the final tableau of Serenade, where three men carry the woman off into the light, followed by the corps de ballet, their arms and heads lifted. My efforts up to this point showed me that further studio work would greatly increase our understanding of Funeral March and Balanchine’s other early ballets. Not only would we be able to actually see parts of the first and third sections, but we could experiment with the second section to see how much could be reconstructed. The first phase of the research and studio experimentation had been completed. The next phase would be vitally important in determining the extent to which we would be able to fully reconstruct this dance: studio sessions with dancers working with all materials, approaching all three sections of the ballet.

4

The Puzzle’s Picture Assembling What We Know

Translating written word into movement is a daunting task, and, as has been noted, is one that many scholars believe to be too inaccurate to be attempted. However, my traditional research into the earliest ballets choreographed by Balanchine seemed to have reached its limit; I had amassed as much information as I could from his Russian ballets. As I worked through the materials, I wondered if there were more to be learned from the material that I had. In the beginning, I had worked only textually with the material, but as I created my own choreography, I found myself repeatedly returning to ideas that I had read about, and wondered how the ballets I knew only through the written word would look if the phrases were to be set on dancers. Keeping the objections in mind as I first moved into the idea of setting Funeral March on dancers, I approached it as an academic study in dance reconstruction, not as rehearsals for a stage performance. As a choreographer, I hoped to be able to enrich my own practice. As a scholar, I hoped to be able to learn more about how Balanchine developed as a young choreographer. As a teacher, I wanted my students to see how a great choreographer became great, to explore how he developed his own choreographic voice.

First Studio Sessions The first studio research I did was done as part of a workshop at a festival with college dancers from the Midwest. Most of these dancers had 60 ·

The Puzzle’s Picture: Assembling What We Know · 61

chosen to attend that morning, and this kind of project was new to all of them. The group was very diverse, from dancers who had professional ballet training, to an actor who told me that he had no dance training but was eager to learn whatever he could. I presented the material as a combination of traditional and practical work. During the first half of the session, I explained the textual and photographic materials and directed the dancers in the process. In the second, I gave the dancers a link to the music, and let them work in groups to “discover” for themselves how the two different corps de ballet sections of the dance could have looked. In this exercise, I asked the dancers to work primarily with the first paragraph of Kostrovitskaya’s account, with a few notes from Geva. The entrance of the six corps de ballet dancers, and then the cortège with three men and one woman is described in these few sentences. I also presented the students with the extant photo of Kostrovitskaya, along with the phrase that the dancers were “bowing [their] heads with sorrow and crossing their arms downward” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). The connection between the picture and the phrase was clear to most of the students, including the nondancer. As a group, we then practiced the position in the mirror. Although many of these dancers would have considered themselves to be primarily contemporary/modern dancers, most still had extensive ballet training. Kostrovitskaya was standing in fourth position en pointe, and these dancers surmised, as I had previously, that the photograph also described that the dancers “stepped out slowly on pointe, one after another” (ibid.), following one another across the stage. What happened next was not expected. This exercise moved beyond a movement workshop on reconstruction into movement research. I found that my understanding of how this dance may have looked increased exponentially in that one-hour time slot. In order to practice the entrance steps, I had the dancers move across the floor, from one end of the room to another. I gave them Geva’s description of the music, that the dancers took steps to the downbeat. As this was intended to be a discovery process, I did not give the dancers specific counts, but told them to do what felt natural to them as they moved to the music. Two things occurred. First, every single dancer in the room moved her foot through cou-de-pied position as she transferred from fourth to fourth. This was not something I had excluded, but it was also not something that I had expected. I asked the dancers to try the

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movement going straight from fourth to fourth, and they did; however, the movement was stiffer and much less stable. We cannot know whether or not Balanchine had the dancers move from foot to foot through coude-pied, yet this exercise showed that it was not only possible, but likely. Of course, dancers today have different bodies, different training, and their movement dynamics are not the same as those of the dancers from the Imperial School in 1923. But they are trained in the same basic steps, and it is significant that the dancers at this conference came from dozens of different colleges and universities, and many more schools and studios before that. Nevertheless, the common technique of their training brought them to do this step the same way. Since this initial workshop, almost every dancer I have worked with has added cou-de-pied. For this reason, I decided to have the step performed in this way for the opening section of the dance. A second thing I noticed during this experiment was that because I had not given specific counts, many of the dancers doubled the timing of the steps from fourth position to fourth position. Geva had said that they danced to the dark downbeat, but this statement was somewhat vague; she did not say they danced to the dark downbeat during the entrance. I had the dancers try out both timings. What became clear was that, given the amount of time they had to cross the room and get into position before the entrance of the cortège, the slow count was the only option. Important to consider in this decision was that this dance was not designed for the enormous stage of the Mariinsky, but the specially built stage in the Duma, surrounded by seating. We do not have the exact dimensions of the stage, but photographs of that room during the era show that it could not have been very large. However, I kept the quicker tempo in mind as a possibility for other parts of the dance. For the second part of the workshop, the dancers separated into groups to work out the possible spacing for this dance, and to try to explore musically what Kostrovitskaya describes as the dancers “reaching the center of the stage” where “all of them separated with the same steps into a large circle” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). They were tasked with listening to the music and trying to figure out when it would have been most likely for the dancers to separate, and when they ended the phrase “Raising their crossed arms into the air for a second, they dropped to one knee, facing the outer part of the stage” (ibid.). For the sake of time, we

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did not explore the final position in this section; rather, we focused on the music—again, for the students, a process of discovery. While most of the class worked on the entrance of the corps de ballet, one group, which had four men and one woman, considered the description of the cortège. Three men performed the moves, and another spotted the female dancer for safety reasons. However, this group did only very basic work, and focused on the timing rather than the lift. In the last minutes of the workshop, we put together both the entrance of the corps de ballet and the entrance of the cortège to complete the first Tragic section.1 Because the ballet was originally performed on a stage surrounded by audience, I had those not presenting sit all around the room, rather than at the front, to emphasize that this dance was choreographed for a circular space. I had the opportunity to give a similar workshop with college students at a later date. This time, I was able to work more closely with the group that was exploring how the cortège entered the stage. Because of the acrobatic nature of this lift, safety was an important factor. Thayer Jonutz, my colleague from Oakland University, assisted me in this workshop. A former gymnast, Thayer has experience spotting, and I found his presence crucial. We needed to figure out how to get into the position of the initial formation, and as in the first workshop, we were working with students who did not have much experience with classical pas de deux or overhead lifts. After the dancers safely worked out this particular section, they were able to explore the music more closely to determine the exact timing of the steps. In the original performance, the cortège moved through the audience under a spotlight (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51), so at this workshop, we looked at the picture of the auditorium from this era (Figure 6), which allowed us to see both the location of the aisles and the number of steps the cortège needed to move down. There is no account of which aisle the dancers used, only that they moved through the audience. Kostrovitskaya mentions that the cortège slowed down at moments of forte. These can be noted in the music score, and most pianists clearly play this section. The third workshop that I did with this material was not done as a pedagogical exercise, but rather a presentation followed by discussion. I set the first section of the dance, the entrance of the corps de ballet, on my own students from Oakland University, and had them demonstrate for a

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group of graduate students at the Free University Berlin (Germany). After the demonstration, in which I described how and why I set the dance as I did, we compared the process from the perspective of the dancer and the scholar. An important topic we explored was how Balanchine’s ideas were not a rejection of the classical geometry, but rather an extension of it. Edward Villella, who learned the role of Apollo from Balanchine in the 1960s, also explained the way Balanchine extended the classical positions: the “very first gesture of Apollo’s variation with the arms up and hands horizontal is really fifth position high. In this one simple gesture of Apollo’s, Balanchine just took fifth position and extended it! Neoclassicism is exemplified by that single move [italics in original]” (quoted in Joseph: 88). The extension of the second position through the lengthened arms and flexed hands of the Muses in their entrance in Apollo is also an example of this concept. In this lengthening of the traditional pantomime, we see Balanchine working on concepts that he used throughout his career, extending classical positions and, in this way, expanding the ballet vocabulary.

Setting the Choreography on Professional Dancers While working with student dancers and scholars proved to be very productive, it was clear that for the project to progress, I needed to work with professional ballet dancers for a few reasons. First, one of the major drawbacks to my initial workshops is that they were done in soft shoes. The spacing for the entrance of the corps de ballet, their separation into a large circle, and their final placement on stage would be determined by the length of each step from fourth position to fourth position, a combination that is not complex but, regarding the space needed, would be quite different in pointe shoes. Additionally, the dancers needed to be technically strong as we moved beyond the simple phrases. While The Trust did allow these initial projects to be done with students, and some Balanchine ballets, such as the opening section of Serenade, are often set on student dancers, for the project to move forward as I believed it could, it would be most productive to work with a group of professional ballet dancers who had experience both with the classical as well as neoclassical repertory.

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While Michigan has a lively dance community, it is primarily contemporary, with the exception of the Grand Rapids Ballet, which has been a staple of the artistic community on the western side of the state for almost fifty years. I contacted Patricia Barker, who was then the Artistic Director, and asked if she had a general interest in working on this project with me. This company was well suited for a project such as this; Patricia was a Balanchine répétiteur and could oversee the quality of the work. The dancers in this company were trained in a diverse repertory; they regularly danced the ballets of Petipa, Balanchine, and a wide array of contemporary choreographers. From my perspective, these dancers had the ideal background to effectively collaborate in studio research, and also the flexibility to engage in a process very different from staging set choreography or working on original pieces with a choreographer. Moreover, their studios are located in a complex with their own auditorium, the Peter Martin Wege Theatre, which would allow us to rehearse in a space with stairs, consistent with the original Duma Auditorium.

Casting Before we started the first set of rehearsals in November 2017, I met with Patricia and the artistic coordinator, Dawnell Dryja, to discuss casting. In particular, the two lead roles, the Angel and the Deceased, needed to be carefully cast. Danilova, who danced the role of the Angel, had a more traditional classical role in this ballet, while Mungalova2 and Geva, who alternated the role of the Deceased, performed high overhead lifts, something that was not part of the training at Theatre School. Geva was still a student at the Theatre School at this time, and had joined as a nontraditional evening student (Geva, Split Seconds: 270).3 Her presence in the Young Ballet, especially as a leading role, is fundamental to understanding Balanchine’s early works. His other two Muses, Danilova and Ivanova, had been with him at the Imperial School since childhood, and were relatively new to the world outside the theatres, as was Balanchine. These two dancers became the prototype for the “Balanchine Dancer.” According to Hodson, they “provided Balanchine with a kind of polarity of style, Danilova, a blond virtuoso, was essentially an allegro dancer, quick and light with great elevation. Ivanova was a brunette, a

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dramatic dancer, whose strength was adagio, although she had powerful leaps” (Hodson, Interview with author).4 The Revolution opened doors for them to the world beyond the walls of Theatre School earlier than previous generations had, but Geva had grown up in the outside world. Ivanova and Danilova brought technical and artistic strength to Balanchine’s earliest works; Geva brought an experimental spirit, and an ability and willingness to try things far removed from the classical repertory. Danilova describes her as being a “more modern dancer, more expressive, and she could lift her legs and do all kinds of things,” and that this was why Balanchine used her in his new pieces (Danilova, Interview by Wentink). Geva herself believes that Balanchine gave her the chance “to try things which I otherwise would never have done” (Loney: 61). Geva had wanted to audition for the Imperial School at a young age, but her father, Levko Zheverzheyev forbade it, saying that the students there were “trained like seals—for one purpose only—and the development of their minds is of secondary importance,” and that she was to have an education (Geva, Split Seconds: 80). He did allow his daughter to take private ballet lessons from a former ballerina, Madame Sokolova (ibid.: 136). With the advent of the Revolution, an evening program opened up at Theatre School, and he allowed her to audition for the program. Because of the chaos and uncertain times, Geva’s father conceded that having a skill would help her find work. She and Balanchine met for the first time at an evening class where boys from the day program supplemented a shortage in a partnering class. In many ways, Geva was very different from Danilova; she had not had the rigorous ballet training the others had. Her father owned a museum and she had a much more diverse education and many interests outside the world of ballet.5 She was also more open to trying out new things. All the dancers in the Young Ballet were eager to experiment, but for Geva, it was a way of life, not something she added onto the tradition of the Imperial Ballet. This made her the ideal partner for many of Balanchine’s most unclassical experiments, including the ballets Étude and Enigma, which were duets in which both Balanchine and Geva performed barefoot and used new ways of partnering, partially inspired by circus acrobats. According to Geva, she “was more flexible and less stiff by tradition, therefore more adaptable for experimentation” (Tracy and DeLano: 31). Mungalova was also one of Balanchine’s early collaborators,

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and Gusev, with whom she often worked, noted that she was not afraid of doing overhead lifts, which all the dancers were still learning how to do. Onstage accidents did occur during some of these lifts, and were, as Slonimsky notes, reported by the press (Slonimsky “Balanchine”: 60). The high overhead lifts that the Deceased did at both at the entrance on the stairs and the exit necessitated a dancer who was not afraid of them, making both Mungalova and Geva well suited to the role.6 There are three descriptions of the cortège. Kostrovitskaya says that three men “carried away a girl lying on her back, whom they had lifted high on extended arms” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). Danilova mentioned that instead of “group on the floor, it was group in the air [sic]” (Interview by Conway). Bruni referred to the groups as well, saying that they “were composed in a very interesting, individual manner” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). As mentioned, Geva notes that she was held high overhead in a bridge, another specific, giving a slightly different description than Kostrovitskaya.7 She could have been referring to the girl lying on her back overhead, but a “bridge” is usually used to refer to a full backbend, and she uses the same term to describe the backbend she did in the ballet Enigma, when Balanchine leapt over her in that position. Slonimsky also notes that Balanchine frequently used them at the time (“Balanchine”: 62), and one also appears in the Prodigal Son in 1929, as well as much later in Stravinsky Violin Concerto in 1973. I concluded that it was very possible that Geva performed a full backbend in the cortège as it left the stage. This is consistent with her ability to do the circus-inspired acrobatic moves with which Balanchine and other choreographers of the era were experimenting. It also meant that in our studio research, I needed to work with three strong men, who could carry the dancer high overhead for several measures of music. The woman needed to be strong enough and capable of holding a bridge position for a long period of time. An overhead lift in a full bridge is not nearly as stable as the flat corpse position. Patricia and Dawnell were clear that there was one dancer in the company who could dance this role, Cassidy Isaacson, a former gymnast and soloist in the company. She had worked for several years with one of the men, Steven Houser, whose experience proved to be invaluable. For the entrance of these dancers, we first worked out the lift. Ballet master Nicholas Schultz assisted the men in finding the most stable way

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for the three to hold onto the Deceased, especially given that it was to be performed going down the stairs, that is, through the audience. The staircase in the theatre is much steeper than the stairs the original dancers descended in the Duma, and the positions needed to be adjusted so that Cassidy would be stable as they moved down the steps. In addition, to reach the stage, the dancers had to walk around a permanent barrier, making a full ninety-degree right turn, then two more ninety-degree left turns before entering the stage from the audience. There was enough space for this turn, but it was tight. Once the dancers reached the stage, the formation was much more stable. This particular section was most difficult for the men. According to the description, they carried the Deceased for the entire second part of the first section of music. Carrying the woman overhead for a full fifteen measures of music, while walking slowly in unison, was not an easy task. Once we had set the dancers’ timing getting to the stage, we set the sections where they would slow down. There were different moments of forte in the musical score, and given the time we needed to come through the audience, I decided to use the moments of forte that came in conjunction with trills in the music as a starting point for where the dancers should slow down. It was during the entrance of the cortège that the part of the workshops where the dancers doubled the music became important. Given the amount of space that had to be covered by the cortège, compared to the amount of space that the women had in their entrance, the men had to step in double time. Therefore, the “slow-down” set them at the same timing as the female corps. One of the slow-downs did occur as the dancers crossed the stage. This gave the audience an opportunity to focus on the cortège, to note its importance, especially as these dancers were under the spotlight, surrounded by the corps women who formed the circle. This aspect, the amount of space available for dancers to use, is a fundamental aspect of choreography. By this time, Balanchine was used to dancing in a multitude of venues, from the enormous stage of the Mariinsky Theatre to the small performing spaces of cafés, as well as in outdoor settings. Funeral March was originally done for the semicircular stage of the Duma, but could be transferred to a proscenium stage. Many theatres would not be able to accommodate the cortège entering through the audience and then up to the stage, and this dance was

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performed in many spaces throughout Petrograd (Kostrovitskaya). This means that Balanchine also had to make adjustments even shortly after the first performance. According to Kostrovitskaya, “they proceed slowly across the entire stage, slowing down even more at moments of forte, and lowering the girl to the floor at the opposite exit. At the same time, they dropped to their knees in the same pose as the others” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Because we do not have a description of the stage, beyond it being a semicircle, we do not know exactly where they entered the stage, or where the exit on the other side of the stage could have been. At the Peter Martin Wege Theatre, we were working with a proscenium stage with wings, and for the dancers to move through the audience it was not possible for them to have entered through the actual exits where we were working. The original stage at the Duma was a semicircle, surrounded by an audience, and, most likely, even if these exits were placed in the normal place where wings would be, they would still be visible to the audience. I followed this assumption as we prepared the piece for performance.

Section I. Tragic: Performance The first public showing of this dance was to take place at Oakland University in a space specially built for the showing. A ballroom was used, with a portable sprung floor built in the center back of the room. This stage was rectangular, so the floor lights were set in a semicircle to create this form for the dancers. Approximately 200 chairs were set around the dance floor, also in a semicircle. For this showing, we did not hang curtains for exits and entrances, just a black background, with all the entrances and exits set between the rows. There is no account that the corps de ballet or the Angel moved through the audience, so we did not place any emphasis on their arrival. However, having them enter through the audience also does not break with Balanchine’s original intent, as Slonimsky said, to connect with the audience. With the exception of the cortège, the entrances of the dancers were subtle, yet alive with anticipation. The entrance of the corps de ballet at the actual showing was the same as it had been during the rehearsals—the only difference being that the dancers were standing in a row between two sections of audience

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members. They were in a parallel first, or Goleizovsky’s sixth position, with their arms at their sides, rather than in a classical position. The ballet leaned toward this simple stance, in particular with the use of parallel positions; Balanchine was using these in other ballets, notably Valse Triste, a solo choreographed by Ivanova for herself with Balanchine’s assistance, at about the same time that Funeral March was choreographed. After graduation from Theatre School, Ivanova was an immediate success at the Academic Theatre. Balanchine was drawn to her qualities as a dancer. She was taller and had higher extensions than most of the dancers of the time. Slonimsky details her jumping abilities in a chapter devoted to her (The Miracle: 171). Likewise, Mikhailov devoted an entire chapter to her, and also talked about her technical abilities (The Young Years: 107, 115). It is telling that in their books on ballet in Petrograd in the 1920s, both felt that her story was one of the most important. Geva also describes her as being “the most incredible dancer I have ever seen. She was like a gift from God. She was the only woman I’ve seen who jumped like a man—just soared in the air” (Tracy and DeLano: 31). Slonimsky says that Balanchine “in Ivanova . . . found a champion of dance, equal to himself, with whom he could capture the audience” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53). More than just a muse, she was one of the first women to inspire his choreographic endeavors. Ivanova’s tragic and untimely death in 1924 seems to have followed her friends for the rest of their lives. Her exuberant spirit led to recklessness, and her social connections with men involved in government activities proved, in the end, to be her downfall, given the insecurity and suspicion that was widespread in the part of society in which she socialized (Danilova, Choura: 61). Ivanova’s friends warned her about the dangers, but she brushed their concerns to the side and was regularly seen at clubs and cabarets frequented by powerful men, including members of the secret police. Efimov once said that she was “in the know about everything. I sometimes think she knows too much. It isn’t healthy” (Geva, Split Seconds: 312). It proved to not only be unhealthy, but to be disastrous. Ivanova was to be the fifth dancer on the tour of the Soviet Dancers in 1924, but just days before they were to leave, she failed to arrive at a performance, and her friends were informed that she had been killed in a boating accident. The events surrounding her death were more than a

