STAGE AND SCREEN Ballet
The Entire Swan-Lake ON Tuesday, November 20th, the curtain at Sadler's Wells will go up upon a charity performance of the greatest interest to the world of ballet, the entire Lae des Cygnes, or Swan- Lake as Diaghilev used to call it in his London programmes. But Diaghilev's and De Basil's Swan-Lake is no more than
the second act of this four-act Tchaikowsky ballet. The
whole of Swan-Lake has not been performed in this country since Preobrajenska and a Russian company gave it at the
London Hippodrome in 1910. The ballet is to be produced at Sadler's Wells by Monsieur N. Sergeyev, one-time stage manager at the Maryinsky Theatre in Petrograd. He has
already produced Giselle and another Tchaikowsky ballet, Casse-Noisette, for the Vic-Wells company. The other week I urged in this column that Fokine or some other great Russian ma tre de ballet be enticed to London in the
interests of our native ballet. For I do not believe that our tie with Russian tradition can be too strong. At the same
time I am grateful for these productions—however inadequate —of classical ballets under what is expert guidance, even if it is not inspired command. It is possible that Monsieur Sergeyev should be given a freer hand. I cannot believe, for instance, that the backcloth to the first act of Giselle, with its red and blue trees in the style of an advertisement for the Underground, is to be laid at his door.
The three great Tchaikowsky ballets, Szvan-Lake, Casse- Noisette and the Sleeping Princess, demand a Royal, an Imperial mounting. Did not Diaghilev ruin himself in producing the Sleeping Princess at the Alhambra in 1921 ? The Vic-Wells company have little to spend. I do not think that this matters, so important is it that we should see, and that they should perform, classical ballet : and it so happens that the decor and costumes by Hedley Briggs for Casse- Noisette are the most successful that I have seen in this theatre. A more serious defect of these productions is the inadequate mime and stage presence of the majority of the dancers. Tchaikowsky ballets, especially, abound in such mimed scenes as might fully exercise the St. Petersburg dancers who, one and all, had been trained in the government school of the mime.
These causes for discouragement are more than offset by the fact that Markova is dancing the principal part in Swan-Lake, the double role Odette-Odylle, Swan-Queen and Magician-Knight's daughter. No other dancer excels Markova in technical range. She possesses balance, speed and light- ness. I find it impossible to imagine that Giselle's first dance in the second act of that ballet has been better per- formed by another. Of interest in Swan-Lake will be Markova's performance of the famous thirty-two fouettes en tournant in the third act, now that these fouettes are all the rage. When Swan-Lake was first produced, thirty-two fouettes was an unheard-off achievement. Pierrina Legnani, the original Odette-Odylle, had no rival in this feat for many years, and when performing this role such ballerinas as Preobrajenska and Karsavina have substituted easier steps for the fouettes. Trefilova was the first to rival Legnani. Today there are probably many dancers who could do these' thirty-two fondles. But it will be of some gossip-interest to compare Markova's execution in this respect with that of the young Russian ballerinas whom we saw this summer, Baronova and Toumanova. All balletomanes will remember the fouettes (whipped turns) of the Top in Jeux d'Enfants and the similar turns by Baronova in the Beau Danube. Will Markova excel these very young dancers at their own special stunt ? We may well expect to hear some lovely music as well as to sec the incomparable dances devised by Petipa and Ivanov. Many balletomanes possess the two gramophone records of the Swan-Lake music which include a valse that -emits all the intoxicating yet formal rapture that we associate with Tchaikowsky ; also a magnificent Czardas or Hun- garian dance. We heard lovely pieces unknown to us when Casse-Noisette was first performed. Swan-Lake promises still wider discoveries.
ADRIAN STOKES.
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