Imported Sophistication: The Ballets Russes Tours of the 1930s–50s and Toronto's Quest for Cultural Significance

Abstract

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes tours across North America in 1916–17 were not a resounding financial or critical success, however, as the preceding articles in this collection have shown, the Russian dancers and their repertoire left a deep impression on audiences, and their performances continued to resonate long after the company returned to Europe: many Americans discovered a love of ballet after seeing the Ballets Russes and sought out classes or local dance productions, and orchestras increasingly incorporated Russian orchestral works and ballet music into their programs. Nevertheless, the impact of the Ballets Russes tours waned over the next several years, superseded by other touring companies of the 1910s and 1920s, in particular the much beloved Anna Pavlova.1 For most Americans, Diaghilev's fabled company eventually faded into memory or became a distant object of curiosity to be followed through magazines and occasional news reports. When Diaghilev died in 1929 and the company disbanded, it seemed that the influence of the Ballets Russes in North America might come to an end.Then, in the early 1930s, the Ballets Russes returned. The company that performed in New York on December 22, 1933, was not the same one Diaghilev had headed for twenty years, but it maintained many of the practices that had led to his company's remarkable success across Europe and included many of its former celebrities.2 Named the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and led by Colonel W. de Basil and René Blum, the new touring company boasted a roster of rising and established star dancers performing old and new repertoire created by some of Diaghilev's most famous choreographers, including Michel Fokine, George Balanchine, and Léonide Massine.3 The new company met with great success in Europe during its inaugural performances in 1932 and was especially popular in London in 1933, when Massine's ballets attracted crowds in such spectacular numbers that the season was extended for several weeks.4 The initial reception of the new Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in Depression-era New York was considerably more subdued, but after tweaks in programming and marketing, the company set off on its first American tour and began its meteoric rise to stardom.Over the next few years, the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo would crisscross the United States and Canada repeatedly, visiting major metropolitan centers along with dozens of small cities and towns, introducing ballet to millions of people, and positioning the genre as a popular form of entertainment.5 With its mix of nineteenth-century ballets and Diaghilev-era repertoire, new but accessible comic and dramatic works, and, on occasion, new modern-leaning works, Ballets Russes performances became highly anticipated events throughout North America. When in the mid-1930s artistic and managerial disputes in de Basil's company escalated beyond repair, the Ballets Russes split into two competing organizations: Massine, formerly the ballet master for de Basil's company, left to form a new “Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo” directed by Sergei Denham, while de Basil regrouped under various names, eventually settling on de Basil's “Original Ballet Russe.”6 Both de Basil's and Denham's companies toured the United States and Canada from 1938 to 1941, sometimes with overlapping repertoire and personnel and often performing in the same theaters in close succession with equal success. Denham's company would, however, soon become the dominant of the two in North America, and after 1947 it was the only one.7The legacy of the post-Diaghilev Ballets Russes companies in North America is difficult to quantify.8 Although by no means the only successful ballet companies to perform in the United States and Canada, and certainly not the most innovative, they were the most popular: they significantly broadened audiences interested in attending ballet performances and they often spurred local dance initiatives, including the founding of several ballet schools and companies, both amateur and professional. Many of the ballet training programs and companies now flourishing across the United States and Canada—and in South America, Europe, and Australia—owe their establishment and audiences to the Ballets Russes tours of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.This article explores the reception of de Basil's and Denham's Ballets Russes in a single city—Toronto—as a case study of how the touring companies made their way into the cultural fabric of a city and shaped the development of a local ballet scene. Our focus is on the impact that the Ballets Russes had on Toronto and its quest to foster a homegrown cosmopolitan cultural scene from the 1930s through the 1950s. When Colonel de Basil first brought the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo to Toronto