Spring-Summer 2019 Ballet Review
From the
Sp/Su 2019
issue of
Ballet Review
Alexei Ratmanskyon ABT’s Harlequinade
Cover photo by Paul Kolnik, NYCB: Joseph Gordon in Dances at a Gathering.
© 2019 Dance Research Foundation, Inc.
Ballet Review 47.1-2Spring-Summer 2019Editor and Designer:Marvin Hoshino
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4 Philadelphia – Eva Shan Chou5 New York – Karen Greenspan7 Los Angeles – Eva Shan Chou9 New York – Susanna Sloat
11 Williamstown – Christine Temin12 New York – Karen Greenspan16 Tokyo – Vincent Le Baron18 Jacob’s Pillow – Christine Temin20 Toronto – Gary Smith22 Boston – Jeffrey Gantz25 London – Joseph Houseal25 Vienna – Vincent Le Baron27 New York – Susanna Sloat28 Miami – Michael Langlois29 Toronto – Gary Smith31 Venice – Joel Lobenthal32 London – Gerald Dowler35 Havana – Gary Smith37 Washington, D.C. – Lisa Traiger39 London – John Morrone40 Chicago – Joseph Houseal42 Milan – Vincent Le Baron
Alexei Ratmansky44 Staging Petipa’s Harlequinade
at ABT
George Washington Cable56 The Dance in Place Congo
Michael Langlois63 A Conversation with
Clement Crisp
Joseph Houseal76 A Quiet Evening, in Two Acts
Ian Spencer Bell82 Women Onstage
Michael Langlois86 A Conversation with
Stella Abrera
Susanna Sloat95 Rennie Harris and Ronald K. Brown
Celebrate Alvin Ailey
Robert Greskovic100 Chopiniana
109 Judson Dance Theater
Michael Langlois114 Awakenings
Karen Greenspan119 In the Court of Yogyakarta
Marian Smith125 The Metropolitan Balanchine
Gerald Dowler141 An Autumn in Europe
Sophie Mintz146 White Light
Lynn Garafola151 Raymonda, 1946
Karen Greenspan161 Drive East 2018
Karen Greenspan168 A Conversation with Maya
Kulkarni and Mesma Belsaré
Francis Mason171 Ben Belitt on Graham
Gary Smith175 A Conversation with Grettel Morejón
Hubert Goldschmidt177 Rodin and the Dance
207 London Reporter – Louise Levene218 Dance in America – Jay Rogoff220 Music on Disc – George Dorris
Cover photo by Paul Kolnik, NYCB: Joseph Gordon in Dances at a Gathering.
This article originated as a talk, via Skype, tothe Petipa International Scientific Conferencein Moscow, “Marius Petipa. The Ballet Empire:From Rise to Decline,” held in June 2018 at theBakhrushin State Central Theater Museum.
Ratmansky’s Petipa reconstructions are Le Corsaire (Bolshoi Ballet, with Yuri Burlaka,2006), Paquita (Bavarian State Opera Ballet,with Doug Fullington, 2014), The Sleeping Beau-ty (American Ballet Theatre, 2015), Swan Lake(Zurich Ballet, 2016), Harlequinade (ABT, pre-miere June 5, 2018), and La Bayadère (BerlinState Ballet, fall 2018). — Marina Harss
Our Main Source: The Stepanov Notation
The choreographic text of this new/old Harle-quinade is a set of notations written out in theStepanov system by Nikolai Sergeyev, the ré -gisseur of the Mariinsky Theater, and his as-sistants. The notation mentions the perform-ers in the main roles: Pavel Gerdt, Georgy Ky -aksht, Olga Preobrajenska, Lyubov Egorova,Sergei Lukyanov, and others. This was the castfor the performance on October 17, 1904.
It is likely that it was during the rehearsalsfor this performance that most of the chore-ography and mise-en-scène was recorded. Atthe time Petipa was still listed as the first cho-reographer of the theater and periodically vis-ited rehearsals (he was eighty-six years old).There had been only ten performances sincethe premiere of the ballet in February 1900 onthe stage of the Hermitage Theater in St. Pe-tersburg, so there is no reason to believe thatthe choreography had changed significantly.
The notations are currently stored in theHarvard Theatre Collection. Some are mis-filed. My wife Tatiana (and assistant in my
historically informed stagings of Petipa bal-lets) and I found some dances in boxes withother ballets. More generally, Harlequinade isnot among the very well-recorded works. Nevertheless, about one hundred pages of no-tations give us information on almost everynumber (except for the “Temps passé, tempspresent” dance for Marie Petipa and SergeiLegat, which was cut after the premiere).
Half of the numbers are recorded twice, invarying degrees of detail. This is explained bythe fact that different tasks were put beforethe different notators: one person concen-trated on the corps de ballet, another on thesoloists, another on the children. Sometimesit was necessary to notate different versionsof the same dance.
