Celebrating the 110th Anniversary of Diaghilev’s groundbreaking company.

Welcome to Balanchine’s Ballets Russes, the first program of Ballet West’s 2019-20 season.

Master choreographer George Balanchine arguably can be called the creator of the American style of neoclassical ballet, but he got his start as a choreographer under the tutelage of impresario Sergei Diaghilev, in Paris at Diaghilev’s famed and revolutionary Les Ballets Russes (pronounced “Lay Ballay Roos”). Diaghilev took the young and talented fledgling dancer/choreographer under his wing and educated Balanchine about art, music, and theater. Diaghilev also introduced him to influential artists of the day – Henri Matisse, André Beauchant, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso, and more – as well as leading composers such as Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, and Igor Stravinsky, the latter of whom became Balanchine’s closest musical collaborator for almost 50 years, until Stravinsky’s death in the early 1970’s. Working with Diaghilev was an unparalleled apprenticeship for Balanchine and, until his own passing in 1983, Balanchine always recognized Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes as the reason he became a great choreographer.

In 2009, I presented Treasures of the Ballets Russes at Ballet West, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Ballets Russes and the company’s huge contribution to the world of dance. In 2010, I gave you Balanchine’s America, which explored the diverse and uniquely American style the choreographer developed. Now, on this program, to celebrate the 110th anniversary of Diaghilev’s company and Ballet West’s long history with works by Balanchine, we present three of Balanchine’s most influential early works: Le Chant du Rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale), Apollo, and Prodigal Son. These works are perfect examples of Diaghilev’s ethos; combining great art, great music, and great dance to create great theater. They show Balanchine’s development as a choreographer, they give us a window into the collaborative process of the artists involved, and they show us how different cultures were represented in Europe in the early 20th century. Ultimately, though, these ballets remain beautiful, important, and fascinating works of art that are vital and need to be kept alive.

George Balanchine was born in 1904, in pre-Soviet St. Petersburg, Russia, to Georgian and Russian parents. He was an accomplished pianist from an early age and went into the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg at the age of nine. He was a professional dancer by age sixteen and began choreographing experimental works at this time as well. His daring new experiments, however, did not sit well with the newly formed Soviet Union and, in 1924, while on tour in Berlin with a Soviet ballet company, he and a group of friends fled to Paris, where Sergei Diaghilev hired them. At the young age of 20, Balanchine became a ballet master for the Ballets Russes and, at 21, he was commissioned by Diaghilev to create his first work for the company, the 1925 Le Chant du Rossignol.

Based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a simple nightingale who saves the life of a Chinese emperor, the work was originally an opera composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1914. Diaghilev was not satisfied with the opera, though, so in 1920, he commissioned Stravinsky to reduce the score to a one-act ballet with a libretto by writer Boris Kochno. He engaged the great modernist Henri Matisse to design the sets and costumes and asked his then resident choreographer Leonide Massine to choreograph the ballet. This version of Le Chant du Rossignol was again not successful, but Diaghilev loved Matisse’s designs and held onto them.

In 1925, Diaghilev charged Balanchine with recreating the ballet. The result was a success and solidified Balanchine’s status with Diaghilev. This was also the first time that Balanchine collaborated with Stravinsky, and it was clear from the start that the two were in sync, both musically and artistically. Le Chant du Rossignol had a respectable run in 1925, but Balanchine would never revisit it again in his lifetime. Then, in 1999, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo commissioned art and dance historians Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer to reconstruct the ballet in honor of its 75th anniversary. The result is this program’s meticulously researched and produced version of Balanchine’s lost Le Chant du Rossignol.

It is interesting to note that Balanchine inherited Le Chant du Rossignol, and to consider that he must have felt quite restricted in its creation, as the ballet was his first major commission, at only 21 years old, but he had had no part in creating its libretto, designs, or score. Nevertheless, guided by Diaghilev, Kochno, Matisse, and Stravinsky, Balanchine delivered a grand pageant of “Chinoiserie,” an aesthetic, popular at the time, characterized by a European interpretation of Chinese culture. And, while much of the dancing itself reflects the early experimental Soviet style that Balanchine had been working in, one can also see the dawn of many of Balanchine’s future signature stylistic details. Movements such as walking on the heels, angular arm movements, and the flexing of hands, even shuffling, would all make their way into Balanchine’s work throughout his lifetime.