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little suspicious, as was the reaction of the other persons involved. The three officers who had accompanied her were seen in public having dinner in high spirits the night following Ivanova’s death (Danilova, Choura: 62). Balanchine later said, “I think it was all a set up. . . . I had heard that Lida knew some big secret and they didn’t want to let her out to the West. They . . . decided to fake an accident” (Buckle: 26). Geva and Danilova were convinced of the same. Although the incident was officially ruled an accident, there is no reason in the historical record or in any personal accounts that Ivanova’s death can be attributed to anything other than foul play. Having seen Isadora Duncan perform in Petrograd in 1922, Ivanova wanted to create a solo for herself to the music Valse Triste by Sibelius. In this dance, a young woman was pursued by some sort of evil and in the end was overcome by it. Ivanova’s death, shortly thereafter, seemed to be a strange case of life imitating art, her death becoming the meaning attached to the dance. Some critics and historians believe that we can see tributes to her throughout Balanchine’s choreography, including Errante, Serenade, and Le Bal (Hodson and Archer, “Fate”: 3). Although Valse Triste later came to be the symbol of Ivanova’s death, like Funeral March, its initial performances by her most likely touched the audiences who had become used to death and fear since the Revolution. There are several common elements in Valse Triste and Funeral March, most importantly the theme of death. In Valse Triste, a young woman is “pursued by some evil force, a terrible fate, which some critics interpret as death itself ” (Archer and Hodson, “The Sad Twist of Valse Triste”: 1). She is costumed in a red tunic dress with a deep blue scarf, and her long black hair hangs on her shoulders. This particular tunic is different from the tunics seen in some other works by the Young Ballet in its length; it more closely represents the tunic-like dress worn by Ivanova in the photo collection from the Academic Theatre in 1922. Similar to Funeral March, the solo consisted of three parts: the Prelude, the Struggle, and the Defeat. The dance opens with the “ray of a searchlight finding the dancer, huddled in a scarf, trying to escape from something” (ibid.). Archer and Hodson explain this section in detail: “Caught periodically in the searchlight, the dancer travels across the top of the stage from one side to the other. She keeps her back to the audience, moving laterally

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Figure 9. Lydia Ivanova in Valse Triste, 1922 or 1923. Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust.

through abrupt ankle flexions and sudden pointe tendus. Sometimes her arms are stretched out in front of her body, as though to shield herself from a stalking menace” (ibid.). The spotlight was fundamental to communicating the meaning in both Valse Triste and Funeral March. In Valse Triste it is menacing, chasing, and ends in tragic death. In Funeral March it is a beacon of hope in the face of death. As a theatrical tool in a work created decades later, Balanchine used a spotlight to great effect again in Duo Concertant in 1972. The lighting designer for the project to envision Funeral March was Kerro Knox III, Professor of Theatre at Oakland University. He was instrumental in setting up the stage and lighting for our space and ran the spotlight for the entrance of the cortège. The limited lighting was consistent with the venues in which the dance was performed in Petrograd in the early 1920s—it is unlikely that any of the venues where it was performed were as well equipped as the Mariinsky. We used footlights for our showing, a typical lighting set-up for the era, which were described by several witnesses in conjunction with Valse Triste (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 52). In addition to the footlights and the spotlight, because we had set up our stage in a banquet hall, we had the houselights set on dim for the first two

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sections of the ballet, and we turned them off completely for the final exit. This arrangement was not ideal; however, we were able to include the most important part—the idea of light shining in the darkness as the cortège moved through the audience. The photographs of Ivanova in Valse Triste (Figure 9) and Stukolkina in Funeral March (Figure 4) also show an important similarity, the use of the parallel positions. In his incorporation of the parallel into otherwise classical steps, rather than completely rejecting the classical tradition, Balanchine was adding to it. There is no textual account of the parallel positions being used in this ballet; however, the photograph of Stukolkina shows her on both knees in parallel. I decided it would be consistent with Balanchine’s early vocabulary to use the parallel beyond just the kneeling positions in some sections of my vision. As they waited to step onstage, I had the Mourners stand in sixth position. Because the seating completely surrounded the performance space, the audience could see the dancers waiting to enter stage. Danilova describes how the parallel feet in Apollo give that ballet “a different, more natural kind of beauty” (Danilova, Choura: 97), as when the Muses stand with their arms to the side as they wait for their entrance. As each Mourner stepped onto stage, she placed her arms into the lower crossed position. Rather than crossing the hands before they stepped, what I chose for them was to make the gesture at the same time as the first step, emphasizing the idea that this gesture was an extension of the classical pantomime for “death.” The audiences for the ballet in the 1920s were diverse—workers, writers, professionals, and artists were frequenting the ballet (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 14), and while they were not the aristocracy of the former subscription viewers, enough of the audience would have been familiar with the classical pantomime for this gesture. While Kostrovitskaya mentioned that no one from the Academic Theatre came to the performance, she also notes that Agrippa Vaganova,8 who had been teaching at the school since 1920, not only attended but also came backstage during the intermission. She simultaneously criticized and complimented the dancers, and her presence made the dancers, who were already nervous about the upcoming première of Funeral March, more anxious about how the audience would respond (Kostrovitskaya). Audiences at the Duma were, in general, rowdy (ibid.), and by this point, the dancers of the Young Ballet had become used to

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Figure 10. Michaelina Ritschl as a Mourner during a rehearsal of Funeral March at the Grand Rapids Ballet at Peter Martin Wege Theatre (2018). Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Ray Nard Imagemaker.

the new patrons of the ballet, in the Academic Theatre, as well as outside of it. These audiences were thrilled with the classics, and whether they understood how Balanchine was extending classical dance or not, they never failed to be moved by Funeral March (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). In rehearsals, we had worked out how to get all six of the women onto the stage so that they arrived center stage, equally spaced, at the point where they broke formation.9 There is no exact timing given; however, there is a slight change in the music at measure eleven, and this seemed to be the most likely point for them to have broken the line formation and gone outward to their circle formation. From that point, we timed the music so that they would form a circle large enough to allow the Angel to dance in the middle, as well as around them. In their final gesture, “raising their crossed arms into the air for a second, they dropped to one knee, facing the outer part of the stage. They bent forward, arms and head toward the floor” (50), which also suggests the pantomime for

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death, this time using the full gesture, beginning over their heads, with the finality of the pose (Figure 10). Because our performance stage was built in a hall and the seating was level with the stage, the placement of the cortège was quite different from in the first rehearsals, but the changes were not drastic for the dancers. There were no stairs in this hall, and the length the dancers had to cover to get to the stage was much less than at the Duma or the Peter Martin Wege Theatre. If we had set the dance in a traditional theatre, there would have been stairs, but it would not have been a semicircle surrounded by the audience. The connection with the audience was fundamental to the intent of the choreographer, so I opted for a rounded space without stairs. To accommodate the new space and the amount of music the dancers needed to reach their destination on stage, at our spacing rehearsal I had the dancers come onto the stage at an angle from the back of the room, cross in front of the entire stage, and then enter at the other corner.10 These changes are not inconsistent with any accounts of the ballet; we only know that the cortège moved through the audience, not the exact path it took. It was at this point in the showing that we had an answer to one of the fundamental questions of reconstructions: would this dance resonate with our audience? The reaction to recreating this particular dance was almost universal—why would you want to do a ballet to this piece of music, Chopin’s Funeral March? Actually, why did Balanchine want to do a ballet to this piece of music? I believe that Slonimsky answered this question for us: it connected the dancers to the audience. He believed that this is one of the main things Balanchine had learned from the Constructivists who wanted to make their art relevant to the new, modern world. Through the Great War and the Revolution, death and destruction had become a part of the daily lives of all people in Petrograd, a theme that continued in the Soviet Union throughout Stalin’s rule in the 1930s and the devastation wrought by German armies in the Second World War. These tragedies connected people then, as it does today, more than anything else. Through this ballet, Balanchine was able to connect with his audience in a direct and meaningful way. This ballet resonated so strongly that it was performed twice in the very same evening. In the performance, after the Mourners had reached their position on the knee, the cortège entered through the back. At this point, the

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Figure 11. Entrance of the cortège under the spotlight in Funeral March. Performance by the Grand Rapids Ballet on November 3, 2018. Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Ray Nard Imagemaker.

music still played but the dancers on stage did not move, and almost like a wave, the realization that another group of dancers was entering from the back moved across the hall. The position of the woman carried overhead by the three men was clear, and the spotlight not only lit them in the darkness, but it also created a shadow of their form on the stage-right wall of the hall. The reaction of the audience was palpable. It was clear that although the dance could not have the same meaning it did for the original audience, it did have meaning. In this moment, it became clear to me that this kind of work is not futile. We can never capture the past and perfectly replicate it, but we can see a reflection of ourselves in works of previous generations.

5

The Missing Pieces Rechoreographing What We Don’t Know

Filling in the missing pieces is perhaps one of the most contentious, but necessary, parts of dance reconstruction. The reconstruction must rely on the creative process, but use it to capture the spirit of the original dance, not to create something entirely new. The most significant hole in the information available on Funeral March was in the middle, Lyric section of the dance. Descriptions of it are vague; however, given what I knew from the first and last sections, along with what I had learned of Balanchine’s earliest vocabulary from other ballets, I saw that this section could be envisioned, and we could get a feel for the dance and a better of understanding of Balanchine’s earliest work. It was on this basis that I began studio research on the middle section of the ballet.

Section II. Lyric: The Angel and the Music The music for the second section of the dance, the Lyric section, is significantly different from the haunting melody of sections I and III. The music is calm and smooth, lending itself to adagio-type movements, a strong contrast to the dark, rhythmic beat of the Tragic sections. While I considered what the steps could be, I found there to be a special challenge with the role of the Angel. Kostrovitskaya says, “The middle, lyric section of the March began . . . Danilova appeared; with light, flying steps she went around each kneeling figure as if to waken the pure, human soul · 77

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from an eternal sleep. Scarcely touching them, she gave them life and, making them rise slowly one by one, she executed slow turns in attitude” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). In particular, I wondered how light, flying steps could fit into the musical framework. In my initial interpretation, the light, flying steps seemed to have represented some sort of jump. Danilova was known for her quick footwork (Danilova, Choura: 99). Yet the melody of this section is clearly adagio; the dark downbeat described by Geva is not heard; rather, the music is light. Interestingly, although Danilova talks about the costumes and the overall theme of this dance, she does not give details of her role.1 Because of the lack of information on her role, I decided to look to other dances from Balanchine’s vocabulary at this time. Balanchine worked so closely with Danilova during the 1920s, I believed it to be best to look at dances he created directly on her from this decade. Most complete, of course, is Terpsichore from Apollo. Danilova did not dance the same steps as they are today, and she describes how her version was different. Her version was “lighter, smaller and quicker. I did fifth, arabesque, fifth, arabesque. Nobody does that anymore. . . . And I did sissonnes—my version was jumpier than the one they dance today . . . I did sissonne en tournant, jumping and turning at the same time” (ibid.). This combination was created for this dancer by this choreographer; it is part of Balanchine’s vocabulary during the 1920s. Again, there is no account of Danilova doing these particular steps in Funeral March—I was looking at another ballet choreographed from this era to utilize Balanchine’s vocabulary, rather than my own. For the Angel’s entrance, I now had a few steps to work with; however, the adagio nature of the music, with the description of flying steps, which seemed to indicate petit allégro, was another significant challenge in working with this section. The breakthrough came when I began to work with musical répétiteur Christian Matijas-Mecca, Associate Professor of Dance Music at the University of Michigan. In his extensive research on Balanchine’s musicality, he explained to me that as a trained pianist, Balanchine would often play the music that he was choreographing to on the piano, and the kinesthetic movement of his hands and arms playing would be translated into the choreography he created for the dancers. I had been focused on the melody of the dance, which is played by the right hand. The melody does not really lend itself to an allegro; but

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the left hand, which played a consistent rhythm, does. In fact, the hand must make jumps from lower to higher octaves throughout the entire section—in short, the hand must jump from key to key. This does not necessarily mean that Balanchine was consciously making this connection when he created this dance; however, it is something that those who worked with him later talked about. According to Christian, he based this idea, which we applied to Funeral March, “on conversations . . . with Maria Tallchief, Eddie Villella, Violette Verdy, Nancy Reynolds, and Barbara Horgan. These conversations occurred over a course of years” and were “based on their stories of working with him.” He continued, “While there are a few of the earlier generation dancers still alive, the later generation dancers would not have had those experiences since he would not have played at the piano with any regularity after the 1950s” (Matijas-Mecca).2 The casting for the Angel was part of the discussion that I initially had with Patricia and Dawnell. We talked about how Danilova had been short and quick, and that it would be ideal for a dancer with these attributes to dance this role, and Principal dancer Yuka Oba was cast as the Angel. In my initial rehearsals with her, it was clear that, out of all the dancers, she most clearly understood the process and the results we were trying to achieve. We listened to the music and read both Kostrovitskaya’s description of light, flying steps, and Danilova’s description of her role as Terpsichore. Yuka understood how we wanted her to pick up the left hand of the music, and how her steps were to reflect the jumping of the hand from key to key. In keeping with what we do know of Balanchine’s vocabulary of this era, we added parallel bourrées, consistent with both Valse Triste and Apollo. There were sections of the music that lent themselves to bourrées—namely, when trills occurred in the melody. In addition to bourrées, we included attitude turns, specifically mentioned by Kostrovitskaya. In rehearsal, we worked out combinations with these elements to the music. Yuka’s musicality and ability to work with each note and phrase of the music certainly helped the process move forward. One aspect that we carefully paid attention to was that her attitude turns would hit the high notes of the melody, requiring Yuka to pay close attention to the music. She needed to do the jumps in conjunction with the jumping of the left hand, then do her bourrées to the trills, and hit the attitude on the high note.

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Figure 12. Yuka Oba as the Angel in Funeral March. Performance by the Grand Rapids Ballet on November 3, 2018. Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Ray Nard Imagemaker.

Yuka entered the stage with all the other dancers in place. As Patricia noted, the impetus is always up on the count of one for Balanchine, so Yuka entered with a first arabesque on her first counts. During the rehearsals with Yuka, we first worked on her entrance, then had her dance a solo for the first eight measures. She then began to waken the other dancers, the kneeling figures. She scarcely touches them, they rise, and she does slow turns in attitude. In rehearsals with the whole group, when Yuka approached the first dancers, we talked about timing the wakening so that dancer would “rise” as the phrases of music hit a high note of the melody. For this section, Yuka’s role more closely followed the melody than it had in her entrance. There is no record of what order she wakened the dancers, and the number of dancers being awakened could not be equally divided in the music, giving the potential for variation in the timing of the section. Yuka moved around the stage, for some dancers using longer phrases than others, and not awakening them in the direct order in which they were situated on stage.3 During the entirety of Yuka’s role in the Lyric section, I used the concept of the classical variation; we used an initial combination of steps, then varied them as she woke each dancer and moved around the stage.

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Because this was Balanchine’s first ensemble work, and he was still dancing full-time at the Mariinsky, it is likely that he would have made use of the conventions he had been trained in. Some of his dances, like Étude and Enigma, had elements far beyond the classical that he did later return to in his mature choreography. However, this dance was costumed in tights and pointe shoes, and the organized entrance of the corps de ballet does look to the classical format. Other than the short quotes listed here, we do not have any more specifics of the Angel’s role; from the descriptions of the dance, it would seem that her most important impact on the audience was of the mood she created, the emotion she evoked. In our studio research, we were envisioning a dance with little choreographic information, so we looked to the one thing that we knew for sure, that the Angel evoked hope in the audience. This became our aim: for Yuka to capture this emotion and, in that way, express the spirit of the original production. Another vital aspect of the awakening was the semicircular stage. The dance was meant to be viewed as a sculpture. For the dancers, this meant that the “front” was not the only front; rather, there were three fronts. Each of the corps dancers was facing a different angle when awakened, and in the performance, each of them was facing a section of the audience. They needed to perform to their section as if they were in the front of a proscenium stage. Likewise, each dancer was at an angle to part of the audience, and had her back to part of the audience. The unusual layout of the audience gave the role of the corps a different dynamic. Creating architecture that could be seen from all sides, rather than creating just a frontal picture, allowed the dancers to engage the audience in a more complete way.

Section II. Lyric: Awakening of the Corps de Ballet The gestures used in this section were meant to convey a feeling of hope. According to Kostrovitskaya, “Everything somber disappeared; the folded arms became straight; the expression of the faces changed; their eyes became bright, focused on something beautiful far away. . . . There were arabesques on the floor with the body bent forward followed by deep backbends . . .” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Geva’s description of the dancers is not as optimistic, and she seems to have a darker

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interpretation of the dance, saying that they changed “from the mourners into the dead, into whirling spirits, our bodies twisting into arches and crosses” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). There is no mention of hope in the afterlife or for the living; the dead are eventually joined by all the living, their fate sealed. It could be that these descriptions refer to different sections of the ballet, or perhaps these different interpretations merely reflected the speakers’ own personal feelings toward death itself, or were an indication of their personal way of dealing with the catastrophic situation surrounding their everyday lives. It is likely that Kostrovitskaya’s interpretation of this section is closer to Balanchine’s original intentions, mainly because she is much more detailed in each of the different sections of the ballet. The photograph of Stukolkina with her arms held up in a gesture of hope shows the dancer looking far off, with her head and chest lifted upward. This position is a stark contrast to the bowed head, slumped shoulders, and inward focus of the photograph of Kostrovitskaya. Balanchine presents death, grief, and hope in the afterlife in different sections of his ballet, but it ends in hope, and this was the lasting impression it made on the original audience. In addition to Kostrovitskaya’s description, the extant picture of Stukolkina shows what I interpreted as one of the positions of the corps de ballet in this section. Stukolkina is on both her knees in parallel, her arms lifted upward in a gesture of hope, her gaze “focused on something bright far away” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Like others, this gesture seems to be an extension of the classical vocabulary. Geva mentioned that this dance had some similarities to the ballet Giselle (Geva, Split Seconds: 300), and this arm position bears resemblance to the arms used in the Cecchetti third arabesque, in which both arms are extended to the front of the body, with the arm of the standing leg held higher than the other. In Giselle, this arabesque position is executed with the body pitched forward, in the Romantic style, which would have been natural for Balanchine to emulate and expand upon. Besides Giselle, this ballet has elements from Les Sylphides,4 Michael Fokine’s abstract ballet that resurrected the Romantic character of the Sylph. According to Gusev, Balanchine would often dance sections of it by himself (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 26), and ponder the idea of an abstract ballet, one that communicated a message without a full storyline. This position is another

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indication that his additions to the ballet vocabulary are truly an extension of the Mariinsky repertory, not a subversion of it. The photograph of Stukolkina shows her with her arms lifted in front of her, the upstage arm higher than the other; however, they are not extended as in the arabesque position. They are turned over with the palms facing upward, and rather than having soft elbows, they are slightly angled. The body of the dancer is upright, and her chin is lifted, gazing on something beautiful and far away. In rehearsal, creating this position proved to be challenging for the dancers; they were able to create a general position, but needed to feel the lift of hope in their bodies to create a feeling through the gesture.5 During our first rehearsals, we focused on putting together steps, but in the second round, we focused on creating this mood, and looking at these gestures as just that—gestures that expressed a meaning, not positions that created a line. Like other choreographers of his generation, Balanchine was working with the idea of pure dance, expression without pantomime.6 Because we know from the photograph that this was an actual position used by the dancers, I chose to use it as the dancers were awakened—both the arm gesture, as well as the position on two knees. As Yuka approached each of the female corps dancers, she bent forward, and the Mourner lifted her body, her arms transitioning from the extended gesture for death into the gesture for hope. With her light touch, Yuka lifted each of these dancers at the same moment they transformed. Again, this is what I have envisioned; in this section of the dance, I was trying to capture the spirit of hope and beauty, born out of grief, with the limited information that I had. For the awakening of the dancers, I looked to the “Dance of the Wilis” from the second act of Giselle for inspiration. During this dance, the corps dancers are on one knee and bend their whole-body forward, then lift up and open. Keeping in mind that the dancers should rise on the high note as they were awakened, I had the dancers fold forward, then, after lifting, do a deep backbend. Rather than soft arms, I had the dancers open with their arms straight with flattened hands, somewhat similar to the grief and hope gestures from the photographs. After awakening each dancer, Yuka exits the stage, and the focus of the dance shifted from her to the Deceased.