There are a few prized examples of nota-tion – for instance, the solo for Columbine(Preobrajenska) from act 2, initialed by A.K. According to Sergei Konayev, this was Alexan-dra Konstantinova. I have tender feelings forthis Alexandra. Unlike her colleagues, sherecorded all the positions of the arms and body in each movement of this variation.
In fact, the absence of notations for the armsshould not concern us. At the time of Petipa,ports de bras was less codified, the arms movedfreely and were often simply allowed to hangdown (this was called bras au repos or bras bas).You can see this in surviving films of Zam-belli, Baldina, Pavlova, Spessivtseva, the Danesin Bournonville dances, or the Italians in Ex-celsior. Also, according to many dancers, Bal-anchine, who took a lot from Petipa, often didnot specify the movements of the arms whenhe was in the studio choreographing, leavingthis part to the dancers.
In Russia today you will not find two bal-lerinas dancing the same variation with thesame arms. Usually, in the process of prepar-ing for a performance, the port de bras varies,and, together with her coach (who says, “Trythese arms. Try another set.”), the ballerinafinds a suitable option for herself. Every move-ment or pose has a certain number of allow-able arm positions based on classical coordi-nation.
©2019 Alexei Ratmansky 45
Staging Petipa’s Harlequinade at ABT
Alexei Ratmansky
Translated and revised by Alexei Ratmansky, withadditional editing by Marina Harss.
Where the positions are unusual or a cer-tain pattern is important, they are marked inthe Harlequinade notations. For example, armsbehind the back in the jeté en tournant in Har-lequin’s first act variation, or hands “on thehips” in Pierrette’s first entrance.
So it is with the endings of the variations.Often in the records we see just the fifth po-sition of the legs, with the arms down. It isdifficult to imagine solo variations ending inthis way. Most likely it was an indication thatthere were several options, depending on thepreferences of the performer. For example, itis known that Preobrajenska preferred to endvariations in arabesque on pointe. Apparent-ly, she easily got on her axis and loved to showher balance. Quite often one finds a pose infourth position plié with a lifted heel for theback leg – a position that has disappeared to-day. This pose appears in the notations forBeauty, Swan Lake, Paquita, and, also, in Harle-quinade, for both the men and the women.
For Harlequin here, we went with a differ-ent ending. According to Preobrajen ska, as described by Pedro Consuegra (conveyed by Ka tya Anapolskaya), at the end of his first-actvariation, after the pirouettes, he struck thestage on the final chord, with the golden batgiven him by the Fairy. Here we preferred thememories of someone who danced in the pre-miere to the notation score as written.
Completing the Puzzle: Additional Sources
Much more problematic for us was the absencein some places of any indication about themovements – nothing but arrows denoting theformations of the dance and certain key pos-es. Both of the large classical ensembles – “LeRendez-vous” in the act 1 and “La Chasse auxAlouettes” in act 2 – are recorded in this way.It is possible that somewhere more detailedrecords exist, but we have yet to find them.The variations for the soloists in both acts arebeautifully recorded, but in the adagio, as wellas in the codas for the Larks and the main char-acters, there is almost nothing – just floorplans.
In such cases, we carefully watched all theexisting productions (especially the versionsof Balanchine, Gusev, and Karsavina), and ifsomething in them coincided with the recordsin the notations, we took it to mean that wemost likely were seeing fragments of the oldstaging, and used them. Some clues were alsofound in other sources, such as photographsfrom the imperial theaters, old reviews, andeyewitness accounts; an animated film calledThe Harlequin Joke that Alexander Shiryaev(Petipa’s assistant) made in 1909; the director’snotes in the piano and violin score; the draw-ings of Gerdt, Goncharov, and brothers Legat;and even Fokine’s Carnival of 1910, in whichthere are quotations from the old Petipa pro-duction.
By the way, it is a curious fact that Fokine,such a passionate ideological opponent of con-ventional mime and eclecticism, not only al-most literally quoted images from Petipa’s Har-lequinade in his ballet Carnaval, but also, at therequest of Kschessinska, in 1916 composed forher and Vladimiroff an insertable number forHarlequinade to the music of Rondo Capricciosoby Saint-Saens. Fokine – so sensitive to dis-tortions in his own ballets and an advocate forauthorial rights throughout his life – at therequest of a ballerina, quietly made an inser-tion into someone else’s ballet. In any case, he,like Balanchine, appreciated Harlequinade andsingled it out from other works by Petipa inhis memoirs.
This “detective” work – finding steps wherethere were none in the notations – was thetrickiest aspect of our work. It is necessary tofind simple and logical combinations that willnot look foreign in the context of 1900 chore-ographic style and that don’t contradict thepatterns indicated in the notations. The hard-est thing for me was recreating this elegantsimplicity, which has disappeared from mod-ern choreography. In this regard, our work isnot finished. As more performances take place,we will continue to refine the details.