It is also interesting to reflect upon how the fairy tale, written by a Danish author in 1843, and the ballet, created in 1925 by a team of Russian and French artists, present a story based in ancient China. Matisse researched every detail of his costume and set designs to represent ancient China as accurately as possible. One can hear the beginnings of the twelve-tone system, a method of musical composition influential amongst 20th-century composers, in Stravinsky’s score; this system was born out of the shí-èr-lǜ, a chromatic scale used in ancient Chinese music. For the choreography, Balanchine attempted as many accurate and historic cultural representations as possible, including that the Emperor never touches the earth and that the entire court prostrates themselves in front of him. Fascinating details, such as the nefarious character of the Japanese Maestro, who presents the Emperor with a mechanical nightingale, give a glimpse of the political tensions between China and Japan in the 19th through mid-20th centuries. The figure of Death, who visits the Emperor, is unexpectedly presented as a Tibetan deity – perhaps Vajrayoginī, a transformative deity who turns passion and ego into enlightenment.

Le Chant du Rossignol was researched and reconstructed meticulously by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, two dance and art historians who specialize in bringing back “lost” historical works of the early 20th century – no easy feat. While Stravinsky’s score remained intact, Matisse’s costume designs had to be reconstructed from photographs, renderings, and some actual pieces from the original ballet that were still intact enough to reproduce accurately. The choreography remained the biggest challenge, since there was no notation system used to catalogue the steps. This is where I admire Millicent Hodson’s ingenuity. By using photographs to determine tableaux and moments in the ballet, as well as countless interviews with dancers and people who were in, worked on, or saw the original 1925 production, Millicent was able to identify many of the actual steps. In many instances, though, she still needed to create links between moments using her own logic and instincts. Can we be sure everything we see now is the actual Balanchine choreography? Perhaps not, but we do know it is the closest that we will ever get.

In Balanchine’s 1928 Apollo, originally entitled Apollon Musagete (or, in English, Apollo, Leader of the Muses), we see the now 24-year-old choreographer coming into his own. This is thanks, in no small part, to Stravinsky’s clean, almost Mozart-like score, which Balanchine, in turn, reacted to with his own clear approach, soon to be known as his “neoclassical” style.

The libretto for Apollo was written by Stravinsky himself and, in a series of abstracted tableaux, variations, and pas des deux, depicts the birth of Apollo and his growth into godhood. Of the three muses Apollo interacts with, poetry (Calliope), mime (Polyhymnia), and dance (Terpsichore), only the muse of dance truly captures his interest.

In 1978, in keeping with his quest to free ballet from too many trappings, Balanchine eliminated Apollo’s birth and final ascent to Mount Parnassus. For this program, though, I wanted to show his development as a choreographer at the Ballets Russes, so I chose to present the earlier version of Apollo that is the closest that we have today to the 1928 original. The original also had extensive sets and costumes by André Beauchant. Diaghilev and Balanchine did not like Beauchant’s costumes and, after the opening, they approached their friend Coco Chanel to create new, simplified costumes.

When Balanchine brought the work back in the 1950’s for his now renowned New York City Ballet, he dropped all formal set and costume elements, preferring instead a more streamlined look. A structurally exposed staircase at the back of the stage depicted Mount Parnassus and the costumes were pared down to clean, unadorned tunics and tights. This was how Balanchine insisted the ballet be done going forward, so that nothing would distract from the steps and the music. The result is a work of pure elegance and epitomizes the Balanchine style. Without being overly emotional or sentimental, Apollo is deeply moving and, in an abstract way, tells of both Balanchine’s and Stravinsky’s growth as artists. When Balanchine’s Apollo first premiered in America, none other than Lew Christensen, brother of Ballet West founder Willam Christensen, danced the title role. It is an honor that the production you are seeing now is the Ballet West premiere of this masterpiece.

Balanchine is known for his great epithet “Ballet is woman.” It is notable, then, that two of his most enduring masterpieces, Apollo and Prodigal Son, give the primary focus to men. Throughout his life, Balanchine would revive both of these works when a specific male dancer was right for them. Lew Christensen, André Eglevsky, Jacques D’Amboise, Edward Villella, and Mikhail Baryshnikov are just a few of the great artists to dance one or both of these roles.

With his 1929 Prodigal Son, Balanchine created perhaps one of the most profound roles ever for a male dancer and it is exciting to be able to revive this work for Ballet West. Adapted from a parable from the gospel of St. Luke, the ballet depicts the Prodigal Son’s rebellious departure from home and his seduction by a beautiful and treacherous siren, whose followers rob him. Wretched and remorseful, he drags himself back to his forgiving father.