for a single performance on April 23, 1934, he found a small audience but one that was eager to see the internationally acclaimed company that had become emblematic of cultural sophistication in London and New York. Encouraged by the warm reception, de Basil's Ballets Russes returned six months later for a three-day engagement, followed by annual visits in 1935, 1936, and 1937. In 1938, after Massine parted ways with de Basil and joined forces with Denham, audiences flocked to the theater for back-to-back week-long engagements of both de Basil's Original Ballet Russe and Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; de Basil's company also visited a second time that year. Both companies returned to Toronto in 1941 and were met by a devoted following of connoisseurs along with an increasingly diverse audience captivated by the company's lavish sceneries, colorful costumes, mix of novel and familiar repertoire, and roster of glamorous ballerinas. As a Globe and Mail reporter declared, “[B]allet fever has swept Toronto,” with admirers lining up for tickets a week in advance of the show and “showing the same enthusiasm for this delightful form of entertainment as [in] London and New York.”9 Denham's organization continued to visit for the next two decades, performing in the city in 1942, 1944, twice in 1945, annually from 1946 to 1951, and briefly in 1955 and 1958.While de Basil's and Denham's Ballets Russes companies were headline attractions in Toronto, they were not merely a passing fad. Although their stops in the city never extended beyond two weeks a year, their tours throughout the 1930s and 1940s coincided with a period of transformation that had profound consequences for Toronto's cultural landscape and artistic status.10 Over a span of roughly twenty years, the city would gradually move toward becoming a modern metropolis, with waves of immigration not only doubling the population but also shifting demographics toward an increasingly cosmopolitan multiculturalism.11 By the time Denham brought his troupe to Toronto for its last performance in 1958, Toronto had undergone significant cultural renewal. Not only had the city established its own acclaimed ballet company, it was well on its way to developing an art and music scene of international caliber.We begin with an overview of Toronto's cultural milieu when the Ballets Russes arrived in the 1930s, offering a window into the conservative music and art world of old Toronto that formed audience expectations when the Ballets Russes first appeared on the scene. We then turn to the tours and the reception of both companies. Notably, although de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo (later de Basil's Ballets Russes or Original Ballet Russe) and Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo were separate entities, Toronto audiences—or at least Toronto critics—did not distinguish between the two. Critics sometimes specified which company they were writing about, but just as frequently they did not: the two were often referred to simply as the “Ballet Russe,” or, occasionally, the “Russian Ballet,” and general interest articles about ballet conflated the two.12 Critics were equally enthusiastic about both and rarely compared them, even when they performed in Toronto in the same years (critics did, however, occasionally compare the “Ballet Russe” to Mordkin Ballet, Jooss Ballet, Ballet Theater, and Sadler's Wells). In keeping with Torontonians’ reception of the Ballets Russes, this article treats de Basil's and Denham's companies as largely interchangeable in their influence on the Toronto art scene. Finally, we conclude by looking at how the Ballets Russes tours shaped Toronto's emerging ballet and music scene in the 1940s and 1950s. We argue that the two companies had a profound impact on the city, significantly broadening audience interest in ballet and music performance and serving as cultural signifiers within Toronto artistic communities at a pivotal moment in the city's history.The timing of the Ballets Russes's arrival in Toronto almost sealed the company's fate. The tours began at the height of the Great Depression, when the city was facing a 30 percent unemployment rate and when many of those still employed were reeling from substantial pay cuts. Only the most affluent members of society could afford to attend major cultural events. Toronto in 1934 was a comparatively provincial city in both size and outlook, with a population of roughly 650,000, predominantly of British descent and Protestant.13 It was then the second largest city in Canada, and while not significantly smaller than Montreal in population, it lagged in economic and cultural terms. Montreal had long been the financial capital of Canada, home to the headquarters of the country's largest banks, insurance corporations, and railways, and it had a reputation for sophistication and fun, with a thriving nightlife that boasted local and international talents. Toronto had an enduring reputation for social conservatism and propriety, with a tendency toward