Ballets Russes Research Articles

"Whole New Worlds of Art": Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz, the Ballets Russes, and Paris between the World Wars

"Whole New Worlds of Art":Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz, the Ballets Russes, and Paris between the World Wars Charlotte Rich Diaghilev . . . made choreographers work with real music and contemporary composers, pulling dance out of the ghetto of made-to- order ballet music and into Stravinsky's modern world. So too with decor and costumes: fashion and art merged with theater and design. Behind all of this lay a new twentieth-century urgency. It was no longer enough to create entertaining novelties: the point was to invent whole new "worlds of art." —Jennifer Homans, Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (2010, p. 339) The reassessment of Zelda Fitzgerald's only published novel has taken many turns. Save Me the Waltz received "circumspect, mixed, and brief " reviews upon its little-promoted publication in 1932. After Fitzgerald's death in 1948 the novel remained out of print, with the exception of one British edition in 1953, until reissue in 1967 as a Signet paperback, an effort spurred by F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli (Wagner 206). Three years later a biography by Nancy Milford sparked new interest in Zelda Fitzgerald, but scholarly attention to the novel remained slim. Offering a recuperative assessment in 1979, Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin noted that those who read Save Me the Waltz tend to do so "for the wrong reason—that is, because Zelda was the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald," asserting that it is "a moving and fascinating novel which should be read on its own terms equally as much as Tender Is the Night" (22, 23). In 1991, Bruccoli reissued Save Me the Waltz as part of the Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald. Despite Bruccoli's faint praise for Fitzgerald's writing as "evidence of an individualized literary capacity" (xiii), the novel received high marks from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, who hailed it as a "strangely evocative novel, episodic in structure, painterly in [End Page 78] its description, almost hallucinatory in overall effect." After a Vintage Classics paperback reissue in 2001, the novel languished again before a new edition in 2019 by Handheld Press. Scholarly discussion of the novel tends to focus on its autobiographical connections, feminist considerations of its protagonist, or its treatment of material similar to Tender Is the Night. Sally Cline's 2002 biography, like Milford's, details links between Fitzgerald and her counterpart in Save Me the Waltz, Alabama Knight, as does Erin E. Templeton's introduction to the Handheld Press edition and Meryl Cates's recent essay in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. Critics including Michelle Payne apply feminist approaches, exploring issues such as body image and eating disorders, while Simone Weil Davis analyzes its portrayal of female identity in a commodified culture that demands constant self-fashioning. Kathryn Lee Seidel, Alexis Wang, and Alvin Y. Wang explore how the text reflects Fitzgerald's own growth as a visual artist. Rickie-Ann Legleitner argues that the novel shows the persistence of sentimentalism in modernist literature through its depiction of a struggling mother/artist figure. And Deborah Pike's The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald makes valuable claims for Fitzgerald's place in literary modernism and reassesses Save Me the Waltz alongside Tender Is the Night through a biocritical lens.1 Despite these insightful ways of reading Save Me the Waltz, the novel remains marginal in accounts of modern American fiction between the world wars, particularly that spurred by American expatriatism in Europe. Judging by its absence in several studies of Lost Generation literature, the novel appears a lesser contribution—or no contribution at all—to the body of fiction about Americans in interwar Europe, especially the environment of Paris.2 Neglect of Save Me the Waltz, particularly alongside its roman à clef counterparts The Sun Also Rises and Tender Is the Night, affirms Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald as the preeminent storytellers of American lives in post–World War I Europe, with the fiction of Djuna Barnes and Kay Boyle more recently recognized for this significance. While Hemingway's and F. Scott Fitzgerald's evocations of the erratic, anchorless culture of American expatriatism are timeless, they continue to dominate understandings of Lost Generation experience...