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After the Mourners were awakened, I used the short descriptions by Kostrovitskaya and Geva as a starting point. I did have ideas for how I would envision these movements, but I wanted to see how the dancers would interpret them. In the studio research with the corps de ballet, I gave the dancers descriptions of the movements, and asked them to explore on their own, in movement, what they thought these passages could be describing. Their starting point was the end position of the first Tragic section, on one knee, head bent forward, arms crossed. The company had performed Giselle only a few weeks prior to our first rehearsals, and all of these dancers had been Wilis, so I asked them to keep that role in mind as they thought about what the movements could possibly be. I explained to the dancers that there is simply not enough material for an actual reconstruction of this section, but there is enough material for us to envision it, interpret the description of the steps, put them to music, and capture the spirit of the dance. In particular, I was curious as to how they would interpret the arabesques on the floor with the bodies bent forward, followed by deep backbends. Deep backbends seemed clear, but what did Kostrovitskaya mean by arabesques on the floor? My initial thought on these arabesques was that the dancers were on one knee, with their bodies pitched forward and hands flat on the ground. However, this position was not, as far as I could tell, consistent with the era. The dancers had about five minutes to explore the idea of arabesques on the floor with the body leaning forward, followed by deep cambrés. The dancers came up with several interesting ideas, but none seemed to fit the description. I discussed this challenge with Patricia. She mentioned similarities to both Serenade and Apollo: “Serenade has the whole scene where [the] Dark Angel comes out and dances in the middle where the girls create a box. And they take each other’s hands and they penchée toward the floor, and they come back up into tendu . . . and they penchée back down to the floor as if they are touching the floor. . . . Possibly [in Funeral March] they could have been in a circle, or close enough [to hold hands] because also in Apollo, we take hands and three of us do [a] penchée and then we come up—also a penchée towards the ground” (Barker). In this discussion, I noted that it could be an issue of translation. Both Patricia and I have spouses who are native German speakers, so we know that often prepositions, like “on” or “toward” do not necessarily mean the same thing as the word they are often translated into, and

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that words can have more than one meaning. Additionally, the connotation and the context of the word have to be taken into consideration. Normally, this would not be an issue, but for this specific work, I decided that it was imperative for me to look into exactly what Kostrovitskaya wrote in her notes on this dance, to make sure that it actually said “on the floor.” In looking up this section, I saw that it actually does say “on the floor.” It is also printed this way in the Russian publication of Kostrovitskaya’s account in George Balanchine (Levenkov: 53). In addition, I noted that the idea of the arabesque on the floor was not absent from the Mariinsky repertory at the time. The opening tableau of the Les Sylphides features a woman lying on the floor, her body lifted, with her arms placed in a Romantic position, with one leg lifted in arabesque. A photograph of a student performance at the Theatre School in the 1920s, labeled La Fille mal gardée, also shows a dancer in this position (La Fille mal gardée). Balanchine also used a similar arabesque on the floor in 1927 in his ballet La Chatte, and there is an extant photograph of Markova in this position. The leg is similar to the position in Les Sylphides, but Markova has her arm on the ground extended forward, and she is lying down fully on the ground. This position could also be described as an arabesque on the floor with the body leaning forward, as opposed to the lifted body of the Sylph. Markova’s body is completely on the floor, one arm is extended forward, and her head is lifted. These two ballets gave me an idea as to what Kostrovitskaya meant by this description; Les Sylphides was made before Funeral March was created, and La Chatte was a ballet Balanchine choreographed a few years later. I felt that I had made an important discovery in interpreting Kostrovitskaya’s “arabesque on the floor,” but one important factor remained: in Les Sylphides, the dancer holds this position until she stands up; it is not part of a movement combination. In La Chatte, the dancer gets into this position on a rug onstage, and the rug is pulled into the wings with the dancer in that position; this phrase is also not part of a full movement combination.7 Kostrovitskaya says that they were followed by deep backbends, implying that they were done as part of a movement combination, not as a static pose. I deduced that Balanchine had taken the pose from Les Sylphides and altered it slightly so that it could be used as part of a movement phrase. The Lyric section begins with all of the dancers in a kneeling position

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with their heads bowed, so they would not need to fall onto the floor as Markova did in her slide. They only needed to lower to the floor, and raise one leg in arabesque, with bodies toward the floor. I asked Thayer, who had helped out previously at a workshop, and a few other dancers to come to the studio to play with some ideas. In particular, I wanted to find a way of getting from the kneeling position shown by Stukolkina, with both knees parallel on the floor, arms extended in a gesture of hope, into the position of the arabesque on the floor, followed by a deep backbend. Thayer was assisted by a few other dancers, who were also adept at both ballet and contemporary, but leaned more toward contemporary dance. While they did not have the same level of ballet technique as the dancers of the Grand Rapids Ballet, their contemporary/modern backgrounds allowed them to be flexible in this experiment. In a short amount of time, we were able work out a combination that included all these elements and allowed the dancers to move smoothly before and after the positions. During the showing of the ballet, these movements were performed on the floor, rather than toward the floor; however, I still believe that this idea of the downward arabesque movement followed by a lift and backbend is a predecessor of the formations that Patricia referred to in both Serenade and Apollo. It seems that the idea of having an actual arabesque on the floor was an idea that Balanchine used in Funeral March and then La Chatte, but this particular idea was transformed into the women holding hands in penchée, followed by tendus and various backbends.

The Deceased Thematically, the focus of Funeral March is on the Deceased. The role is most remembered for the high overhead lifts, which were not yet common in ballet, but there is very little direct information on rest of the dance. I had looked at choreography that Balanchine had created for Danilova during that era to fill in the blanks in the Angel’s role. He had also created choreography for the Deceased, specifically for the dancers Mungalova and Geva, who were willing to experiment with high lifts, far beyond their training in classical pas de deux. For this section, I needed to look to other dances to glean vocabulary that Balanchine used during

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this era, looking to express his voice and to capture the spirit of the dance. I chose to work with three moves that Balanchine had done in other ballets he created either at the same time, or earlier than 1923. There is no record that these phrases were done in this dance—this section represents my attempt to use Balanchine’s vocabulary, and therefore, his voice. However, because choreographers often work on themes in different dances and use the same or similar motifs, it is possible that the dancers did some of these moves or that some elements were part of the dance. My ultimate goal was to envision a dance that captured the spirit of the ballet and demonstrated what we do know about Balanchine’s earliest works. I looked to three of the most memorable duets that Balanchine created before Funeral March: La Nuit, his first dance, which was done with dancers Mungalova and Gusev in 1920, and Étude and Enigma, duets that he choreographed for himself and Geva in 1923. The only extant photograph of Balanchine and Geva dancing a duet shows them in Étude, barefoot and barelegged, in tunics, with Geva laying upside-down over his shoulders. Descriptions of the dance bear similarities to another dance he choreographed at the same time, Enigma,8 which was Balanchine’s only dance from the era to be performed on the stage of the Mariinsky. It is likely that one or both of these dances was performed when the Soviet Dancers auditioned for Serge Diaghilev in the home of Misa Sert in Paris in 1924 (McDonagh: 32). In our record of Balanchine’s choreography, much less is written about the duet Étude, choreographed to the music of Scriabin in 1923, than about Enigma. In her personal papers, Kostrovitskaya made lists of both the dances and the dancers of the Young Ballet, including details on the appearance at the Duma where Funeral March was performed. Neither Enigma nor Étude is specifically mentioned, but the list includes adagio number thirteen: “Geva and Balanchine: adagio with high lifts (I don’t remember whose music)” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49).9 Even if neither of these dances were on the program for the performance at the Duma, they are still important works in his early repertory. The costumes, tunics showing bare feet and bare legs, were used for both Étude and Enigma, and both dances presented very acrobatic and experimental partnering. In the photograph of Étude (Figure 13), the

Figure 13. George Balanchine and Tamara Geva in Étude (1923). Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust.

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costumes only covered the dancers’ bare legs to midthigh, much more revealing than traditional ballet costumes with tights. They are similar in style: Geva’s tunic is light-colored, Balanchine’s is a little darker, and it covers only one shoulder and continues under the other arm, similar to the sleeves on the costumes from Funeral March. Balanchine is wearing a headdress, but it is not possible to see if Geva is wearing one because her hair is unbound. She is lying on her back, slung over his shoulder, both her legs bent in a starfish position, with one leg holding the position by wrapping itself around Balanchine. At the Imperial Ballet, contact between a man and woman was limited to the waist, hands, and shoulders (McDonagh: 20), and this photograph shows Balanchine blatantly violating that tradition. In costuming, we see not only Balanchine’s rejection of the strict standards of the classical repertory, but we also see him looking to his future works. While this costume does resemble Duncan’s Greek tunics, it is more specifically what dancers wore in the studio in the 1920s, foreshadowing his black and whites, which allowed the audience to see the dancers’ full bodies, thereby placing emphasis on the choreography, rather than the costume design. Similarly, in Funeral March, the female dancers wore short dresses, which showed off their legs and were fitted on the torso, so that their movements were clear for the audience to see. It also looks forward to Balanchine’s choreographic connection between the classroom and the stage, exemplified in the opening of Serenade. The upside-down position in the photograph was one that I took special note of, as I looked for vocabulary to include in the presentation. Balanchine was not the only choreographer of his era to experiment with upside-down positions in a pas de deux. Lopukhov wanted his version of Firebird to be fiercer than Fokine’s, and he carefully studied the score to create this dynamic in the choreography (Kendall: 156). The movements he chose were not well received at the time, with the press criticizing the adagio because the man had swept the female dancer upside-down across the stage like a broom. Mungalova describes how “the final struggle takes place. The bird flies upward, the Tsarevich catches her in an arabesque, and sets her on the ground in this position, holding the raised left leg; he violently pulls the bird toward him, so that she turns. Immediately he throws her to his chest, and for a second turns together with her, lowering her head to the ground, then placing the bird back on his chest,

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takes several steps” (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 264).10 The idea of the upside-down position was clearly a motif that was important to Soviet choreographers, having first appeared in the circus, and foreshadowing the high overhead lifts and upside-down positions of the Soviet ballet in later decades. This was exemplified in the acrobatic overhead lifts and upside-down positions in the pas de deux between Spartacus and Phrygia in the ballet Spartacus, choreographed by Leonid Yakobson in 1956. For this reason, I felt that including this position in the role of the Deceased would be in keeping with the spirit of the era. In incorporating the position from the photo of Étude, I took advantage of Cassidy’s background as a gymnast and the close working relationship between her and Steven. Our first goal was to figure out how to get into and out of the position. First, I looked to a surviving ballet, Apollo, for clues. At one point in the pas de deux between Terpsichore and Apollo, Terpsichore leans over him, back-to-back. She is upsidedown and her legs are in a full split. I believe that the position in the photograph of Balanchine and Geva is a predecessor to this one. However, Geva is facing front, so she was not able to get into the position as smoothly as Terpsichore does. In the studio session, we needed to figure out how to get into and out of this position. The section begins with the men on their knees, and Cassidy in a sitting position on the floor. Because this was a duet, and the woman needed to get onto the man’s back without the assistance of other dancers, it seemed most logical for the man to be on a lower level, and for Cassidy to lean into position and then for him to stand up. Cassidy was in front of Steven, so we had her stand up and then bourrée around him into position. We first experimented with parallel bourrées, however, they were awkward as she tried to move around Steven, so in order to make them turned out, we changed them to fifth en pointe. The next move required a great deal of trust, and the partnering experience they had together made the process easier, something they both talked about in the presentation. Cassidy leaned back onto Steven’s shoulder blindly; he could use his arms to assist her, but he could not see to adjust for her. Once she was on her back and in position, he stood up. We did not want the position to be completely stagnant. Keeping in mind that the audience would be seated around the stage, Steven walked Cassidy around in a slow circle so that each section of audience would be able to view the

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Figure 14. Cassidy Isaacson and Steven Houser as Deceased and Mourner in Funeral March. Performance by the Grand Rapids Ballet on November 3, 2018. Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Ray Nard Imagemaker.

dance. As with the corps de ballet, I told these dancers to remember to be engaged with the audience members on the sides to the same extent they would be to the audience in the front. Getting out of the position was easier than getting into it. Steven supported her as she came out of the position through a back walkover, stepping onto the floor with one leg, then the other.11 The acrobatic elements added to the spirit of the era. This position is also reflective of another way Balanchine was expanding the classical pas de deux: by allowing the dancers to have full body contact, rather than having the man primarily use his hands to support the woman. One of the earliest photographs of Gusev and Mungalova also shows this concept in Waltz and Adagio (Figure 15), with music and choreography by Balanchine. In the picture, Gusev is leaning forward in a lunge, and Mungalova is en pointe, with her leg extended straight forward. The dancers provide mutual support in the architectural position: she is off-balance, leaning on him back-to-back, foot-to-foot, leg-to-leg, each dancer clasping the hand of the other with arms fully extended. Their

Figure 15. Olga Mungalova and Peter Gusev in Waltz and Adagio (1922). Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Courtesy of St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music.

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supporting legs are so close that the sole of her foot creates a shadow over his top arch. They are both wearing short tunics and shoes. We see that Balanchine was looking forward to other ballets, works in which he was not limited by the traditions of the Academic Theatres, but was able to experiment freely. For the next phrases, I looked to another very experimental and acrobatic move that Balanchine included near the end of Enigma. Enigma is one of Balanchine’s most memorable early works. It enjoyed a longer life than Étude, having been performed in the Soviet Union up until the 1930s, several years after the dancers it was created on were no longer living there. Balanchine originally choreographed it for himself and Ivanova,12 but Balanchine and Geva performed the work at the Donon Restaurant in Petrograd, for a benefit concert given at the Mariinsky, on the tour of the Soviet Dancers in Germany and London, and at least three times in Monte Carlo after the group had joined the Ballets Russes (Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné: 25). Costuming in tunics on stage had become common in the 1920s; photos of Ivanova wearing a tunic-like dress were even taken at the Academic Theatre (Lydia Ivanova in Rehearsal). However, the costumes that Balanchine and Geva wore were much more revealing. They “danced barefoot, in chiffon tunics barely covering [their] torsos” (Geva, Split Seconds: 298). She compared this dance to Isadora Duncan, but added that “it required real technique” (Geva, I Remember Balanchine: 12). Recalling that Fokine was forced to dress his dancers in tights and shoes with toenails painted on them, rather than break the ironclad rule forbidding bare legs onstage (Kassing: 175), this could be seen as a daring step for Balanchine to take, particularly for a dance that was performed on the Mariinsky stage itself. Performing this number at the Mariinsky under any circumstances would have been unthinkable only a decade earlier, showing how radically times had changed in Petrograd. Balanchine’s reputation as a choreographer was growing outside the Academic Theatres; however, within the Mariinsky, he was not being promoted either as a dancer or choreographer. Some of the dancers say that they were instructed within the Theatres not to participate in the performances of the Young Ballet (Danilova, Interview by Conway), although no one was ever punished. In fact, most of the Young Ballet dancers also performed in Artistic Director Lopukhov’s Dance Symphony (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 272).

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Enigma was Geva’s one and only performance on the Mariinsky stage (Geva, Interview by Reynolds). She remembers it vividly: Standing in the wings as we awaited our turn I felt a painful letdown. . . . The lights in the auditorium were only partly dimmed, the audience was standing, none of the important dancers were taking part, and one could hear distant voices and laughter. . . . In the hullabaloo, it was impossible to determine the degree of our success or failure, but we took three bows. I think the audience was a bit stunned . . . the crowd of well over a thousand, bizarre in its conglomeration of fancy costumes, ordinary clothes and a few leftover evening dresses and dinner jackets was getting unruly. People ate and drank gluttonously, spending their last rubles on what had been denied them for years. Unaccustomed to drink, they were thrown off balance, and though in Soviet Russia any public display of affection was suppressed, eroticism was rampant. One had only to open a door to the antechamber of a box to come upon entwined bodies. It was madness—a ball during a plague. The theatre, the beautiful blue and gold dignified theatre, was the scene of a drunken carnival. (Split Seconds: 298–299) This dance was criticized for being obscene, a great irony considering the behavior of this audience. However, it is exactly this point that was later remembered by the dancers and those who saw it performed. The criticism came for a section where Geva positioned herself in a bridge on the floor, and Balanchine performed a darting jump across her body. This move, performed when the music reached its climax, was extreme for the era. Gusev recalled how shocked they were as “in this piece for the first time a woman arched into a ‘bridge.’ This shocked people but was accepted. But when her partner leaped across the ‘bridge,’ making a grand jeté with his bent leg, this produced general indignation and protest. Even Lopukhov told us that such a stunt was coarse and served no purpose. We told Balanchine to listen to the criticism and remove the jump. But he stubbornly continued to jump all he wanted” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 54). Interestingly, Lopukhov later used the same jump on Gusev and Mungalova in a duet of acrobats in the opera Judith (ibid.). To re-create this move, I had Steven assist Cassidy into a bridge from a standing position. She certainly could have done it on her own; however,

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Figure 16. Nathan Young leaps over the Deceased in Funeral March. Performance by the Grand Rapids Ballet on November 3, 2018. Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Ray Nard Imagemaker.

wearing pointe shoes makes the move less stable than barefoot, as gymnasts usually are. Steven moved backward to allow for the other two men to perform the jump one at a time, from separate sides of the stage. As we had with Yuka, we looked at the piano score from the perspective of the left hand. I wanted the dancers to take three steps and to jump parallel to the fingers of the pianist. This proved to be more difficult than it had been for Yuka’s solo. The men needed momentum to gain enough height to safely jump over Cassidy in a bent-leg jeté. The move was stunning. The first time I showed the video to someone not directly involved in the rehearsal process, that person was shocked at the move; not because of the obscene connotation that the move bore in the 1920s but because it was so unexpected, and because men jumping over the woman in this vulnerable position read as dangerous. It would have had an entirely different feeling had the woman’s back been exposed, which would been a more protective position. But having the men jump over the Deceased’s torso with her abdomen exposed was breathtaking, both for its erotic overtones as well as its architectural structure.13

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After this section, Steven moved forward again and assisted Cassidy out of the bridge through another back walkover. For the next phrase, we needed to move the cortège off the main part of the stage to prepare for the third, Tragic II, section of the dance, in which the corps would again take center stage. The other two men had moved to the back of the stage after their jump, and for Steven and Cassidy to join them, I looked to another important innovation from this era, an overhead lift in first arabesque, which Balanchine used in his very first choreographic work, La Nuit. Choreographed in 1920 while he was still a student, this dance created quite an uproar at Theatre School, since Balanchine was doing the choreography in secret, behind closed doors that were guarded by two students (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49). He set it on Gusev and Mungalova to Anton Rubinstein’s Romance; the musical accompaniment was both a piano and a violin, although, at different performances, the accompanying instruments were often different. It was part of the repertory of the Young Ballet for several years and was performed by Balanchine and Geva during the tour of the Soviet Dancers in 1924 (ibid.). The music, immensely popular, was staged many times in the 1920s. In addition to Balanchine’s choreography, there is an extant film clip of Anna Pavlova dancing a solo to this music in 1924 (Romance). In 1923, Balanchine choreographed another dance, Valse Caprice, to Rubinstein’s Op. 118. In La Nuit, Balanchine demonstrated without question his intentions of breaking the traditions of the Mariinsky. From the entrance of the dancers, it would have been obvious to the audience by the costumes they wore that they were in for a surprise. Kostrovitskaya describes that “in 1921 there were still few who appeared onstage in tunics. Dancing on pointe was done only in tutus. The head was adorned with diadems, artificial flowers, and various tinsel. Mungalova wore a light bright tunic and instead of the headdress a narrow ribbon was tied freely around her blond curls” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). The Imperial Theatres had followed a tradition of women dancing en pointe only when wearing a tutu (McDonagh: 20), and by breaking this rule, Balanchine declared his intentions even before dancers took their first steps. Goleizovsky’s performers had also begun to free the dancer from bulky costumes, allowing the audience to see the dancer’s body, placing more emphasis on the dance itself than on the other components. However, in La Nuit, it

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is clear that Balanchine was moving in this direction even before he saw Goleizovsky perform in 1922, a stark break from the elaborate sets and costumes of Petipa’s ballets. It is an early indication that he would take a different direction, both from these productions and from the elaborate productions of the Ballets Russes. Whereas these artists sought to achieve Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, Balanchine worked to develop choreography as the reason for being. Although by today’s standards, La Nuit would be considered “chaste” in the words of Gusev (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53), at the time it caused quite an uproar for its eroticism. Souritz also quoted Balanchine, saying that: “some of the teachers considered this piece not academic enough, and, most importantly, ‘scandalous.’ They talked about its ‘eroticism.’ ‘As I remember it today,’ said Balanchine, ‘it would be perfectly suitable for a presentation in a young-ladies’ seminary’” (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 74). Like the dancer lying in a starfish pose across her partner’s shoulders, or the jump over the woman in a bridge, the move that I chose to use from this ballet was considered obscene for that generation. I did not choose it for its erotic subtext, but rather because these phrases are some of the clearest examples of acrobatic partnering in Balanchine’s earliest works. It is important to remember that in the context of the generation that had been trained in the classical repertory, almost any kind of acrobatics, costuming that allowed the audience to see the dancer, and partnering that involved more than minimal body contact, would have been considered obscene. Goleizovsky’s opens his “Manifesto” with a quotation of the criticism that was being aimed at him, saying, “The works of the leftist ballet masters are too technical. They do not correspond to the music, they are erotic, and so on . . . it is impossible to call the works of the present-day leftist ballet masters dance” (Goleizovsky: 70). Balanchine’s ballets always did maintain a bit of eroticism (Geva, I Remember Balanchine: 12), for example with hip juts, and his central focus on female dancers. While as a teenage boy, Balanchine probably enjoyed shocking his elders, he was primarily pushing the boundaries of what ballet could be.14 La Nuit was a break from the traditional pas de deux in content as well as vocabulary. It expressed emotion through the dance, as recalled by Danilova, who said it was about “a young girl and young boy sort of courting” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). An important change was