sanctimonious moralizing that earned it the moniker “Toronto the good.”14 It had been a dry town from 1916 until 1927, and several Toronto neighborhoods remained liquor-free for many decades beyond (one could not, for instance, purchase a drink at Massey Hall when the Ballets Russes performed there).15Toronto also had a reputation for cultural conservatism. Much of the city's musical offerings throughout the 1920s and 1930s reflected the old-fashioned British tastes that had dominated Toronto's musical scene since the early twentieth century.16 The city had a small local theater scene, a burgeoning art scene, and a fledgling Symphony Orchestra, but Torontonians’ unadventurous musical and artistic tastes and wariness of anything new would have made for an inauspicious welcome for a company such as the Ballets Russes, which built its reputation on claims of choreographic modernity.17 Massey Hall, home to leading musical ensembles such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, for instance, relied heavily on the Austro-German canon, regularly presenting evenings of orchestral and choral works by Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Handel, and Bach. It was not uncommon for the TSO to program concerts entirely dedicated to the works of Wagner or Beethoven, with yearly all-Wagner concerts.18 Other composers featured periodically on TSO programs included Dvořák, Grieg, Elgar, and Sibelius.19Although ballet music remained a rare treat for TSO audiences, a few works made their way onto programs by the mid-1920s, suggesting that Toronto audiences had at least a passing familiarity with some of the repertoire presented by the Ballets Russes companies. Tchaikovsky's music was by far the best known. His symphonies no. 4, 5, and 6 were programmed multiple times per season, as were his piano and violin concertos. Audiences would, therefore, have found the music of Massine's Les Présages (to Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 5) and Balanchine's Ballet Imperial (to Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto no. 2) comfortingly familiar even if the ballets’ choreography and staging challenged their expectations. The TSO also regularly performed Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suite, which became popular with Massey Hall audiences long before the choreographed ballet became a staple of Ballets Russes programming. Other ballet music performed by the TSO on an occasional basis that later showed up on de Basil's and Denham's Ballets Russes programs include Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune, Delibes's Coppélia, Strauss's The Blue Danube, Borodin's Polovtzian Dances from Prince Igor, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol.20Toronto's art scene was equally conservative, deeply rooted in Canada's Victorian aesthetic past.21 As with music, the development of a modern art scene lagged significantly behind its European and American counterparts, with audiences especially apprehensive of anything avant-garde.22 Viscerally conservative critics challenged emerging modernist artists such as the Toronto-based Group of Seven, who sought to reimagine Canadian nationalist art through a modernist lens—an opposition they continued to face in the 1930s. Although Toronto had a few outlets such as the Toronto Arts and Letters Club that encouraged local artistic experimentation, audiences and critics continued to protest artistic currents that strayed too far from the familiar.23Despite its deep-seated conservatism, Toronto in the 1930s aspired to assert itself on the world stage as a cosmopolitan city on par with the capitals of Europe and the United States. However, Toronto's cultural organizations could only do so by looking abroad. With few established institutions that could compete on an international level and suffering from insecurities born of its colonial past, Toronto endeavored to establish its artistic credentials primarily by importing international acts.24 Theater managers and agents invited a succession of American and European companies in an effort to demonstrate Toronto's standing as a cultural center, while critics drew on these performances to market their own visions of what Toronto's cultural scene should look like. Audiences, in turn, grew increasingly open to foreign productions and foreign talent. The Royal Alexandra Theater and the Princess Theater, for instance, regularly welcomed companies such as England's Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Festival Company, the D'Oyle Carte Opera Company, and the New York-based Theater Guild.25 Royal Alexandra audiences were also treated to performances by touring opera companies, including the American Opera Company, the New York Grand Opera Company, and the San Carlo Grand Opera, who performed operatic favorites of the day: The Marriage of Figaro, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Faust, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and Aida.26 The luxurious Eaton Auditorium, a brand-new venue that catered to a select audience