Bringing Fokine to Light

Author(s): Karen Nelson

Source: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 3-12
Published by: Congress on Research in Dance
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1478716
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Bringing

Fokine

to

Light

KarenNelson

While valuing freedom of movement as the sine qua non for

making dance expressive, his overriding goal, Michel Fokine
nonetheless maintained that a dance could be beautiful only
if it followed "the rigid laws that govern the creation of one of
Shakespeare's sonnets." As far as Fokine was concerned, setting dances was "all pure brain work, extracting and using
the magical harmonies and rhythms that lie hidden in nature."' The "natural law" of choreography that Fokine postulated had as its main precepts principles governing rhythm
and plasticity. This paper discusses Fokine's dance aesthetic,
its validity, and the degree to which his aesthetic was actually
realized in his work. A context for this discussion is provided
in the form of a recapitulation of the principal facts of Fokine's
career and of related aspects of the careers of his forerunners.
The materials with specific reference to Fokine available for
study include current versions of a few of his ballets, films of a
somewhat larger number, critical responses to his work, recollections of people who came into contact with him or his
work, and his own statements and writings.
In the course of this review of Fokine's professional life, two
main points are developed. First, Fokine deserves more attention than he gets. Until fairly recently, the Baltimore Sun
liked to refer to its home base as the largest unknown city in
the United States. In the recent annals of ballet, Fokine is the
most important unknown choreographer. Yet to acknowledge
Fokine's eminence is not to concede quite the degree of iconoclasm and groundbreaking Fokine himself claimed for his
work, nor the degree of universality he claimed for his aesthetic principles. The reforms for which Fokine is famous entailed
the sort of reaffirmation of the indispensability of committed
artistry which has recurred periodically over the years. He
was struggling against the tendency of dance production to
become routine, overrefined, and beholden to conventional
tastes. Fokine was not the first individual to take a stand on
these matters, but the existence of precursors does not diminish
the importance in his own time of Fokine's efforts at renewal.
He promoted the fundamental and timeless aesthetic value of
expressiveness.2 On the other hand, the fugitive nature of Fokine's choreographic prescriptions, in general, and of most of
his ballets, in particular, indicates that he was overreaching
when he claimed universal applicability for his own particular
preferences in movement quality and characterization.
The second point is that, at the very least, recognition of
authorial privilege requires that Fokine's work be judged
using standards appropriate to the particular genres in which
he worked. Speaking generally, Fokine was drawn to the

romantic school of ballet, both for its tendency to stylization

of classical steps and poses in order to enhance their expressiveness, and for its dramaticism, requiring dancers to project
roles rather than their own personalities (or some more or less
neutral persona). Fokine was bent on displacing a regime
represented by a repertory of full-length works composed in
Petipa's formal style and interpreted by ballerinas who tended
to view such works as personal showcases. Speaking more
specifically, one genre Fokine especially favored was that
drawing on fairy (or folk) tales.3 Several of his ballets in this
genre are central to his oeuvre, but are easily undervalued
because they have an inherent air of naivete and oldfashionedness.
A folkish ballet, such as Scheherazade, Petrouchka, or The
Firebird, is marked by an atmosphere that is a deliberate
blend of fantasy and reality (a characteristic of romanticism)
and by characters who are types. Although this genre is not
much in favor today, it is a legitimate approach to narrative
ballet, one which can embody complex psychological qualities and relationships, as evidenced by the duality of the
major roles in the fairytale ballets Fokine choreographed. In
the words of the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, "Fairy tales
describe states of the mind by means of images and actions."4
Thus they are especially suited to choreographic treatment.
Still, today's audiences find a fairytale ballet difficult to take
seriously unless the piece is one from the canon of nineteenthcentury classics, such as The Sleeping Beauty, or is given special dispensation as a signature work, such as, in Fokine's
case, The Firebird. Just as "some moderns reject fairy tales
because they apply to this literature standards which are
totally inappropriate,"5 latter-day evaluations of Fokine's
works often fault him for failing to do things he neither cared
nor intended to do. Although analogies to literature can be
carried only so far, Alastair Fowler's observations that "each
age has a fairly small repertoire of genres that its readers and
critics can respond to with enthusiasm" and that "it is not
works that are said to age or evolve, but their genre" may
help clarify the point being made here concerning Fokine's
reputation.6
In addition to the constraints imposed by today's sensibilities, there are technical considerations that make Fokine's
choreography hard to keep in the repertory. His work depends
on careful attention to detail and atmosphere, both of which
blur with time unless performers receive careful coaching.
The difficulty of dance conservation in the choreographer's
absence varies. In the case of Fokine's ballets, much of the
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16/2 (Fall1984)

substance is lost if only combinationsof steps are taught to

new casts, something that is much less of a problem with a
choreographerin the Petipa tradition. Furthermore,whereas
some ballets, notablyPetipa's,have survivedall sortsof interpolations, to interpolatein Fokine is to obliterate. Forestalling erosion of his work was made especially difficult for Fokine by the fact that for the better part of 20 yearshe had only
a changing groupof studentsto use in maintaininghis ballets.
Fokine'sCareer
Fokine'sprofessionalcareerbegan in 1898 when he graduated
at the age of eighteen from the St. PetersburgImperialBallet
School into the Maryinskycompany. In his memoirs he describesthe growingalienationhe felt duringhis firstfew years
of service at the Maryinsky.The repertoryand performances
of the ballet companyseemedinartisticto him. He considered
resigning,but decided againstit and instead occupied himself
with painting, visiting museums, and experimentingwith the
students he had begun teaching in 1902.7 The first public
presentation of his choreography was Acis and Galatea in
1905. The costumesand movementsof this piece hinted at the
departuresfrom academicismFokine would adopt more fully
in a few years.8In particular,he sought to capturein Acis and
Galateasome of the expressivenesshe associatedwith the plastique of figures on Greekvases. Over the next few years, Fokine continuedto feel his way as a choreographerin pieces he
made for student and charityperformances.His 1907 production of Eunice for a benefit was the first instance in which he
was able to present his vision of antiquity in unadulterated
form: The costumeswere in the Greekstyle (except bare legs
were not allowed), none of the dancerswere on pointe, and
the dances for the corps were at the same level of importance
as the soloists'parts. One of the Maryinsky'sdancers, Tamara
Karsavina, recalled Eunice as "a compromise between our
traditionand the Hellenic revivalembodiedby Isadora[Duncan]."9Within a few months, two of Fokine's major ballets
had their premiereson the Imperial stage itself: Le Pavilion
d'Armidein November, 1907 and the second version of Chopiniana, later known in the West as Les Sylphides,in March,
1908.
Fokine'sinnovativework markedhim as the obvious choice
to serve as company ballet masterwhen Diaghilev was ready
to include ballet in his Russianseasonsin Paris.AlthoughDiaghilev occasionallyoffered his audiences items from the classical repertory,for the most part he was resolved to present
progressivechoreography.Fokine'sinitial contact with Diaghilev'scircle was his work on Le Paviliond'Armidewith that
ballet's librettist and designer, the artist AlexanderBenois.
Benois'slibretto, although actually based on Theopile Gautier's tale "Omphale,"was inspired by his infatuation with
Frenchbaroqueand rococo art of the eighteenth century and
with the tales of Hoffmann."?
Accordingto Karsavina,"It was
an essentialfeature of Benois that he not merely reconstituted an epoch, but investedit with weird irresistiblepower over
one's imagination."" Later she adds, "His masteryof blending fantastic with real was the more wonderful because he
effected his magic by the simplest means."'2 Nicholas Legat,

who might otherwisehave been chosen to do Armide because

he was seniorto Fokine at the Maryinsky,was unable to handle such a departurefrom Petipa'smore benign or, one might
say, classical style of choreographingfairytales.'4Peter Lieven, a close observerof Russianballet at the time, contends
that Benoisoutshone Fokine in developing the dramatic side
of the ballets on which they worked together."s On the other
hand, Fokine found that Benois's ideals for music, mime, and
dance were entirely traditional, so Armide involved some
4