The sets and costumes for Prodigal Son were created by renowned expressionist Georges Rouault, the libretto, again, written by Boris Kochno, and the score composed by Sergei Prokofiev. Prodigal Son would prove to be the only time Balanchine and Prokofiev worked together. While Diaghilev was very pleased with Balanchine’s abstract approach to the story, Prokofiev wanted a more classically balletic approach. He especially disliked the strong and domineering way in which Balanchine represented the Siren. Adding to Prokofiev and Balanchine’s dislike for one another was the financial situation. At the time, it was customary for the composer and scenic artist to receive royalties, but not the choreographer; the choreographer could receive a percentage of the composer’s royalty as a courtesy, almost like a tip. However, Prokofiev refused to share his royalties with the young, nearly impoverished Balanchine, and from that day on, Balanchine refused to choreograph to Prokofiev’s music.

The creation of Prodigal Son was also fraught with anxiety from the dancers’ perspective. Serge Lifar, the production’s original Prodigal Son and incidentally the original Ballets Russes Apollo, could not figure out how to approach his character. Balanchine is reported to have given a simple, dry answer, which was just to dance the steps to the right music. This would ultimately become Balanchine’s overall approach to his art: spare, simple, with no “phony” emotions. (Much later, he did say that Lifar was the best Prodigal Son.) Felia Doubrovska, the original Siren, also struggled, as she felt uncomfortable in a role that was so overtly sexual. With her, Balanchine was very gentle and understanding, helping her through her discomfort with much of the same advice he gave to Lifar. Nevertheless, the ballet was a huge audience success, with Prokofiev himself conducting on opening night.

Unexpectedly, Prodigal Son became one of the last ballets of Diaghilev’s brilliant but short-lived company – Diaghilev passed away suddenly in August 1929. There were a number of incarnations of the Ballets Russes in ensuing years, each, to varying degrees, following Diaghilev’s ethos of bringing together artists and composers to create great art. Indeed, Diaghilev had introduced the one-act ballet to the world.

Balanchine immigrated to America and, in 1933, founded the School of American Ballet to train dancers in his style and technique. His approach would become synonymous with American ballet and he grew to be considered one of the greatest choreographers of all time.

The three works on the Balanchine’s Ballets Russes program are presented in chronological order – I hope you enjoy this fascinating glimpse into Balanchine’s early years, and that you may see his growth as a choreographer during this period.

Le Chant du Rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale) began its life in the mid-19th century, when Hans Christian Andersen wrote the fairy tale to honor opera singer Jenny Lind (who, because of the story, became known as the “Swedish Nightingale”). The Chinese theme of the tale probably came from the setting in which Andersen first heard Lind sing – a Chinese pagoda in Tivoli Gardens, in Copenhagen. The fairy tale has enduring relevance; it is an early confrontation of nature versus technology. An ailing Chinese emperor is healed by the natural song of a nightingale, but not before a contest with a comical yet threatening mechanical bird, a role originally performed by choreographer George Balanchine.

In 1914, Igor Stravinsky created an opera based on Andersen’s tale for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with 18th-century-inspired “Chinoiserie” designs by Alexandre Benois. That lavish production was destroyed in World War I, so Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to reduce the score to a ballet suite without singers. Leonide Massine choreographed it in close collaboration with Henri Matisse, whose designs presented a modernist version of the Ming dynasty aesthetic. When the ballet premiered in 1920, reviews were mixed. Many critics found Massine’s tableaux vivants (French for “living pictures”) to be too static for the music, so in 1925, soon after Balanchine joined the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev asked him to recreate the work, still using the Matisse decor and costumes. It was a triumph for the then unknown Balanchine.

Coming straight from the jazz culture of Petrograd (St. Petersburg, during World War I) and the corps de ballet of the Imperial Russian (Mariinsky) Ballet, Balanchine had his own agenda – and Diaghilev was delighted. He knew his company and repertoire needed rejuvenation in the creatively vibrant but economically vulnerable landscape of postwar Paris. Balanchine, an impoverished immigrant, managed to pack into Le Chant du Rossignol the wealth of his Russian heritage – quotes from Marius Petipa’s classic La Bayadere, storytelling devices from Diaghilev’s triple bills, and angular and acrobatic features from his own Soviet avant-garde dances. This eclectic mix, typical of the new art of the USSR, was called, by filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, a “montage of attractions,” a circus of styles. Balanchine, then just 21, brought his stylistic riches to Diaghilev’s touring company, but he did not find life with the company easy. English critics reported hearing him snap his fingers in the wings to keep the Ballets Russes in step. Perhaps this experience triggered the transformation of his Apollo in 1928, when Balanchine radically reduced the ballet’s scope, cast, and vocabulary. Le Chant du Rossignol therefore provides us with a privileged glimpse of transition, when the master choreographer-in-the-making learned the virtues of restraint.