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taking place in the transformation of ballet, namely, that emotions could be portrayed on stage simply by dance, rather than by the use of classical pantomime. Kostrovitskaya described how Balanchine departed from the norm in that, from the former Mariinsky and the school, they were used to “the usual adagio développés, traditional turns from fourth position which the ballerina performed with support from her partner. Before the turns, there would be fear on her face, and a relieved smile at the conclusion. There was none of that here. Rubinstein’s Night, in Balanchine’s dance, was a lyrical duet of restrained passion—half poses, half arabesques . . . tender passages of adagio without the conventional movements of legs raised on the principle of ‘the higher, the better’” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49).15 In addition to the pose where the balance was held in a kiss (Geva, Interview by Reynolds), La Nuit contained another important innovation, which I chose to include in Funeral March. Danilova describes the final pose: “At the end, young male dancer pulls [presses] girl dancer on arabesque with straight arm over his head. It was sensational; we never saw anything like it [sic]” (Derby: 9). In another interview, she recalled that he carried her away in this lift (Danilova, Interview by Conway). According to Mungalova, “for the first time, acrobatic lifts appeared in our school” (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 74). Again, we see the differences in perception from their generation and ours. The erotic connotations of this move shocked both the students and the teachers. “The boy conquered the girl: he lifted her in arabesque and held her with a straight arm overhead, then carried her off into the wings—so she was his [italics in original]!” (Danilova, Choura: 44). This move certainly astonished the students who were accustomed to a strict school environment that kept the boys and girls separated from one another, awaking in the students what Gusev described as “animal passions” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53). Equal or perhaps surpassing the positive astonishment of the students was the negative reaction of the school authorities. Danilova recalls that the directress of the school thought that Balanchine should be expelled for such a daring number (Danilova, Interview by Conway), but Gusev says that they were merely reproached for indecency (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53). Interestingly, Slonimsky reported a different reaction:

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despite the upset over La Nuit, many began to see Balanchine’s potential as a choreographer and people began to speak of him as a prospective ballet master (ibid.: 41). Like some of his other early dances, La Nuit made such an impression that even after Balanchine left, it continued to be performed for decades in the Soviet Union (ibid.). Most likely, it was perpetuated by the dancers it was originally choreographed on, Gusev and Mungalova, who, according to Kostrovitskaya, performed it on various stages in Petrograd long after Balanchine left (ibid.: 49). Like the other phrases from his earliest choreography that I included in this section, this one had erotic overtones for the original audience, but it has no such resonance today. A press lift in first arabesque is almost mundane in today’s partnering vocabulary, but I felt it would be consistent to include it in this dance because of the innovative spirit and acrobatic nature it had during the 1920s. Because this study is meant to explore how Balanchine’s earliest choreography developed into his mature work, it is also important to note how the few short years he worked in the Soviet Union bore a long-term impact on ballet there. Each of the dances that I used to glean vocabulary from this era, Valse Triste, Enigma, Étude, and La Nuit, were performed long after they were “lost” in the West. Balanchine was by no means the only choreographer working on acrobatic partnering, but he was one of the first and one of the most prominent of this early generation of Soviet choreographers to incorporate it. Ballet in Russia and in the West diverged in its intent during the decades after Balanchine left Russia. However, even as the drambalet16 continued to develop in later decades, and Soviet ballet focused on the narratives of its ballets, a vastly different approach from Balanchine’s focus on music and choreography, we can still see the influence of the experiments he did during these years. In Funeral March, this was a simple phrase for Steven and Cassidy. For the position, rather than first arabesque, I had Cassidy put her arms into the gesture of hope. He lifted her, then carried her toward the back of the stage, laid her on the floor, and the three men took the position they had when they first brought her to stage: on one knee, heads bowed, arms crossed.17 The focus of the dance now changed back to the Mourners, the corps de ballet.

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What Should the Corps de Ballet Be Doing? While working with the cortège and exploring the early vocabulary of Balanchine’s solos and duets, I came to the question of what was the corps de ballet doing after they were awakened? In Balanchine’s later work, the corps rarely stands still and decorates the stage as it had done in Petipa’s ballets. Balanchine was innovative, and we see him breaking out of the previous conventions of dance, but how far did he move in the direction of having the corps actually dancing at the same time as the soloists? It is not a topic that was directly addressed in conjunction with his earliest ballets. Balanchine choreographed The Twelve shortly after he did Funeral March, and in her account, Stukolkina describes them together, saying that “we were asymmetrically moving groups with no real soloists; at times one dancer detached from the group and performed a combination of movements, as if pronouncing a ‘sentence,’ then disappearing into the group. The choreography was fluid and strictly subordinated to the music, one pattern running into the other with strict musical and choreographic logic” (Stukolkina, I Remember Balanchine: 80). There are clear soloists and corps de ballet dancers in Funeral March; it is structured in a more traditional manner than The Twelve seems to have been. The idea of individuals leaving the group, and then rejoining is also consistent with the theme of the poem itself. Because we have so little information on The Twelve, we cannot look to that dance for answers. From his earliest work at the Ballets Russes, The Song of the Nightingale, Balanchine’s first full-length ballet and third ensemble work, we do see some similarities, particularly in aspects from the classical dance that he used for the corps de ballet. In the entrance of the courtiers in that ballet and the entrance of the Mourners in Funeral March, the corps dancers enter the stage in an organized fashion, one after another, doing the same step or phrase. This is a common format in the classical repertory, for example, the entrance of the Swans in Act I, Scene II, or the Bayadère in “Kingdom of the Shades.” However, I did not feel that there were clues from The Song of the Nightingale that would answer the question of what the corps was doing in this section of Funeral March. In the end, I decided that the corps should not be completely still, but that it would also not get up and dance around the stage. Again, no one

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can know for certain how it was performed at the actual performance. I was looking to be consistent in this section. It was also important that the movements of the corps not distract from the actions of the cortège, which was the focus of the second part of the Lyric section. The dancers were on their knees at the end of the first Tragic section, and I opted to have them do their movements in place, complementing the cortège, but not moving around it. This was partially based on what I knew the beginning of the second Tragic section needed to be. According to Kostrovitskaya, “In the third section of the March, musically analogous to the first, all of the dancers—Danilova first, followed by the young men with the girl on their arms and the other six girls—went slowly from the stage one after another, as in the beginning, stretching their arms forward in a gesture of hope” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). This meant that, in that final section, I needed to get the corps women, who were at the end of the first Tragic section in a circle facing outward, back into the entrance formation. Kostrovitskaya reminds us that it is musically analogous to the first section, making it likely that the dance was also a variation on the opening section. I had already worked out the third section, because I believed that the explanation was clearer, and I believe that my work is, while by no means identical, still in many ways an accurate portrayal of the original. In that section, I had the female corps de ballet stand and then walk fourth position en pointe to fourth position en pointe back to their place in the line, ready to continue the march.18 As each dancer was awakened, I looked to Kostrovitskaya’s description. Their movements included the arabesques on the floor, deep backbends, and their bodies twisting into crosses and arches. The deep backbends were an important element in Valse Triste as well, as Hodson notes that the dancer “falls back into a deep cambré, the scarf dropping to reveal her long hair. Then she collapses and lifts her face, which the public now sees is tormented with vulnerability and despair” (Archer and Hodson, “The Sad Twist of Valse Triste”: 1). The deep backbend here signifies the moment that the dancer reveals herself to the audience, and she begins to succumb to her fate. This choreographic choice is also seen in Fokine’s Dying Swan, a dance with which both Ivanova and Balanchine were very familiar, as Fokine made ample use of Anna Pavlova’s ability to express emotion through her backbend in the Swan’s throes of death.19 “Arches” can certainly refer to backbends, but I was also intrigued by

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the description of the bodies of the corps twisting into crosses. During the first rehearsals for the crosses and the twisting, I had each dancer on two knees, with both arms straight out to the side. I had them twist to one side, then to the other for a rounding port de bras. After considering the materials and the studio work, I decided that these crosses probably should have flexed hands. There are a few variations of orthodox crosses, one of which is not flat at the ends of the horizontal crossbar, but rather has a decorative end point. Flexed hands more accurately represent this cross. Using religious imagery like this, especially in the context of a funeral, would be consistent with Balanchine’s personality and his work. For Prodigal Son, Balanchine told Edward Villella in rehearsals that some of the positions were based on Byzantine icons (83, 207). The angular position of the flexed wrist is also consistent with Balanchine’s experiments of the era and was the position he used for the entrance of the Muses in Apollo. The theme of death, appearing once again in his early works, reflected the desperation of the times and gives us an important clue as to why Balanchine and his colleagues chose not to return to their homeland. Only days after Ivanova’s death, the other four Soviet Dancers left for their tour of Germany. At that time, none of them thought that they would never return, and none could imagine the impact that decision would have on the course of the art of ballet. Death is a theme that recurs in ballets throughout Balanchine’s career. It is notable that a person who generally had a positive disposition would have these dark undertones to so many ballets. We cannot say how much of this is a result of having come of age in such desperate circumstances, where death was a daily ocurrance, or because of the shock of Ivanova’s death at such a young age. We can say, however, that this theme, like many choreographic elements, can be seen in his earliest works.

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Section III. Tragic The final section of Funeral March is very similar to the first section; the music repeats and the dancers once again perform the march step. Kostrovitskaya says that the music was analogous to the first section, and that the cortège is led off stage by the Angel, and then followed by the six female Mourners. Yet what it does not say is how they got into this formation. This was the last section that I set on the dancers of the Grand Rapids Ballet, and because of the previous work we had done, the easiest to choreograph in the studio. At the end of the Lyrical section, the corps women stood up in their circle, facing outward, and did the fourth-position-en-pointe to fourthposition-en-pointe march step to the slow tempo, returning to the line that they were in as they first entered the stage, their arms in the low crossed position. When they reached the center of the stage, I had them step to the side into a parallel first position, creating a pathway for the entrance of the Angel, who did the same step with the same arms. These dancers remained in place while the men in the cortège brought the women up over their heads. They positioned themselves behind the Angel and followed her. Each of the corps women joined the line, continuing their slow march, one after another, until all dancers were offstage as the music and lights faded. In our showing, they continued down one aisle

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until they were fully past the audience. The dancer walked, rather than took the steps en pointe, when they reached the carpeted area offstage.1 Because this section contained many similarities to the first section, these rehearsals were straightforward. The only new thing was the position of the Deceased, who was in a full bridge, rather than a flat corpse position. For her final exit from the stage, we needed to work out the positioning of the dancers. We looked at the end of Serenade, where three men carry the woman offstage. In that position, the woman is upright. For the final cortège, Cassidy got into that position, then leaned back into a full bridge, with two men supporting in the front, and one in the back. This final position, one of the most experimental and acrobatic, like so many other parts of this dance, looks forward to Balanchine’s most significant ballets. As we worked on this last section, noting how much we had learned in the first rehearsals, I realized how much I had gained as a scholar through this process.

Why Reconstruct in Addition to Traditional Research? This entire study began as a purely historical research study, with no studio component. As I transferred what I was reading about and imagining to the dancers, I saw how much my own understanding of the earliest works of George Balanchine increased. To make what I was learning and experiencing accessible to a wider group of people than just those who read dance literature, I chose to rework the entire ballet, filling in the sections of the dance with the vocabulary from other ballets by the choreographer from this era. This is my vision of Funeral March. What was different about setting the choreography on professional dancers and moving beyond simple studio research to completing the reconstruction process? Why do I see this process as not just a useful, but a necessary part of dance history? I call the result my vision, but the process uses the language and the methods of dance reconstruction. While I stand by the decision to call this project a vision, I do not object to it being considered a reconstruction, in the general sense. Understanding the process and the result is more important than the term used to describe it. I am a new generation of reconstructor who did not have the opportunity to meet any of the people who danced in or witnessed any of Balanchine’s Russian works. I worked with a répétiteur who also learned

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Balanchine’s ballet as a second-generation stager. I did not, however, in any part of this work, pull ideas out of the air; my research was extensive, and in this book, I have attempted to show why and how I have put this dance together in this way. It involved yeаrs of detailed research, as I sought and analyzed accounts of Balanchine’s earliest choreographies. While there are many books and articles about Balanchine’s life and his decades of ballet making, there is very little about his choreography from the Soviet era. For this reason, I believe that this project and this book are important. Balanchine’s earliest years in Russia seem to be lost in a distant past; they are somehow an enigma compared to the rest of his career, including his work with the Ballets Russes, beginning in 1925. The increase in the amount of information available during the few short months between the tour of the Soviet Dancers and the premiere of The Song of the Nightingale is surprising. This discrepancy is due to the chaos that ruled in Petrograd in the post-Revolutionary years, as well as the destruction caused by World War II, a subject that was addressed at the beginning of my meeting with Sergei Laletin, Senior Researcher at the archive for the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. In this meeting I inquired about possible photos of Gusev and Mungalova, two of the most important collaborators in the Young Ballet, as well as leaders in the development of Soviet ballet for decades after. I was surprised to learn that, while there are many later pictures of them, there are few from this era, perhaps the most well known is a picture that shows them dancing in Lopukhov’s Ice Maiden from 1927. In this context, the photographs we have of other Young Ballet dancers I see as treasures as I continue to explore, and look to understand, not just Balanchine’s work, but also the entire era. The dancers of the Young Ballet represented the future leadership of ballet, both in the East and the West. Their youth is important to us; their first performances outside of the Theatre School and the Academic Theatre are pivotal to understanding the paths they took as dance artists. I believe it is for this reason that their names were carefully listed by Kostrovitskaya in Slonimsky’s article and were important enough for her to repeat them several times in her personal papers (Kostrovitskaya). These dancers represented the future of ballet in the West: for Balanchine, Geva, and Danilova in the States, and for Efimov in France,

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where he went with Lifar to revive the Paris Opera Ballet (Danilova, Interview by Conway). Gusev, Mungalova, Mlodzinskaya, Kostrovitskaya, Slonimsky, Stukolkina, and Mikhailov2 were all instrumental in building Soviet ballet, enabling it to become one of Russia’s greatest treasures to this day. The challenge with the information on Balanchine’s earliest works extends to the fact that it is spread over thousands of miles, with surprisingly more details on the ballets in English than in Russian. Balanchine himself, along with Geva and Danilova, two of the women with whom he worked closely in Russia, emigrated and finally settled in New York. It seems counterintuitive for so much of the primary source material to be in English. As is the hope of all scholars, perhaps more will be discovered in any language, but at this point, we have relatively little to work with. This reason alone resulted in Balanchine’s Russian works being virtually lost in the past. Memories recorded decades later are problematic in many ways; however, whether in Russian or English, they are the most complete source of information that we have. As a scholar and dance artist, I decided that this lack of information makes the work challenging but is not a reason to discount studying the subject. Of course, the research will not be perfect. There are many discrepancies, considering the amount of time between the recollections and the actual occurrence. I discussed this issue, as well, with Laletin. As I looked at the colorful, hand-painted advertisement poster (Figure 17) of the 1921 graduation performance of the Theatre School, I noted that it more closely represented some of the things that Kostrovitskaya said about the similarly archived, but printed, poster for the Duma performance of the Young Ballet in 1923. Laletin responded that, of course, all of those accounts were decades after the fact, and the archive dealt with actual materials. I saw it as my job to interpret the wide variety of materials at my disposal as accurately as possible. Just as I needed to examine and analyze the material at hand as a scholar, so did I choose to approach the practical studio research as a dance artist. I maintained an appropriate amount of skepticism of the witness accounts, but I also kept an open mind to the fact that there was something important here to be discovered and passed along. It is clear that there are many holes in the information. In a purely traditional study, these holes can either be left, with a statement saying that

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Figure 17. Hand-painted poster for Theatre School Graduation Performance on May 19, 1921. Courtesy of St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music.

the information is simply unknown, or the historian can use his imagination to put the subject into the context of the time and place. When he chooses the latter, it is because he believes we can learn more about a person and gain a better understanding of what formed him and his work. Of course, this process leaves room for conjecture and requires the historian to use his imagination to create a picture. I believe that my studio work enables me to do something similar with choreography.

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With relatively little information, I have taken what we know about one of Balanchine’s earliest group works, Funeral March, and put it into the context of his early ballets. I could have decided to study only what we have been left with in various accounts. This, however, would create something that interests only a few scholars, and would lead the larger community of dance artists and audiences no further in their understanding of Balanchine. By setting my interpretation of accounts of the ballet on dancers, and filling in the missing sections with Balanchine’s vocabulary, I was able to create a work that was accessible to a wider audience. The showing was attended by young dancers, from middle-school age through college, professors, children, and community members from Metro-Detroit—an area that has not been able to sustain a professional ballet company. The vast majority of these people would not have attended a lecture on dance, no matter how lively, or read a book on ballet, no matter how well written. But they would attend a performance, and they left with a better understanding, not only of their own encounters with ballet, but with a renewed understanding of the depth of this art. It is much more than young girls in pink tutus, or the annual tour of The Nutcracker by an outside company at the Detroit Opera House. This project gave a picture of where our art comes from, who we are as dance artists, and how we can see ourselves in the future. I hope it can help move our art form forward, both in my own community, and in others.