Dance ResearchJournal

compromises with Fokine's aesthetic principles, in particular

the inclusion of passages of pure mime-instead of mime integrated with dancing-at the beginning and end.'1
During the years 1909-1912 Fokine was working both in
the West with Diaghilev and in St. Petersburg. Fokine was so
committed to his view of a company's choreographer as its de
facto director that he could not recognize the pivotal position
of Diaghilev in the Ballets Russes. Fokine, in fact, felt that he
had created Diaghilev's company, saying that Diaghilev's
only creative "contribution" was making cuts in scores, and
that Diaghilev's artistic policy was unduly responsive to considerations of expediency."7 According to Fokine, he refused
to let Diaghilev interfere with his choreography aside from
making occasional editorial changes.' In 1912, when Nijinsky
was staging The Afternoon of a Faun, Fokine resigned from
the company rather than share the choreographic spotlight
and the prerogatives of ballet master. The evidence we have
indicates that Diaghilev was content to see Fokine return to
St. Petersburg. At the time of this first departure from the
Ballets Russes, Fokine was only seven years into his career as a
choreographer and had another 30 years of work ahead of
him. Nevertheless, he had already created a third of his total
output of ballets and about half of what, in a final accounting seems important.'9 Fokine's second and final period of
service with Diaghilev took place during the brief interim in
1914 between Diaghilev's firing of Nijinsky in response to the
latter's marriage and the onset of World War I.
The related questions of who did what in the early years of
the Ballets Russes, and to what extent artistic principles governed what was done by whoever did it, involve such a tangle
of testimony by interested parties and such a profusion of
hearsay, that it is impossible to offer detailed answers with
any confidence today. In assessing the relative contributions
of Diaghilev and Fokine during the period they worked together, it is fair to say that major items in the early repertory
of the Ballets Russes were choreographed by Fokine with no
input from Diaghilev, that later works produced by Fokine
under the Diaghilev aegis bore the distinctive stamp of their
choreographer, and that once Diaghilev's support was no
longer available, Fokine's career lost momentum. Over twenty
years passed before he was again in a position to collaborate
with distinguished artists in what were-for ballet-reasonably secure institutional settings. Yet, to say, as some have,
that Fokine's gifts faded after his separation from the Diaghilev enterprise is misleading. Fokine was an aesthetic dogmatist who deliberately restricted himself to certain dance genres,
movement styles, and approaches to characterization. He remained in full command of his artistic faculties, but the choreographic front moved beyond him through the second and
third decades of this century. As a result, there was an increasing gap between the "modernism" Fokine professed and that
actually practiced by progressive choreographers. Fokine lost
currency.
Fokine returned to St. Petersburg at the end of 1914 and
worked at the Maryinsky until 1918. The Soviet historian
Natalia Roslavleva contends that he turned out nothing remarkable during this period, although he could take satisfaction in seeing that his efforts at reform had some impact on
the company's dancers and performances.20 Another Soviet
historian, Vera Krasovskaya, offers a different view of Fokine's wartime career. She points out some mitigating circumstances and identifies what seem to her to have been some real
successes.21 Fokine was back in the thick of Maryinsky politics, including in particular Mathilda Kschessinska's maneuvers to preserve her premiere position among the ballerinas.
Kschessinska was never able to master-or perhaps to accept

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-Fokine's plasticity and never understood what he had

against pauses for applause and demonstrations in the audience.22 Nonetheless, she supported his efforts in return for
choreographic concessions on his part. Aside from several
revitalizing choreographic contributions to operas, the successful ballets of this period included Iota Aragonesa and The
Sorcerer's Apprentice, both created in 1916, the first for the
Maryinsky and the second for a charity performance.
Krasovskaya reports that ]ota, set to Mikhail Glinka's score,
benefitted from Fokine's gifts for responding expressively to
music and for bringing folk color to a ballet without preciousness or fakery. He did not take Spanish steps and convert
them to something more nearly academic, but rather employed authentic Spanish movements (picked up when he and
his family traveled through Spain at the end of 1914) which
were reminiscent of academic steps. This was in line with Fokine's belief that national dances, because they were undistorted by concern for critics, directors, or the public, had a
fundamental aesthetic truth to them.23 As in Petrouchka
(1911), Fokine retained a hint of improvisation in the crowd
movements. Krasovskaya argues that what Chopiniana did
for "symphonic ballet" (her term), Jota did for folk ballet:
both compositions were exemplary for their synergistic union
of music and dance." The Sorcerer's Apprentice, though
shown only once in Russia, enjoyed successful revivals in the
United States and Buenos Aires.25
Fokine's first work in the United States was setting show
dances for Morris Gest in 1919 and 1920. According to the
New York Sun's reviewer, Fokine managed to transform the
chorus girls "from puppets into mainsprings,"" but it seems
the dances themselves were inconsequential. Fokine also occupied himself with concert tours in which he and his wife
Vera, herself a dancer, presented programs of evocative and
exotic dances (described as "unitone" in Musical America27).
In 1921 Fokine settled in New York for good, but until 1936,
when he joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, his career in
this country was an extended dry spell. Roslavleva reports
that during this time Fokine wanted to establish a company
which would compete with the Ballets Russes by contrasting
the Fokine version of progressive choreography with that
sponsored by Diaghilev. However, no one would back Fokine
for anything other than purely commercial ventures.2 Every
now and again there was a heartening moment in this period
before 1936, such as the occasion in 1934 when several thousand too many people showed up at the Lewisohn Stadium
for a program of Fokine's ballets.29
The Elves (1924) is an example for which we have a film
record of Fokine's work in the first period of his career in the
United States. The critic John Martin, reviewing the 1937
Ballet Russe revival, which is the subject of the film, said the
piece conveyed "strongly [Fokine's] romantic style, his ability
to turn a charming and inventive phrase and his dominant
sense of character and atmosphere."30 Another reviewer,
Robert Lawrence, wrote that the ballet represented "one of
Mr. Fokine's most successful attempts at the union of music
and movement."3' (The score was Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.) The film has
no sound track and the dancers are in practice clothes, so it
requires some imagination to appreciate the relation of the
movement to the score and to conjure up the sylvan atmosphere of the piece. What the film does make apparent is Fokine's concern with occupying the entire stage with dance and
with designing steps that appear natural for elves, however
challenging some of them would be for humans to execute.
There are big lifts and arabesques sautes, a variety of turns in
the air, cross-stage runs, and even elves occasionally at rest on