of middle- and upper-middle-class Torontonians, likewise presented international operatic stars for more intimate concerts of Italian opera arias and, on occasion, concerts of more recent works by composers such as Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev, and de Falla.27This influx of international theatrical, musical, and artistic trends not only fostered an interest in artistic production in general but also encouraged an openness to a broader range of artistic developments, including modernist art and music. Toronto's Art Gallery, for instance, sought to introduce local audiences to the world of modern art in 1927, hosting the International Exhibition of Modern Art.28 The exhibition, featuring “the strangest, most disturbing, most bizarre, and most exciting visual art” by the leading avant-garde artists of the day was considered the gallery's most successful exhibition to date, with over 10,000 in attendance.29 Although most audiences and critics remained wary of the modernist works on display, some were intrigued, sparking a small local following for modern art.30 Modern music also slowly emerged in the Toronto music scene in the 1930s, with performances held by small chamber ensembles for the more adventurous audiences of the experimental Hart House Theater on the university campus. The Hart House quartet, for example, became an important advocate of new music in Toronto, performing works by Hindemith, Delius, Kodály, Prokofiev, Bartòk, and Schoenberg.The Ballets Russes tours were part of this internationalization and modernization of Toronto's cultural scene. Prior to the 1930s, most Torontonian audiences understood “dance” to mean social dance and popular stage dance, and sometimes, modern dance. Most ticket buyers would have had an intimate knowledge of social dance, which remained a common diversion throughout the period in private homes, social clubs, and dance halls, and many were very likely familiar with dance as seen in vaudevilles, revues, musical comedy, and cinema.31 All four forms of entertainment featured a range of choreographed numbers, from high-kicking lines of scantily clad “girls,” tap dancing, or various folk dances from around the world to lyrical performances that called on a classical ballet vocabulary. Other live dance performances included recitals staged by private dance studios and performances by practitioners of modern dance.32Torontonians’ only exposure to professional-level classical ballet would have been Anna Pavlova, the famous Maryinsky-trained prima ballerina who toured extensively with her own company of dancers. Pavlova made several stops in Toronto between 1910 and 1924, cultivating a loyal following by performing in both established and vaudeville theaters at comparatively low prices.33 Pavlova remained the emblematic ballerina of Torontonians’ popular imagination for a generation and was the standard against which audiences and critics first measured de Basil's Ballets Russes.34 Once Torontonians saw the Ballets Russes, however, Pavlova was all but forgotten by critics, whose point of comparison for all ballet performances, whether local initiatives or other touring companies, became the Ballets Russes. The popularity of de Basil's, and later Denham's, Ballets Russes subsequently served as catalysts for inviting other ballet companies to perform in Toronto. Two years after de Basil's first Ballets Russes tour to Canada, Toronto welcomed the Jooss Ballet in 1936 and 1937, the Mordkin Ballet in 1937 and 1938, and the Littlefield Ballet in 1941. Roland Petit came with Les Ballets de Paris for a week in 1950, and the Sadler's Wells Ballet came in 1949, 1951, and 1953.35De Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo made their Toronto debut in April 1934 as part of cross-continent tour organized by Sol Hurok. It was the company's second tour of North America, and Toronto was one of ninety stops in seven months.37 They had been invited to perform at Massey Hall as one of a number of major musical attractions brought in from the United States by American impresarios with the goal of attracting large audiences, as well as bestowing reflected prestige on the theater. The Ballets Russes had a reputation for choreographic innovation, and the company had recently made headlines in London with Massine's controversial new “symphonic” ballets Les Présages and Choreartium, set to Tchaikovsky Symphony no. 5 and Brahms Symphony no. 4. In an interview published by the Toronto Daily Star the day before the company's premiere in the city, Massine underlined his company's “greatness” by making reference to “our best things [which] are extremely modern . . . with a great deal of modern music.”38As much as the company advertised its modernity in the Canadian press, the Ballets Russes did not create many modernist ballets; and of the few that it premiered, almost none were performed in Toronto.39 Instead, Hurok and de Basil toured with their lightest and least adventurous numbers guaranteed to please the broadest possible audience.40 As it turned out, that