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

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

Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the American Midwest

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the American Midwest

Guest Editor's Introduction: The Ballets Russes in North America

Guest Editor's Introduction: The Ballets Russes in North America

“It Must Be Preserved”: Adolph Bolm's Revival of Le Coq d'Or

“It Must Be Preserved”: Adolph Bolm's Revival of <i>Le Coq d'Or</i>

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

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

Борис Эйфман: на пути к современному Театру балета

The aim of this article is to study the factors that determined the way of formation, creative discoveries of the original author’s repertoire Ballet Theatre of Boris Eifman - an outstanding choreographer at the turn of the XX and the first twenty years of the XXI century. The scientific originality of the research is due to the fact that the topic of the author’s ballet theatre has been little studied in art history, but its role in the development of modern choreography is significant. As a result of studying the phenomenon of Boris Eifman Ballet Theatre, the components of this type of theatre were identified: mastering the creative heritage of great choreographers, continuing the traditions of Russian ballet in creating a multi-act plot performance based on literary classics (and other sources), updating the spiritualized plasticity and polystylistics of the choreographic vocabulary, its dramatization , musical drama.

Letter from the editor

Dear readers, We are pleased to present to you Issue 4, 2021, of the scientific and analytical journal Burganov House. The Space of Culture . Upon the recommendation of the Expert Council of the Higher Attestation Commission, the journal is included in the List of Leading Peer-reviewed Scien - tific Journals and Publications in which the main sci - entific results of theses for the academic degrees of doctor and candidate of science must be published. The journal publishes scientific articles by lead - ing specialists in various humanitarian fields, doctor - al students, and graduate students. Research areas concern topical problems in multiple areas of cul - ture, art, philology, and linguistics. This versatility of the review reveals the main specificity of the jour - nal, which represents the current state of the cul - tural space. The journal traditionally opens with the Aca - demic Interview rubric. In the issue, we present an outstanding figure of world culture — Nikolai Tsis - karidze, a Member of the Council for Culture and Art under the President of the Russian Federation, People’s Artist of Russia, Rector of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. His charismatic image personifies the Russian ballet school. The article “The Liar’s Paradox –a wild interation. Part II. Difthong “Aristotel-Anokhin” (continuation)” by E.Menshikova develops the theme of the para - doxes of the modern space of culture. The author explores such concepts as consciousness as a “res - onant system” and various types of thinking, com - paring modernity with the ancient philosophical and cultural tradition. In his article “On the Issue of Organising Space in Book Miniatures of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. 4th-7th Centuries”, M.Bankov analy - ses polychrome miniature in the context of the book creation art. The author believes that the develop - ment of spatial constructions in miniature painting is an indivisible process in which each new stage is derived from the previous one. The views of animal painters of the 19th-20th centuries on the world of wildlife, the factor of the relationship between man and nature, reflected in works of art, are considered by I.Portnova in the ar - ticle “Russian Animalistic Art of the 19th-20th Cen - turies in the Views on the World of Flora and Fauna”. The extensive correspondence of Empress Cathe - rine II with politicians, scientists and cultural figures of Europe during the period of difficult relations be - tween Russia and China is investigated by N.Suraeva in the article “The Image of China in the Corre - spondence of Catherine II”. Particular emphasis is placed on the correspondence between Catherine II and Voltaire. In the article “Architectural Space in Dance as an Artistic-figurative System”, T.Portnova considers the expressive means of dance and architecture, anal - yses the general and the specific in their artistic language, reveals the degree of interaction of ar - chitectural principles with dance drama and chore - ographic composition. In the article “Practice as Research: Creative and Research Practice in the Format of Postgraduate Ed - ucation”, the team of authors, L.Alyabyeva, I.Sakhno and T.Fadeeva, summarise the experience of Euro - pean educational programs and, after their critical understanding, create the author’s concept. The au - thors believe that practice and research have long been inseparable in educational programs in the field of contemporary art and design. In the article “Artistic Potential of Graphic Digi - tal Modelling. The Convergence of Traditional and Multimedia Exhibition Means in the Display of Dig - ital Art Works”, E.Zayeva-Burdonskaya and D.Kar - dashenko study the artistic potential of computer graphic modelling in the space of contemporary ar - tistic creation and artistic exhibition systems. The authors provide examples of contemporary exhibi - tions that implement the complex convergence of traditional and multimedia exhibition means in the display of digital art works. The publication is addressed to professionals specialising in the theory and practice of the fine arts and philology and all those interested in the arts and culture.

