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Michael Fokine

and what to look for
               in his ballets

 June 2001
A lecture demonstration by Richard Glasstone
Clore Theatre, 28 June 2001

 as reported by Brendan McCarthy


Kirov's Fokine reviews




As a curtain raiser to the Kirov's Fokine programme, the Friends of Covent Garden and of the Kirov arranged a study evening at the Clore Studio. It was presented by the excellent Richard Glasstone and there was an opportunity to see two Kirov principals, Zhanna Ayupova and Viktor Baranov dance the Waltz in C Sharp Minor from Chopiniana. Richard Glasstone portrayed Fokine as a considerable moderniser, quite as radical in his way as Isadora Duncan, who was born three years earlier. However, Fokine insisted on the worth of classical training. It was in the realm of expression that he was revolutionary.

The tradition in which Fokine grew up was that of the court ballet in which dancing was not meant to be expressive. Instead the execution of movement and patterns ("just lovely dancing") was all-important. In the 1880s visiting virtuoso dancers from Italy had brought to Russia a gallery of new "tricks". While Petipa originally thought them vulgar, audiences were enthusiastic. Petipa incorporated these "tricks" into Sleeping Beauty, which marries French elegance with Italian virtuosity. Artists sought increasingly to incorporate their 32 fouettes into every ballet, irrespective of whether this was right for the context. Fokine railed against this. He spent much time in the Hermitage Galleries and considered how wrong the subjects in the paintings there would seem in traditional ballet postures.

While Richard Glasstone's lecture was entitled "What to look for in Mikhail Fokine", he suggested that it was, if anything, more helpful to restate his topic as a series of negatives.

  • Don't look for virtuosity in Fokine ballets unless it is appropriate to the character. Harlequin in Le Carnaval is a case in point.

  • Don't look for mime. Glasstone instanced the ludicrous contortions of the mime for the phrase "Call the judge here", found in an Ivanov ballet.

  • Don't look for too much pointe. Fokine uses pointe only when it is appropriate to the character. In Petrushka pointe is used for the ballerina doll with the specific intent of making her look stiff. In Chopiniana those on pointe are sylphs and fairies.

  • Don't look for polkas and mazurkas. Fokine hated rigidly formulaic ballets. He insisted it was possible to dance to music other than dance rhythms.

  • Don't go to Fokine for tutus. He hated them, dismissing them as 'upturned parasols'. The original costumes by Golovin and Bakst for Firebird did not portray a traditional ballerina in a tutu, rather an oriental and exotic creature in pantaloons. The tutu emerged in Goncharova's subsequent redesign. Fokine would not have approved.

  • Don't go to Fokine for pas-de-deux. Pointe started first to be used by Taglioni in La Sylphide. By the 1870s the Italians had developed the blocked shoe – this allowed the pirouette. Fokine hated the steel pointe. Pas-de-deux developed out of pointe and the need to support the ballerina. Where two dance together in Fokine's choreography it is "for each other" and not to show off to the audience.

  • Don't go to Fokine if you believe, like Balanchine, that "ballet is woman". In the nineteenth century the role of the male in ballet was completely degraded. The subject matter of romantic ballets placed woman at the centre. Pointe work further reduced the role of the male. In Degas' representations of dancers there are no men. While Bournonville in Copenhagen was affirming the male tradition, the male role in Coppélia in Paris was being danced en travestie by a woman. Fokine placed the male dancer back in the forefront. In Le Spectre de la Rose ninety per cent of the dancing is for the man. Diaghilev's early success was with Prince Igor, which strongly featured male dancing.

  • Don't look for heavily drilled corps de ballet in Fokine. He hated regimentation of the corps. In Petrushka Fokine has 100 dancers on stage doing individual things – pouring from a samovar, cracking open sunflower seeds. Each dancer is unique.

  • Don't look for lots of glissades and bourrees for their own sake. The movement has to be right for the character. The characters of Petrushka and the Moor evolve from their movements. Fokine wanted ballet technique to train the body; but he insisted that choreographers should use the whole body expressively. Ballets should not be set in stone, but should be expressively true to the music. However, Glasstone suggested gloomily "Fokine must turn in his grave daily and it's getting worse". It is necessary, he said, to have a determined director and willing dancers, who will sublimate their wish to be "tricksy". Fokine worked out in great detail the characteristics of his characters – but today's dancers tend to get the bare bones, while missing the detail. It is very hard, said Glasstone, to get dancers to take an interest in the detail.

    Richard Glasstone then set out the background to Chopiniana (later Les Sylphides). By 1907 Glazunov had orchestrated several pieces by Chopin and Fokine was keen to choreograph them. He did each scene in character – with the exception of the Waltz in C Sharp Minor, which he choreographed as "pure dance". In 1908 Fokine completely reworked this draft, keeping only the pas-de-deux. This pas-de-deux is an exception in Fokine; elsewhere it is used to dramatic purpose (as in Le Carnaval).

    Until the nineteenth century, dancers wore heeled shoes and pannier skirts. The 1832 La Sylphide used the first ballet skirt. It was bell shaped so that the dancer could lift her leg. By Degas the ballet-skirt had reached mid-calf. It was the drive to virtuosity that drove the further movement to the tutu, which Fokine so despised.

    Fokine saw lifts not as lifts per se. Instead the girl/sylph/firebird was attempting to fly away and the male was attempting to catch her. It was the Bolshoi in 1956 that brought the first high lifts. In the early performances of Sylphides the steps were danced more quickly than they are now; performance has become more mannered with the years.

    The evening was an excellent "consumers' guide" to Fokine. Until now I had only seen Richard Glasstone on video. Watching him 'live', I was struck by his pleasing combination of intellect and quiet natural authority. He must have been a superb teacher.





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