Old Ballets and the Current Repertory: How We Got to Today Throughout the book, I have drawn connections between Funeral March and other ballets that Balanchine created during that era. These are important, not just in how they show the creation process of his earliest ballets, but also in how these motifs were repeated, reworked, and transformed over his entire career. Diaghilev described Balanchine’s choreography when he first met him: “Diaghilev remarked that the music Balanchine had used till then—Scriabin and such—was not really very good music. Diaghilev also pointed out that in what he had seen of his choreography[,] false, crude, or disappointing effects often marred passages of great beauty, and he added that Balanchine was like someone who carefully prepares an elegant and delicious meal for his guests and

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then, when they are waiting for just the right wine to go with it, brings them a big jug of water” (Taper: 75). As choreographer for Diaghilev, Balanchine saw his style refined from the rough, sharp-edged elements it had shown in the Soviet Union—although, as we see in Apollo, Prodigal Son, and the “Rubies” section of Jewels, he did not leave these sharp edges completely behind.3 These dances are very different thematically. The Dionysian Prodigal Son is in many ways the antithesis of Apollo (Harss), and “Rubies” does not have even a loose story line. Yet, these three dances are connected in their angularity, which Balanchine first developed in Russia. Many elements in his ballets from this era come across as being very un-Balanchine for those familiar with his mature works. His Soviet dances represent the most extreme experimentation of his career, but this kind of experimentation was thriving in Petrograd at the time and allowed him to freely try new ideas. Russian dance scholar Vera Krasovskaya believed that while it is possible this style may not appeal to current tastes, this era allowed for ballet to become what it did both in Russia and the West, through Balanchine (Articles about Ballet: 187). At the Ballets Russes, Balanchine had the opportunity to work with the great composer Stravinsky from the very beginning, as well as use costumes and sets created by the designers who worked with Diaghilev. This experience added to what he had been absorbing from Constructivist artists, actors, directors, and visual artists in Petrograd, enabling him to take what he had learned and refine it—to bring his choreography to a place where the “passages of great beauty” were not marred by crude effects. It did not happen right away, but he seems to have reached what he was hoping to achieve in Apollo; one could speculate that this is one of the reasons that he did not keep the earlier ballets in the repertory. Despite their lack of elegance, these ballets are worthwhile for studying and understanding how Balanchine arrived at his aesthetic, and why his work led to a transformation of the entire art form, rather than just remain a choreographic style. These changes are rooted in his Russian work; through them he was expanding what ballet could be on a fundamental level. Other choreographers were working on similar experiments; however, it is Balanchine, who through the combination of his experiences within the Soviet avant-garde and later the Ballets Russes, was able to bring the concepts to another level. Balanchine took the idea of abstract ballet—a dance without a story

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that he had learned in Les Sylphides—and created some of his greatest works. In addition to the model of Fokine, himself a revolutionary artist, the idea of the abstract ballet was an important concept for many Soviet choreographers of the 1920s. Balanchine’s earliest works were mostly abstract, stand-alone solos and duets, like La Nuit, Étude, and Enigma, or dances with a loose narrative or theme like Valse Triste and Funeral March. He worked with an ensemble of dancers at the Maly Theatre, but those works were not full ballets. Up to The Song of the Nightingale, none of his ballets contained any sort of full story line. This is partially due to the nature of short numbers: they were choreographed on a small number of dancers, and presented either in recital format or in small venues as part of variety shows. Yet the concept was in line with the works created by Lopukhov and Goleizovsky during those years—in particular, the musicality of Dance Symphony. However, as Balanchine continued to develop the idea of the plotless ballet in the West, creating great works like Serenade, The Four Temperaments, Agon, and Jewels, Soviet ballet moved decisively in the direction of the creation of drambalets, such as Romeo and Juliet and Spartacus. Lopukhov’s most important legacy lay in preserving the classics for the future as well as mentoring generations of young dance artists (Mamontov: 61), but Goleizovsky did not fulfill the promise of his early works (Souritz, “Balanchine in Russia”: 50). When Balanchine brought the New York City Ballet to Russia in 1962, Souritz notes how critics had to walk a delicate balance in reviewing his work. What she saw presented a stark contrast to the drambalets, which was the almost unchallenged official style of Soviet ballet. She quotes two prominent artists who had reviewed the performance, both of whom were impressed by the company’s technique. Ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya said, “Of course we cannot accept everything that was shown. Many things are not close to our heart,” while composer Aram Khatchaturian was more positive, saying that the “only shortcoming of the American company is the lack of a story line.” Souritz explains, “You could praise the dancers, even say that the choreographer was skillful in imagining movements, especially if you stressed that he has been brought up ‘in the great Russian tradition,’ but you should criticize him for adhering to the plotless kind of ballet” (Souritz, “Balanchine in Russia”: 53). One of the most important things Souritz notes is that most people in Russia in the 1960s, including herself, did not really understand the

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abstract ballets, despite their origin in Russia. Les Sylphides, the ballet that brought the Ballets Russes to prominence, was first presented at the Mariinsky as Chopiniana in 1908. It featured what Balanchine considered the most important part of ballet: the choreography and the music. This, too, ran contrary to the official stance of the Soviet Union, which placed the dramatic narrative as the most important aspect of ballet. Balanchine’s special musicality, his ability to simultaneously express different voices in the music through dance, was also born out of his Petrograd years, particularly those directly after he graduated from Theatre School. As mentioned earlier, while he was dancing in the corps de ballet at the Mariinsky and creating his own choreography as artistic director of the Young Ballet (Molodogo), Balanchine was enrolled at the Petrograd conservatory of music, where he trained in piano, harmony, counterpoint, and composition (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 21). These skills allowed him to understand what Lopukhov wanted to achieve in his Dance Symphony, and to translate it for the other dancers. According to Volkov, Balanchine tried to learn from Lopukhov, and saw the genius of what he was doing in this work (Volkov: 70). While the relationship between Lopukhov and Balanchine seems to have had problems (Kendall: 170–171), there is no doubt that it was from Lopukhov that Balanchine learned what became the most important part of his dance: the rapprochement of dance to symphonic music. Funeral March is fundamental to our understanding of Balanchine’s development as a choreographer, for in it he began to apply the concepts he had learned in Lopukhov’s Dance Symphony to his own choreography. Gusev, who danced in both, remarked that he saw the influence of Dance Symphony in Balanchine’s treatment of Chopin’s music. I found this to be an important clue in my work on Funeral March, and one that I used as I worked on the choreography. My basic problem of understanding how the Angel danced jumping steps to an adagio during the Lyric section was clarified by understanding that Balanchine used the different voices for the dancers, and learning from the project’s musical répétiteur how Balanchine connected the movement of the hands on the piano to the choreography of the dancers. In his later dances, the corps and the soloists often dance to different voices in the music, and on multiple levels, as we see in “Rubies” and many other pieces. There is not as much material available for the Lyric section of the

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dance as there is for the first Tragic section. In the minds of many, this would mean that no attempt should be made to set it on dancers. However, in the context of creating a vision of this dance to present an accessible piece of dance history, this aspect was one of the most successful in the lecture demonstration that preceded the performance. Christian played the left hand on the piano, and Yuka demonstrated how her combinations, gleaned from Danilova’s Terpsichore, corresponded to that voice of the music. Yuka’s exceptional musicality and Christian’s extensive understanding, not just of music for dance but specifically for Balanchine’s musicality, brought the concept to life. It is true that we could have stopped working on the choreography there, and simply had a lecture demonstration. However, it would not have felt complete. Performing the ballet at the end of the presentation allowed the audience to gain a complete picture of Funeral March, as well as Balanchine’s choreography from the era and how it related to the great master they know. In Funeral March, we see Balanchine changing what pas de deux could be. The Deceased is carried, on- and offstage, in an overhead lift. This kind of partnering had been common in the circus, but was new to ballet. Lopukhov experimented with a variety of ideas in his ballets during the 1920s, including acrobatics, folkdances, and sports movements (Mamontov: 61). In 1920, Balanchine had also begun to work with high overhead lifts, in particular at the end of La Nuit when the man pulled the woman overhead in an arabesque. This was a radical experiment on the part of Balanchine; no one in the school had done such a lift previously. Because of the importance of this particular lift, which became common within a few years (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 54), and because La Nuit continued to be performed long after Balanchine left Russia, I believed that it was consistent with my goals to include it in one of the sections. I have no materials saying that Balanchine used it in Funeral March. However, like the overhead position of cortège, it shows how choreographers of the era were breaking out of the old style and creating something new. High overhead, acrobatic lifts continued to be developed and expanded upon far beyond what Balanchine had done in the 1920s or continued to do in his mature work. They did not disappear from his work. Most notably, the final tableau of Serenade, in which three men carry away a woman into the light, is a direct descendant of the cortèges that he created first in Funeral March, and then in La Chatte.

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The duets Étude and Enigma represent more extreme experimentation on Balanchine’s part than many other ballets of the era, and in some ways resemble modern dance more than ballet. They were both done barefoot and in tunics. A series of photos of Ivanova taken at the Academic Theatre show her also in a dress that resembles Greek tunics more than the dresses or tutus normally worn, but it is longer and is more similar to her costume for Valse Triste. However, it is likely that these costumes for Étude and Enigma represent the rehearsal clothes of the era, a predecessor to the leotard ballets that Balanchine created in America. The lack of clothing was not primarily meant to shock, although it probably did, as the bare legs and bare feet of the dancers were well outside the convention of the Academic Theatres. Rather, Balanchine was working toward the idea that the audience should be able to see the bodies of the dancers—to place primacy on the choreography and the music, not on the costume design. This is also represented in the simple dresses of Funeral March. Funeral March was the first time that the dancers of the Young Ballet made their own costumes for a performance. They fall at the knee, and the cut of the dresses allows the audience to see the bodies of the dancers. The dresses are form-fitting, which makes them even more revealing of the figures of the dancers than with Greek tunics, which would have floated around their torso and legs. According to Danilova, the dresses worn for Funeral March were “what now would be common costume [but then] was terribly extreme” (Danilova, “A Conversation—Part I” 38). In these costumes, Balanchine is again looking forward to a new kind of ballet—one that is not dependent on stories, or complicated design, but one that puts the dancer in the center. I believe that, in creating the costumes for this dance, he ensured that the dresses would demonstrate for the audience what he wanted to accomplish. Beyond that, the headdress, so typical of the fashions of the 1920s, is also seen in other ballets of the era on both men and women. The dresses could be created for a dance today; the caps, however, allow us to be transported backward in time. The photograph of Étude, with Geva lying over Balanchine’s shoulder, both her legs bent, shows a memorable pose of this era. Not just because of the bare legs, and the short tunics that barely covered half of their thighs, but the full-body contact that the photo shows was a stark

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departure from the strict partnering of the classical repertory, expanding it. There are few photographs from this era. When I was looking for Balanchine’s vocabulary, this one in particular stood out, as it is the only photo of Geva dancing in a role from the Young Ballet. I decided to include it in Funeral March. Of all the photos of the era, this one sheds light onto what kind of a choreographer Balanchine was. As Danilova said, he was inspired by Goleizovsky, but was willing to go much further. This position shows him departing from the Mariinsky tradition in almost every way. Costume, shoes, tights, and choreographic convention are left behind. He is looking forward, but, as Diaghilev said, it does not necessarily show a passage of great beauty. It is truly interesting, and I believe it is a predecessor to the phrase in Terpsichore’s pas de deux with Apollo in which she lies over his shoulder in a full split.4 In rehearsals I looked to Apollo for how to get into and out of the position. However, the transition into and out of this extreme position was a much more difficult effect to re-create than the smooth, lyrical quality and beauty of the Apollo combination. This photo shows Balanchine at his most extreme experimentation, while foreshadowing one of the most beautiful moments in ballet. While this position was not used in Funeral March, I believed that including it certainly met my criterion of incorporating the vocabulary that Balanchine had used during 1922 and 1923, and that it expressed the spirit of the age. Another part of the vocabulary that Balanchine used during this era was the parallel bourrée. Bourrées in this position are not unknown in the classical repertory; Fokine used it as well in Carnaval. But Balanchine went beyond the bourrée and increased the vocabulary of ballet by using more positions and phrases in parallel; for example, in the roles of all the lead dancers in Apollo and Prodigal Son, choreographed just a few years later. It also played a prominent role in Valse Triste, where Ivanova performed sissonnes in parallel. Bourrées in parallel are some of the steps I chose to include in the role of the Angel. We know that they were an important part of Balanchine’s vocabulary in 1922 and 1923, and that the interplay between the parallel and turned-out positions was an important element of Apollo. Also important to Funeral March, as well as to Valse Triste, was the use of deep cambrés, which Fokine also included in The Dying Swan. These backward bends expressed deep grief in each of these ballets.

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Group Dances: Tradition and Transformation In other choreographic conventions, Funeral Mаrch is in many ways a predecessor to La Chatte, and then Apollo and Prodigal Son. Balanchine did not veer from the order of the classical corps de ballet. Their entrance, one after another as they crossed the stage, points back to the corps de ballet of Petipa and Ivanov, as well as forward to Balanchine’s future choreography as he added his own ideas to the entrance. In both ballets, dancers enter, one after another, repeating the same sequence of steps. Balanchine repeated this pattern in The Song of the Nightingale (4 Emperors and 1 Nightingale) at the entrance of the courtiers. With the opening steps in Funeral March, fourth position to fourth position-en pointe, we can see reflections of future ballets, including the first two he kept in the repertory. We see a version of this in the entrance of the Muses in Apollo, in which they enter fourth position to fourth position, but with a grand battement in between each step. In Prodigal Son, one year later, the Siren on several occasions moves across the stage, fourth position to fourth position, en pointe. She is not moving through the cou-de-pied as the dancers did in Funeral March, but is adjusting with other parts of her body. In one section, the direction of each step changes as her hips adjust. In another, she is running, en pointe, with both legs in plié. Walks en pointe became a fundamental part of Balanchine’s choreography, with Suki Schorer including an entire section on it in her book Balanchine Pointework (50–52). It is after this initial entrance that Balanchine first deviates from the classical format. His dancers reach center, then each faces outward and forms a circle, using the same steps they used as they came onto stage. Of course, circle formations were not new to ballet, and Balanchine used them in future works as well. However, in Funeral March, Balanchine had the circular stage in mind, the idea that ballet should be seen from all sides, not just the front. Dancers in the back of the stage, facing the audience at the spot where there would normally be wings, had to change how they engaged with the audience. This intention changes the general idea of the choreography. Most of Balanchine’s ballets were created for a proscenium stage; however, his particular use of three-dimensionality here, in the creation of formations onstage, was new. These ballets were not solely intended to be seen from the front, and even though most were, they had a different kind of depth. Even on a proscenium stage, this

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idea is not the same as the many architectural formations that are found throughout the dances of the classical repertory. Scholl mentions how the three-dimensionality of Balanchine’s ballets represent an extension of the two-dimensionality of Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun, from 1912. In this ballet, Nijinsky modeled the choreography of the entire ballet on the two-dimensionality of ancient Greek ceramics, vases in which the figures, some of which are dancing, preparing for war, celebrating, or reveling, are depicted in flat, two-dimensional form. Scholl believes that the comparison of the two-dimensionality and threedimensionality is reflected in the loose narrative of the Muses in Apollo (From Petipa to Balanchine: 98–99). Polyhymnia and Calliope do not fulfill the vision, so in a sense they are two-dimensional. In Terpsichore it is fulfilled; she is full-bodied, in a sense three-dimensional, or the real expression of what Apollo is looking for. Although Nijinsky’s Faun was not performed in St. Petersburg, all the work of the legendary Ballets Russes prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was well known to the ballet community there. It is also notable that Balanchine spent a great deal of time at the house of Zheverzheyev, father of Tamara Geva, who had innumerable programs of the works of the Ballets Russes at this time; her relationship with Balanchine certainly made these available to him beyond what he already had as a student at Theatre School. Before the Revolution, Zheverzheyev had owned a collection of paintings, lithographs, posters, sketches, and models of stage sets (Geva, Split Seconds: 62). Geva recalled having spent hours in his museum looking at books, old programs, and photographs of celebrities, including those of the Ballets Russes (ibid.: 173). In addition to the museum, Zheverzheyev had a modern two-story building next to his house named “Theatre Miniature,” which he used to promote new ideas and encourage young talent. Before the Revolution, when tradition still had a strong hold on many artistic endeavors and anything avant-garde was discouraged by the authorities, he gave moral and financial support to struggling young artists of every field. He was surrounded by writers, poets, artists, some of whom were famous, others unknown (ibid.: 65). Balanchine was a frequent visitor to the house. The work of great choreographers like Nijinsky, as well as the new happenings in the arts were topics of conversation.

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The ideas that Balanchine could have gleaned from Nijinsky’s work at an early date at the Mariinsky would have predated his work as a choreographer, but the exchange of ideas that he had with Zheverzheyev was concurrent with the rise of Constructivist theatre, and his own activities as an up-and-coming avant-garde choreographer in Petrograd in the early 1920s. This included the idea of ballets viewed from all sides, which was the focus of his experiment with Funeral March in the Duma. The three-dimensionality of the placement of the corps de ballet, as well as the overhead group formations, and both the entrance and exit cortèges, look forward to the three-dimensional formations in Apollo. In one of these formations, Apollo emerges from the middle of the three Muses, a lute held high overhead. The muses are facing inward, all three in a penchée position, the Muses to the right and left holding one of Apollo’s shoulders, the other hands connected to each other. The third Muse is performing a penchée directly behind Apollo, and holding her balance with both hands on his shoulders, creating a three-sided, threedimensional formation. In this position we see the idea of a sculpture in which all sides are not symmetrical, but are still treated equally. In theory, if performed on a semicircular stage, as Funeral March was, the Muse in the back would be seen from the side audiences in the same position as the Muses to the right and left of Apollo. Although this ballet was created to be viewed from the front, we see the progression that Balanchine made, from having the corps de ballet members face different sections of audience, to creating a sculpture out of the bodies of the dancers that could be interesting to view from different sides. This demonstrates a stark contrast to the frontal poses in Petipa’s ballets. Another formation that looks to dynamic sculptures, which Balanchine first saw in 1922, is in Goleizovsky’s Faun. Like Nijinsky, Goleizovsky had been inspired by Greek art, but rather than create flat figures, he put his dancers on three levels, similar to vases in which rows of figures are depicted. Goleizovsky’s figures are connected to one another, by arms and legs, and hands and feet. The dancers are in constant motion, their swaying reflecting the slow, lyrical mood of the music. Souritz talks about how Balanchine learned about these connected, laconic movements and incorporated them into his choreography. There is no indication that he used this concept in Funeral March, but the cortèges show

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how he had begun to experiment with creating dynamic sculptures. They did not sway back and forth, but they did move through the audience; the cortège represented a multilevel sculpture created out of the bodies of four dancers, who moved through the audience in the beginning, and then off the stage in the end. This kind of dynamic, multilevel sculpture foreshadows similar formations in La Chatte, Serenade, and Prodigal Son. In La Chatte, Balanchine created stable, three-dimensional formations, as well as a chariot formation and a cortège in which the Man was carried across stage, in a manner similar to the Deceased being carried in Funeral March. There are similar formations in Prodigal Son. In one, the Prodigal and Siren are held high overhead in a flat position with their arms and legs in a star position. In another sequence, the Siren is carried standing on the shoulders of one of the Revelers, supported by another dancer, demonstrating how, in Prodigal Son, he made “ingenious borrowing from gymnastics, night club ‘adagio’ dancing, and clown acts, as indeed he and others of the avantgarde had already done in Russia in the early 1920s” (Hunt: 130). Of all the ballets that have survived in the repertory, Prodigal Son contains the most, and the most obvious, influence of Balanchine’s early years. We see these elements in other ballets, such as in the final tableau in Serenade, but this ballet harkens to the Romantic era in its overall mood. Likewise, the slow, swaying formations of dancers with their bodies connected to complete the formation, which Balanchine incorporated in Apollo, are an extension of these formations as well as the swaying movements of Goleizovsky’s Faun, but the overall concept of the ballet is that of the ballet blanc. Despite their harkening back to the elegance of previous eras, the inclusion of these formations is, however, fundamentally different from those of Fokine and Petipa. Their formations are created with the intention of them being viewed only from the front and do not have the multifront depth of a sculpture, to be viewed from all sides. Balanchine’s formations are sometimes symmetrical, sometimes they are not. A human body viewed from the front is symmetrical; but it is also interesting to view in profile. Most of Fokine and Petipa’s formations are symmetrical and interesting from the front view, but they do not provide a side view that can be equally as interesting.

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What I Have Learned When I began this study many years ago, I was fascinated by the early work of Balanchine, but this fascination was superficial. I was struck by how different it appeared from his mature work. The photographs and descriptions of the dances seemed so contradictory to what I knew and loved about his work. The most significant thing I saw as I studied his choreography and continued to delve deeper into how he developed his voice in the early 1920s was how much of his beginnings are reflected in his later ballets. He is very much an American choreographer; however, much of his innovative spirit and transformation is a result not only of what he learned in the United States, but of how he was part of a movement of countless other artists, both in dance and other genres, merging and transforming their ideas as he applied them to his own art, ballet. He certainly would not have become the choreographer he did without the opportunities given to him by Lincoln Kirstein, when Balanchine was invited to come to New York; yet the basis of all his creations are from Russia, from both the late Imperial and the early Soviet eras. His work in so many ways exemplifies what ballet has always been and strives to be—an intersection of time, creativity, and genius.

APPENDIX I Summary of George Balanchine’s Russian Choreography (1920–1924)

This summary only contains dances for which we have some choreographic information. There are many other dances that Balanchine created during these years. These are listed in Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné, Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works, referred to below simply as “Catalogue.”

La Nuit/Night/Romance (1920) Entry in Catalogue: 1 Music Anton Rubinstein. Original accompaniment: a piano and a violin (Catalogue: 1; Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49).

Original Performance 1920 in Petrograd; annual Theatre School performance (Catalogue: 1; Danilova, Choura: 44).

Original Cast Olga Mungalova and George Balanchine at the school (Catalogue: 1; from Mungalova’s papers), Olga Mungalova and Peter Gusev at the school graduation (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49).

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Other Performances and Casts Catalogue June 1, 1923, at the Duma. Performed by the Soviet Dancers as well as being “performed for many years in the Soviet Union after Balanchine’s departure” (1). Kostrovitskaya Gusev and Mungalova performed it on various stages in Petrograd (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49). Geva Performed the dance with Balanchine (Geva, Interview by Reynolds).

Costumes Kostrovitskaya “In 1921 there were still few who appeared onstage in tunics. Dancing on pointe was done only in tutus. The head was adorned with diadems, artificial flowers, and various tinsel. Mungalova wore a light, bright tunic, and instead of the headdress a narrow ribbon was tied freely around her blond curls” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50).

Choreographic Details Danilova The story was about “a young girl and young boy sort of courting. . . . It was the first sexy ballet—talking in vulgar language—that we saw and this awakened, let’s say first emotional, really emotional ballet; emotions in form of dancing, not in form of mime [sic]” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). Kostrovitskaya “We were accustomed to seeing in the former Mariinsky Theatre and in the school the usual adagio développés, traditional turns from fourth position which the ballerina performed with support from her partner. Before the turns, there would be fear on her face, and a relieved smile at the conclusion. There was none of that here. Rubinstein’s Night, in

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Balanchine’s dance, was a lyrical duet of restrained passion—half poses, half arabesques . . . tender passages of adagio without the conventional movements of legs raised on the principle of ‘the higher, the better.’ Of course, later on in various concert pieces, artists performed love duets, called adagios, with disregard for the traditions of Petipa. But then, and especially in the school, this was completely new” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49–50). She also described dance and costume in her personal papers (Kostrovitskaya).

