A “Brilliant Talk” and a “Stirring Appeal”: How Women of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Built an Audience for the Ballets Russes in 1917

Abstract

By February 13, 1917, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes had been crisscrossing the United States for four, grueling months, dancing to often disappointingly small houses, in which the appreciation of both critics and public was tempered with varying degrees of disapproval and bewilderment. When the company arrived that day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, it would have had little reason to expect anything different. But if the local press is to be believed, the performance there met with exceptional success. The Grand Rapids Herald began its review (signed C.M.S.), by celebrating the size, enthusiasm, and sophistication of the audience.Furthermore, according to Mary E. Remington of the Grand Rapids Press, the company had shown the city special favor by treating the audience to an extra performance by its star dancer. “Waslaw Nijinski [sic] was programed for only one dance drama, the ‘Carnaval,’ but he also danced in the ‘Scheherazade’ and for the first time in a one-night engagement” (GRP 2–14).Like many reviews, these ultimately raise more questions than they answer about the audience and its real response to the performance. After dancing to half-filled halls in most of the fifty-six North American cities in which the troupe appeared, how did the Ballets Russes manage, on a snowy Tuesday evening in western Michigan, not only to attract but to “enthrall” a large audience? Who were the people “seeking high art” in Grand Rapids in 1917? What experience of and ideas about high art had their lives there afforded them up to that point? If indeed there were those in the audience who came seeking something else, who were they, and what did they think? What led to their conflicting expectations of this particular performance? And what might have inspired Nijinsky to favor Grand Rapids with a surprise second appearance in Scheherazade?Grand Rapids in the 1910s offered both opportunities and challenges for theatrical presenters. It was a prosperous city accustomed to seeing major touring artists in its theaters; its location made it a logical stop on the way to Chicago, after an engagement in Detroit or, in the case of the Ballets Russes, Toledo, Ohio. At the same time, the region of western Michigan held a deep vein of cultural conservatism, led by Dutch Calvinist churches, many of which at the time still banned all music but unaccompanied, unison psalm singing from their services and which prohibited dancing of any kind and under any circumstances. The Herald critic's jab at disappointed thrill-seekers, who came to the ballet hoping for “displays of physical nakedness,” seems to address an antagonist not with serious moral objections but rather one who sought to caricature the performance as mere burlesque, dismissing any higher aesthetic value. Yet it does hint at a backdrop of controversy over where to draw the line between art and titillation. Given the relatively small population with the means and inclination to go to the theater, theatrical managers could not well afford to ignore concerns of this kind.So how did the management of the Powers’ Theater draw a “large” audience and prepare them with the appropriate expectations? An examination of the local press reveals that the theater did not rely solely on the publicity materials distributed throughout the country by the tour organizers.2 While Grand Rapids newspapers did print many of these items (the account of Nijinsky at a Yale football game, rosy portraits of the star dancer's family life, general pieces about the company, and, of course, tantalizing photographs of dancers in their costumes), the city saw even more coverage of a local event designed to generate interest and enthusiasm for the Ballets Russes. It was described in the Grand Rapids News on February 10: Those who will attend the Russian ballet, which comes to Powers’ theater next week, missed a great opportunity if they failed to attend the meeting of the Drama league at the Ladies’ Literary club house Friday. Mrs. William F. McKnight, the president, brought the crystallization of years of study of art and the theater to her audience in a brief and brilliant talk on Bakst and the new art of the theater. The new art, the speaker says, combines color, line, motion, music and drama. She interpreted the story of “Scheherazade,” one of the ballets which will be presented and translated the emotions which Bakst puts into his barbaric color—which, she declared, were so violent they shrieked—but shrieked in harmony. Mr. Ottakar Malek assisted by playing the ballet music, “Scheherazade,” by Rimski-Korsakov; “Prince Igor” by Borodine, and the “Marche Slave” by Tschaikowsky. He also assisted in the pronunciation of the formidable array of foreign names of musicians and artists and producers. Mrs. L. S. Billman made a stirring appeal for the assistance