Michel Fokine: Self-portrait (From the estate of Lucile Marsh,

courtesy Dance Collection, The New York Public Library)
the ground. The overall impression is one of creatures whose
nervous energy propels them through the woods in fortuitous
symmetry. (Krasovskaya reports Fokine also "unexpectedly"
favored symmetrical designs in Jota Aragonesa. 32)
Fokine's career had a renascence beginning in 1936 when
two ballets made for Rene Blum's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo were premiered, L'Epreuve d'Amour in April, and Don
Juan in June. These were the first in a series of ballets, extending to within a year of Fokine's death, that received approving notices from many of the critics who reviewed them. In
1937 Fokine made a new hour-long ballet version of Le Coq
d'Or for the Ballet Russe, now managed by Colonel W. de
Basil. (Diaghilev had sponsored Fokine's staging of Le Coq
d'Or as an opera-ballet in 1914.) The next year Fokine produced Cendrillon for de Basil, whose company, for legal reasons, had been rechristened the Educational Ballet. In 1939
came Paganini, also for the Educational Ballet. Although
the critics disagreed as to the quality of these works, they concurred in their description of the approach Fokine employed.
He continued to favor dance-drama, including the fairytale
genre. His dancers all had specific roles and their movements
were specifically designed to project those roles. A sample of
Fokine's choreography from this period can be seen in a 1946
film which excerpts the Florentine Maiden's dance from Paganini. Fokine's choreography places a considerable burden on
its interpreter because the steps themselves are essentially
simple: largely chaine turns and bourrees accompanied by a
certain abandon in the upper body and arms to convey the
Maiden's ecstasy.33
In 1939 Fokine reached an agreement with Ballet Theatre
to restage some of his existing works and to choreograph new
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16/2 (Fall11984) 5

ones. The first new ballet was Bluebeard (1941). This was followed by Fokine's last completed ballet, Russian Soldier
(1942). Helen of Troy (1942) was the final ballet on which
Fokine worked; however, Fokine died before he could complete the choreography, so the staged version is credited to
David Lichine.
Forerunners
The reforms Fokine outlined in 1914 in his widely-cited letter
to the London Times34 were most directly aimed at the production values of Marius Petipa, who served as chief choreographer at the Maryinsky from 1869 to 1903 (having been appointed to the staff of balletmasters in 1862). Petipa composed
evening-length ballets whose style and structure varied little
from one to the next. Each piece, regardless of its subject, was
blocked out to include a predictable assortment of divertissements, mime scenes, and pas for soloists and principals in a
classical style that especially highlighted the ballerina's virtuosity. Fokine called such ballets "prefabricated."35 Petipa
used the dancers in the corps as an ensemble to achieve mass
geometric effects in their own dances and to provide a variety
of decorative frames when the principal dancers were on
stage. Fokine objected to Petipa's inattention to the ostensible
content of his stories and to the ballerinas' habit of interpolating favorite variations into a ballet with no concern for maintaining a homogeneous style in the work or even for performing enchainements that fit the ballet's score. In addition, Fokine found the traditional mime inexpressive, the male dancers
underemployed, and the overall impression the ballets made
diffuse. On the other hand, he admired the wealth of imagination Petipa displayed in his invention of steps and poses.
For his part, Petipa was sufficiently impressed with Fokine's
gifts to favor the younger man as his successor.36
Junior to Petipa was Lev Ivanov, who served as second ballet master at the Maryinsky from 1885 until his death in 1901.
For Ivanov, dance was "the blossoming of the music," an attitude reflected in his careful linking of his choreography for a
ballet to its score.37 Ivanov is also noted for depending less
than Petipa on divertissements and for using the corps as a
more active element in the design of his ballets.38 All these
qualities of Ivanov's work have their correlates in Fokine's,
but Ivanov worked in a refined mode, while Fokine adopted
a degree of stylized abandon in much of his choreography.
For instance, Ivanov's version of the Polovetsian Dances was
cited by Alexander Shiryaev, who danced the Chief in 1890,
as a source Fokine failed to acknowledge when he choreographed his own version of the work in 1909. On the other
hand, Joan Lawson reports that Fokine, who had also appeared in Ivanov's production, was explicitly invited by Diaghilev to set choreography to Borodin's score that would be
less formal than Ivanov's and more in keeping with Nicholas
Roerich's impressionistic decor.39
In Moscow during the early years of this century, the innovative work at the Bolshoi was being done by Alexander Gorsky, whose choreography was influenced by the stage direction of Constantine Stanislavsky. Both these men aimed at
achieving dramatic truth by suiting the style of any particular
work to its subject. Their emphasis was on expressiveness, on
the use of authentic costumes, on individualizing both principal and ensemble roles, and on having the ensemble contribute importantly to the progress of the drama.40 For the sake of
elucidating plot and character, not to mention in the hope of
arousing audience interest, since the Bolshoi was playing to
many empty seats at the turn of the century, Gorsky introduced
new ports de bras and new foot positions. According to Kra6

Dance Research ournal

Rehearsalfor Prince Igor with Michel Fokine and Alexandra

Fedorova and her dancers, Riga, Latvia, February 5, 1929.
(Courtesy Dance Collection, The New York Public Library)
sovskaya, these changes were more an overlay of Duncanesque
plasticity than a fundamental alteration of movement quality. She argues that Fokine always embarked on new work
and developed corresponding new movement idioms, while
Gorsky made a habit of touching up Petipa's ballets with a
non-classical glaze.41 The choreographer Kasian Goleizovsky,
who was familiar with both Gorsky's and Fokine's work, said
Fokine was like an engraver building up an image from fine
details, while Gorsky created with "bright rich dabs."42 In
Krasovskaya's view, what this amounted to was that Gorsky's
works were less finished than Fokine's. On the other hand,
Lieven spoke for many when he suggested that much of Fokine's best work was produced when he was so rushed that he
could not spend time fussing over details.43 In any case, it is
apparent that Fokine and Gorsky had a number of parallel
ideas, including the view that the 1830's and 1840's were
exemplary years for ballet, but their specific styles and the
very itineraries of their careers were quite different (Gorsky
had little occasion to leave Moscow), so their paths of subsequent influence diverge.
There is no way of measuring the degree to which Isadora
Duncan's work may have influenced Fokine. It was always a
sore point with Fokine that Diaghilev promoted the view that
all of Fokine's best ideas had been borrowed from Duncan."
Fokine readily agreed that he admired Duncan's ideals of
natural and free movement of the whole body, and that he
shared her devotion to flowing plasticity in dance, but he insisted his work was different in important ways from hers.
According to Fokine, he, unlike Duncan, used more than one
style of movement (encouraged by the great variety of national dance traditions of which he was aware); he used stylized and complex movement when appropriate; he did not

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allow improvisation;and, although the two choreographers

used similarphrasingand timing, he designedhis dancescarefully to correspondto the score ratherthan presentinghis instinctive responseto the music, as he was under the impression Duncan often did.45Fokinewas convincedthat his work,
unlikeDuncan's,could only be handled by thoroughlytrained
dancers.Duncan, as aware as Fokineof the similarityof their
aestheticimpulses,in 1909 invited him to teach at her school,
an invitationhe says he declined only because he was already
undercontractto Diaghilev.46
In his 1914 letter to the Times, Fokine argued:
No artistcan tell to what extenthis workis the resultof the
influenceof othersand to what extent it is his own. I cannot, therefore,judge to what extent the influence of the
old traditionsis preservedin the new ballet [i.e., in his
ballet] and how much the new ideals of MissDuncan are
reflected in it.47

This is a defensible position, but the record should note that

Fokineappliedsomethingof a double standard, claiming, for
instance, that his choreographyfor the Venusberg scene of
Tannhaiuserhad anticipated the two-dimensional look of
Nijinsky'sAfternoonof a Faun.48Furthermore,Fokine's ardent rhetorictended to sound a more revolutionarynote than
his actual choreography.A statement of Benois'sis representative of an alternate view: Fokine was a "renovator,not by
any means a fanatical innovator. Fokine himself was far too
deeplyin love with what had helped to formulatehis aesthetic
consciousnessto wish to destroyit and createsomethingessentially his own and entirely original."49Finally, a number of
Fokine'smost respected ballets were made in collaboration
with other artistswhose contributionsdeserve more generous
recognitionthan Fokine sometimes gave them.
Aesthetics
Fokine'saestheticswere based on his belief in "naturallaws"
of dance, not to be confused with the canons of academic
dance, and on his agreementwith Leo Tolstoy that "the projection of feeling, the inoculation of the audience with it, is
... the very essence of pure art form."50Fokine's aesthetic
convictionsled him to produce a type of romantic choreographythat departedin importantways from the Petipa paradigm, while following rules of its own. Where Petipa extended his material to fill an evening's program with a single,
multi-actballet, Fokine, seekingto make a more focused impressionon his audience, worked with librettos concentrated
into single-act treatments of their subjects. So that the impressionmade on the audience should be distinctive and also
realisticin ways that were importantto him, Fokine required
that each ballet be composedin a consistentstyle: from beginning to end the choreography, music, and decor of a ballet
were all to correspondto its subjectand setting. With respect
to choreography,this meant producing meticulouslystylized
movement whose idiom would change appropriately from
one piece to the next, ratherthan always working in the formal classicalstyle and employinga markedelement of virtuosity. Representativeof the ballets in which Fokine gave play
to these principles are Daphnis and Chloe (1912), which
called for a plastiquebased on the decorationof Greekvases,
Cleopatre(1909), which drew upon Egyptian wall paintings,
and Le Dieu Blue (1912), which adopted motifs of Hindu art.
Fokine expected technical mastery in his dancers, but he
also insistedthat they achieve in their movementsan intensely
naturalquality he identified with expressiveness.Fokine'sattitude on this point is seen clearly in his teaching: he seemed