Other Aspects of This Work Arabesque Balance Balanchine “I was in trouble . . . because I made a pas de deux in which I lay on the floor and the girl leaned over in an arabesque and touched me with her lips. That was thought indecent and at age fifteen, I was nearly thrown out” ( Joseph: 42–43). Geva “Balanchine was standing on one knee and I was bent forward in a very high arabesque. My arms were back and I held my mouth to his mouth in a kiss and that’s where the balance was.” This arm position in arabesque is also a direct copy of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake (Geva, Interview by Reynolds). “Balanchine was on his knees, and I had to hold myself in an arabesque just on my mouth or lose my balance. I didn’t hold it long, believe me. That’s an example of erotic dance that Balanchine could produce—he always had a little bit of eroticism everywhere in his work” (Geva, I Remember Balanchine: 12). Final Pose—High lift over the head Danilova “At the end, young male dancer pulls girl dancer on arabesque with straight arm over his head. It was sensational; we never saw anything like it [sic]” (Derby, 9). “The boy conquers the girl: he lifted her in arabesque and held her with a straight arm overhead, then carried her off into the wings—so she was his!” (Danilova, Choura: 44). “It was shocking, yes,

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that the boy sort of succeeded in taking the girl” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). Mungalova “For the first time, acrobatic lifts appeared in our school” (Souritz, Soviet Choreographers: 74).

Other Aspects of This Work Kostrovitskaya Recalls that the process created quite an uproar at the Theatre School, since Balanchine was doing the choreography in secret, behind closed doors guarded by two students (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49). Gusev By today’s standards the ballet would be considered “chaste” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53). Balanchine “As I remember it today, it would be perfectly suitable for a presentation in a young ladies’ seminary. I thought it was very daring at the time” (Taper: 53). Danilova The directress of the school thought that Balanchine should be expelled for such a daring number (Danilova, Interview by Conway). Slonimsky Reports a different reaction. Despite the upset over La Nuit, many began to see Balanchine’s potential as a choreographer and “people began to speak of Balanchine as a prospective ballet master” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 41).

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Poème (1921) Entry in Catalogue: 4 Music Zdeněk Fibich.

Original Performance Concert at Theatre School, Petrograd 1921 (Catalogue: 4).

Original Cast George Balanchine and possibly Alexandra Danilova.

Other Performances and Casts Danilova and Mikhail Dudko danced it at Donon Restaurant in 1923 (Danilova, Interview by Conway, Catalogue: 4). Vera Krasovskaya performed it in a school concert in 1932 (Catalogue: 4).

Costumes Kostrovitskaya Danilova was irreproachably formed “with her finely moulded, severe features framed in golden hair, wearing a transparent bright blue tunic [she] was the embodiment of pure, cold beauty” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50).

Choreographic Details Kostrovitskaya “Balanchine . . . lifted Danilova in the classic arabesque and lowered her softly on pointe. The adagio began, but again without the usual turns and technical tricks (although Danilova had many opportunities to do them). Sometimes these performances were accompanied without violin, only by a piano, but the lines of the dance were so melodious that one could always imagine the violin’s presence anyway. At the end of Poème, Balanchine carried Danilova off, lifting her high in an arabesque with his arms extended. One had the impression that she herself, without a partner’s support, was gliding through the air away from the audience to

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finish ‘singing’ her dance somewhere far, far away. The Poème gave rise to many imitations” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). She also described dance and costume in her personal papers (Kostrovitskaya).

Waltz and Adagio (1922) Entry in Catalogue: 7 Music George Balanchine.

Original Performance April 9, 1922, at the Theatre School graduation performance.

Original Cast Pеtеr Gusev and Olga Mungalova.

Other Performances and Casts Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine on June 11, 1922, and June 1, 1923, at the Duma by Mungalova and Gusev (Catalogue: 7).

Costumes Tunics and short dress, from photographs of Mungalova and Gusev dated 1923 (Catalogue 7).

Choreographic Details Gusev “There were exercise movements—full pliés, tendu, battement, grand battement, ronde de jambe par terre and frappé . . . The piece was choreographed on a strictly classical base. . . . There were . . . some unusual lifts . . . the female dancer is carried off in first arabesque on extended arms” (Slonimsky; “Balanchine” 54). Photographs There are two extant photographs of this dance. In them, he is wearing a tunic, she is wearing a short dress. She appears to be wearing tights, while he appears to have shoes on, but no tights. They are both wearing hats,

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but their hair is showing. In one, Gusev is in a lunge on his right leg, with his left leg straight behind him. Mungalova is leaning fully against him, back-to-back. She is en pointe, standing on her left leg, with her right leg extended in front of her. Their left feet are touching, continuing the line up to their heads, which are also touching. In the second photo, Gusev is standing on his right leg, with his left leg in tendu to the side. Mungalova is on his shoulder in an arabesque position with her left leg straight over his left shoulder. Her right leg hooks under his arm for support. Gusev is holding Mungalova’s wrists. Her arms are fully extended.

Valse Triste (1922) Entry in Catalogue: 10 Choreographer Lydia Ivanova under the direction of, or together with, George Balanchine. (Catalogue: 10; Kostrovitskaya, Personal papers; Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49).

Music Jean Sibelius.

Original Performance 1922 at Sestroretsk, near St. Petersburg (Catalogue: 10).

Original Cast Lydia Ivanova

Other Performances and Casts Tamara Geva and Alexandra Danilova in Germany and London in 1924. Slonimsky wrote that the dance had “lasted to this present day in the performances of various female dancers” in 1976 (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 53). The Catalogue says that the “the solo was taught in class at the Vaganova Academy at least as late as 1990”(10). The ballet was reconstructed by Hodson and Archer for the Finnish National Ballet in 2004.

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Costume Ivanova had a “dark red tunic, deep blue scarf and long black hair falling over the shoulders” (Archer and Hodson, “The Sad Twist of Valse Triste”: 1). Mikhailov says she wore a transparent red tunic (Mikhailov, The Young Years: 119).

Choreographic Details Tcherepnin “In one small composition . . . there appear two devises of great expressiveness . . . the female dancer, developing her feelings of horror and moving in a kind of emotional crescendo in a straight line from the rear of the stage to the footlights, unexpectedly, at the last instance of highest intensity, turns her back to the audience in a quick motion and becomes frozen for a moment. This fermata makes an enormous impression. . . . In the same piece the final emotional intensity is conveyed superbly with a completely new device—the silent scream of a widely opened mouth . . .” (Quoted in Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 52). The widely opened mouth was a device from the silent film era. Balanchine used it again in Apollo a few years later. Geva “I was a somnambulist, dressed in a tuniclike dress down to the knees. That dance frightened the audience because I moved forward toward the very edge of the proscenium as though I were blind and were about to go right off into the pit” (Geva, I Remember Balanchine: 13). She says this dance prefigured the Sleepwalker in La Sonnambula (Catalogue: 10). Mikhailov Gives a detailed description of this dance (The Young Years: 119–120). Photograph One extant photograph of this dance shows Ivanova with her feet in a parallel position, looking out from under the scarf over her head. This dance contained wide use of the parallel.

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Other Aspects of This Work A detailed choreographic description of this dance in English can be found in “The Sad Twist of Valse Triste, Balanchine’s Tragic Solo Reconstructed” by Archer and Hodson. Their reconstruction of this dance was based largely based on the firsthand accounts of Slonimsky, Mikhailov, and Tcherepnin. Balanchine and Ivanova were inspired by Isadora Duncan’s performance of the Sixth Symphony of Tchaikovsky which they had seen with other members of the Young Ballet. It is meant to be Isadora Duncan en pointe, although Balanchine used it sparingly in this dance (Archer and Hodson, “The Sad Twist of Valse Triste”: 1).

Orientalia (1922–1923) Entry in Catalogue: 12 Music César Cui.

Original Performance 1922 or 1923 in St. Petersburg.

Original Cast Young Oriental Dancer: Nina Mlodzinskaya and Blind Old Beggar: George Balanchine (Catalogue: 12).

Other Performances and Casts Tamara Geva and Rostislav Slavianinov in Petrograd on June 2, 1923, and Tamara Geva and George Balanchine in Germany.

Choreographic Details Geva “George played a blind beggar in the street, an old man with a bear, and I was either his daughter or his dancing girl. He rolled out a little carpet, sat down, and mimed playing a string instrument, and I danced on the rug. When we finished the dance, we packed everything up and went away” (Geva, I Remember Balanchine: 13).

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Slonimsky “The old man sat on the floor with his legs crossed in oriental fashion and ‘spoke’ to the dancer with sounds from the tambourine as if prompting her movements” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 40).

Funeral March/Marche Funèbre (1923) Entry in Catalogue: 19 Music Frédéric Chopin.

Design According to the Catalogue, scenery by Boris Erbshtein and costume drawings by Vladimir Dimitriev. Sewn by dancers. There are differing accounts as to whether the costumes were designed by Erbshtein or Dimitriev (see below).

Original Performance June 1, 1923, at the Duma Auditorium in St. Petersburg by the Young Ballet (Catalogue: 19).

Original Cast The Deceased: Olga Mungalova, alternating with Tamara Geva; Angel: Alexandra Danilova; Mourners (Men): Peter Gusev, Nicholas Efimov, Balashov; Mourners (female corps de ballet): Included Nina Stukolkina and Vera Kostrovitskaya and four other female dancers (Kostrovitskaya, Personal papers; Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50; Catalogue: 19).

Other Performances and Casts Kostrovitskaya says it was danced twice at its first performance and then several more times in Petrograd (Personal papers). Slonimsky says that it never failed to move audiences, also indicating that it had more performances in Petrograd. According to De Valois, Balanchine taught it to five or six members of the Ballets Russes in London (I Remember Balanchine: 86), but was never performed on stage in Western Europe. Gusev says

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it was performed with The Twelve at the Cineselli Circus in Petrograd (Catalogue: 28).

Costumes Mikhailov “In black, fantastic costumes, designed by Boris Erbstein [sic], which scarcely covered our bodies” (“My Classmate III”: 8). Kostrovitskaya “Dimitriev drew sketches for our costumes for the March. We sewed and dyed them ourselves from old calico which we found at home. The short, gray, close-fitting, sleeveless dresses had a black-and-silver pattern. The plain gray caps with small discs on the sides over the ears were also embroidered in black and silver. The usual ballet tights and slippers completed the costume” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Danilova They “all had tunics, like they have more or less now with short skirts” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). She also says that “we wore caps and our hair was under inside of caps which really unites every dancer, because you couldn’t see different color of hair,[sic]” and “we looked like amazons” (ibid.).

Choreographic Details Geva The dancers were mourners, the dead themselves, or spirits, and they built a “design of uncompromising grief to the dark downbeat, changing from the mourners into the dead, into whirling spirits, our bodies twisting into arches and crosses” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). Mikhailov Performed by all the girls and several boys in the Young Ballet. “We moved self-effacingly on the stage. We performed diligently the movements invented by the ballet master, changing groups and poses which were permeated through and through with hopeless anguish and grief ” (“My Classmate III”: 8).

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Danilova They were carried in certain groups: “Instead of making group on the floor, it was group in the air [sic]” (Danilova, Interview by Conway). Bruni “The cortège came onto the stage through the audience under a spotlight in the dark. The groupings were composed in a very interesting, individual manner” (Quoted in Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 51). Photographs Two extant photographs of the dance show some positions. One photograph shows Kostrovitskaya in fourth position en pointe, head bowed, and arms crossed in front of her. She describes this position in her account. The second photograph shows Stukolkina on both knees, parallel, with her arms lifted in a gesture of hope, which Kostrovitskaya describes as the arm position in the second Tragic section.

Other Aspects of This Work The Circular Stage Kostrovitskaya “One of our concerts took place in the building of the ‘Institute of the Living Word’ on the square of the former Alexandrinsky Theatre. Seats for the audience were arranged in an amphitheatre, as in the circus; the stage was a semicircle. With this in mind, Balanchine choreographed the Chopin Funeral March for a circular stage, but in such a way that it could be performed, if necessary, on an ordinary stage with little modification” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50). Geva At that time, Balanchine “contended that dancing, like sculpture, should be complete and interesting to view from all four sides” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). The accounts of these two dancers were used to build the stage and the seating for “Envisioning Marche Funèbre.”

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The Constructivist Influence Slonimsky “The slightest opportunity was taken to lay a bridge between the audience and the stage, emphasizing the unity of what was being performed and what had been experienced, the unity of spirit between the audience and the stage heroes. This explains the passage of the dancers followed by light through the audience and the modeling of sculptural groups as if to generalize individual experience. In this respect, Meyerhold was the teacher of everyone—including Balanchine” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 52).

The Original Performance Two events that were recalled in the première was the visit of Vaganova backstage right before the nervous dancers went on stage. Secondly, the audience responded so well that the dance was performed again that very night (Kostrovitskaya, Personal papers).

Primary Sources for “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” Kostrovitskaya gives a detailed description of this dance in her accounts of the repertory of the Young Ballet in Slonimsky’s essay, “Balanchine: The Early Years” (50–52). Her handwritten manuscripts with corrections have details on this dance (Kostrovitskaya, Personal papers). These notes, based on Slonimsky’s English-language article, which quoted Kostrovitskaya in whole, were published in Russian in Oleg Levenkov’s George Balanchine in 2007. Both Danilova and Geva, who also performed in the dance, give details in their memoirs, various published interviews, and in the recorded interviews at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The two extant photographs of the dance were used for both the choreography and Christa Koerner’s designs for the costumes for “Envisioning Marche Funebre.”

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Enigma (1923) Entry in Catalogue: 25 Music Anton Arensky.

Original Performance 1923 in St. Petersburg.

Original Cast Lydia Ivanova and George Balanchine (Catalogue: 25).

Other Performances and Casts Tamara Geva and George Balanchine in Petrograd at the Mariinsky (Geva, Split Seconds: 299) and the Donon Restaurant (Catalogue: 25). Part of the repertory of the Soviet Dancers in Germany and London. Used as an audition piece for Diaghilev. Performed at least three times in Monte Carlo by the Ballets Russes (Catalogue: 25).

Costumes Geva says they “Danced barefoot wearing chiffon tunics covering our torsos” (Split Seconds: 298).

Choreographic Details Geva Compares this dance to Isadora Duncan, most likely because of the costumes and bare feet. However, she adds that “it required real technique” (Geva, I Remember Balanchine: 12). Gusev “I remember that in this piece for the first time a woman arched into a ‘bridge.’ This shocked people but was accepted. But when her partner leaped across the ‘bridge,’ making a grand jeté with his bent leg, this produced general indignation and protest. Even Lopukhov told us that such a stunt was coarse and served no purpose . . . we told Balanchine to listen

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to the criticism and remove the jump. But he stubbornly continued to jump all he wanted” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 54). Lopukhov later used the move where the man jumped over the woman in a bridge in his opera Judith (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 54).

Eugene the Unfortunate or Brokenbrow or Hinkemann (1923) Entry in Catalogue: 27 Playwright Ernst Toller.

Original Performance Maly Opera Theatre.

Choreography for Play George Balanchine.

Choreographic Details Catalogue Dances in an urban setting, shown in silhouette, were done in Act II of the play (27). Several photographs of the dances, housed at the St. Petersburg State Museum of Music and Theatre, show these silhouettes. Their contemporary, urban theme looks forward to his commercial work. Slonimsky One of three major plays with choreography by Balanchine as ballet master for the Maly Theatre. The other two plays he did movement for were Le Coq d’Or and Caesar and Cleopatra (Catalogue: 24 and 26, respectively). Photographs The St. Petersburg State Museum for Theatre and Music has several production photos that show the group work that Balanchine choreographed on different levels of the sets.

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Other Aspects of This Work During their tour in Germany, the Soviet dancers did a performance in an asylum, where Ernst Toller was a patient. They all knew his work Hinkemann, as it had been translated into Russian and played in Petrograd. Geva recalled that they were all interested in the play, and that “it was a cry against war, a first protest play against war” (Geva, Interview by Reynolds).

The Twelve/Chorus Reading (1923) Entry in Catalogue: 28 Music Done to a chorus recitation of Vsevolodsky-Gerngross’ dramatic interpretation of Alexander Blok’s poem, The Twelve (1918) (Souritz, “The Young Balanchine”: 68). The Catalogue says that it was done to “The Twelve and other poems” (28). Geva recalls that the chorus composed of fifty voices “all spoke in rhythm in different keys, overlapping, stopping” (Geva, Interview by Reynolds).

Original Performance 1923 at the Duma Auditorium, possibly at the second performance of the Young Ballet or at the Cineselli Circus (Catalogue: 28).

Original Cast Ten or twelve dancers (Geva, Interview by Reynolds, Catalogue: 28)

Other Performances and Casts Unknown.

Costumes National costumes.

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Choreographic Details Geva “It was George’s variation on a Russian square dance done to a boldly changing rhythm that at times approached syncopation” (Geva, Split Seconds: 300). Stukolkina “What we did was not pantomime, illustrating the text, but a dance. The dance had movements very much like Russian folk dances. The rhythm was difficult to grasp. Before performing it to Blok’s text, we had many rehearsals with Balanchivadze counting for us” (Stukolkina, I Remember Balanchine: 80). “I also remember two group works I took part in, Marche Funèbre to Chopin and The Twelve. We were asymmetrically moving groups with no real soloists; at times one dancer detached from the group and performed a combination of movements, as if pronouncing a ‘sentence,’ then disappeared into the group. The choreography was fluid and strictly subordinated to the music, one pattern running into the other with strict musical and choreographical logic” (ibid.). Kostrovitskaya They were representing in movement what was being chanted by the chorus (Souritz, “The Young Balanchine”: 68).

Other Aspects of this Work Souritz says that Vsevolodsky-Gerngross was obsessed “with the idea of an amphitheatre for performance—a circular stage surrounded on all sides by seats.” Both Funeral March and The Twelve were performed on his round stage. The Twelve was performed during the second performance of at the Duma (ibid.).

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Étude (1923/1924) Entry in Catalogue: 30 Music Alexander Scriabin.

Original Performance 1923 in Petrograd.

Original Cast Tamara Geva and George Balanchine.

Other Performances and Casts The Catalogue says that this dance was probably performed by Balanchine and Geva as an audition piece for Diaghilev in Paris. The Ballets Russes also presented it at matinee performances in Monte Carlo (30).

Costumes The photograph of Balanchine and Geva show them wearing tunics that covered them at about mid-thigh. Balanchine’s is a bit darker, and he is wearing a headdress. Geva’s hair is unbound, so we cannot see if she is wearing one as well.

Choreographic Details Photograph An extant photograph of Geva and Balanchine shows Étude (Souritz, “The Young Balanchine”: 69). Both dancers wear similar short tunics. Geva is lying over Balanchine’s shoulders, with both legs bent.

Other Aspects of This Work This dance seems to have many similarities with Enigma.

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Other Ballets by George Balanchine from 1920 to 1924 From 1920 to 1924, the Catalogue lists about two dozen other works by George Balanchine for which we have little or no choreographic information. The year 1923 was particularly productive. Entry numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8.1, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28.1, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.

Other Original Ballets from the Repertory of the Young Ballet Kostrovitskaya (Personal papers) and her account in Slonimsky’s “Balanchine: The Early Years” (49).

Adagio with High Lifts—possibly Enigma or Étude (see above) Choreography: Balanchine Dancers: Geva and Balanchine

Dying Swan Choreography and Dancer: Mlodinskaya

Ecstase Choreography and Dancer: Kostrovitskaya

Elegy Choreography: Mikhailov Dancers: Kostrovitskaya and Mikhailov

Flight Choreography and Dancer: Mazikova

Flight of the Bumblebee Choreography and Dancer: Faber

Idyll Choreography and Dancer: Lisovskaya

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Spanish Dance Choreography: Balanchine (Catalogue: 18) Dancers: Stukolkina and Mikhailov

Spring Choreography: N/A Dancer: Ivanova

APPENDIX II Score of “Envisioning Marche Funèbre”

This score gives a basic structure of the work described in the previous chapters. Descriptions of the dance steps as they correspond to the music are noted. This is not a complete dance score and is only meant as a tool to accompany this book. The musical score is Sonata pour le piano by Frédéric Chopin, Leipzig chez Breitkopf & Härtel. Digital art for the dance score is by Maximilian Ulrich. X Female Mourners

S Spotlight

A Angel

→ Direction

D Deceased

O Cortège

• Three male Mourners

Audience Sections

•—• and Deceased.