of the public in her efforts to bring the best to Grand Rapids. A number of slides, illustrative of the dramatic style of Bakst were also shown. (GRN 2–10)This piece, too, presents more questions than answers: who did attend the meeting of the Drama League, and what was this organization's interest in the Russian ballet? Who were Mrs. McKnight, Mr. Malek, and Mrs. Billman; and what expertise and influence did they bring, respectively, to their “brilliant talk,” interpretation of Russian music and names, and “stirring appeal”? What motivated them to promote this performance? While lacking many details, this vivid snapshot points to some of the cultural institutions, social networks, and influential individuals that created the conditions for a warm reception of the Ballets Russes in Grand Rapids. It has served as the starting point for my attempt to piece together a portrait of the artistic and cultural life of this mid-sized midwestern city on the brink of World War I. Drawing on the resources of the Grand Rapids Public Library and Grand Rapids Public Museum and the three daily newspapers in operation at the time, my research has revealed a community of women who, without extraordinary wealth or artistic achievements of their own, devoted themselves to making high culture a part of life in their city.This essay, together with the others in this issue, seeks to address a gap in the scholarship on the Ballets Russes's North American tours (discussed further in the introduction), which has given little attention to the reception outside major, east-coast cities.3 Nesta Macdonald's compilation of reviews and Hanna Jarvinen's analysis of criticism (mainly from New York, Boston, and national publications) make clear that the American response to the Ballets Russes was more nuanced and varied than has often been assumed. Nevertheless, there has been no systematic effort to challenge Macdonald's assertion that “it would be profitless to attempt to cover every city—to repeat endlessly the reactions, mainly very similar, to the various items in the repertoire” (128). Grand Rapids is one of several cities that have remained entirely unexplored. On the surface, the newspaper reviews published there (none of which is included in Macdonald's study) appear similar to some from other cities. However, my goal here is to reach a richer understanding of what these critics are saying and why they are saying it at this particular time and place. I do not attempt to assess the long-term impact of the Ballets Russes in Grand Rapids. Rather, my interest is in developing a more three-dimensional portrait of the “large and enthusiastic audience” that encountered the company there in 1917. This will reveal some of the ways in which the performance became linked to other interests of this community and other agendas that were served by its promotion and reception.In particular, I will show how the two individual women named above, building on years spent cultivating audiences for “high art” in general, mobilized women's networks and the local press in support of the Ballets Russes. Anna Caulfield (Mrs. William F.) McKnight (1866–1947) had seen the company perform when it first arrived in New York in January 1916. Her local and national reputation as a leading clubwoman, public figure, and authority on art and drama gave weight to her endorsement and ensured a receptive audience for her “brief and brilliant talk.” The talk itself, remarkably well documented, sheds further light on the views expressed by the critics. Lillian Sommers Billman (1866–1957) had become manager of the Powers’ Theater following an early career as a writer and journalist in Chicago. By 1917, after a decade as the public face of this local institution, she was recognized for her ongoing “efforts to bring the best to Grand Rapids” and was in a position to know just what kind of “stirring appeal” would strike a chord with this public. Though Mrs. McKnight and Mrs. Billman came from entirely different backgrounds, each brought a specific passion for and commitment to the theater as a force for good in civic life. Their complementary roles and combined strengths formed a uniquely powerful alliance, which, as I will argue, accounts for their city's notably warm response to the Ballets Russes.The reviews of the Ballets Russes published by Grand Rapids's three mainstream daily papers are unanimous in their enthusiasm. All characterize the audience as large and appreciative and agree that, while Scheherazade was “splendid” and “passionate” and Carnaval beautifully displayed the technique of the dancers, Prince Igor was the favorite ballet of the evening. All three heap lavish praise on the stars, describing Lydia Lopokova, respectively, as “dainty as the zephyrs,” “flower-like,” and “graceful as thistledown” (GRH 2–14, GRN 2–14, GRP 2–14), while Nijinsky is “tigerish in action,” “vigorous, athletic, with amazing leaps and bounds contrasted with the graceful poses, the expressive use of arms, hands and, in fact, of the