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America Soon to
See for the
First Time This
Remarkable Dancer,
a Favorite of
the Czar
T
HAMAIt KARSAVINA, the
leading dancer on the femi
nine side of - Serge - de
Diaghllew'i Ballet Russe, which is
Being brought to America this year
by the directors of the Metropoli
tan Opera House, will appear at
the Metropolitan Opera House for
four weeks with the remainder of
the troupe, displacing in that time
America's most costly song birds.
Karsavina is, perhaps, the great
est dancer and mime of this gen
eration. In the full flush of youth
ful comeliness and plastic charm,
she Is neither too simple nor too
sophisticated. The Russians, the
most critical audiences in the
world, have long applauded her
artistry, in the subtlest and most
elusive feats of the dance. Like a
perfume is the delicate and insin
jating illusion that she works upon
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the stage with the bai.et, the sen
sation of Europe for the last six
years.
"The glory of the Russian bal
let," is how the Jaded Parisians de
scribed the ballet when it thronged
their Chatelet. "The stuff that
dreams are made of," is how Lon
don felt when its Covent Garden
and Drury Lane were thronged.
And now America will experience
the thrill. ,
When the Dlaghllew ballet was
first produced In the continental
cities there was ro end to its train
of influence. Fashions reflected it,
Russian was spoken Russian
was the backcround of society
while it lasted, and even now
where art baa been almost oblit
erated by the war the glory and
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the Influence of the ballet still re
mains. The Dlaghllew ballet is the
bringing together and unifying of
all the arts in such a way that the
cumulative effect is absolutely pro
found. Serge de Dlaghllew, an attache of
the Court of Russia, wealthy and
well connected, is directly respon
sible for the existence of the ballet
As a young man he surrounded him
self with the younger artistic set
in Russia, and when the time was
ripe introduced them through a
little art exhibit. The morning
after the exhibit Dlaghllew was
world famed, and so were the
young artists who had exhibited
their works. But there was even a
greater influence than that Rus
sia of the steppes of the North, the
Russia of Siberia and fallow fields,
br the SUr Company. Great Britain RIhU Brv4.
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was displaced in the minds of Eu
rope by a new Russia, a Russia
awakened, revlvlflrd, a Russia
pregnant with ideas, which re
flected the Influences that had been
at work for centuries to break
down the reaction of the ages.
Dlaghllew was famous, but so
was Bakst who had designed a
great number of drawings for this
exhibition, drawings which, by
their striking method, as well as
their riotous color harmonies,
seemed to clash and yet were
harmonious, provided Paris with a
piquant stimulus.
From this beginning grew the
ballet Dlaghllew returned from
Paris to Russia and felt that the
time was ripe for the Occident to
see more of the glories that slowly
had been developing in Russia.
Two years after his first exhibit at
the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, in
June, 1909, he produced the ballet
Cleopatre, that sensuous story of
Egypt's queen.
The dancers were the best of
Russia's Imperial Academy Nljln
skl, the Incomparable, the same
who will be in America this Fall,
and Karsavina, the beautiful, su
preme in her particular field. The
stage settings were huge Oriental
creations, columns, pillars, arab
esques that the imaginative mind
of Bakst had devised. The music
combined all the lure of the East
with a Turkish and Persian strain
predominant And all these, the
dancers, the musicians and stage
painters, were assembled by their
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compatriot Dlaghllew to produce
artistic, aesthetic unity.
And then Dlaghllew gave them
more. And from being the pro
ducer of a lone ballet he became
the reglsseur of a great number.
The greatest musicians in the
world, Debussy, Rlmskl Korsakov,
begged for permission to write the
music for his ballets; kings begged
for the honor of being present at
performances. A wave of en
thusiasm swept through Europe
and kept on for six years, and on
the crest of this wave were Dlaghl
lew, Nljlnskl, Karsavina, Holm,
Mlasslne and the others with whom
the Russian producer had sur
rounded himself.
Not all of the ballets had an
Oriental background like the first
one, Cleopatre, but they presented
a variety of backgrounds as well as
a large number of stories. The
more divergent they were the more
did it delight these intrepid Rus
sians, who only regarded the greater
difficulties as giving them greater
room for expression. There will
be, for instance, here In America,
the ballets with the fierce wild Rus
sian background and stories,
Prince Igor and Petrouchka. There
will be ballets with the placid and
refined Greek milieus, which re
flect the Greek life and make
ancient Athens alive.
Then there are the purely arti
ficial ballets of Carnival, which
show how the ballet was before the
genius of Dlaghllew and Nljlnskl
developed it from its stays and
ballet slippers and bounden forms.
The most striking of the ballets,
perhaps, full of the chrome and
crimson passion of the Orient, is
the ballet, Scheherazade, which
tells the story of a sultan'a harem
and its intrigue.
In this Dakst allowed his sense
of color to grope about in the whole
realm of the spectroscope and then
take that which Just reflected the
ideal, iiakst, in this ballet, dramat
ized color, and his vivid portrayal
of the story by color made critics
say with justice, "the true sym-
7
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A Bae ETasy.
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; it.
pnony of musio and motion,
light' and shade, line, mass
and color has been achieved.
To depict a certain emo
tion a certain color is chosen,
with sympathetlo background
and added to it a correspond
. lng strain of music, and
dance evolution, all com
bining in artfulness and force to
achieve the result For each
emotion there ia a suggestive cor
responding color and dance step and
musical tone and these axe manipu
lated in unison in this wonderful
ballet
Fifty-five principals will come to
America as part of the troupe.
Waralav Nljlnskl, perhaps, stands
out as the foremost. H
has been compared to
a Jet of flame shooting
up in the air, as he
dances. From his first
years of training at the
Imperial Ballet School
in Petrograd, he has
stood out as one of the
first dancers of all
time. He is the princi
-""" pal male dancer of the
troupe.
Thamar Karsavina, supreme lu
her particular field, that of mimetic
dancing, and universally considered
the most beautiful dancer, In the
chief female member of the troupe.
Her portrayal of the roles that de
mand a true understanding of the'
passionate nature of woman, is
startling and amazing.
MalwNine is a young Apollo. To
his activities as a dancer be adds a
clear knowledge and technical in
sight of the ballet and with Bolm
acts as directeur choreographlque.
There are, of course, other prin
cipals of the company, who are each
of them stars in their particular
fields. For that is one of the many
factors that differentiate this ballet
from all others ever seen on this
side of the Atlantic. It is true that
other Russian dancers have danced
here, but when they performed it
has always been with a company of
asRistlng dancers picked up here
and there, and with the especial
reason of enhancing the dancing of
the premier danaeur or danseuse
by contrast. In this company each
principal is a star.
How this great aggregation
comes to America in a year when
an international conflict is raging
is an interesting story. The under
taking that the directors of the
Metropolitan Opera Company have
put upon themselves is a most dif
ficult titft. But where the cul
mination of an artistic ideal is
concerned, the pocketbook does not
matter to them.
First the company was assembled
in the land of artistlo and political
neutrality, Switzerland, and here
on the shores of the beautiful Lake
Geneva they went through the re
hearsals of the twelve ballets
which will be produced in America,
Igor Stravinsky, great composer,
also was at hand to assist with any
new musical compositions that
Dlaghllew wished to add.
The troupe remained ia Switzer
land until the late Fall. Then all
went to Liverpool and from there
they will set sail for America. The
massive stage settings, the gor
geous costumes, the exquisite
draperies have all been stored in
London, safely insured from the
bomb-throwing Zeps, waiting for
the time when they ehall be put
aboard ship tor America.