· 141

142 · Appendix II

Score of “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” · 143

144 · Appendix II

Score of “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” · 145

146 · Appendix II

Score of “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” · 147

148 · Appendix II

Score of “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” · 149

NOTES

Chapter 1. Envisioning Funeral March 1. St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914 during World War I, to make the name of the city more Russian. In 1924, it was renamed Leningrad in honor of Vladimir Lenin, a few days after his death. In 1991, its residents voted for the name to be restored to its original name, St. Petersburg (Schmemann). In this book, I primarily refer to it as Petrograd, as this was the name it was called during Balanchine’s last years at Theatre School and his first years as a professional dancer and choreographer. 2. In 1919, the Mariinsky Theatre was officially added to the ranks of the Academic Theatres and called the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet until 1935 when it was renamed the Kirov Theatre (Krasovskaya, Vaganova: 264). In this book, I use the terms Academic Theatre and Mariinsky interchangeably, as most of those who wrote about the time period do. 3. The ballet underwent many changes over the decades, including the name being shortened to simply Apollo. In this book, I use the name of the ballets as they are most commonly known. In particular, I use the English names for Funeral March, although it is often referred to by its French name, Marche Funèbre. 4. The Catalogue says that “George Balanchine and Lydia Ivanova or Ivanova under Balanchine’s supervision” choreographed this dance (Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné: 10). 5. In 2018, the Grand Rapids Ballet welcomed its new Artistic Director, James Sofranko, and Patricia Barker assumed leadership of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. The project continued with the dancers of the Grand Rapids Ballet through the transition. 6. In Sleeping Beauty: A Legend in Progress, Scholl details how some versions of this ballet came to be, as well as the various controversies surrounding them. 7. Balanchine called them the “Soviet Dancers” (Balanchine, “Lecture at The · 151

152 · Notes to Pages 7–22

New School”), while the Catalogue calls them “Principal Dancers of the Russian State Ballet” (Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné: 1). Don McDonagh says that they were billed as the Soviet State Dancers in Germany, and then the Principal Dancers of the Russian State Ballet (32). I have chosen to use Balanchine’s name for the group in this book. 8. By most accounts, the reason the dancers chose to stay was because of the better living conditions; however, Danilova does say that being “petrified of being arrested suddenly for your thoughts, or a wrong word at a wrong time” played a factor (Clippings). 9. I primarily cite the English versions of the materials in this book. Where the Russian sources contain additional information, I have cited them as well. 10. Kendall is skeptical of the accuracy of Geva’s Split Seconds (Kendall: 215); however, the book is a memoir which primarily covers her very young life. In using this book to study Balanchine’s earliest choreography, I have not found the final chapters of the book to be more problematic than the many other memoirs I have used. 11. In his introduction to his translation of Volynsky’s work Ballet’s Magic Kingdom, Stanley J. Rabinowitz discusses the rivalry between the two (xxxiv); however, he does not include any of the articles themselves in this collection of writings. Chapter 2. The Scholar’s Conundrum: Should We Reconstruct? 1. Because of their careful oversight, The Trust has been successful in maintaining the quality of Balanchine’s works as they continue to be performed throughout the world. 2. Hodson notes that audiences are not looking for a “score” when they come to see a ballet, rather they want an emotional experience (Interview with author). 3. In his article “The Ascent of Apollo: Mounting Olympus,” John Gruen notes some of the changes this ballet underwent in Balanchine’s lifetime (164–165). 4. During the discussion by the former casts, there was a great variety of opinion, but the participants still seemed to show willingness to be open to differences without questioning the basic integrity of the variation. 5. One of Hodson’s goals with her reconstruction was to create a usable history (McCarthy: 1), a way for dancers to connect more with historical works. In 2017, Hodson and Archer were kind enough to come and teach the students at Oakland University some of the choreography from their reconstruction of Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring. As their history teacher for several semesters, I found that this group of students had a better grasp of the academic material from early–20th-century dance than any other I have worked with in fifteen years in higher education.

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6. Danilova seems to have found this lack to be the case in American dancers throughout her career, and believed that American dancers should “study other phases of dance, art, music, etc. and not restrict themselves to their own ballet studio” (“The Real Danilova”). She encouraged young dancers to expand their knowledge, similar to how she had been encouraged to do so by Lopukhov. 7. Markova was filmed teaching a student parts of her role in The Song of the Nightingale (Reynolds: 17). 8. These are the first two of Balanchine’s ballets that are included in Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets. For both ballets, several pages of details on the ballets themselves are given. 9. His arguments regarding theatre also ring true for dance reconstructions, so I have presented his arguments here primarily regarding this particular term. 10. In Apollo’s Angels, Homans describes in detail the role that ballet played in Soviet diplomacy during the Cold War (341–395). 11. As with other dances, Swan Lake has so many versions to it, that even those performed at the Mariinsky cannot be considered to be the “original” or the “right” version (Metelitsa: 199). 12. Kendall refers to a performance of a reconstruction of Lopukhov’s Dance Symphony that she saw as being lackluster (Kendall: 260). This can certainly be due to it having been stylistically old-fashioned, which can be seen as an example of what Rudnitsky refers to. However, I contend that such an undertaking is still worthwhile. 13. The former Imperial Theatre School in St. Petersburg, which most of Balanchine’s generation referred to simply as “Theatre School,” has had various names, and the current English name given on the school’s website is the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Yet the same organization calls it the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet on the Russian version of its website. In this book I use the school’s own English title. 14. Slonimsky also noted in the 1970s that Valse Triste had “lasted to this present day in the performances of various female dancers” (“Balanchine”: 53). 15. I cite only the English translation by Dorinda Offord here. 16. Souritz notes some of the changes he made to the repertory, including sections of The Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda, Harlequinade, and The Little Humpbacked Horse (Soviet Choreographers: 258–259). Chapter 3. The Dancer’s Discovery: Finding the Steps 1. These small, semilegal, variety performances, which Danilova and Geva called halutras, sprang up around Petrograd; ballets were presented alongside concert pianists, comedians, singers, and jugglers (Geva, Split Seconds: 228). Mikhailov says that little theatres appeared in “every location which could be

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considered suitable in the slightest degree” (Mikhailov, “My Classmate II”: 6). Kendall refers to new, popular venues as estrada (Kendall 8). 2. Mikhailov says that the costumes were black (“My Classmate III”: 8). 3. Different sources provide different accounts as to who designed the costumes for Funeral March. Because the two were close friends, it is possible that the costumes were a result of both their work. 4. Krasovskaya gives details on the creation of this dance and its place in Soviet ballet (Vaganova: 156–159). 5. In 1982, Balanchine choreographed his Perséphone to Stravinsky’s score, which included a narrator and chorus. 6. Interestingly, Krasovskaya says it is possible that Lopukhov may have gotten his idea to create his Dance Symphony from one of Meyerhold’s unrealized ideas (Vaganova: 115). 7. If the Magnanimous Cuckold can be considered a fully Constructivist theatre production, then La Chatte can be considered a fully Constructivist ballet production, with elements of it immersed in the design, choreography, and music. 8. Kendall details Balanchine’s contact with Meyerhold’s work (165–167). 9. The original production at the Ballets Russes had a mountain scene in the background. In later productions, Balanchine replaced it with a simple staircase and scaffold, which he later removed because he thought it looked “silly.” He said that these elements were not important to the music or the choreography (Gruen: 165). 10. Nancy Goldner notes how the fence represents an important reflection of Constructivist art in its functional as well as decorative aspects (Balanchine Variations: 15). 11. Goldner examines interpretations about the role of the corpse in La Valse (More Balanchine Variations: 37–38). 12. James Steichen notes that while Serenade was Balanchine’s first fully American ballet, two other ballets, Mozartiana and Dreams, which were performed at the same time, had been significantly reworked. Dreams, in fact, was danced to a new musical score (42). 13. This position could also conceivably be what Goleizovsky called the 7th position, where one foot is placed in front of the other, but parallel, rather than turned out (Banes: 97). 14. Full score with key in Appendix II. Chapter 4. The Puzzle’s Picture: Assembling What We Know 1. I based the titles I gave to each of the three sections of Funeral March on how Kostrovitskaya identified them. She calls them the “first tragic section,” “the

Notes to Pages 65–80 · 155

middle, lyric section,” and “the third section of the March, musically analogous to the first” (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 50–51). 2. Mungalova became known for her ability to do acrobatic partnering, in particular with Gusev. Mikhailov mentions both their partnership as well as her flexibility and beautiful legs (The Young Years: 21). 3. Yuri Slonimsky, another important collaborator in the Young Ballet, also entered as a nontraditional evening student (“Balanchine”: 22). 4. Ivanova was tall for the era, as was Felia Doubrovska, who created the roles of Calliope in Apollo and the Siren in Prodigal Son (Huckenpahler: 371). She had “long legs, arrow like pointes, and [a] flexible back” (Vaughan: 72). In both these dancers, we see Balanchine looking toward a body type that was taller than the typical dancer of that era. 5. Later in her life, Geva credits her upbringing for the eclectic variety of careers she pursued. In addition to ballet, she became a Broadway star, a filmmaker, and worked in the horse business (Split Seconds: 360). 6. Other than knowing that she also danced the role of the Deceased (Balanchine Catalogue Raisonné: 19), we do not have much information from Mungalova regarding Funeral March. For that reason, most of my research is based on Geva’s recounting, and I refer primarily to her in the role of the Deceased. 7. Geva says that in his experiments Balanchine was trying to figure out how much he could do and what he could get away with (Geva, Interview by Reynolds). 8. Vaganova developed her method after the members of the Young Ballet graduated from Theatre School. However, she did teach them in their final years, and Kostrovitskaya says she taught most of them (Kostrovitskaya). Danilova recalls that she taught company class on her first day (Crowle: 84). 9. Appendix II, lines 1–2 show the spacing of the dancers next to the piano score. 10. See Appendix II, lines 3–6. Chapter 5. The Missing Pieces: Rechoreographing What We Don’t Know 1. In one interview, she mistakenly says that she was one of the Mourners. In this interview, she recalls the costumes, as well as the overhead lifts performed by the Deceased (Interview by Wentink). 2. See Appendix II, lines 7–17. The notes for the left hand of the piano (the lower line) show the “jumping” of the hand for the Angel’s entrance. MatijasMecca is not suggesting that while working with dancers Balanchine was at the piano, but rather, as a pianist, this principal crossed over into his choreography. 3. See Appendix II, lines 9–13.

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4. First presented at the Mariinsky under the title Chopiniana, it was presented as Les Sylphides by the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1908. It led to some of the company’s early successes. 5. In reviewing the materials from my first rehearsals, dance scholar Mindy Aloff pointed out that these were gestures, not positions, and this imagery was enormously helpful in communicating to the dancers how the movement was to be done. 6. Michael Fokine was one of the first to create this kind of work at the Mariinsky. In his “Manifesto,” Goleizovsky describes dance as the “expression of an idea by means of movements” (70). The work of both of these choreographers was strongly influential in Balanchine’s development of his own choreographic voice. 7. Hodson says that this was a Vaudeville trick that Balanchine incorporated into the ballet. 8. Souritz says the photograph is Étude (“The Young Balanchine”: 69), but Taper says it could have been either Étude or Enigma (60–61). Boris Kochno, who had been present at the audition of the Soviet Dancers, mistakenly says that Balanchine danced a pas de deux with Danilova, not Geva, but claimed to have a photograph of the dance with “Balanchine lifting up Danilova, who covered him with her skirt” (82). In any case, descriptions of both dances are very similar, and it is likely that, in addition to the dancers being barefoot and barelegged, Balanchine used similar choreographic motifs in them. 9. The dances are numbered in the English translation in Slonimsky’s article as well as in Kostrovitskaya’s personal papers. 10. Danilova also notes that she did “grands battements en pointe. That was unheard of at the time. Such a movement was considered too bold for classical dance of the era” (Alovert: 42). Similarly, in Balanchine’s Apollo, the Muses enter the stage doing grands battements en pointe. 11. See Appendix II, lines 14–15. 12. Ivanova and Balanchine worked closely together, but she most often partnered with Efimov (Mikhailov, The Young Years: 116). 13. See Appendix II, line 16. 14. We do see much more blatant eroticism in the pas de deux between the Prodigal and the Siren in Prodigal Son. 15. Kostrovitskaya is making a comparison between the aesthetic of this duet and ballet in the 1970s, when Slonimsky wrote the article. Higher extensions define ballet in later decades, not the 1920s. 16. The Soviet drambalets, in which the dance played a secondary role to the dramatic content, like Romeo and Juliet and Spartacus, were well accepted in the West and also in the Soviet Union, and enabled Russian ballet to gain its strong international reputation during the Cold War (Homans: 391).

Notes to Pages 99–114 · 157

17. See Appendix II, line 17. 18. See Appendix II, lines 18–19. 19. Mlodzinskaya’s own choreography to this music was part of the repertory of the Young Ballet (Slonimsky, “Balanchine”: 49); however, there is no record of the choreographic details in her version. Chapter 6. One Final Note: What We Have Learned 1. See Appendix II, lines 20–24. 2. After Balanchine joined the Ballets Russes, correspondence between him and Diaghilev shows that he was trying to get several of the dancers from the Young Ballet who were not on the tour of the Soviet Dancers to come to the Ballets Russes, including Nina Stukolkina, Olga Mungalova, Vera Kostrovitskaya, Nina Mlodzinskaya, and Mikhailov, “the young dancer I told you about in London” (Balanchine, “Correspondence with Serge Diaghilev”). He mentions that these dancers are in Leningrad, so he is likely referring to Mikhail Mikhailov. 3. This angularity is also seen in The Song of the Nightingale, in which Alicia Markova, who danced the role of the Nightingale in the original production, subsequently set her solo on a young dancer so that it would not be lost (Alicia Markova). 4. This position may also be a predecessor to some of the acrobatic partnering in the pas de deux in Stravinsky Violin Concerto, in which the female dancer does movements resembling back walkovers. Goldner also makes a comparison between this pas de deux and that of the Prodigal and Siren in Prodigal Son (Balanchine Variations: 114).

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INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abstract ballet, 82–83, 109–11 Academic Theatre (State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, St. Petersburg). See Academic Theatres (Russia); Mariinsky Theatre Academic Theatres (Russia), 3, 40, 93, 113, 151n2. See also Mariinsky Theatre Acrobatics, 63, 104, 112, 155n2; in Balanchine’s ballets, 4, 50–54, 66–67, 87–99, 124, 157n4 Affectos Humanos (Hoyer), 20 Afternoon of a Faun (Nijinsky), 116 Alexandrinsky Theatre, 132 Aloff, Mindy, 156n5 American ballet, xv, 7, 25, 27–28, 110, 119, 153n6 Archer, Kenneth, 4, 6, 127, 129, 152n5 Arensky, Anton, 134 Ashton, Frederick, 26 Avant-garde movement, 9, 109, 116, 117, 118 Balanchine, George, 2, 88; adjusting his own ballets, 21, 27–29, 35, 53, 68–69, 154n9, 154n12; angularity, 102, 109, 157n3; and Ballets Russes, 3–4, 15, 105, 109, 130, 157n2; biography, 1–10, 39, 54–55, 106, 119, 156n6; classical dance, use of, 38–39, 45, 64, 73–74, 81–83, 114–15; connecting to

audience, 48–49, 69, 75; and Diaghilev, 3, 7, 9–10, 28, 108–9, 157n2; eroticism in work of, 94–95, 97, 98–99, 123, 156n14; experimentation with abstract ballet, 82–83, 109–11; experimentation with acrobatics, 4, 50–54, 66–67, 87–99, 112–13, 124; experimentation with body contact, 89, 91–93, 97, 114; experimentation with costumes, 88–89, 93, 96–97, 113–14; experimentation with parallel positions, 69–70, 73, 79, 114–15; experimentation with three-dimensionality, 50–54, 75, 109, 115–19, 133, 154n10; “From Petipa, through Fokine to Balanchivadze: The Evolution of Ballet,” 8, 39; hope in ballets of, 58–59, 81–82, 102; and Ivanova, 15–16, 70–71, 93, 101–2, 127–29, 156n12; and Lopukhov, 54–55, 94, 111, 134–35; at Mariinsky, 3, 68, 81, 87, 93, 111; legacy of, xi–xvi, 1, 10–12, 29, 119, 152n1; muses, 15–16, 65–67, 70, 155n4; musicality, xiii, 54–56, 78–80, 99, 111–12, 155n2; pantomime, lack of, xiv, 83, 97–98, 137; sources on, 10–16, 105; and Soviet Dancers, 7, 93, 102, 151n7, 156n8, 157n2; as student, 1, 8, 50, 96–99, 116; and Volynsky, 14; and Young Ballet, 1–3, 40, 43, 105–6, 111, 157n2. See also Balanchine, George, works of Balanchine, George, works of —Agon, xii, xv, 110

· 167

168 · Index —Apollo (Apollon Musagète), 4, 6, 8, 17, 128, 155n4; angularity, 102, 109; bourrées, 79, 114; Calliope, 116, 155n4; changes in, 21, 27–28, 35–36, 78, 151n3; costumes, 44; group dances, 73, 115, 156n10; name, 151n3; Polyhymnia, xiv–xv, 21, 116; role of in development of ballet, 10, 64; similarity to other ballets, 24, 37, 44, 52, 84–86, 90, 114; Terpsichore, xiv, 78–79, 90, 112, 114, 116; three-dimensionality, 38, 52–53, 116, 117, 118 —Bal, Le, 6, 16, 71 —Caesar and Cleopatra, 135 —Chatte, La, 7, 17, 85–86, 115; Constructivism in, 50, 53–54, 118, 154n7; cortège, 53, 113, 118; costumes, 44; reconstruction of, 6, 16, 28 —Concerto Barocco, xiii —Coq d’Or, Le, 135 —Cotillon, Le, 16, 24 —Duo Concertant, 72 —Dreams, 154n12 —Enigma, 17, 29, 81, 99, 110, 134–35; acrobatics, 66, 67, 87–88, 93–94, 146; costumes, 39, 66, 87, 113; similarities to Étude, 87, 138, 139, 156n8 —Errante, 71 —Étude, 17, 29, 93, 99, 110, 138; acrobatics, 66, 87–90, 88, 114, 146; costumes, 39, 66, 81, 87–89, 88, 113–14; similarities to Enigma, 87, 113–14, 138, 139, 156n8 —Eugene the Unfortunate, 4, 5, 135–36 —Four Temperaments, The, xiii, 110 —Funeral March (Marche Funèbre), 130–33, 141–49; aisles, importance of, 48–54, 63, 65, 67–68, 75, 103–4; audiences moved by, xv, 3, 25, 42, 52, 74–76; casting, of original, xiv, 15, 29, 65–67, 130; casting, of envisioning, xv–xvi, 65–67, 79; La Chatte, compared to, 44, 53–54, 85–86, 113, 115, 118; and Constructivism, 50–54, 75, 109, 117–18, 133, 154n10; costumes, 42–45, 43, 89, 113, 130–33, 154nn2–3; Deceased, envisioning of, 52–53, 65–68, 86–99, 104, 141–49; ensemble and length, 1, 3, 8, 40,

48, 81; envisioning on Grand Rapids Ballet, xi–xvi, 6, 12, 64–108, 141–49; envisioning in student workshops, 10–12, 38–46, 54, 59–64; experimentation in, 1, 4, 8, 45–48, 54, 117–18; final Tragic section, 59, 96, 101, 103–104, 132, 154n1; first performance, 1, 3, 40, 42, 73, 76, 130–33; first Tragic section, 41–49, 56–59, 61–63, 67–77, 101, 103–4; Funeral cortège, 48–56, 61–63, 67–73, 75–76, 117–18, 132, 141–49; Funeral cortège, images of, 57, 76; images of, 43; images of envisioning, 74, 76, 80, 91, 95; middle Lyric section, 32, 45, 57–59, 77–103, 111–12, 154n1; music, 54–63, 68, 77–80, 101, 103; naming, 151n3, 154n1; pantomime for “death,” 46, 73, 74–75; parallel positions, 45–46, 69–70, 73, 79, 114–15, 132; as predecessor to later ballets, 4, 8, 37, 86, 108–19; Revolution, in context of, 1, 71, 75, 82; similarity to Goleizovsky, 51–52; similarity to Valse Triste, 49, 70–73, 79, 101, 114; sources for, 6–7, 11–18, 20, 41–46, 155n6; spotlight, 48–49, 57, 72–73, 76, 132–33, 141–49; stage, importance of, 41–42, 45–54, 62–65, 68–69, 75, 81, 115–17 —Grotesque Espagnol, 7 —Jewels, 8, 109, 110, 111 —Mozartiana, xii, 154 —Nuit, La (Night/Romance), 1, 17, 29, 87, 110, 121–24; acrobatics, 50, 97, 98, 112, 147; controversy, 96–99 —Orientalia, 129 —Perséphone, 154n5 —Poème, 17, 29, 125–26 —Prodigal Son, 17, 24, 67, 102, 155n4, 156n14; Constructivism, 38, 52, 53, 118, 154n10; costumes, 44; earlier works as predecessors of, 37, 109, 114–15, 118, 157n4 —Romanesque, 7 —Sarcasm, 7 —Serenade, xiii, 64, 71, 89, 110, 154n12; and Funeral March, 37, 84, 86; and Funeral March cortège, 53–54, 59, 104, 112–13, 118 —Song of the Nightingale, 16, 17, 105, 115; first full-length ballet, 3–4, 100, 110; and