entire being, in the spirit of the dance” (GRH 2–14, GRP 2–14). Comparing the Ballets Russes to performances of Pavlova and her company, they particularly commend the supporting and ensemble dancers: “In every day language, it was the most wonderful team work in Russian dancing ever witnessed here” (GRN 2–14). Overall, they express nothing but admiration for the “spectacular novelty” of the production (GRP 2–14).Although these reviews mention music only briefly, the music seems to have contributed to the writers’ interest in the event. While all three were identified primarily as dramatic critics, each also had a background in and commitment to music. For C.M.S. (Carl M. Saunders) of the Herald, the “wonderful” music alone, “without the aid of the ballet, . . . would have portrayed fully the stories of the three ballets, rising to wrath or passion and falling away to sweet and melodious bliss” (GRH 2–14). His other critical writings confirm that he was equipped to listen to and describe music in some detail. Lueve Parcell of the News praises the orchestra, “ably directed by Pierre Monteux,” but otherwise refers to the music only as one of the components that combine in creating the magnificent spectacle (GRN 2–14). He was, however, one of the few men permitted to join the women's musical club, the St. Cecilia Society, presumably as the husband of a prominent local pianist and music teacher.4 Mary E. Remington of the Press, the only reviewer to venture any criticism of the Ballets Russes performance (and the most apt to write critical reviews in general), remarks that “the orchestra, which was strong numerically gave an effective if somewhat uninspired rendition of the music scores” (GRP 2–14). Miss Remington, too, reveals musical expertise in other writings and lists specialized training in music in a summary of her skills recorded in 1918.5In many respects, these three reviews read like checklists of essential characteristics of the Ballets Russes, which the writers might have absorbed from the tour's publicity campaign.6 In addition to describing the star dancers, each remarks on the boldness and color of the designs, unity among the arts, emotionalism, Slavic-ness, and “savage” Orientalism. On closer inspection, however, their vocabulary and emphases suggest that it was primarily Mrs. McKnight in her “brilliant talk” who schooled them in how to view this performance, as I will show when I discuss the content of the talk in more detail below.We will also see that the press frequently took its cues from Mrs. McKnight, the Drama League, and Mrs. Billman. These three papers rarely published really negative reviews, instead encouraging readers to go to the theater by providing plot summaries of plays, praising favorite performers, and highlighting memorable aspects of productions—humor, scenery, songs, and so forth. The press further supported the theater by reporting on the Drama League's activities in society columns as well as on regular news pages and by giving the Powers’ a prominent place both in the theater pages, which carried promotional material on coming attractions, and in the reviews, which appeared on editorial pages. The newspapers, thus, not only provide data about theatrical events but also reflect their collaboration with Mrs. McKnight and Mrs. Billman.7When it came to the Ballets Russes, the lone voice of dissent in the local press sounds in a front-page editorial from the small weekly Grand Rapids Chronicle: The Chronicler saw the Russian ballet at Powers’ theater Tuesday night. He was led to separate himself from the necessary number of plunks required to secure admission, by looking at the pictures in the daily newspapers, showing how the thing would look when in action. Years ago the Police Gazette was condemned if not denied the use of the mails for publishing pictures of the Russian ballet kind, but we have made progress since that time and look upon things through a different lense [sic]. (GRC 2–15)As he continues, the writer, William B. Weston, makes clear that he is entering into a specific local debate, with the Drama League as his principal opponent: While the desire was there all the time to see the Russians when they came to town, there was some hesitancy about approaching the box office to purchase a ticket, or to confess his intentions to members of his family, until an approval of the ballet had been given by the drama league. When this came, it was made easier. It gave encouragement and a decision was promptly reached to tackle it, in spite of recollection of the storm of protests that was raised a few months ago against the burlesque shows given at the Columbia theater and the fear that some good church friends might be looking on to see who called at the box office for Russian tickets.8All this is very much in character with the Chronicler's usual style, which above all delights in sending up any form of perceived hypocrisy. (The previous week, his piece on the Reverend Billy Sunday was laced with references to collection