1941: Dance

Ballet.

The year 1941 marked the most active ballet season in this country, for five major companies contributed to a year notable for extended engagements, long tours, performances in Canada, Mexico and South America and the production of many new works. January saw the closing performances in New York of Col. Wassily de Basil's Original Ballet Russe, an organization which had not been seen in America for several seasons. Headed by Irina Baronova and Tamara Toumanova and supported by an unusually expert group of lesser soloists, the company was distinguished for dance virtuosity and lavishness of production. The two most popular ballets were Michel Fokine's great melodrama, Paganini and David Lichine's frolicsome Graduation Ball. January also saw the premiere of Nina Verchinina's Quest, a ballet which employed, to an unusual degree, the technique and the style of modern dance. Toe slippers were absent, and the choreographer's use of torso movements, rather than foot action, carried her initial theater work still further from the classic ballet tradition.

The Ballet Theatre opened at the Majestic Theater in New York in the spring for its second season of activity. Again it proved that it possessed the greatest corps de ballet yet seen in these parts, for its American personnel brought a zest and a quality of teamwork to the productions that not one of the imported organizations could match. New ballets included Agnes de Mille's Three Virgins and a Devil, Antony Tudor's Gala Performance, a restaging of Eugene Loring's Billy the Kid and two works by Anton Dolin, Capriccioso and Pas de Quatre. The de Mille ballet was another example of the influence of modern dance upon the ballet, for no toe slippers were in evidence and much of the broad and sweeping body-movements stemmed directly from modern dance. It also differed from the traditional ballet in that the comic action was not carried out through the use of old fashioned miming, but rather through comic actions that were designed to be an actual part of the dancing and not merely interludes between dances. The successful Gala Performance was a jibe at ballet itself, its easily caricatured mannerisms and its even more easily caricatured ballerinas. A demanding ballet from both dance technique and characterization aspects, it was made distinguished by the performances of Nana Gollner, Nora Kaye and Karen Conrad. Through an audience poll it was discovered that Billy the Kid was one of the three most popular works of that Ballet Theatre season. Gala Performance and Tudor's tragic and beautiful Jardin aux Lilas were the other favorites. Billy the Kid was certainly the most important ballet presentation of the entire year from the American viewpoint, for Loring adapted the traditional ballet technique to an American use, touching it with a native robustness, adding movements of his own devising when they were required, so that 'Billy' emerged with the smoothness and authority bestowed by tradition and with a flavor which was purely American. Dolin's Pas de Quatre was one of the company's loveliest productions. A restaging of a single command performance for Queen Victoria by four of the great ballerinas of the year 1845, the ballet captured the style of a bygone era of dance and also caught much of the flavor of the original occasion in which the four stars were reported to have shot well-bred glances of malice towards each other.

Attendance records for ballet at the Lewisohn Stadium were broken last summer by the three performances of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. No new works were presented, but such ballets as Scheherezade and Swan Lake, drew immense and enthusiastic audiences. By this time Toumanova had left the de Basil company to join the Monte Carlo, where she starred with Alexandra Danilova, Leonide Massine, Igor Youskevitch, Andre Eglevsky and Frederic Franklin.

After an absence of several seasons the Jooss Ballet returned to New York in the Fall for the longest engagement since the company's initial season in America. The most famous ballet in the repertory, The Green Table, passed its 1,755th performance during the run. A Spring Tale and Chronica were shown in New York for the first time and Agnes de Mille's Drums Sound in Hackensack marked the first occasion in the company's history that an American choreographer's talents had been engaged. The original high standard of performing excellence was maintained with special praise going to Hans Zullig, Jack Gansert, Rolf Alexander, Ulla Soederbaum and Elsa Kahl, distinguished members of this company which does not permit stardom. The Jooss Ballet, in almost every one of its works, is more closely allied with drama than classic ballet. There is no point work and physical virtuosity is not stressed. Theme, characterization and the projection of the dramatic qualities of their ballets receive the major accents.

In the Summer and Fall, Lincoln Kirstein's American Ballet Caravan toured South America and Mexico. Ballets by Georges Balanchine, Lew Christensen, Eugene Loring, Antony Tudor and William Dollar were in the repertory. No traditional ballets were presented, only those works which Kirstein commissioned expressly for his company's use.

October saw the annual New York season of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House. Three new ballets were presented, but not one was successful. Of these, the most lavish was Labyrinth with choreography by Massine and décor by Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter. The décor was magnificent, but the choreography found Massine at his least inventive and most garbled. Massine's second work, Saratoga, was a still greater disappointment, and not even the superlative dancing of Danilova and Franklin could have made it engaging. Alexandra Fedorova's restaging of the third act of Swan Lake into The Magic Swan was a dismal failure, for the divertissements were poorly designed and danced accordingly. The single highlight was the dancing of Toumanova, who was afforded an opportunity in the course of the ballet to display her electric style and super-virtuosity. The hit of the season was the old favorite, Gait‚ Parisienne. On the opening night performance of this ballet, Danilova was given a tremendous ovation upon her entrance which continued throughout most of her first variation, an unprecedented occurrence in the history of this company.