to take for grantedthat his studentswould perfect their technique and devotedhis attentionto developingin them his version of beauty and expressiveness.51Fokine's ideal was the
work of the romanticballerinaMarieTaglioni in the first half
of the nineteenth century. Not that he thought every ballet
should have the look of a Taglioni lithograph; rather, he believed dance should always have meaning and a true vitality
and expresslonging for a different, better world, as it seemed
to him had been the case in Taglioni'stime. It was to this end
that Fokine based his ballets on natural gesturesidealized to
highlight their psychologicalmotivation. In fact, Fokine defined dance as "the developmentand ideal of the sign."52That
is, for Fokine, only movementswhich constituted interpretable gestures could be considered dance. As an example of
movementidealized to the level of deeply expressivegesture,
he cites the arabesque,"a surgeupwardsinto distance-it [expressesan] urge with the entire body, a movement, with the
whole being." Without that motivation, "the arabesquebecomesintolerablenonsense."53
Similarly,he found the tombe,
a movement in which the dancer resists gravity till the last
possible moment, especially expressive.
Lincoln Kirstein, in sorting through the choreographic
developmentsof this century, suggeststhat Fokine'sparticular
approachto stylization,designedas it was to contributeto the
creation in each piece of grandiloquentlocal color, vitiated
the artisticforce of his idealized naturalism.Insteadof a timelesspoeticsof physicalimageryand metaphorsuch as Nijinsky
employed, Fokine'saudienceswere presented with a literalmindedpicture of a distant place in a distant time, an ethnographic picture based on secondary sources in libraries and
museums.In Kirstein'sview, there was a certain redundancy
in the pains Fokine took to make movement meaningful. He
arguesthat Nijinsky'sapproach, one which took for granted
that movement is meaningful and sought ways to unveil its
meaning, was more elemental.54
Fokine felt that his calling was to produce dramatic dance
works. This he did throughout his career, even though the
genre in which he worked seemed more and more old-fashioned. Although Fokine clearly enjoyed solving the choreographic problem of establishinglocal color, this was not his
sole aim. For instance, in his fairytale ballets exoticism and
ethnic color are not ends in themselves,but ratherare intended to supportthe main purposeof unfolding human relationships and psychology.
Jacques Riviere, a French critic who followed the Ballets
Russesin its early years, questionedwhether Fokine was even
serious in pursuing his expressedaim of making movement
meaningful:
[Fokine'sdance] is inherently unsuited to the expression
of emotion; one can read into it nothing but a vague,
entirely physical and faceless joy.... Instead of emotion
being the object that the movementtries to describeand
makevisible, it becomes a mere pretextfor eruptinginto
movement, and is soon forgottenamid the abundanceof
which it is the source....
For Riviere, the headlong quality of the choreographyin a
ballet like Le Spectrede la Rosewas incompatiblewith "inner
truth."55
It is true that Fokine favored joyful themes (as did August
Bournonville), and exactly because they provided a pretext
for abundant movement. The sad themes of many of the exponents of modern dance struck him as the excuse of amateurs
to avoid moving.'5 Speaking more broadly, for the genres in
which he worked there is no inherent inconsistency between
Fokine's methods and the demands of inner truth. Again tak-

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ing fairy or folk tales as an example, what is distinctiveabout

them is that they incorporatenaturalisticdetails in a fantastic
context, and this very conjunction allows them to enact allegorical incidents motivated by indwelling human impulses.
This psychological accuracy is what Bettelheim celebrates.
However, as David Levin puts it in analyzingthe attributesof
Balanchine'swork, "an aesthetic of immanence (an aesthetic
of self-revealingpresence)has come to replace the earlier aestheticof mimeticconnotationand transcendentsymbolism."57
So long as this aestheticis in ascendancy, and at the moment
it seemsquite robust,many of Fokine'sballets will seem dated,
while many of Balanchine'swill seem timeless.
Fokine rejectedthe work of modern-dancechoreographers
because it violated his aesthetic principles.58 As noted above,

Fokine argued that sad themes should be avoided because

they invite dancersto mope, not move. Similarly,he felt that
visible muscle tension in the movementsof dancers on stage,
except in the portrayalof the grotesqueor the morbid, was a
symptom of poor training, not a means of directly creating
beauty.Awkwardmovementswere unnaturaland hence ugly.
Thus, howeverinterestingFokine'sown essaysin grotesquerie,
as in certainpassagesof TheFirebird,he neverconsideredsuch
movement anything other than sideshow material. His reasoningin this regardcan be inferredfrom the rhetoricalquestion he posed in a polemic directed against the Germandancer Mary Wigman: "What sincerity could exist where all is
ruled by one principle-do everything freakishly, strangely,
unusually?"59 Fokine's constant admonition was that dilet-

tantes, those lackinga thoroughclassicaltraining, should stay

off the stage, just as pianists should hold off giving recitals
until they can do justice to their music. Understandably,his
sense of professionalism was offended by poorly produced
work, but it seems not to have occurred to him that much of
what appeared amateurish in the work of those developing
modern dance would in due course be amended.
Apart from their lack of skill, Fokine faulted modern dancers for lacking sufficient knowledge of the past history of
dance to be able to contribute to the evolution of the art. On
the contrary, they seemed inclined to make "everlasting starts
from the very primitive beginnings" which Fokine found
pointless.60 Furthermore, exponents of modern dance were
faddists: "Ballet is a form of art. Modernism is a temporary
state, a period in the evolution of art."6"Fokine was not loath
to tread even farther out onto thin ice: he claimed that "the
last 25 years [c. 1905-1930] have shown that the ballet can be
progressive and modern, and that in it can be found all the
new achievements of the dance."62 His own advice for creating something novel was to forget the theater and transport
oneself to another world, paying no attention to the demands
of tradition or fashion. He told the critic Walter Terry,
I do not try for novelty. Newness comes naturally. When
I compose I forget my audience, and I forget myself. My
ideas come from a book, from music or from a dreammy themes are from no one period, for I love art from
ancient Egypt up to the present.63
It was this ability to appreciate five thousand years of art that
Fokine felt qualified him to reject authoritatively the work of
Wigman and Martha Graham, in which he could discover no
historical, ethnological, or psychological truth.
Fokine complained that in modern dance "everything is
superseded by boldness and audacity,"4 an opinion that
seems to be related to his sense of what sort of dance movement is appropriate for women. In general, Fokine believed
dances should be wholesome, indeed spiritualized: "The theatrical art in its higher levels elevates itself above the body and
8