INTERVIEW WITH NIKOLAI TSISKARIDZE — A MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL FOR CULTURE AND ART UNDER THE PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, RECTOR OF THE VAGANOVA ACADEMY OF RUSSIAN BALLET

Traditionally, our journal opens with an academic interview. In this issue, we present an outstanding figure of world culture — Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a member of the Council for Culture and Art under the President of the Russian Federation, National Artist of Russia, Rector of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. His charismatic image personifies the Russian ballet school. It is universally recognised that Tsiskaridze’s creative and pedagogical activity has given a new impetus to the school of classical dance. Thanks to his efforts, the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet has rightfully taken a leading place on the world stage and is highly regarded by the professional community. Nikolai Tsiskaridze kindly agreed to answer the questions of Maria Burganova, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Burganov House. Space of Culture. INTERVIEW WITH NIKOLAI TSISKARIDZE — A MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL FOR CULTURE AND ART UNDER THE PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, RECTOR OF THE VAGANOVA ACADEMY OF RUSSIAN BALLET Maria A. Burganova: What defines contemporary culture in Russia? Dialogue with the past, search for innovations, an expectation of change? Nikolai M. Tsiskaridze: Everything listed by you. And also, the rapid development of the culture of consumerism. M.B.: Are culture and the state interrelated concepts? To what extent does the state determine the development of culture? Can culture exist without government support? N.Ts.: At all times, culture could not exist without state support; therefore, of course, these concepts are interrelated. M.B.: The cultural space is a dialogue space. The audience creates it jointly with an artist, an actor, a musician. Today it seems that the viewer comes to the theatre, museum, philharmonic “to have a rest”. Who is an ideal viewer? What would you like to communicate to them? To what extent does the creative process take the possible reaction of the viewer into account? N.Ts.: There can be no dialogue. There is an artist, and there is the viewer’s perception of them. Any cultural space — theatre, museum, and so on, has always been a space for relaxation. When they say that the viewer also “works”, “creates” — it is nonsense. M.B.: The modern cultural space is permeated with Internet culture. How does this relate to classical heritage and education? Has a new cultural myth been formed? N.Ts.: The Internet is just a form of expression. M.B.: Virtuality is fully capturing museums and theatres. Exhibitions based on media technologies have become commonplace. In theatres, laptops broadcasting monologues and stage performances appear instead of actors. Is this a farce or a new reality in art? Is there a border in the cultural space which virtual technologies cannot cross? N.Ts.: Some people like butter, and some like margarine. If a person loves margarine, then they will use it. If someone wants to use a laptop, they will use a laptop. Whoever wants to see an artist will come to the artist.

If napkins could talk: women’s action sketching at the Ballets Russes

ABSTRACT Action sketches hold vast communicative potential as windows into the historical details of dance events. This article foregrounds sketchbook images depicting ballet dancers created in the 1910s by British artist Laura Knight (1877-1970) and French artist Valentine Hugo (1887-1968) to show how the quick line drawings inscribed during live performances translate nuances of spectator-performer dynamics. Analyzing various instances of women’s action sketching serves to elevate the activity as an independent form of artistic expression alongside established visual cultural practices such as painting. Knight’s and Hugo’s geographically distinct yet thematically coinciding works prove that action sketching does more than draft silhouettes: it forms a network of microcosms which enhance perceptions of the time, place, and atmosphere of dances and their surroundings. By advocating for a deep reading of the sketch as a major dance reception method, I highlight the ways ballet audiences saw their emotional and material conditions reflected onstage in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, I argue that a serious consideration of the woman spectator as an active participant in theatrical dance performance, through her own artistic practice, is indispensable to building a more holistic view of ballet’s role in reinventing the modernist subject-object relationship.

The images of the russian ballet in the Fine Arts of the late XIX and early XX century

The purpose of the study is to analyze various interpretations of the theme of ballet in the context of creating an artistic image taking into account the specific characteristics of various arts on the factual visual material of the late nineteenth - early twentieth century. Methodology: 1) Search method, which allowed to reveal in museums and private collections, works of art dedicated to ballet of the period under consideration; 2) Historical and tipological method, which helped to group the works according to the thematic principle, to determine the degree of their value in the process of the creative work of the artist; 3) Method of stylistic analysis, which allowed to track the structural changes in the images created, the evolution of the creative method of the artist. Main findings: The nature of pictorial foundations in choreography is explored; the artistic pursuits and the various decisions in the masterpieces of graphics, painting and sculpture, dedicated to the ballet theatre and mostly connected with "The Russian Seasons" by S. Diaghilev; the main iconographic principles, the typology and the interpretation of ballet images are revealed.

