The role of musical component in S. Lifar’s stage conception

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The role of music in the ballet genre, its relationship with choreographic text remain one of the most controversial in the scientific field. In the situation of the “musical revolutions” of the 20th century, this problem became acute in connection with the renewal of genres, the emancipation of the creative imagination of choreographers who began to use music of any style direction in ballet. Among the interesting innovations of the past, we should point out the concept of free dance by Serge Lifar – a famous dancer, Ukrainian by origin, whose work as choreographer is less covered than the work of his colleagues and contemporaries M. Fokin and G. Balanchin. The purpose of the article is to consider the interaction of musical and choreographic components in the concept of S. Lifar’s ballet performance. For the first time S. Lifar’s creative experiments are considered in the context of the relationship between music and dance with the defining the role of music in the conception of “free dance” that is the innovative idea of this study. Recent research and publications. After the first publication of the leading art critic A. Levinson (Levinson & Lifar, 1934), the materials about S. Lifar appear in French art history with a certain frequency (Prunières, 1935; Gropius & Servane,1947; Hofmann, 1953; Laurent & Sazanova, 1960; Schouvaloff, 1998; Christout & Lefèvre, 2006; Poudru, 2007; Pastori, 2009). In the Ukrainian scientific space, attention to the artist’s figure has been increasing since the late of 1990s (Yu. Stanishevsky in: Lifar, 2007; A. Balabko, 2011). Important for the development of the theme are the books of the dancer himself. In his “Le manifesto du chorégraphe” (Lifar, 1935) the choreographer lays out the understanding of the relationship between music and dance in a ballet performance. Results and conclusion. S. Lifar realized his concept in the ballet “Icarus” (1935). Musically gifted by nature, in his choreographic practice, he unexpectedly proclaims the primacy of choreography, not music (!), which went against the latest trends of the time. The choreographer argued that the composer can use the fixed choreographic text in the same way as the text of a poem for creating music, which will enliven a given rhythmic and dance patterns. A. Honegger in the ballet “Icarus” uses 26 instruments, combines them into five blocks of drums of uniform timbre, supplemented by two double basses, which are also interpreted as percussions, due to the predominance of the col legno technique. The simple in essence rhythm formulas are artfully distributed among the instruments of a percussion ensemble that takes on the role of a traditional orchestra. In S. Lifar’s “Icarus” for the first time proposed a method of translating body movements into rhythmic formulas combined into a plastic score of the performance. A. Honegger turned out to be an ideal composer for such translstion. If other versions of the musical embodiment of the “Icarus” rhythm diagram will appear in the history of the genre, the original compositional solution will remain the invariant, comparison with which will be inevitable.