Index · 169 Markova, 153n7, 157n3; rechoreographing of original, 22 —Sonnambula, La, 128 —Spanish Dance, 140 —Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, xiii, xiv, xv —Twelve, The, 1, 39, 48, 100, 131, 136–37 —Valse, La, 53, 154n11 —Valse Caprice, 96 —Valse Triste, 79, 99, 110, 127–29, 153n14; and Ivanova, 29, 70–73, 72, 101, 113–14, 127–29; Mikhailov’s description of, 14, 24, 41, 128; reconstruction of, 4, 6, 14, 16–17, 24, 40–41; spotlight use, 49, 72 —Waltz and Adagio, 45, 91, 92, 126–27 —Who Cares?, xiii Balashov (dancer), 130 Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 7, 32. See also Ballets Russes Ballets Russes, 4, 15, 97, 105, 157n2; Apollo, 27, 154n9; La Chatte, 50, 53; Enigma, 93, 134; Étude, 138; Funeral March, 3, 130; influence on Balanchine’s work, 109, 116; The Song of the Nightingale, 100; Les Sylphides, 111, 156n4. See also Diaghilev, Serge Barker, Patricia: Artistic Director, 6, 65, 151n5; input on “Envisioning Marche Funèbre,” 53, 67, 79, 80, 84, 86; répétiteur, 21, 29, 65 Baroque era dance, 33 Bayadère, La (Petipa), 45, 100 Benesh notation, 33 Blok, Alexander, 48, 136, 137 Bolshoi Ballet, 23 Boston Ballet School, xiii British ballet, 30 Bruni, Tatiana, 25, 48, 49, 67, 132 Carnaval (Fokine), 50, 114 Cecchetti, Enrico, 82 Chopin, Frédéric, 55–56, 75, 111, 130–32, 137, 141 Cineselli Circus, 131, 136 Circus, influence on ballet of, 3, 52–54, 66–67, 90, 112, 132. See also Acrobatics

Cold War, 153n10, 156n16 Constructivism: in La Chatte, 50, 53–54, 118, 154n7; influence on Balanchine, 50–54, 75, 109, 117, 133, 154n10; and Goleizovsky, 50–52; in Magnanimous Cuckold, 50, 52, 154n7 Cook, Bart, xiii Coppélia, 23 Coralli, Jean, 23, 30 Crommelynk, Fernand, 50 Cui, César, 129 Dance history, 6, 10, 18–19, 33–41, 104, 112. See also Dance reconstruction; Kinesthetic history Dance reconstruction, xi–xiii, 4–7, 12, 16–37, 75–77, 104 Dance Symphony: Magnificence of the Universe (Lopukhov), 31, 40, 55, 93, 110–11, 153n12, 154n6 Danilova, Alexandra: accounts by, 13, 15, 24, 41, 153n1, 155n10; on Apollo, 35, 73, 78, 112; on Balanchine, 50–51, 114; Balanchine muse, 15, 16, 65–66, 86; on ballet dancers, 22–23, 26–27, 35–36, 153n6; on ballet revivals, 23, 26–27, 28, 32, 35–36; in Ballets Russes, 7, 28; biography, 7–9, 15, 40, 105–6, 152n8; and La Chatte, 28; on Funeral March, 52, 67, 78, 132–33; as Funeral March Angel, xv, 29, 57–59, 65, 77–79, 101, 130; on Funeral March costumes, 43–44, 78, 113, 131; on Geva, 66; on Ivanova, 71; and Lopukhov, 9, 32, 55, 153n6; on La Nuit, 97–98, 122–24; in Poème, 125–26; in Soviet Dancers, 15; in Valse Triste, 127; in Waltz and Adagio, 126; in Young Ballet, 15, 39–40, 105, 155n8 Debussy, Claude, 51 Detroit Opera House, 108 Diaghilev, Serge, 7, 9, 17, 21, 28, 157n2; opinion of Balanchine, 3, 7, 108–9, 114; Soviet Dancers’ auditions for, 3, 87, 134, 138. See also Ballets Russes Dimitriev, Vladimir, 44, 130, 131 Donon Restaurant, 93, 125, 134

170 · Index Doubrovska, Felia, 28, 155n4 Drambalet, 99, 110, 156n16 Dryja, Dawnell, 65, 67, 79 Duato, Nacho, xii Dudko, Mikhail, 125 Duma Auditorium (St. Petersburg), 9, 13, 49, 54, 62, 87; audience, 73; circular stage for Funeral March, 41, 46–49, 62, 68–69, 117, 137; Funeral March at, 1, 3, 7, 40, 87, 130; La Nuit, 122; poster, 48, 106; stairs, 49, 65, 68, 75; The Twelve, 136, 137; Waltz and Adagio, 126 Duncan, Isadora, 29, 71, 89, 93, 129, 134 Dying Swan (Fokine), 101, 115; Mlodinskaya choreography, 139, 157n19 Efimov, Nicholas, 7, 70, 105–6, 130, 156n12 “Envisioning Marche Funèbre” (Kattner), 57, 132, 133, 141–149 Erbshtein, Boris, 44, 130, 131 Ethnographic Theatre, 48 Faber (dancer), 139 Farrell, Suzanne, xii, 35 Faun (Goleizovsky), 51–52, 117, 118 Fibich, Zdeněk, 125 Fille mal gardée, La, 33, 85 Firebird, 89 Fokine, Michael, 8, 93, 118, 156n6; Carnaval, 50, 114; Dying Swan, 101, 115; Firebird, 89; Les Sylphides, 55–56, 82, 85, 110, 111, 156n4 Forsythe, William, 33 Frame, Peter, xii Free University Berlin, 46, 64 Fugate, Judith, xiii Gabo, Naum, 50, 52 George Balanchine Foundation, 12 George Balanchine Trust, xi, 11, 41 Geva, Tamara: accounts by, 13–15, 24, 41, 133, 152n10, 153n1; on Balanchine, 39, 46, 97, 155n7; Balanchine muse, 15–16, 65–67; biography, 7, 15, 65–67, 105–6, 116–17, 155n5; in Enigma, 93–94, 134–35, 156n8; in Étude, 87–90, 88, 113–14, 138, 156n8; on

Eugene the Unfortunate, 136; in Funeral March, xiv, 29, 49, 57, 65–67, 86, 130; on Funeral March, 52, 56–59, 61–62, 78, 81–84, 131–33, 155n6; on Ivanova, 70–71; in La Nuit, 96–98, 122–23; in Orientalia, 129; in Soviet Dancers, 7, 29, 93, 96, 156n8; on The Twelve, 48, 136–37; in Valse Triste, 29, 127–28; in Young Ballet, 40, 66, 105–6, 114, 139 Giselle, 82; authorship, 23, 30, 33; “Dance of the Wilis,” 58, 83, 84 Golden Age, The (Shostakovich), 44 Goleizovsky, Kasyan, 3, 14, 38, 96–97, 110; Faun, 51–52, 117–18; influence on Balanchine, 43, 50–52, 114, 117–18, 156n6; positions, 38, 70, 154n13 Gorsky, Alexander, 23, 30 Grand Rapids Ballet, xiii, xv; Artistic Director, 6, 65, 151n5; ballet technique of dancers, 10, 65, 67, 86; Funeral March performance, 74, 76, 80, 91, 95; Peter Martin Wege Theatre, 65, 69, 74, 75; setting Funeral March on the dancers of, xi, 6, 10, 12, 84, 103. See also Barker, Patricia; Dryja, Dawnell; Houser, Steven; Isaacson, Cassidy; Oba, Yuka; Ritschl, Michaelina; Young, Nathan Gusev, Peter, 13, 67, 105, 106, 155n2; in Funeral March, 55, 111, 130, 131; in La Nuit, 87, 96, 97, 98–99, 121–22, 124; recollections of Balanchine, 39, 55–56, 82, 94, 134–35; in Waltz and Adagio, 45, 91–93, 92, 126–27 Halutras, 153n1 Harlequinade, 153n16 Hendl, Susan, xii Hodson, Millicent, 4–6, 127, 129, 152n5 Horgan, Barbara, 79 Houser, Steven, 67, 90–91, 91, 94–96, 99 Hoyer, Dora, 20 Hynd, Ronald, xii Ice Maiden (Lopukhov), 105 Imperial Theatre School (St. Petersburg), 9, 70, 105, 122–23; acrobatics, 50, 65, 98,

Index · 171 112, 123–24; Balanchine at, 1, 111–12, 116, 151n1; Balanchine controversy at, 96, 98–99, 121–24; evening program, 65, 66; formation of the Young Ballet, 40; name, 153n13; student performances, 85, 106, 107, 121, 125, 126; training, 23, 27, 62, 65–66, 98–99; and Vaganova, 73, 155n8. See also Vaganova Ballet Academy Institute of the Living Word, 13, 132 Isaacson, Cassidy, 67–68, 90–91, 91, 94–96, 99, 104 Ivanov, Lev, 31, 32, 45, 115 Ivanova, Lydia, 4, 14, 24, 29, 70, 156n12; Balanchine muse, 15, 16, 65–66, 70, 155n4; death, 7, 15, 16, 70–71, 102; Enigma, 93, 113, 134–35; Spring, 140; in Valse Triste, 70–73, 72, 101, 113–14, 127–29, 151n4; in Young Ballet, 40 Jesionowski, Irina, 14 Jonutz, Thayer, 63, 86 Judith (Lopukhov), 94, 135 Kattner, Elizabeth, xi, xiii Khatchaturian, Aram, 110 Kinesthetic history, 6–7, 10, 17, 19, 41 Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (Gabo), 50, 52 “Kingdom of the Shades.” See Bayadère, La (Petipa) Kirov Theatre, 151n2. See also Mariinsky Theatre Kirstein, Lincoln, 119 Knox, Kerro, III, 72 Kochno, Boris, 156n8 Koerner, Christa, 44, 133 Kostrovitskaya, Vera, 130, 139, 155n8, 157n2; accounts by, 13–15, 35, 41, 87, 139; on acrobatics, 53; on costumes, 42, 44, 96; on Funeral March, 54, 73, 130–33, 154n1; on Funeral March final section, 49, 59, 67, 101, 103; on Funeral March first section, 45, 51, 52, 56, 61–63, 69; Funeral March image of, 43, 45, 56, 61, 82, 132; on Funeral March middle section, 45, 57–59, 77–78,

79, 81–85; on La Nuit, 98, 99, 122–24; on Poème, 125–26; on The Twelve, 137; and Young Ballet, 13, 105–6 Krasovskaya, Vera, 109, 125, 154n4, 154n6 Labanotation, 33 Laletin, Sergei, 105, 106 Leland, Sara, xii Lenin, Vladimir, 151n1 Leningrad. See Petrograd Lepeshinskaya, Olga, 110 Levenkov, Oleg, 15, 133 Lifar, Serge, 7, 106 Linke, Susanne, 20 Lisovskaya (dancer), 139 Little Humpbacked Horse, The, 153n16 Lopukhov, Fyodor, 9, 94, 105, 112, 134–35, 153n6; Dance Symphony, 31, 40, 54–55, 93, 110–11, 153n12, 154n6; Firebird, 89; restoration work, 3, 31–32, 110 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 2 Madame Sokolova (ballet teacher), 66 Magnanimous Cuckold (Crommelynk), 50, 52, 53, 154n7 Maly Opera Theatre (St. Petersburg), 3, 5, 110, 135 Mariinsky Theatre (Academic Theatre), 70, 71, 73, 113, 156n6; audience, 74, 94; Balanchine at, 3, 81–83, 87, 111, 117; Balanchine departing from tradition of, 93–94, 96, 98, 114, 122–23; Enigma performance, 93–94, 134; name, 151n2; repertory, 3, 8, 31–32, 83, 85, 153n11; stage, 49, 62, 68, 72; Les Sylphides performance, 111, 156n4; and Young Ballet, 1, 3, 9, 40, 93, 105. See also Academic Theatres (Russia) Markova, Alicia, 24, 28, 85, 86, 153n7, 157n3 Massine, Léonide, 16, 22 Matijas-Mecca, Christian, 78, 155n2 Matisse, Henri, 22 Mazikova (dancer), 139 McBride, Patricia, xii, xiv Medtneriana (Goleizovsky), 43, 51

172 · Index Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 48, 50, 53, 133, 154n6, 154n8 Mikhailov, Mikhail Mikhailovich, 35, 70, 131, 153n1, 154n2, 155n2; Elegy, 139; Spanish Dance, 140; Valse Triste description, 24, 41, 128–29; and Young Ballet, 14, 106, 131, 157n2 Mlodzinskaya, Nina, 106, 129, 139, 157n19, 157n2 Morris, Mark, xii Moscow Chamber Ballet, 43, 50. See also Goleizovsky, Kasyan Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 37 Mungalova, Olga, 13, 39, 89, 94, 155n2; in Funeral March, xiv, 29, 66–67, 86, 130, 155n6; in La Nuit, 50, 87, 96–99, 121–24; in Waltz and Adagio, 45, 91–93, 92, 126–27; and Young Ballet, 105, 106, 157n2 Navarro, Adrian, 46 New York City Ballet, xii, xiv, 8, 11, 23, 27–28, 110 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 16, 22, 24, 25, 116–17, 152n5 Nikitina, Alicia, 28 Nutcracker, The, 32, 108 Oakland University, 44, 63, 69, 72, 152n5 Oba, Yuka, xv–xvi, 79–81, 80, 83, 95, 112 One Flat Thing, reproduced (Forsythe), 33 Ostrozhsky, Konstantin, 9 Pacific Northwest Ballet, xi, xii, xiv Paquita, 32 Paris Opera Ballet, 7, 106 Pavlova, Anna, 7, 96, 101 Perrot, Jules, 23, 30 Peter Martin Wege Theatre, 65, 69, 74, 75 Petipa, Marius, 8, 33, 39, 65, 100; Balanchine and tradition of, 45, 97, 100, 115–19, 123; revivals by, 23, 30; (re)production of his ballets, 19–20, 23, 26–27, 31–32 Petrograd, 1, 40, 49, 75, 105, 151n1, 153n1 Petrograd Conservatory, 54, 111 Petrograd Soviet, 49 Pevsner, Anton, 50

Picasso, Pablo, 34, 37 Popova, Lyubov, 50, 52 Rambert, Maria, 24 Ratmansky, Alexei, 23 Raymonda, 153n16 Reynolds, Nancy, 79 Rite of Spring, The (Nijinsky), 16, 22, 24–25, 152n5 Ritschl, Michaelina, 74 Roerich, Nicholas, 22 Romantic style, 22, 82, 85, 118 Romeo and Juliet, 110, 156n16 Rome Opera Ballet, 6 Royal Ballet, 26, 33 Royal Ballet School, 27 Royal New Zealand Ballet, 151n5 Rubinstein, Anton: Night, 98, 121–22; Op. 118, 96; Romance, 96 Russell, Francia, xi–xii, xiii Russian ballet. See Soviet Ballet Russian Civil War, 8–9. See also Russian Revolution Russian folk dance, influence on ballet of, 3, 48, 112, 137 Russian Revolution, 10, 32, 40, 116; ballet after, 2–3, 9, 27, 31; disruption after, 1–3, 8–9, 56, 71, 75, 105; innovation after, 1–3, 39, 66 Salomé (Goleizovsky), 51 School of American Ballet, 7, 11, 27, 28 Schultz, Nicholas, 67 Scriabin, Alexander, 87, 108, 138 Sergeyev, Nicholas, 32 Sert, Misa, 87 Sestroretsk, 127 Shakespeare, William, 26 Sibelius, Jean, 71, 127 Silent film, 128 Sixth Symphony (Tchaikovsky), 129 Slavianinov, Rostislav, 129 Sleeping Beauty, The, 7, 31, 151n6, 153n16 Slonimsky, Yuri, 44, 106, 155n3, 156n15; accounts by, 4, 6, 10, 12–16, 41, 129; on

Index · 173 acrobatics, 52–53, 67; on Eugene the Unfortunate, 135; on Funeral March, 25, 44, 49, 69, 75, 130–33; on Ivanova, 70; on La Nuit, 98–99, 124; on Orientalia, 130; on Valse Triste, 127, 129, 153n14; on Young Ballet, 55 Slovak National Ballet, xiii, xv Sofranko, James, 151n5 Soviet ballet, 32, 99, 110–11, 153n10, 154n4, 156n16; experimentation in, 3, 90, 109; role of Young Ballet in, 7, 14, 93, 99, 105–6 Soviet Dancers, 7, 15–16, 70, 102, 105, 157n2; for Diaghilev audition, 87, 156n8; Enigma, 87, 93, 134; Eugene the Unfortunate, 136; name, 151n7; La Nuit, 96, 122; Valse Triste, 29 Soviet Realism, 2 Spartacus, 90, 110, 156n16 Spessivtseva, Olga, 28 Stalin, Joseph, 75 Stepanov notation, 32 Stowell, Kent, xi St. Petersburg. See Petrograd Stravinsky, Igor, xii, 22, 67, 109, 154n5, 157n4 Stravinsky Violin Concerto, xii, 67, 157n4 Stukolkina, Nina: Funeral March, 42, 43, 100, 130, 137; position in Funeral March, 45–46, 53, 58–59, 73, 82–83, 86, 132; Spanish Dance, 140; The Twelve, 100, 137; and Young Ballet, 106, 157n2 Swan Lake, 26, 45, 100, 123, 153n11 Sylphides, Les (Chopiniana) (Fokine), 55–56, 82, 85, 110, 111, 156n4 Synchronous Objects (Forsythe), 33 Tallchief, Maria, 79 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, 129 Tcherepnin, Alexandre, 41, 128, 129 Teatr, 55

Tetley, Glen, xii Toller, Ernst, 4, 5, 135, 136 Ulrich, Maximilian, 141 University of Michigan, 78 Vaganova, Agrippa, 73, 133, 155n8 Vaganova Ballet Academy, 14, 27, 29, 127, 153n13. See also Imperial Theatre School (St. Petersburg) Verdy, Violette, xii, xiv, 79 Villella, Edward, 64, 79, 102 Volynsky, Akim, 14, 152n11 Von Aroldingen, Karin, xii Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, Vsevolod, 13, 46, 48, 136, 137 Wagner, Richard, 97 Wigman, Mary, 29 World War I, 75, 116, 151n1 World War II, 75, 105 Yakobson, Leonid, 90 Young Ballet, 2, 39, 43, 47, 129, 139–40; costumes, 71, 113; and Duma Auditorium, 1–3, 13–14, 40, 48, 73, 106; Dying Swan, 139, 157n19; Ecstase, 139; Elegy, 139; Flight, 139; Flight of the Bumblebee, 139; formation of, 1–3, 25, 40, 111, 155n3; and Funeral March, 1–3, 40, 113, 130–33; and Geva, 15, 65–66, 114; Idyll, 139; Kostrovitskaya account of, 13, 87, 106; legacy, 29, 37, 105–6; and Lopukhov, 40, 55, 93; Mikhailov’s account of, 14; La Nuit, 96; as Soviet Dancers, 7, 15, 157n2; Spanish Dance, 140; Spring, 140; The Twelve, 136; and Vaganova, 155n8 Zheverzheyev, Levko, 66, 116, 117

Elizabeth Kattner is associate professor of dance at Oakland University, Rochester, MI. She has published in Ballet Review, Dance Research Journal, Journal of Dance Education, and in the program notes for the State Ballet Berlin and the Grand Rapids Ballet. She serves on the editorial board of Dance Education in Practice. Kattner is also an active choreographer.