perfectly suited Toronto's conservative audiences. The program for the inaugural performance featured Fokine's dreamy, romantic Les Sylphides set to Chopin, Balanchine's comic La Concurrence with a score by George Auric, and Massine's light romantic comedy Le Beau Danube choreographed to music by Johann Strauss. All were highly accessible and steeped in choreographic conventions familiar to any balletomanes in the audience and in musical sounds immediately appealing to symphony-goers. Hurok and de Basil had chosen well. The show was hailed by critics as a “dance sensation,” “better even than Pavlova.”41The repertoire chosen for subsequent Toronto performances was equally accessible. When the Ballets Russes returned to Toronto in the fall of 1934 and 1935, they repeated Le Beau Danube and Les Sylphides, declared to have been crowd favorites in Toronto the previous year, along with comedies and romances choreographed to pleasant, uncomplicated music, old and new: Union Pacific, with music by Nicolas Nabokov; La Boutique Fantasque, with music by Respighi drawing on older works by Rossini; Children's Tales (Contes Russes), with music by Anatoly Liadov; and School of Dance (Scuola di ballo), with a score by Luigi Boccherini, orchestrated by Jean Françaix. They also introduced Toronto to the rousing Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's Prince Igor, and they added the Petipa/Tchaikovsky classics Swan Lake (Act II) and “Aurora's Wedding,” excerpted from The Sleeping Beauty. The only modern-leaning works in the first three programs were Bronislava Nijinska's new Les Cent Baisers to music by Frédéric d'Erlanger and Massine's new Les Présages.42 Although these last two works were well received—one critic claimed that Les Présages was the greatest hit of the Ballets Russes 1934 program—they would remain among the few new works performed in Toronto.43 They were also modern only in choreography. Neither d'Erlanger's nor Tchaikovsky's music would have been challenging to Massey Hall audiences, who would have been well versed in a late-nineteenth-century orchestral idiom.Although Torontonians were familiar with modern dance and might have been more open to innovative ballets, de Basil, and later Denham, would never present the most modern works that had fueled the Ballets Russes's international fame as an innovative ballet company. They did not, for instance, stage Les Noces, the powerful and austere Diaghilev-era ballet by Nijinska and Stravinsky with designs by Natalia Goncharova; Rouge et Noir, an allegorical ballet by Massine to Shostakovich's Symphony no. 1 with designs by Matisse; Bacchanale, a surreal ballet by Massine and Salvador Dali to Wagner's Tannhauser; Labyrinth, by Massine choreographed to Schubert, also with designs by Dali; or Jeu de Cartes by Balanchine and Stravinsky. Instead, the Ballets Russes companies played it safe with proven crowd-pleasers. Among the most frequently repeated ballets were Les Sylphides, Le Beau Danube, Polovtsian Dances, and Scheherazade from the Diaghilev years, excerpts from Swan Lake, and Massine's much beloved Offenbach ballet, Gaîté Parisienne.44 Each appeared on programs of either de Basil's or Denham's company in eight or nine different years and were sometimes performed by both companies in the same year.45The Ballets Russes companies only grew more conservative as the decade progressed, mainly repeating works known from previous years along with the occasional accessible new work. Denham's company presented only one novel program, in 1945: evenings of Balanchine ballets Ballet Imperial (to Tchaikovsky), Bourgeois Gentilhomme (to Richard Strauss), Danses Concertantes (to Stravinsky), and Mozartiana, along with old standards Les Sylphides and Gaîté Parisienne. The program did well enough at the box office, but it is telling that the more accessible Ballet Imperial returned in 1948, 1949, and 1950, while the more modernist Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Dances Concertantes were not repeated in Toronto. The only “modern” ballet that attracted attention in the late 1940s was Rodeo, first performed in Toronto in 1948 (reprised 1949, 1950).46 Both Toronto critics and audiences, however, dwelled less on its novel choreography and setting and more on its connections to Broadway and Hollywood, which did much to boost box-office sales. Most “new” repertoire presented on tours instead veered sharply into the past, with nineteenth-century classics outnumbering new works or canonic Ballets Russes repertoire: the works that turn up repeatedly on Denham's programs from the late 1940s are Nutcracker, Giselle, Paquita, Raymonda, and Coppélia, excerpts from and variations of which were repeated almost yearly for the company's last tours.47Despite Hurok's overtures to the public, Toronto's audience for de Basil's Ballets Russes was initially quite small. Massey Hall did not sell out for the company's first performance, and although critics declared the show a triumph and a sensation, a few seats remained unsold during the Ballets Russes's three-day