plates and coin-counting machines.) In this case he is determined to ridicule any pretensions to knowledge of high art.The Chronicler goes on at length in the same style, describing one dancer as “Miss Notmuchonsky,” wearing “lingerie very much cutoutsky,” and caricaturing those who professed appreciation—all, not coincidentally, “ladies.”Indeed, the review is less a critique of the ballet itself than of the women in the audience, their rapturous praise, and cryptic “explanations” of the mystifying spectacle: After it was all over and when leaving the theater trying to wear an expression of profound appreciation, a look of “I've got my money's worth,” as it were, a lady was heard to remark: “That is art for you.” Then it was known what we had been looking at. It was art. It did look like a life class in an art studio come to think about it. But what a difference there is about such things. Formerly such a display would have been called indecent exposure of person, and the police would have been called, but in a first-class theater, at five dollars per, it is called art. Seen at the Columbia theater, there would have been an uprising and the house ordered closed. At Powers’ theater it was an artistic treat and society, the “best” people in town, turned out to see it. A great age this in which we live.Ironically, this gleefully irreverent and even misogynist witness gives perhaps the most credible testimony that the Ballets Russes in Grand Rapids did indeed “enthrall a large audience” that “came seeking high art.” Without naming Mrs. McKnight or Mrs. Billman, the energy of his rebellion against women who tell people what to think about art and against the pretensions of a “first-class theater” provides a measure of their success in building an audience for and defining the terms of the conversation about this performance. It certainly invites further exploration of the activities of these individual women and women's organizations.We cannot know for sure who sat in the “large audience” referred to in the Grand Rapids Herald, but we can begin by painting a picture of the city as a whole. With a population of 125,759, Grand Rapids in 1917 was slightly larger than Dayton, Ohio; San Antonio and Dallas, Texas; and slightly smaller than New Haven, Connecticut; Memphis, Tennessee; and Spokane, Washington. (Chicago's population was 2.4 million, the second largest in the country after New York, with 5.4 million.) The largest ethnic groups were German, Polish, and Dutch, with a smaller but significant Lithuanian section, as well as Italian and Syrian communities; African Americans made up barely 1 percent of the population. The Grand River delivered timber and powered factories, making Grand Rapids a center for lumber and fine wood products, which earned it the nickname “Furniture City.”Grand Rapids in the 1910s projects a strong sense of identity and civic pride. Advertisements and other promotional materials reveal consistent efforts to present itself as a place of sophistication and cultural refinement—combined with moral uprightness and business sense. According to a pamphlet published by the Grand Rapids Association of Commerce in 1916, “To be a ‘good’ city, a city must be good in two ways. Good to live in and good to make money in.”9 For making money, the association cites 811 factories producing knit goods, carpet sweepers, refrigerators, and sticky fly paper, in addition to sixty-five furniture plants. Interurban roads and railways, the pamphlet tells the manufacturer, offer easy access to Lake Michigan ports and deliver customers from the surrounding farming region and summer resort country, aided by an astonishing 265 daily passenger trains (including late-night, after-theater routes). Among the amenities that make it “good to live in,” Grand Rapids boasts ten banks, ten hospitals, twelve prominent hotels, two electric light and two telephone companies, a Central League baseball team, thirty-two parks, forty clubs, 133 churches, and twenty-eight theaters. Furthermore, the association advertises low infant mortality, a good school system, and its status as “the largest city in the United States to vote itself dry,” which it did in November 1916, though the law would not take full effect until May 1918. The pamphlet declares victory in two other, recent civic battles, proclaiming that Grand Rapids has “no burlesque house nor red light district.”10While the association's publication does not speak specifically to women except as mothers, it does claim that Grand Rapids has the largest millinery business between New York and Chicago. This may attest not only to its general prosperity but to the active social life and considerable spending power commanded by its women. Furthermore, millinery was one industry in which women could not only work but own and operate businesses. According to one visiting speaker in 1917, there were 3,330 wage-earning women in the city; they found community in at least two large clubs and other activities directed at “Business Girls.”11 