Dance ResearchJournal

caters not to sensuality but to the brains and imagination."65

As far as Fokine was concerned, Nijinsky's Faun had been
"pornographic filth."66 More specifically, Fokine's notions of
masculinity and femininity were conventional and, correspondingly, he tended to work with specialized masculine
and feminine movements. In particular, Fokine's men were
usually expected to display more power than his women.67
Bold and audacious women seemed improper to Fokine unless
they were members of an untamed people, such as the Polovetsian women in Prince Igor,68 or were, like the Firebird, not
in fact human.
In sum, Fokine promoted a style of dance which made
heavy use of his version of interpretive movement. He affirmed aesthetic values of naturalism, vitality, joyfulness, stylistic consistency, and, above all, expressiveness. (The latter,
though often an elusive notion, in Fokine's case can be taken
to mean rather literal portrayal of narrative actions and their
motivations.) Some of these values are almost beyond debate,
but what they imply for movement quality and characterization will vary according to each choreographer's individual
vision.
Movement Quality and Characterization
Fokine's standard for dancing grew out of his principles of
expressiveness and naturalism. He looked for a pliant body
moving fluidly through space in time with the music. His
pupils report that in class he equated beauty with perfection
of line, complete follow-through in movement (with the
movement itself often on an enlarged scale), and perfect coordination. He always taught by phrase and allowed the body
to make its own adjustments in moving from one pose to the
next in a phrase.69 He expected his dancers to be able to link
natural rhythms of running and walking to corresponding
musical meters and depended on combinations of different
rhythms to achieve striking choreographic effects.70 From Sol
Hurok we learn that his favorite words when discussing dancing were "laska" (a caress) and "naslazhdaites" (enjoy yourself).71
Karsavina argues that "Fokine's standard of beauty was
essentially the same as that of his predecessors: harmony, softness and roundness."72 But, as Mikhail Baryshnikov points
out, the result in Fokine is "like playing with and reshaping
the strict classical style."73 Nora Kaye, who was dancing with
Ballet Theatre while Fokine worked there, lists as characteristics lack of rigidity in the hips and back, loose arms with
limp wrists and soft elbows, and a slight tendency to be off
balance.74 In general, Fokine tried to avoid the erect and
squared-off carriage of the Petipa dancer, and there were
several features of classical dance he explicitly rejected. One
was exclusive use of the five turned-out positions of the feet,
for which he had discovered scant precedent in painting and
sculpture. Another was virtually exclusive use of dancing on
pointe in choreography for women. Fokine considered pointework suitable for achieving effects of lightness, as in the role
of the Queen of Shemakhan in Le Coq d'Or, but not for acrobatics. In the latter category, the virtuoso feat he most fervently condemned was the fouette, a step he felt was virtually
guaranteed to distract a ballerina from projecting the character she was playing.75 Fokine had an especial distaste for
side-to-side choreography, with the dancers continually facing the audience and making frequent use of second position
and of movements a la seconde. 76Instead he relied heavily on
diagonal movements and stressed correct epaulement and use
of the head, citing the works of Auguste Rodin and Michelangelo as models.77

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How Fokine put his aesthetic preferencesinto practice is

best seen by consideringactual examplesof his choreography.
Scheherazade(1910) is an early instance both of Fokine'suse
of mime and of his handling of numbersof dancers on stage.
Fokine recalls that it was in Scheherazadethat "I applied for
the very first time my principles of describing action. The
actionsand emotionswere expressedthrough movementsand
positionsof the body. No one 'spoke'with the hands."78What
mostthrilledaudienceswas the notoriousorgy, whose impact
SergeGrigoriev,Diaghilev'sregisseur,attributednot especially to its voluptuouselementsbut ratherto its variety of dances
and to its timing: the scene reached a great climax, came to a
halt, and then unwound.79Watching the ballet 25 years after
its premiere, Fokine found it unaged,80 not a unanimous
opinion. Recent productionshave been appreciatedfor their
visual, dramatic, and plastic values, if not for their stylized
eroticism.The ballet is usuallycharacterizedsimply as exotic,
but the fairytale origins of this exoticism should be kept in
mind. Fokine never intended the movementshe set to be an
exercisein strict realism: he wanted not simply to share his
vision of Persia, but also to develop a fantastic drama whose
psychologicaldynamic would have a universalresonance.
Fokine repeatedly claimed a strong interest in psychology
and in using his art to portray human feelings accurately. In
fact, he insisted that his dancers portrayed human beings
ratherthan simplydisplayingthemselves.8'It was a feature of
Fokine's romanticism that the major characters he created
tend to be emblematic rather than particular humans, but
thisdoes not preventtheir being as complex as real individuals
are. (It is the nature of their complexity that is the object of
artisticchoice.) Accordingto Fokine'spupils, he almost invariably indicated the characterizationhe had in mind through
imagery rather than simply announcing the emotions to be
portrayed.82Evidently, however literal-mindedone may find
the mime through which Fokine's characters in large part
expressthemselves,his approachto creating roles was fundamentally poetic, i.e., creative, imaginative.
Petrouchkacan serve as an example of how Fokine was
able to exploitthe combinationof realismand fantasy characteristic of folktales to create psychologically sophisticated
roles for charactersone would never expect to encounter offstage. In John Martin'seyes, Petrouchkawas "the first modern ballet, for in it for the firsttime choreographywas created
fromthe inwardnessof the characters."83
Baryshnikovadvises
that "the use of a puppetlikestyle must, first of all, be clearly
designed and then performedwith a seamless fluid ease so
that it becomes its own standard, so that the audience does
not feel that the dancer is 'playing a doll."'84 Benois, one of
the librettists, offers a similar insight, but in converse terms:
"The great difficulty of Petrouchka's part is to express his pitiful oppression and his hopeless efforts to achieve personal
dignity without ceasing to be a puppet."8' From either perspective, the idea is that the performer must preserve Petrouchka's dual makeup. Fokine was expert at creating such
dualistic characters and took considerable pains to convey to
his dancers the inherent oppositions in their roles. For Petrouchka, he says, "I tried to create puppetlike, unnatural
movements and, at the same time, to express in these movements three totally different characters and to convey the plot
of the drama-so that, in spite of the puppetlike movements,
the audience would be forced to respond and sympathize."86
In Le Spectre de la Rose (1911), the ballet Riviere cited as
an example of Fokine's falseness in portraying emotion, the

impressionrendered can certainly be spoiled if the ballet's

rolesare sentimentalized.Again, the key is to avoid interpreting the roles simplistically.In his memoirsFokine insiststhat