visit in 1935.48 Seats were very expensive—between $1 and $3.50 when most Massey Hall concerts cost 50 cents to $2 or $2.50—and as mentioned above, few Torontonians in the early 1930s could afford such high-end entertainments. However, the allure of the company's spectacular staging, glamorous stars, and international reputation, along with a steady economic recovery, considerably brightened the company's fortunes. By the late 1930s, both Ballets Russes companies were performing for multiple nights to sold-out halls, and in the mid-1940s, audiences were so enthusiastic that one hyperbolic critic declared Toronto the next center for ballet in North America.49We have only a general idea of who came to these first performances of the Ballets Russes. One can assume that a Massey Hall audience was relatively affluent and probably familiar with symphonic and operatic repertoire. One reviewer, for instance, wrote that, as a workingman, he found himself a dissenting low-brow, and another mentioned that “the Toronto dance public” was “partly a musical public and partly just the public.”50 Initial press releases seem to have been geared toward Toronto's cultural elite. The Toronto Daily Star's first promotional article, published nine days before the Ballets Russes 1934 premiere, was designed to address middle- and upper-middle class Torontonians’ social values and cultural insecurities. The Star not only tempted audiences with promises of glittering spectacle but also assured potential patrons, in superlatives, of the company's prestige, credentials, and international status. The Ballets Russes was declared to be “the first real Russian ballet” to visit since Pavlova and was billed as passing on “the great tradition from Paris.” The company, “under the patronage of the Hereditary Princess of Monaco,” was said to comprise the “most distinguished dance protégés of the late Serge Diaghilev, great figure of the Russian ballet world,” along with “rising young talent from studios of former prima ballerinas of the Imperial Ballet Russe of Petrograd.”51 “Critics in New York, London, Paris, and Chicago,” continued the announcement, had pronounced it “one of the most glamorous spectacles in the theatre to-day.”52 An interview with Massine published the day of the performance again reminded readers of Diaghilev's “greatness” and of the company's international stature, assuring tickets holders that they would like the show as much as audiences did in New York and Chicago.53Reviews of both Ballets Russes companies’ performances continued to appeal to Torontonians’ quest for status throughout the 1930s, while also establishing many enduring myths of ballet history, creating lineages of “great” choreographers and placing the Ballets Russes as the inheritors of a noble European or Russian tradition.54 One review highlighted ballet's associations with its noble French ancestry, declaring that “this peculiar combination of arts goes straight back in tradition to the days of Noverre, who taught Marie Antoinette to dance.”55 Another gave Imperial Russia credit for the company's illustrious pedigree, telling audiences that the Ballets Russes inherited this tradition from the Imperial Ballet and that the dancers were descendants of the czar's favorite ballerinas who had moved to Paris and had taught exiled Russian children the art of Nijinsky and Pavlova.56 Yet another combined these two ideas, reminding readers of ballet's aristocratic roots in the French court of Louis XIV and concluding that “as a French institution it faded and died out, but in Russia it became a national institution, which is why today Ballet Russe is regarded as reaching the supreme heights of the art.”57 With similar intent, reviews also underlined the company's pedigree by emphasizing its success at Covent Garden in London, twice with King George and Queen Elizabeth in attendance, once with the Duke and Duchess of York.58Audiences might initially have been drawn to the Ballets Russes because of its mythologized history and international renown, but what brought them back in successive years was more likely star power and spectacle. Managers of Massey Hall, the Royal Alexandra, and both Ballets Russes companies recognized this and quickly shifted gears. Over the next two decades, preperformance announcements would increasingly rely on photographs of the most popular dancers under headlines such as “Stars of Ballet Dazzle Toronto” and “Ballet Russe Comes in Romantic Glamor,” sometimes with tantalizing descriptions of dancers’ lives that depicted them as mysterious and exotic.59 Many reviews devoted at least as much space to describing the colorful “scenics” as to giving accounts of the ballets. The Toronto Daily Star's Augustus Bridle was especially inclined to embellish, describing shows as “throbb[ing] with scenic splendor, to a grand, rhythmic carnival of costumes” or featuring a “prodigious color-symphony with gorgeous scenics.”60 Glamour and glitter were the true draws of the show.The shift in focus of announcements and reviews from selling the company