The main channel through which women exerted their influence was the flourishing women's club scene, for which Grand Rapids was particularly recognized and which the association pamphlet's tally of forty clubs does not begin to account for. The wide spectrum of clubs, with different class, ethnic, religious, and political orientations, included many literary societies; women's branches of the numerous fraternal orders (such as the Ladies of the Maccabees); clubs based on ethnic identity (including the Società della Regina Margherita, whose programming rarely if ever involved anything specifically Italian); Daughters of the American Revolution; the Equal Franchise Club; Women's University Club; charitable organizations; seven local chapters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union; mothers’ groups at schools; and numerous church circles and committees. The clubs involved in promoting the Ballets Russes (the Drama League, Ladies Literary Club, and St. Cecilia Society), which I will discuss in more detail below, were the most prominently featured in the society pages, and their members, the most affluent, educated, and privileged women.12To gauge the experiences and expectations the audience may have brought to the Ballets Russes performance, it will be useful to glance at the types of events presented in the same theater where the company danced. In the weeks surrounding the Ballets Russes engagement, the Powers’ offered a fairly typical assortment of touring theater productions, films, high-profile classical music performers, and local productions. (Table 1) Many plays and musical comedies appeared as one-night stands; national headliners like May Irwin might stay two or three days, but rarely more than four. In addition to musical comedies, Grand Rapids regularly saw the great actors of the day in serious plays, mainly contemporary works but also including Shakespeare once or twice a season. Fully staged ballet and opera were rare treats: Anna Pavlova had appeared at the Powers’ a handful of times since 1913, and, on January 25, 1917, Maggie Teyte sang Faust in the Boston National Opera Company's third visit to Grand Rapids.These attractions placed the Powers’ in a different class from the other theaters in the city. It was unquestionably the one where audiences would expect to see the most prestigious productions and pay the highest ticket prices. The Columbia, having ceased to present burlesque, had reopened in 1917 as the home of a stock company that performed a mix of comedies and dramas at ten to thirty cents per ticket. Seats at Keith's Empress, the leading vaudeville theater, cost ten or twenty-five cents. For the same prices, audiences could see moving pictures at the Isis, Majestic Gardens, and Strand theaters, the most prominent though not the only movie houses in town. The films shown at the Powers’ were usually advertised as having some educational or artistic value, as in Lyman Howe's travel pictures, dramas based on literature and featuring well-known actors, and D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Tickets for such films sold for between twenty-five cents and $1.50, around the same as a musical comedy, which may be less surprising when we consider that the films often traveled with a “large symphony orchestra.” To see the opera or the Ballets Russes, one had to pay $1.00–$5.00, or about $20–$100 in today's dollars.While it was not the only place to offer concerts of “serious” music, the Powers’ did host some of the most prominent musicians to perform in the city. Most of these, including soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, appeared under the auspices of the Mary Free Bed Guild, a charitable organization that offered about five concerts a year as fundraisers.13 Grand Rapids did not at that time have an orchestra of its own, but a few times a year the local Orchestral Association brought the Cincinnati Symphony or Philadelphia Orchestra, which usually performed in the Central High School auditorium. The semi-professional Furniture City Band aspired to a status as Grand Rapids’ leading ensemble and made the Powers’ its home. In March 1916, the Herald praised the band's “heavy program,” featuring music of Grieg and Meyerbeer, which “did credit both to the band and to the musical appreciation of Grand Rapids.”14Audience members could have formed some expectations to take to the Ballets Russes performance from other events in the preceding year that combined music, dance, and representations of the Orient and/or Russianness. Dedicated music lovers would have heard Scheherazade when it was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in November 1916, and the New York Symphony program of January 1917 included more music of Rimsky-Korsakov (march from Le Coq d'or). Although the Grand Rapids reviews compare the Ballets Russes only to Pavlova, who had most recently danced Coppélia there in May 1916, spectators could have found parallels to several other dance events, notably the October 25 