the danseur is "in no circumstancesa 'cavalier,' a ballerina's

partner."87Although the Spectre is guiding the Girl when
they dance together, it is the Girl'sdream that engendersthe
Spectre'smovement. The dream has both real and hallucinatory aspects which, as her consciousnessmatures, the Girl
must sort out. She must be "actively passive," as the critic
Clive Barnesputs it. Barnesaddsthat he "was once privileged
to watch Tamara Karsavinasketch out a few of the gestures
and she evoked a world of lost sentiment and social structure.
It was a Victoriandream of the purest love."88The Spectre's
airbornemovement is quite distinct from the somnambulistic
movementof the Girl. The man must be a poet-athlete (Robert Lawrence's term) because the dialectic here is one of
strength muted by sensitivity.89
Having struggledso consciouslyto transcendthe expressive
conventions of traditional ballet, Fokine objected when his
work was describedas "classical,"a category in which he included not only ballets of the Petipa school, but also those,
like Giselle, which are now more likely to be referredto as
"romantic."90Fokine acknowledgedthat his use of idealized
(as opposed to pedestrian) movement was characteristic of
classicalballet, and he agreed that ballet technique is valuable for the variety of movement it provides, for the sense of
rhythm and line it develops, and for the charm it adds to
movements. Nevertheless,as far as his actual choreography
was concerned, he felt that his care in matching movement
and music and his departuresfrom the stereotypeddescriptive
and symbolic elements of Petipa's ballet, from its relatively
rigid upper body moving always en dehors, and from its emphasison virtuosity,were so markedthat he deservedhis own
category in the taxonomy of choreographicstyles.
Ironically, when commentatorsdo make a point of distinguishingFokine'swork from that of Petipa, it is generally in
the process of assigning Petipa's the higher rank. Arguing
along the same lines as Levin (see previoussection), the critic
ArleneCroce attributesthis outcome to a "crisisin the poetics
of dance"which came to a head in the 1920s. The issue to be
resolved was exactly that which engaged Fokine as a rising
choreographerin the early years of the century: is the expressive potential of dance seated in "the color, the drama, the
'mimeticbody' of [a] Fokine"or in "poetic distillation,"that
is, in an emphasis on "dancingwith no meaning apart from
itself?"91Fokine answered one way, Balanchine the other,
and it was the latter whose position prevailed. Those who
welcomed Balanchine'sformalismwere drawn as well to the
kindred quality of Petipa's choreography. The term "classical"has come to be used to refer to the style epitomized by
Petipa, and it is in this narrowersense of the word that Fokine'swork is "non-classical."On the other hand, the formal
traditionin ballet and, for want of a better term, what might
be called the interpretativetraditionare coequal. Each has its
own characteristicgenres(for example, "symphonism"in the
case of the formaltradition, and the folktale in the case of the
interpretativetradition), and these genres, in turn, tend to
give rise to distinct approachesto movement and characterization.
The Firebird(1910), one of the small number of Fokine's
worksto have survivedthe "crisisof poetics"of the 1920s, is a
pure example of Fokine's adoption of the fairytale genre to
embody his principlesof expressiveness.In Karsavina'sview,
this ballet "brokefresh ground in treating fairy tales without
adulteration, preserving all their ruthlessness, vigor, and
exoticflavor."92Threetypes of movement are employed: grotesque and angular for the evil kingdom, natural and soft for
the princesses,and on pointe without turnout or academic
stepsfor the Firebird.The Firebirdmust expressin her moveDance Research Journal

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16/2 (Fall11984) 9

ments the tension experienced by a creature whose wings

would normally allow her to move with great freedom, but
who is, for the moment, under restraint.93 According to Karsavina, Fokine wanted the Firebird not to be graceful, but
rather "powerful, hard to manage, and rebellious" with "no
human emotion." The Firebird is "proud, arrogant. She gives
the feather only to buy her freedom, not to help the Prince.
She returns because she made a promise which she fulfills."94
Fokine did not want people to imagine he promoted reforms
in ballet production because he was incapable of composing
in the classical tradition, broadly defined. Les Sylphides is his
demonstration of command of the classical idiom and is understandably treated by most as sui generis among Fokine's
works. The choreographer's own view was that
In this ballet I expressed my sentiments more clearly than
in any other, more clearly even than in my own program
of reforms.... With the production of the "Chopiniana"
Waltz I wanted to show how I understood the unique
beauty of the classical dance.95
Given its music and costumes, it is easy for the ballet to lose its
exquisite antithetical quality of infinite movement and apparent calm,96 and become sentimentalized, even queer. The
ballet's simplicity and deliberateness are its infrastructure,
synthesized from lyric movement, sustained poses (often arabesques), and repetitions. Its superstructure is framed by the
variety of entrances and exits for the soloists and incorporates
the ensemble as an important element of its design.97 Arnold
Haskell observed Fokine stage Les Sylphides in 1936 and
reported it was "slower and more deliberate than we usually
see it, far richer in detail. The greatest difference of all lies in
the treatment of the arms which are meltingly soft and
rounded."98 Fokine made a point of establishing a quality of
movement for the danseur different from that of the female
soloists: as in Spectre, the male must combine aspects of spirituality and strength. If Les Sylphides is to be performed as
Fokine intended, its cast must not be led to think of it as Fokine's lone extant essay in the academic style. For this ballet,
as for all his others, Fokine wanted the particular quality of
movement which he found consistent with his aesthetic principles. And, despite the absence of explicit characters, he
wanted his dancers to bring to their parts something more
than just the steps. Sono Osato, who performed in the ballet
under Fokine's direction, recalls that "Fokine said a dancer
should never move in Sylphides until inspired by some image
of nature."99
Conclusion
When Fokine's memoirs were published in English in 1961,
reviewers tended to comment on his diminished influence.
The historian Lillian Moore felt that exactly the symptoms of
diminished artistry that had troubled Fokine at the start of his
career were beginning to reappear in ballet: disproportionate
focus on principal dancers and their technical skills, the wearing of what amounted to uniforms on stage (she had Balanchine's leotards in mind), inconsistency of style, absence of
expressiveness."1?From a slightly different vantage, all these
developments are seen to be related to a fundamental shift
away from Fokine's aesthetic. Pure dance values were coming
more and more to dominate ballets at the expense of the visual
and dramatic values that were important to Fokine. The recent success of the Dance Theatre of Harlem's production of

Scheherazadeillustratesthat this trend is neither pervasive

nor irreversible.To a great extent, how a majorFokine ballet
fares today depends on how faithfully its staging reproduces

Fokine'schoreography(with some allowances for divergence

of the spiritof the choreographyfrom its letter), how fully the
dancersempathizewith his aims, and how well-informedthe
expectationsof the audience are. One might add that part of
the modernsensibilitythat artistsand their audiencesbring to
ballet is an appreciationof the abstract accompanied by an
impatiencewith the representational,an appreciationof the
sophisticatedaccompaniedby a tendency to dismissanything
that vergeson the naive. A preferencefor the abstractand for
the worldly-wisein itself is not to be faulted, since each age is
entitled to its own aestheticsensibility,but what is regrettable
is the related tendency to take standardsappropriateto abstract or overtly sophisticated works and attempt to apply
them to ballets in genres that make use of representational
choreographyand overtly naive subjects.The resultingproblem of inattention to important works, such as a number of
Fokine'sbest ballets, is exacerbatedto the degree representational choreographysuch as his is tied to imagespeculiar to its
own period.
Fokinehimselfunderminedhis positionas an acknowledged
influence on ballet practice by demanding more credit than
he was due. Not only did Fokine'sefforts at renewal have a
numberof historicalprecedents,but also his actual work was
not so revolutionaryas the ardorof his claims would indicate.
And one cannot overlookthat much of his work was "merely
professional."Fokine'sdogmatic view that "thereis only one
way of seeing beauty"'0'diminishedhis credibility as an arbiter of quality. On the other hand, Fokine'scareer, rather
than being consideredin its own right, has often been set up
as a foil to help define the accomplishmentsof other choreographers.His historicalpositionbetween the classicismof Petipa and the neoclassicismof Balanchine,between the vaporous
romanticismof the nineteenthcentury and the psychological
romanticismof Tudor, invites comparisonsthat make him
appear to be basically a transitionalchoreographer.
The genres in which Fokine commonly worked are not so
enchanting for the moment as they used to be, but his basic
intent is enduring: "No matter how obscure, fantastic and
unrealisticthe form of the dance may be, it must have in its
root the truth of life."'02Although he did not treat modern
subjectswith a modernsensibility, did not recognizethe fullness of expression attainable in pure dance, and could not
accept anger and unhappinessas motives for dance, there is
substantialcompensationin the persistingvalues he affirmed:
rejection of the routine, "concentrationof the means of exthrough developing a single line of action in a
pression"103
fundamentallysimple and consistentstyle, and dealing intelligibly with the complexities of human psychology. Fokine
improvedthe opportunitiesto choreographthat came his way
by producingballets that sustainedand animatedthe classical
tradition.It is impossibleto know that traditionfully without
knowing Fokine'swork.
NOTES
I am gratefulto SelmaJeanneCohen,Gemzede Lappe,and Orest
of
whowereall kindenoughto sharetheirrecollections
Sergievsky,
Fokineandhis workwith me.
1. New YorkTimesMagazine, Nov. 16, 1919.

as the defining
treatmentof expressiveness
2. Forone philosopher's
of art,seeSusanneLanger,FeelingandForm:A Theory
characteristic
of Art Developed from "Philosophyin a New Key" (New York:

CharlesScribner's
Sons,1953),p. 40.