The Ballet Theatre opened its third New York season in November. S. Hurok had taken over the management of the company and the personnel was altered. The corps de ballet remained primarily American, but the new choreographers and soloists were European. Alicia Markova and Irina Baronova headed the company, and Nana Gollner and Eugene Loring severed their relations with the group. The hit of the season was Michel Fokine's new and lavish comedy, Bluebeard. The entire company took part in this work and Anton Dolin, England's leading classic dancer, had his first comic role in the title part. So successful was Bluebeard that the management broke with tradition and discarded the repertory system for a week's continuous engagement of this ballet on a bill with Dolin's lavish restaging of the last act of The Sleeping Princess, entitled Princess Aurora. Bronislava Nijinska's revival of her own ballet. Beloved, was removed from the active repertory after an unsuccessful debut. But the Russian choreographer's staging of The Wayward Daughter, the oldest ballet in any repertory, was thoroughly engaging and afforded Baronova the finest role of her season. Vania Psota's first American showing was as choreographer of Slavonika, a slight and unexciting folk ballet. The one hundredth anniversary of Giselle was celebrated this season by the ballet world. The Ballet Theatre's production of this classic, starring Dolin and Markova, was without flaw. Previous to the New York season, the reorganized Ballet Theatre had played a successful engagement in Mexico City.

Concert Dance.

Of major importance to American dance in 1941 was the continuing shift from abstract forms to theatrical forms on the part of the modern dancers. This trend seemed to give greater scope to the talents of the leading choreographers and certainly made for a more popular form of modern dance. Martha Graham presented in January the New York premiere of her long modern dance ballet, Letter to the World, first produced at the Bennington Festival of the Arts the preceding summer. The piece was based upon the legend of Emily Dickinson, and the theme was developed through dance action and the spoken word. This proved to be one of Miss Graham's greatest achievements and certainly one of the most significant works produced by an American dancer.

Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman forsook the Broadway stage and its accompanying financial hazards and inevitable deficits, for their own small repertory theater at 108 West Sixteenth Street. Here they presented new dances and older works with such little expense that a long season was possible and audiences were able, at modest admission prices, to contact a wide range of Humphrey-Weidman creations. On a smaller scale, Helen Tamiris attempted the same thing. Her studio was by no means a theater, yet it served as the site of one of her finest dance pieces, Liberty Song, a powerful, patriotic ballet which projected the strength, the idealism and the undying belief in freedom of the American people.

Hanya Holm appeared in one Broadway performance in the spring with her company. The major work, The Golden Fleece, was a disappointment, for the surrealist costumes of Kurt Seligman far outshone the dance designs created by the choreographer. A new opening piece, Dance of Introduction found Miss Holm once again presenting her audience with clean, simple and effective dance construction.

Young dancers were active during 1941. Anna Sokolow, after a period of teaching and performing in Mexico, gave a Broadway recital, notable for the splendid dancing in her own solos and disappointing in the choreographic weakness of the group efforts. Barton Mumaw, long a solo dancer in Ted Shawn's company, made his debut as a solo artist, and proved his ability to carry an entire program alone. Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons embarked upon a four month's successful tour of Argentina and returned to New York for their first night club engagement at the Rainbow Room. In December, two theater works for young audiences were presented in New York. Junior Programs offered a song-dance-drama version of Marco Polo with choreography by Ruth St. Denis and highlighting the dancing of young Charles Tate. Edwin Strawbridge's ballet of Daniel Boone with its pioneers and Indians made a hit with young audiences and was distinguished by the agile dancing of a promising young performer, Rex Cooper. During the season, Elizabeth Waters, formerly of the Hanya Holm company, formed her Dancers en Route, a group of young artists who were willing to barnstorm the country in search of engagements and opportunities to show the smaller communities of America what was happening in the native dance field.

During the first half of 1941, La Meri continued to give bi-monthly studio performances of exotic dance forms at the Ruth St. Denis-La Meri School of Natya, founded in 1940. Later she severed connections with Miss St. Denis and in the Fall launched a series of lecture-demonstrations and recitals at the Master Institute of Arts in New York City. Subject matter included dances of India, China, Java, Hawaii, the Philippines, Africa, Spain and Latin America. In December, La Meri and her Natya Dancers presented a concert consisting of three Oriental ballets, choreographed by La Meri.