Restaging Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces: Multimodal Interdisciplinary Curriculum in the Performing Arts

In this article I will discuss "Performance-As-Research," as a method of pedagogy, an approach to learning and problem solving, as a practice of inquiry and of making meaning in the performing arts, and as a conduit for students to develop physical, cognitive and affective proficiencies; in the context of a first year undergraduate dance repertory course. Over the past academic year, I have begun to collaborate with entering Bachelor of Fine Arts Dance majors at Temple University (where I am an assistant professor) to restage and perform Les Noces, (French; English: The Wedding; Russian: Свадебка, Svadebka), a ballet and orchestral concert work composed by Igor Stravinsky for percussion, pianists, chorus, and vocal soloists. Stravinsky subtitled the work "Choreographed Scenes with Music and Voices." The ballet, commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, was choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska and premiered in Paris in 1923. In my Repertory I course, the students and I have worked together to collaboratively craft a creative reimagining of the original work. This article will describe that process, and demonstrate the multiple avenues for teaching and learning that Performance-As-Research opens up in the pedagogical context of the higher education performing arts curriculum.

Balet Rusia À La Indonesia: Sebuah Akulturasi Dalam Tari Kabaret Baliano Karya Rusdy Rukmarata

This study discusses about the Russian ballet which is acculturated with the Nusantara culture in Indonesia. This research uses acculturation theory by Readfiled, Linton, and Herskovits in The Cambridge Handbook of Acculturation Psychology (2006). The purpose of this study is to identify how acculturation occurs in Russian ballet with Indonesian traditional dances and what influences it. This study uses a qualitative method that uses the literature study method, and is supported by interview techniques. The results of this study identified that acculturation occurs in one of the many works that combine Russian ballet with Nusantara dance and that experience can also affect the acculturation results of the work.

«Больше, чем в костюме»: танцовщицы-«босоножки» и костюм русского балета начала XX века

The beginning of reform in Russian ballet of the 1900s is connected by the most part of researchers with the first performances of Isadora Duncan in Russia (1904–1905). Her great influence on Russian ballet choreography and costume is explored well enough and indisputable. Nevertheless, free dance or “modern dance” became popular in the USA and in Europe because of Duncan’s predecessor, another American dancer Loie Fuller. It was a major tendency included creativity of such different performers as Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Maud Allan, Mata Hari and many others. The author of the presented article uses the complex method to analyze the reforms of dancing costume carried out by so called “barefoot” dancers and their influence on Russian ballet costume at the beginning of the 20th century, revealing general transformations and some direct parallels between costumes of “barefoot” dancers and Russians ballet dancers.

Proust and the Ballets Russes. The mark of Giselle

Proust and the Ballets Russes. The mark of Giselle

Poetic Transformations in Matisse's Earliest Dance Images

Matisse's early dance paintings Joy of Life, Dance (I), and Dance (II) appear in countless art books in which their public receptions are repeatedly treated in a superficial manner. The fame of these works needs to be understood in a fuller context for students of dance and art. Matisse's early dance paintings are carefully examined in terms of their historical influences. His exposure to Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, and the Ballets Russes is considered. The frequent citation of specific folk dances Matisse saw at the time he created these works is challenged. What becomes significant is how poetically Matisse transformed the many sources he absorbed into his own reductive style. Matisse's decades-long interest in dance is demonstrated by select examples from his dance oeuvre. Even as an invalid, Matisse continued to work with dance themes. His joy in watching dance and making dance works, including those for ballet, reflected his passion for colour, motion, and expression of the liveliness he saw in dance. It is hoped that this article can lead to more interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching between dance studies and art history.