3. There is no set distinction in English between the terms "folktale"

and "fairytale," although the latter may be said to be the more comstories
prehensive since it can refer both to authentic folktales and to

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lackingany actual folk provenance.The two termswill be used interchangeablyhere.

4. Bruno Bettelheim, The Usesof Enchantment: The Meaning and
Importanceof Fairy Tales (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), p.
155. See alsoVeraKrasovskaya,Stati o Balete (Leningrad:Iskusstvo,
1967), pp. 167-168,where the authorcreditsFokine with developing
mime that "shows"(pokazyvaet)rather than "tells"(rasskazyvaet).
5. Bettelheim, p. 155.
6. Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the
Theoryof Genresand Modes (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 226-228, 166.
7. AnatoleChujoy, Fokine:Memoirsof a Ballet Master(Boston:Little, Brown and Company, 1961), Ch. III. Krasovskayareportsthat
the MaryinskyAnnualsgive 1904 as the year in which Fokine began
teaching. VeraKrasovskaya,RussianBallet Theaterof the Beginning
of the Twentieth Century [in Russian](Leningrad:LeningradGovernmentInstituteof Theater,Musicand Cinema, 1971),vol. 1, p. 164.
8. Chujoy, p. 89; Krasovskaya,RussianBallet Theater..., p. 166.
9. TamaraKarsavina,TheatreStreet:The Reminiscencesof Tamara
Karsavina(New York:E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1931), p. 211.
10. Alexander Benois, Reminiscencesof the Russian Ballet (New
York:Da Capo Press, 1977 [orig. pub. 1941]), pp. 225, 244.
11. Karsavina,TheatreStreet, p. 243.
12. Ibid., p. 260. See also AlexanderBenois, "The Decor and Costume," in Footnotes to the Ballet: A Book for Balletomanesed. by
Caryl Brahms(New York:Henry Holt & Co., 1936), p. 209.
13. Benois, Reminiscences,p. 265.
14. Krasovskaya,p. 72; Peter Lieven, The Birth of Ballets-Russes
(New York:Dover Publications,Inc., 1973 [orig. pub. 1936], p. 309;
Benois, Reminiscences,pp. 225, 253; Benois, "Decorand Costume,"
p. 189.
15. Lieven, p. 79.
16. Chujoy, pp. 111-113.
17. There are a numberof manuscriptsof Fokine'sdeposited in the
Dance Collectionof the New YorkPublicLibrary.The one used here
is a translationof some extended notes on Diaghilev'srole in the Ballets Russeswhich Fokinehad written out in Russian.The Russiantext
of these notes is reprintedin the Russianversionof Fokine'smemoirs:
Protivtecheniia:vospominaniabaletmeistera,ed. by Yu. I. Slonimsky
(Leningradand Moscow:Iskusstvo,1962).
18. Cyril W. Beaumont, Michel Fokine and His Ballets (London:
Cyril W. Beaumont, 1935), p. 129; Karsavina, Theatre Street, pp.
257-258, in which she reports that Diaghilev helped her grasp her
roles as Echo and Thamar.
19. For an indicationof the relative importanceof each of Fokine's
ballets, see the Appendixin Chujoy, pp. 300-311.
20. Natalia Roslavleva,Era of the RussianBallet (New York:E.P.
Dutton & Co., Inc., 1966), p. 184.
21. Krasovskaya,RussianBallet Theater .., pp. 450, 466-468.
22. MathildaKschessinska,Dancing in Petersburg:The Memoirsof
Kschessinska(Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1961), p. 106.
23. Chujoy, p. 103.
24. Krasovskaya,Russian Ballet Theater..., pp. 466-468. Karsavina rememberedJota as "Fokinein his brightest mood." Theatre
Street, p. 312.
25. Lillian Moore, Artists of the Dance (New York: Thomas Y.
CrowellCo., 1938), p. 191. Jota was revivedfor ReneBlum.
26. New YorkSun, Nov. 10, 1919.
27. MusicalAmerica, Jan. 17, 1920.
28. Roslavleva,Era of the RussianBallet, p. 183.
29. New YorkTimes, Aug. 23, 1942.

30. New YorkTimes, April 22, 1950.

31. New YorkHerald Tribune, June 2, 1943.
32. Krasovskaya,RussianBallet Theater. .., p. 468.
33. Kathrine Sorley Walker, De Basil's Ballets Russes (New York:
Atheneum, 1983), p. 43, reports difficult and virtuoso dancing in
other parts of Paganini.
34. See, e.g., Beaumont, Michel Fokine, pp. 144-147.
35. Michel Fokine, "TheNew Ballet," in Argus, November1, 1916.
A typescript of the English text of this article is on deposit in the
Dance Collection. The Russianversion is reprintedin Protiv techeniia.
36. Karsavina,TheatreStreet, p. 169. See also Chujoy, p. 92, for a
recordof Petipa'scomplimentaryreactionto Fokine'sballet La Vigne
(1906). Note, with regard to interpolations, that such changes in
choreographymay on occasion have been introducedby the choreographerhimself.
37. JoanLawson,A Historyof Ballet and its Makers(New York:Pitman Publishing Corp., 1964), p. 83; Krasovskaya,Russian Ballet
Theater..., p. 333.
38. YurySlonimsky,"Writingson Lev Ivanov"with "a biographyof
Ivanov in excerpts"from M. Borisoglebsky,all ed. by Anatole Chujoy, Dance Perspectives2 (1959).
39. Roslavleva,Era of the RussianBallet, p. 128; Lawson, pp. 86,
107.
40. Natalia Roslavleva, "Stanislavskyand the Ballet," Dance Perspectives 23 (1965).
41. Krasovskaya,RussianBallet Theater..., pp. 237, 262.
42. Roslavleva,Era of the RussianBallet, p. 214.
43. Lieven, p. 311.
44. ArnoldHaskell,BalletomaniaThen and Now (New York:Alfred
A. Knopf, 1977), p. 100.
45. Protiv techeniia, pp. 517-523. See also Selma Jeanne Cohen,
Next Week, Swan Lake: Reflectionson Dance and Dances (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UniversityPress, 1982), pp. 32-33. Benois
reportsthat Fokinebalked at the suggestionthat Duncan be cast in
Le Pavilion d'Armide.Reminiscences,p. 252.
46. Chujoy, p. 257.
47. Beaumont, Michel Fokine, p. 147.
48. Chujoy, p. 208. See also Haskell'scomment: "...when I first
met [Fokine]he was.. .inclined, as the majorityof choreographers,
but with much more reason, to find that everythinghad been borrowedfromhim." ArnoldL. Haskell,In His TrueCentre:An Interim
Autobiography(London: Adam & CharlesBlack, 1951), p. 56.
49. Benois,"Decorand Costume,"p. 197. Cf. this comment by Karsavinain the May, 1955 issueof Dance and Dancers:"It is easy to see
that in his classical ballets [Fokine] never deviated from academic
traditionexcept in pruning away from it any form of exhibitionism,
and giving it more expression:the more supple, unhackneyedmovements of arms and a more ingenious ground plan."
50. Chujoy, p. 62.
51. Dawn Lille Horwitz, "A Ballet Class with Michel Fokine" in
Dance Chronicle, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1979), pp. 36-45. See also "Dilettantism in the Dance" (1932), one of the Fokine manuscriptson
deposit at the Dance Collection. Cohen devotes a whole chapter to
the role of virtuosityin dance: Ch. 4, pp. 61-79.
52. Fokine, Argus. See also "The Central EuropeanDance" (1933),
another of the Fokine manuscriptson deposit at the Dance Collection. Helpful commentson this point are providedby Cohen, p. 32.
53. Chujoy,p. 129; alsothese Fokine manuscriptsat the Dance Collection:"TheNew Ballet"(1916), "Dilettantismin the Dance"(1932),
and an undated letter to the editor of MusicalAmerica.
54. Lincoln Kirstein,NijinskyDancing (New York:AlfredA. Knopf,
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1975), pp. 30-31. In an earlier book, Fokine (British-Continental