In general, the work is similar to puttingtogether a puzzle or, rather, restoring an oldfresco with missing fragments. True, accord-
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ing to today’s scientific standards, the lostfragments of frescoes are left empty. Restor-ers no longer attach hands and heads to an-cient statues, as before. But in the theater thisis impossible; the audience expects to see con-tinuous action.
In those cases when the notators had enoughtime and patience for detailed recording, likemy idol Konstantinova, the notations accu-rately convey all the mechanics of the chore-ography and leave almost no room for doubt.
Here I must refute the popular view thatthe notations are not accurate and can be in-terpreted however you like. This is not true.The peculiarity of the Stepanov system con-sists of the precise transmission of dancemove ment. French terms are not used. Insteadeach step is decomposed into its componentparts. In notations, we see the height and di-rection of the legs, whether they are bent orstretched, the angle of the bend in the kneeand hip, whether the step is executed in demi-
pointe or on pointe, on the floor or in the air,how the weight is transferred from one footto the other, the number and direction of theturns. This is all mechanics. In this way, thecoordination and technique of classical dancein the time of Petipa comes alive miraculous-ly. What the Notations Reveal
about Ballet Technique
Reconstructions based on notations are notabout stylization or the introduction of cer-tain “mannerisms” of the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. That style, in anycase, is inaccessible to us. The process of re-construction entails the staging of the texts of Petipa’s ballets, as they were written bySergeev and his colleagues.
I must say that in the process of studyingthe notations, we discovered very interestingthings – for example, that saut de basque wasperformed with two bent legs, and not withone, as it is now. I was happy to find confir-
s p r i n g - s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 47
Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside. (Photo: Rosalie O’Connor, ABT)
mation of this recently in Karsavina’s 1962book, Classical Dance: The Flow of Movement. Shedescribes saut de basque in this way: throw-ing the leg, folding one leg, folding the otherleg, landing. In Cecchetti, this movement iscalled jeté en tournant en avant.
In chaînés and series of piqués on the diag-onal, the spot was kept to the front, into theaudience, and not toward the corner, as now. In the book Vaganova: Articles, Memories, Mate-rials, there is a letter by Vaganova’s studentand assistant Galina Ber ezova (Tatiana stud-ied with her in Kiev in the late 1970s) writtenat the end of the 1930s in which Berezova asks,“Dear A. Ya., where should the dancer spot ina diagonal of rotations – to the corner or tothe front?” We do not know Vaganova’s reply,but most likely she answered – toward the cor-ner, as it was in the Soviet method. Balanchinepreserved the earlier style of keeping the spot
forward toward the audi-ence. In the notations thisolder method is clear.
In tour jeté, instead of abattement forward fol-lowed by a fouetté, they usedto do the battement imme-diately into arabesque to theback, with the feet changingin the air behind the back.Also, arabesque is recordedwith a slightly bent leg or,more accurately, a free – notoverstretched – leg. In con-trast, in pas de chat the firstleg was stretched, as one of-ten sees in Balanchine.
In pirouettes, the work-ing foot is recorded at dif-ferent heights: at the ankle,in the middle of the calf, orat the knee, which gives thepirouette three differentpossible colors. The same istrue of chaînés: sometimesthey are done on pointe,sometimes on demi-pointe.In The Sleeping Beauty Auro-
ra starts doing chaî nés on pointe only in thevariation of the last act; before that, she exe-cutes them on demi-pointe. All these details,in my opinion, give the choreography of Peti-pa many shadings. It becomes more three-di-mensional, livelier, more musical.
When we tried to reproduce these subtletiesonstage, first in Paquita, and then, even morecarefully, in Beauty – we realized how difficultthese steps actually are. Our current idea thatballet has greatly moved forward in terms oftechnique vanished. Stretching, amplitude,the number of rotations – these all have cer-tainly increased. But this change has caused asharp and, I’m afraid, already irrevocableslowing of tempo. In terms of small technique,we have regressed. And this, despite the factthat jumps on pointe, pirouettes, and balancesused to be done in much softer and narrowertoe shoes.
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Stella Abrera as Pierrette. (Photo: Erin Baiano, ABT)
Regarding the diversity of dance coordina-tion, a lot has been lost in pursuit of greatereffects. Take a simple step – glissade (as a pre -paration for a jump or pose), which ought togo from fifth position to fifth position – at leastin principle, as taught in school. Today, goingthrough precise positions of the feet causesmajor problems for the danc ers. That is truein New York, Milan, or Zurich. In Russia,where I have not yet tried to do a stylistical-ly precise reconstruction, I do not know whatwould happen. If you do everything as writ-ten, and with brilliance, you get a conversa-tion in a completely different language. Andas a choreographer, I find this language in-teresting and exciting.