The Traditional and the Innovative in the Dramaturgy and Composition of Béla Bartók’s Ballets

This article investigates the development of the 20th century ballet genre on the example of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881—1945). The study aims to reveal the features of B. Bartók’s ballets in the context of trends in Western European art of the 20th century and to show the composer’s innovative techniques. The article identifies specific musical formative means that reflect the genre definition of “pantomime”, and emphasizes his innovation. The early 20th century ballet art is an extremely bright phenomenon associated with the active search for new ways of developing the genre, which took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Classical ballet, which had reached its peak in the works of the Russian ballet school and the works of M. Petipa, was suddenly recognized as outdated and unviable. The new generation of choreographers sought to refute, to a certain extent, the genre’s old laws. The idea of searching for new means of expression became the leading one, and the canon of classical choreography was replaced by pantomime and a new unusual dance technique, which later became known as modern dance. B. Bartók’s ballets “The Wooden Prince” (1917) and “The Miraculous Mandarin” (1919) are examples of the new type of ballet performance of the early 20th century. The article shows that the composer focused on creating a symphonic score corresponding to the ideas of pantomime. His appeal to this had been primarily dictated by the librettos themselves, in which B. Balázs and M. Lengyel had defined the work character in this way. Naturally, the rejection of classical ballet’s traditional forms influenced the works’ compositional features. The article demonstrates that the scores of “The Wooden Prince” and “The Miraculous Mandarin” are distinguished by a new approach to the musical structure, in which the principles of instrumental forms play a significant role. At the same time, each of the ballets expresses the dialectical pair of “canon and heuristic” in its own way: “The Wooden Prince” retains to a certain extent the flair of classical ballet; in “The Miraculous Mandarin”, this genre pattern is violated almost ostentatiously. In this work, B. Bartók’s appeal to such an anti-classical subject reflects the era’s new trends associated with the artistic movement of expressionism. In the Hungarian composer’s ballets, the dualism of the traditional and the innovative gives rise to a different type of ballet score itself.

ОБРАЗНАЯ ВЫРАЗИТЕЛЬНОСТЬ ЯЗЫКА НАРОДНО-ХАРАКТЕРНОГО ТАНЦА В БАЛЕТАХ КЛАССИЧЕСКОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ

The article focuses on the phenomenon of folk character dance, which is a unique feature of Russian art, traces the key stages in the development of folk character dance in Russian ballet and identifies the sources that served as the basis for its figurative language. It is noted that the language of folk character dance is the creative fruit of many choreographers, whose works in the XXIst century are perceived as vivid examples of heritage. The author reviews the specificity of imagery in folk character dance currently existing in classical ballet repertoire. Significant attention is paid to the subtleties of depicting national characters when creating dance images of various ethnic groups. The author also considers the characteristic visualization in folk character dance, highlighting and describing distinctive features of a number of national characters more frequently implemented by the language of folk character dance in classical ballet and opera choreography of Russian music theatres. The article substantiates the idea that underestimating the potential of the language of folk character dance as means of expressiveness in ballet theatre leads to limitations for the new generation of choreographers striving to create realistic and truthful dramatic characters, depriving them of national distinction. In her research, the author aims to actualize the question of preservation of national character on the Russian ballet stage in the XXIst century.

ФОРМА СЮИТЫ В БАЛЕТЕ И ЕЕ МЕТРОРИТМИЧЕСКАЯ ОРГАНИЗАЦИЯ

The article reveals the peculiarities of metrorhythmic organization of the classical dance cycle (suite), typical for Russian ballet of the XIXth century and its evolution in the early XXth century under the influence of innovations in the field of rhythm in the ballets by Igor Stravinsky. The purpose of this article is to find mechanisms of interaction between dance and music based on coordination of their temporal parameters. The material of analysis is the classical dance cycle that performs both compositional and dramaturgical functions in the ballet. Apart from the metrorhythmic and compositional system of organizing time in ballet music, other types of time can be distinguished: real, psychological (subjective) and conceptual, artistic time organizing the processes of the characters' life cycle and the development of action in the virtual time of the artwork. In a classical dance cycle in each number, real time predominates, but when the numbers alternate, subject to the principle of contrast, the conceptual time has a corrective effect. The alternation of musical and choreographic numbers in a ballet determines the rhythm of the form or "compositional rhythm" (according to V. P. Bobrovsky). The correlation of temporal proportions of numbers is considered on the example of ballets "Swan Lake" by P. Tchaikovsky and "Petrushka" by I. Stravinsky. The compositional unit is the duration of the stage segment of the musical form, the change of which creates the rhythm of the form.