We reconstructed Le Chant du Rossignol in 1999 with Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, whose dancers are known for their French chic and technical precision. We were proud of Le Chant du Rossignol then, but we are fascinated by it now, and how different it looks on Ballet West. It is a question of scale. The United States is a big country and Ballet West has tall dancers. Each fills the space around them with vigor. We like to think that Balanchine, with his fondness for cowboy movies and the great American expanse, would appreciate the Salt Lake City production.

With Artistic Director Adam Sklute and our team of ballet masters and musicians, we have simplified some gestures, as Balanchine himself did in relation to Massine’s 1920 version. Critics noticed this “simplification of the stage picture” in 1925. For example, in the 1920 ballet, the Court Ladies carried cutouts of potted plants to prepare the court for the Nightingale’s arrival. Balanchine omitted the props and just let the women sweep the air in their flowing Matisse tunics, with gestures similar to those found in traditional Chinese dances done with long sleeves.

While reconstructing Le Chant du Rossignol, we learned that Matisse had done in-depth research for the ballet, especially for the Warrior characters and for that of Death. At the Museé Guimet (The National Museum of Asian Arts) in Paris, we saw objects that Matisse had also studied at the museum in the 1920’s: eighth-century polychrome wooden sculptures retrieved from cave temples in western China. For Le Chant du Rossignol, Matisse duplicated the sculptures’ body armour, dragon-mouth sleeves, leonine beards, and terracotta-colored limbs. Known as Jingang in Chinese iconography, these types of warrior guards were often placed in a square grouping of four around a statue of Buddha. Matisse also researched the archetype of Death in the Tibetan Tantric tradition: a figure, draped in skulls, who balances the life forces in her bowl, judging the moment for transformation and thus enlightenment. In Le Chant du Rossignol, only a small bird is capable of confronting such a powerful demi-goddess.

We were drawn to the arduous process of reconstructing Le Chant du Rossignol largely because of Matisse’s commitment to presenting such treasures from Asian cultures. For decades, we had studied classical Chinese philosophy, medicine, and movement arts. Kenneth teaches the widely known Yang style of Taiji Quan (tai chi), and Millicent recently completed the ten-year course to become a master teacher of the dynamic Chen style, which dates from the Ming dynasty. In our rehearsals with Ballet West, Millicent took special pleasure in sharing with the dancers the Chen movement known as Jingang Dao Dui, or “Buddha’s Warrior Pounds Mortar.”

The irresistible pull of the ballet came from surviving dancers who had lived it: Alicia Markova, then a 14-year-old ingénue on whom Balanchine created the role of the Nightingale, and the four principals, the great Alexandra Danilova, Ninette de Valois, Felia Doubrovska, and Tamara Geva, who were miffed that the newcomer was the star. Balanchine called these four women “The Divas” and made special moments in Le Chant du Rossignol just for them. As we worked on other early Balanchine ballets, these dancers kept sending us back to 1925: “George [Balanchine] did that first in Le Chant du Rossignol…”

Lara (Obidenna) Ladre remembered her corps de ballet steps and those of her husband, Marian, who was a Warrior. At a chance meeting with Doubrovska, two decades before we did Le Chant du Rossignol, Millicent learned that Death was the origin of the Siren, a role Doubrovska had danced in Balanchine’s 1929 Prodigal Son. As Doubrovska spoke, she twisted a long string of pearls. When asked about the gesture, she explained how Death and the Nightingale used a huge necklace of skulls to trap each other. We also had the testimony of Boris Kochno, Diaghilev’s secretary, librettist, and collaborator, and the memories of Philip Dyer, who was 9 years old at the time and “dazzled” by the Mechanical Nightingale and the whole Ballets Russes production in London (Dyer would go on to found the Theatre and Performance Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum).

We then assembled all these puzzle pieces together with Matisse’s letters to his wife, copious reviews in English and French, photographs, and other visual documents to reconstruct Balanchine’s Le Chant du Rossignol as you will see it now. This research is synthesized in our bijou book Le Chant du Rossignol, the first in our series, Balanchine’s Twenties, created with Elizabeth Kiem’s Trapeze Press. Le Chant du Rossignol is now available to purchase from Blurb Publishers.