Summer dance activities were centered at Lee, Mass., and at Bennington, Vt. At Lee, Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova launched the International Dance Festival at the old Ted Shawn headquarters at Jacob's Pillow. Markova and Dolin appeared in several recitals, assisted by members of the Ballet Theatre. Irina Baronova, Ted Shawn, Barton Mumaw and Lisa Parnova, Paul Draper, Anne Simpson and others appeared on the series. Of major importance was the appearance of Ruth St. Denis in a revival of that program which she had presented at her debut thirty-five years before. The Incense, The Nautch, The Cobras, Yogi and the ballet, Radha, constituted the bill. Capacity audiences cheered the veteran dancer at her festival performances and found that, in spite of her sixty-odd years, she looked young and slim and danced with an agility remarkable for a dancer of any age. This program and other programs, composed of works from her repertory, were later presented at the Carnegie Chamber Music Hall with equal success. They afforded students an opportunity of seeing dances which had played a major part in the inception and development of American dance, and they also gave contemporary audiences a chance to see an almost legendary figure perform with the undimmed skill which brought her world fame.

At the Bennington Festival of the Arts, Martha Graham presented the premiere of her newest theater piece, Punch and the Judy. Again Miss Graham made use of the spoken word along with dance, but this time in comic vein and to great effect. Later it was presented in New York along with Letter to the World and El Penitente. This program proved to be Miss Graham's most effective bill, consisting as it did of hilarious comedy, deeply moving human drama and highly effective primitive ritual.

Doris Humphrey also presented a new work at Bennington. Entitled Decade, the full-length theater piece found Miss Humphrey in an autobiographical mood as she looked back over her joint career with Charles Weidman, its creative efforts, its artistic successes, its hardships and its failures. In revised form, Decade was later offered at the Humphrey-Weidman Theater in New York. Along with her colleagues in the modern dance field, Miss Humphrey accented costume effects, the use of stage properties, a more representational and less abstract approach to her material. In the case of Decade she too employed the spoken word in the course of the ballet.

First-rate dance attractions were offered on the series which are sponsored by the Y.M.H.A. in their Kaufmann Auditorium and by the Students Dance Recitals course, presented at the Washington Irving High School. Most of the dancers appeared in similar programs in Broadway theaters, but Carmaltita Maracci, one of the most distinguished of the younger dancers, limited her New York appearances to these series. Both of her 1941 New York performances were marked by skillful dancing in the ballet idiom and in the Spanish style, a combination which she employs to good theatrical advantage, for she is a brilliant artist in both fields.

Argentinita and her company of Spanish dancers and musicians headed the Spanish dance field for 1941 with performances far superior to those of other Spanish dancers in the concert field. An all-Spanish program is hard to sustain, yet so broad is Argentinta's dance range, encompassing the classic, the gypsy, the peasant and the Latin American forms, that her program never lacks in variety. Performances of Spanish dance in concert, supper clubs, musical revues and motion pictures are decidedly on the increase, and their popularity seems to promise even greater activity in later seasons. The Spanish influence is also to be noted in the works of American artists. Winslow and Fitz-Simons returned from South America with new dances from that continent. The American Ballet Caravan also composed a Latin American ballet and is at work on still another. And Anna Sokolow returned from Mexico with still further balletic excursions into the Spanish style.

Folk Dancing.

Interest in folk dancing was apparent during the year, for New York City alone boasted well over a dozen active groups. Folk dance clubs and schools included Don Chambers' 'Squares and Rounds,' Brooklyn Folk Dance Group, American Folk Group, Half-Century Club, the Knickerbocker Folk Dance Club, directed by Edyth Carliph; the Community Folk Dance Evening, directed by Michael Herman; the Country Dance Society, directed by May Gadd; 'Folk Dancing for Laymen,' a course directed by Elizabeth Burchenal, the Y.M.H.A. folk dance evenings and several national folk dance groups.

The year 1941 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the American Folk Dance Society, headed by Elizabeth Burchenal. Miss Burchenal made the Society's folk dance archives available to students, conducted her annual sessions for laymen and made lecture tours.

There were several folk dance festivals in New York during the season. Five hundred dancers participated in the Spring Festival of the Country Dance Society, dancing English and American folk forms. Michael Herman directed the Washington Square Folk Dance Festival, held during the Summer. The Cheyenne Mountain Dancers made a tour, and folk dancers from all sections of Vermont met for the tenth consecutive season at Plainfield for the 'Governor's Cup' contest.

During the year the folk dance influence spread to the ballroom floor and several supper clubs devoted portions of their evenings to instructions in the polka, the reel and other forms. The Rainbow Room held a series of folk dance sessions where an instructor was on hand to teach the guests the steps of various folk dances. The increased interest in folk dancing does not even remotely suggest that folk dance will replace the established ballroom forms or the currently popular rhythms from Latin America, but it does imply that more and more people are discovering the recreative and the truly social values of folk dancing.