Press, Ltd., 1934), p. 64, Kirsteinlisted Fokine'sstrong points: "To
have studied under Fokine is to have experiencedan unforgettable
illuminationinto the sources of gesture, the definition of style, the
creationof theatricaleffect." See also Kirstein'sDance: A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing (New York: Dance Horizons,
1969),pp. 284-285. Coton makesa point similarto Kirstein's,namely
that Fokine was to some extent working at cross purposes because
stylizationin dance can inhibit expression.(Cotondoes attach a positive value to the "homogeneity"of each Fokine work.) A.V. Coton,
TheNew Ballet: KurtJoossand His Work(London:Dennis Dobson,
Ltd., 1940), pp. 25, 13. Benois argues that Golovin's ethnological
decor for The Firebirddefeated the "fantasticand eerie"quality of
Fokine'schoreography.He makesa similarcomment about the decor
of Le Festin. Reminiscences,pp. 306-307, 354.
55. Jacques Riviere, "Le Sacre du Printemps"(1913), reprinted in
Kirstein,NijinskyDancing, p. 166. Riviere'searlier enthusiasmfor
Fokine'swork is detailed in his article, "Des Ballets Russeset de Fokine,"La Nouvelle Revue Francaise,Vol. VIII, No. 43 (July, 1912),
pp. 174-180.
56. Haskell,Balletomania,p. 91; Chujoy, p. 250. See also Bournonville's forward to his Etudes Choreographiques.Note that Fokine
would treat a sad theme if, as in The Dying Swan, he found the
theme in question consistentwith full-bodied movement.
57. David Michael Levin, "Balanchine'sFormalism," Dance Perspectives 55 (1973), p. 34. Reprinted in Salamagundi, No. 33-34
(Spring-Summer,1976), pp. 216-236.
58. The Fokine manuscriptsin the Dance Collectionconsultedwere
those listed in note 53 and "The Dance Is Poetry Without Words"
(1924), "ASad Art"(1931), "The Central EuropeanDance" (1931),
and "SexAppeal in Dance" (1932).
59. Fokine, "CentralEuropeanDance."
60. Morning Telegraph,Feb. 4, 1931.
61. Fokine, "A Sad Art."
62. Fokine, "CentralEuropeanDance."
63. WalterTerry, I WasThere:SelectedDance Reviewsand Articles
-1936-1976 (New York:MarcelDekker, Inc., 1978), p. 13 [1937].
64. Fokine, "CentralEuropean Dance."
65. Fokine, "SexAppeal in Dance."
66. Chujoy, pp. 204, 206.
67. But see the letter of Fokine quoted by Walter Terry in the New
YorkHerald Tribuneof Dec. 29, 1940: Fokinewrites: "Peopleinterested only in the demonstrationof power and masculinity.. .should
not go to the theater but to sporting events."
68. Walker, p. 48.
69. See Horwitz.
70. Describedin notesFokinepreparedfor Lucille Stoddart'sTeachers' Courseat the Hotel Astorin 1931 (on deposit in the Dance Collection). See also Betty Ross'sinterviewwith Fokine publishedin the
May, 1926 issue of The Dance Magazine in which he indicates his
attractionto the variety of jazz rhythmsbut rejectsjazz dance as too
mechanical and too focused on the feet.
71. Sol Hurok, S. Hurok Presents:A Memoir of the Dance World
(New York:HermitageHouse, 1953), p. 96.
72. Karsavina,TheatreStreet, p. 289.
73. Charles Engell France (ed.), Baryshnikovat Work: Mikhail
BaryshnikovDiscussesHis Roles (New York:AlfredA. Knopf, 1976),
p. 141.
74. CharlesPayne, AmericanBallet Theatre (New York:Alfred A.
Knopf, 1977), p. 310.

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75. Cohen recallsthat Fokine found a specific dramaticpurposefor

employingfouettes in Bluebeardwhen he needed a strong image of
a woman ridding herself of a rival for her husband's affections.
Cohen, p. 74.
76. Fokine, Argus. Cf. Goleizovsky'scomments concerningtranslation of classroommovements, including movementsin second position, to the stage, in Sally Banes, "Goleizovsky'sBallet Manifestos,"
Ballet Review, Vol. XI, No. 3 (Fall, 1983), pp, 70-74.
77. Fokine'steachersat the Imperial Ballet School, notably Christian Johannson,shouldbe given credit for traininghim to value care
in epaulement.
78. Chujoy, pp. 152-153.
79. S.L. Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet, 1909-1929 (London:Constable, 1953), p. 46.
80. Chujoy, p. 154.
81. Ibid., p. 51.
82. Horwitz, p. 43.
83. New YorkTimes, Jan. 11, 1934.
84. France, p. 227.
85. Benois, Reminiscences,p. 338 (Benois'semphasis).
86. Chujoy, p. 191. See also Lawson, pp. 109-111, for a discussionof
Fokine'shandlingof reality and fantasyin Petrouchka,especiallyher
suggestionthat the Charlatan is the link between the real and the
fantasticbecause his flute controlsboth the crowd and the puppets.
Note Massine'sremarkin My Life in Ballet (New York:St. Martin's
Press, 1968), p. 52: "AlthoughI heard glowing descriptionsof Nijinsky'sperformance[of Petrouchka],I did not see how Fokine'sinterpretationcould have been improved upon."
87. Chujoy, p. 182.
88. New YorkTimes,June 1, 1977. See MarieRambert,Quicksilver:
The Autobiographyof MarieRambert(New York:St. Martin'sPress,
1972), p. 112, for mention of a similarexperiencewith Spessivtseva.
89. Robert Lawrence, The Victor Book of Ballets and Ballet Music
(New York:Simon & Schuster, 1950), p. 437.
90. Haskell, In His True Centre, p. 58.
91. Arlene Croce, "News from the Muses,"The New Yorker,Sept.
11, 1978, pp. 126-127.
92. FernauHall, paraphrasingKarsavinain SaturdayReview, April
16, 1955.
93. Benois,Reminiscences,p. 305.
94. Margot Fonteyn: Autobiography(New York:Alfred A. Knopf,
1976), p. 144. For AlexandraDanilova'scommentson The Firebird,
see the articleby Eric Johnsin the May, 1949 issue of TheatreWorld.
95. Chujoy, p. 105.
96. AdrianStokes, RussianBallets (New York:E.P. Dutton & Co.,
Inc., 1936), p. 93.
97. See Lawson, pp. 99-103, for an outline of the choreographyof
Les Sylphides.
98. Daily Telegraph, May 16, 1936.
99. Sono Osato, DistantDances (New York:AlfredA. Knopf, 1980),
p. 287.
100. Typescriptdeposited in the Dance Collection.
101. Payne, p. 316.
102. New YorkTimes Magazine, Dec. 15, 1940.
103. Chujoy, p. 109.

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