I was blown away the first time I saw George Balanchine’s Le Chant du Rossignol in rehearsal. Lovingly revived by scholars Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, the ballet represents a stylistic bridge between the Imperial ballet of the 19th century, the Orientalism of the Ballets Russes, and the beginnings of Balanchine’s later neoclassical style most associated with the New York City Ballet. With sets and costumes by Henri Matisse, Le Chant du Rossignol has all of the components to be a true classic dance work spectacle. However, as a historic work from 1925, what was then thought of as an “exotic” and stylized portrayal of Chinese people, now in 2019, had the potential to look racially dated or caricatured. The question for Ballet West was — how to revive the work with historical integrity without perpetuating offensive stereotypes of Chinese people?

At 21, George Balanchine had just joined Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes when he was given an exciting challenge: to pick up a previously unrealized choreographic project by one of his musical idols, Igor Stravinsky. Based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, Stravinsky’s score for Le Chant du Rossignol, or The Song of the Nightingale, tells the story of an ailing Chinese Emperor and the healing song of a magical bird. Distracted by the gift of a sparkling and colorful robotic bird, the Emperor falls to his deathbed, only to have Death herself banished by the power of the humble real nightingale, whose song saves the Emperor. A cautionary tale against adopting technology over authentic connections, the core lessons from Le Chant du Rossignol could not come at a more relevant time.

Parallel to the history of the ballet itself, Chinese people in America had been creating their own story as well. As with any immigrant group in American history, the Chinese faced their own share of xenophobic discrimination. With the first wave of immigrants who came during the Gold Rush in the early 1800’s, Chinese people have been caricatured and demonized in political cartoons, theater, and vaudeville, and later in film and television, a phenomenon known as “Yellow Peril.” Most often this manifested in the performing arts as “Yellowface,” the practice of white performers exaggerating mannerisms, racial features, and accents of Asians. As a result of migration and other international geopolitical events, Yellowface reinforced old ugly stereotypes and brought out new ones; from the Chinese Exclusion Act, to Japanese Internment, to the Vietnam War, we see negative images of Asians used to justify mistreatment of them as a group.

Just as “Blackface,” which portrays Blacks as simple-minded, primitive, silly, or violent, Yellowface is based on a similar distortion of Asian racial features and mannerisms. The Chinese tradition of bound feet, when translated to the stage, became small shuffling steps, the humble bow gesture became head bobbing, and the early image of the railroad worker with his rice paddy hat and queue became the stand-in for “Chinese” in America. To this day, Chinese Americans are still challenged with breaking free of these iconic tropes. A recent exposé on Harvard admissions practices revealed that Asians consistently ranked lowest in “personality.” Hollywood and television are only just starting to represent Asians with nuanced portrayals beyond characters like super villain Fu Manchu, Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yonioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” or exchange student Long Duck Dong in “Sixteen Candles.” Some comedians still think racial slurs against Asians are fair game.

While Le Chant du Rossignol itself does not attempt any overt caricature, there were gestures and movements in the work that over time have taken on mean-spirited or negative connotations. Despite the innocent intentions of the creators, Ballet West needed to make sure that the impact of these negative tropes, like bobbing and shuffling, didn’t distract from the beauty and significance of the work itself. Guided by its commitment to diversity and inclusion, Ballet West leaned into the conversation.

During the rehearsal period, Ballet West proactively invited leaders from the Asian American community to join a rehearsal and begin a dialogue about what changes were needed in order to ensure that everyone could enjoy the work without the distraction of caricature. Leading up to the performance, the company hosted a series of conversations around this topic with students from local schools as well as with the general public before the opening weekend performances.

In tandem, Ballet West has also taken proactive steps to ensure that the historical integrity of the work remains intact. As part of the performance, the company will present a display in the lobby that highlights the dancers in the adapted make-up designs for the 2019 production. Audience members can not only appreciate the history and context of the original work but also engage more deeply about what it means to represent each other respectfully in the diverse society we live in today.

The longevity and relevance of the great works from the Western canon depend on their ability to reach audiences around basic human truths. I believe Le Chant du Rossignol and the themes it presents make it a work with that potential. However, performing it with outdated or discolored representations does a disservice to the work; like all dance, it is only through change that the work remains alive and relevant for people today. While this ballet might be slightly different than it was in 1925, its song is no less powerful for audiences in 2019.