performance by “dramatic dancer” Lada, presented at Powers’ as part of the Mary Free Bed series. Advertising it as a concert with dance rather than as ballet, the publicity highlighted the Russian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Modest Altschuler, the music by Russian composers, and the Russian character of the dancer (who was born Emeline Schupp in Duluth). It quoted a New York critic who, ranking her alongside Pavlova and Duncan, “hoped that Otto Kahn may yet persuade De Diaghileff to add Lada to his company.”15 Comparisons would surely have been inevitable between the Ballets Russes and the dancer Maud Allan's program of Oriental dance dramas, including her celebrated “Vision of Salome”—if Allan had not canceled her scheduled November 14 engagement at Powers’ the day before it was to occur. Nevertheless, the public had been extensively prepared for her appearance through a coordinated campaign by Mrs. Billman, Mrs. McKnight, and the Drama League, which, as I will discuss below, proved to be a rehearsal for their promotion of the Ballets Russes.16In addition to these events in the realm of “high art,” popular attractions offered representations of Russia, the Middle East, and Asia, often involving dance. As elsewhere in the United States, in Grand Rapids the vaudeville theaters presented the most frequent and varied dance performances, which were covered on the same theater pages and reviewed by the same writers as the attractions at Powers’. The dancing acts ranged from the “Ballet Classique” (nine Metropolitan opera house stars “said to be the country's most perfectly trained dancing organization,” dancing to the music of “famous composers” performed by an “augmented orchestra”), to Miss Nina Payne in “Cleopatra's Cake Walk,” to the Tasmanian Trio, “a troupe of novelty Arabian acrobats, in a routine of music on one string fiddles, Russian dances, native songs and whirlwind acrobatic work of the most sensational nature.”17 The movie theaters picked up Russian themes with films such as The Scarlet Oath and Anton the Terrible, in addition to Pavlova's The Dumb Girl of Portici.18 The Majestic Gardens contributed to the interest in Eastern dance when it presented Miss Beulah Skallerup giving her “sensational Temple of Kama dance” as a prelude to Mary Pickford's film Less Than the Dust, set in India. Music for both film and dance was given by the house orchestra, an ensemble of ten women called the “Gypsy” or “Boston” orchestra, under the baton of violinist Eleanor Louise Schworer, professionally known as “Zita.”19Coverage of these presentations of Eastern dance reveal both the fascination that might draw audiences to the Ballets Russes's Scheherazade and the moral concerns that Mrs. Billman and the Drama League would have to allay in their promotion of it. When the Anglo-Indian dancer Roshanara appeared on a vaudeville bill at Keith's Empress, she was touted as “India's greatest exponent of the ancient terpsichorean art.” Nevertheless, Carl Saunders of the Herald, in his review of her “Burmese court reel,” “Ceylon harvest gavotte,” and “weird Hindu snake dance,” could not resist emphasizing her “seemingly boneless physique” and “a certain pleasing pulchritude which is accentuated by her appearance in bare feet and limbs.” She was prominently quoted the next day stating that there was not “anything vulgar about dancing in bare feet,” and indeed “nothing sensuous about any of our Indian classical dances.”20 Similar anxieties around the performance of Amorita, star dancer in the “Garden of Allah” show at the West Michigan State Fair, were more pronounced and less easily quieted. A journalist who called himself only “the respectable young married reporter” (though his writing style and other details probably identify him as Saunders) described at length his embarrassment on being sent by his editor to interview the dancer in her tent and his astonishment on finding that “‘the Sultan's Favorite’ is a very nice little lady with a husband and a fond recollection of the folks back home.” Still, when he saw her on stage, as her dance became “more energetic” he “stealthily sneaked out.” His discomfort was consistent with the mores of the community, for, at the conclusion of the fair, the Grand Rapids Ministers Conference condemned this show and “voted to withdraw their indorsement of the fair if such exhibitions are booked in the future.”21In trying to imagine how this audience might have responded to the Ballets Russes performance, it is also useful to consider how Grand Rapids residents engaged with music and dance in their daily lives. There was a broad culture of participation in the arts, with many voices speaking to the benefits, especially of music. Schools, churches, factories, clubs, and other organizations offered extensive musical and theatrical activities for children and adults. The papers carried frequent announcements of performances by amateur choruses and bands, and the formation of new ones, confirming the view that “Grand Rapids never c