Translated material
Carnation in buttonhole
A translation of Lynn Garafola’s famous book “Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet” has been published in Russia.
A theater critic from Vogue magazine compared the Russian Ballet troupe to a carnation in a buttonhole in 1928, at the end of Diaghilev’s enterprise. And not in a metaphorical sense, but in a literal sense: dancers and scenery were perceived by beautiful boys from bourgeois families “as a kind of personal decoration.” Two years earlier, another English critic vented his anger: “I want to throw a brick at Serge Lifar when I see him collecting armfuls of flowers after finishing the ballet.” From the dream of the ballet “The Vision of a Rose” (composed at the beginning of the twentieth century by Karsavina and Nijinsky) to the pillory in “The Prodigal Son” (the last ballet of the enterprise with Lifar in the title role; the robbed character is pressed against a pillar erected on stage) and indeed the path that did the Ballets Russes (as the troupe was called in French).Both quotes from critics' reviews are taken from the book “Diaghilev's Russian Ballet” by American dance researcher Lynn Garafola, professor at Columbia University, curator of numerous exhibitions, author of more than one monograph on dance, thanks to whose translation the English-language “Diaries of Marius Petipa” was born. The phenomenon of the public's perception of Sergei Diaghilev's twenty-year feat became the main subject of her book, which was published in New York in 1989. Twenty years later, in 2009, the long-awaited translation of this fundamental publication into Russian was released in Perm (Oleg Levenkov was the initiator, scientific editor, and translator together with Maria Ivonina). Garafola's ascetically designed book about Diaghilev continues the series of the Book World publishing house, begun by Levenkov's own monograph on George Balanchine.
The book is divided into three chapters - “Art”, “Enterprise” and “Public”. For the first time, the Russian Ballet is examined from all sides. First, there is an analysis of the artistic product itself, depending on the style and worldview of each of the five choreographers (Mikhail Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Leonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, George Balanchine); Then follows the saga of the troupe's survival in various difficult financial conditions. About, for example, who paid the bills and what salary the dancers received, how the size of the troupe and the geography of the tour were determined, that is, the enterprise is considered as a commercial enterprise (the author’s pedantry in the study of underwater market currents is admirable). Then the most interesting thing awaits the reader - a sociological cross-section of the public, which for twenty years has been the mirror or fourth wall of Diaghilev’s theater and echoes the cultural ideology of Diaghilev’s enterprise.
It is interesting that the American author pays great attention to the English accent, that is, the role of the English public, which was brought up and formed at the performances of the Russian Ballet (in contrast to the usual idea for us about the paramount importance of the educated French public, which set the tone and fashion in the first seasons) . It is curious that Garafola draws a divide between the British public in the mid-1920s, placing on one side the lords, ladies, and literary men of the Bloomsbury group, and on the other - the dandy aesthetes. The former were attracted to the artistic phenomenon in the theater, the latter were interested in new fashion items. That is, according to Garafola, Diaghilev seemed to sacrifice William Turner and Virginia Woolf for the sake of the feverish pursuit of novelty, fearing to lose contact with the younger generation and new ideas, which, however, has always been different and not only in these years. An interesting, hitherto little-studied picture emerges of theatrical British journalism of that time with its quarrels, intrigues, and conciliatory gestures. The author believes that after 1924 (namely, after Bronislava Nijinska’s “Les Noces” and “The Hinds”) Diaghilev’s taste began to change, and he followed the new elite, consuming the avant-garde according to the laws of the market.
Following the Bloomsbury literati led by Virginia Woolf Garafola considers Nijinska’s ballet “Le Noces” to be the principal artistic pinnacle of all seasons. The brightest and most inspiring pages of the book are dedicated to her and Natalya Goncharova, two Russian women, choreographer and artist.
Here's an example: “The Wedding” turned out to be a prediction of the loss of individuality as such. The bride and groom and their parents have no influence over their own destiny; weak-willed, they are victims of a higher power. Within the godless universe of this ballet, rock is represented by plastic architecture that deciphers the theme of social predestination. Nijinska assembles her ensemble into human pyramids, closed phalanges, mounds, wedges - monoliths, terrible, like the peasant customs of old Rus', where a daughter was torn from her mother and married off.” And again: “The ballet speaks more about male strength and female suffering than about femininity; the clicking pointe shoes, “masculine” in their irresistibility, acted out, so to speak, the drama of sexual penetration.”
The gender approach, which has come into circulation in the last twenty years in American art criticism, is obvious. The ritual of a Russian wedding is considered from a feminist perspective, and the works of Vaslav Nijinsky, respectively - “Games” and “The Afternoon of a Faun” - appear as an erotic autobiography of the choreographer. The author considers Bronislava’s personality to be underestimated and shifts the emphasis, declaring her the founder of both constructivism and neoclassicism (while it is generally accepted that the creator of the “neoclassicism” movement in ballet was Balanchine, and Nijinska’s masterpiece is undoubtedly unique).
For Lynn Garafola, the Russian roots of the Diaghilev “family”, Russian origins, Diaghilev’s interest in Soviet Russia are important, despite the fact that the troupe has never performed in its homeland: neither on the stage of the Imperial Theaters, nor in clubs, nor in proletarian theaters. Diaghilev retained the myth of Russia in his soul to the end, but he lived ahead of the curve. Ironically, he delivered his farewell words to his troupe in London, and it was in future Britain, despite the fact that modernism took the weakest roots there, that the Russian Ballet left its greatest mark. “Diaghilev never looked back, but always carried his past with him,” concludes Lynn Garafola’s introduction to the Russian edition in 2009. In the year of the centenary of Diaghilev's seasons, this serious and interesting book paved the way to where the phenomenon called Diaghilev's Russian Ballet came from. It’s a pity that our native science cannot offer anything like this to the world this year.