Different Approaches
The divergences one can see between differ-ent interpretations of the same notations lies
in the approach to theiruse. There are several fun-damental questions thateach stager – there are notmany of us! – must answer,each in his or her own way:Does one need to follow thenotations to the letter? Orshould one adapt them forthe convenience of today’sdancers? Is it right to takethe notations as just apoint of departure and callthe resulting choreogra-phy a “reconstruction”?Should we, like the Sovieteditors of the classics, fol-low the immortal dictum“save the best, remove theoutdated”?
Then, I would ask, whatis the point of looking tothe notations at all? In myview, they offer an impor-tant window into the orig-inal choreography. Whynot use them as fully aspossible? After all, what
seems obsolete today may turn out to be in-teresting again tomorrow. Why should wejudge Petipa from the standpoint of today’sfashion?
In our work we proceeded from the ideathat the records reflect the choreography ofPetipa as it was seen during his lifetime, as herehearsed it. The notations obviously demon-strate a deep knowledge of the laws of the stageand an accurate understanding of ballet coor-dination. This, of course, speaks to the pro-fessionalism of Nikolai Sergeev and his team,but first of all, reveals the skill, experience,and talent of Petipa himself.
More than once we have had the opportu-nity to see the importance of every minute detail of the notations. We don’t accept the notion that the choreography was distortedduring the act of notating it. After all, the maintask of the notators was to record as accu-
s p r i n g - s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 49
James Whiteside as Harlequin. (Photo: Marty Sohl, ABT)
rately as possible what they saw before themin the rehearsal studio or on the stage. Besides,the notations were not hidden in a privatearchive, but were used as working materialsto revive old ballets and teach the dances tonew casts. All graduates of the imperial the-ater school were able to read them.
Of course, mistakes occur. These are draftmanuscripts, not carefully prepared for print-ing, as in Gorsky’s book on Stepanov notation,published in 1899. But our experience showsthat what appears at first glance to be a error,with more careful study, as a rule, reveals akey to deciphering the misunderstood move-ment or pattern. As I said, the gaps in the no-tation that need to be filled are the main diffi-culty. Mime
In Harlequinade, all the mime, or as it was thencalled, “mimika” (“facial expression”), is re -corded in great detail, not in Stepanov nota-tion, but in words. Each note is allotted a cer-tain number of measures in the notations, soit’s not difficult to break down conversationsor monologues rhythmically. Each line isrecorded in the form of a sequence of stagegestures, for example, “You kiss me not.” Thereare some difficult phrases, like “one Harle-quin,” “go cook porridge,” “I love her madly,”or “steal the key.” In these cases, I was helpedby my experiences in Denmark, not only atthe Royal Theatre, where the pantomime bal-lets of Bournonville are performed, but alsoat the Pantomime Theatre in Tivoli, where Iworked as a Harlequin one summer. (The com-pany there preserves thirty-five nineteenth-century pantomimes in its repertory.)
Another great gift to us is a 1965 Englishfilm in which Karsavina rehearses the Sere-nade of the Harlequin, staged by her for a smalltroupe led by a student of Nikolai Legat, JohnGregory. I like to think of this film as a per-sonal gift from Tamara Platonovna, “Queen ofColumbines,” as she was known, intended es-pecially for our use. The fact is that Harle-quin’s Serenade in act 1 is sparingly notated,with only two phrases explaining the action.Therefore, following the example of Balan-
chine and Gusev, I composed a simple dancefor four couples and Harlequin. We worked onthis scene for a long time, but weren’t satis-fied.
Imagine my delight when, after returninghome from a rehearsal, I came across a men-tion on Facebook of a movie that I had neverheard of, in which Karsavina seemed to be re-hearsing Harlequinade. In the comments peo-ple wrote that it could not be Harlequinade, andwas most likely Carnival. But it turned out tobe Harlequinade after all. After searching andnegotiating, we obtained a complete record-ing of the production, thanks to Hazel Moor,former assistant to John Gregory, and every-thing immediately fell into place. The Sere-nade is a mime scene, not a dance. In Petipa,the ballerina usually first appears dancing, but the hero is most often introduced withmime. Think of the first entrances of Basil,Solor, Siegfried, Désiré, Conrad, Lucien, andAlbert – all pantomime.
In this “speech,” on the last chords, Harle-quin tells the audience about his “crazy” lovefor Columbine. He is surprised that she doesnot come out of her house and, after somethought, asks his musician friends to playlouder in order to wake her. Columbine, ap-pearing on the balcony, explains that she hasbeen locked up by her father, and that the keyis hidden under Pierrot’s pillow. When Har-lequin suggests that she steal the key, she re-sponds with a refusal, but at this moment atriumphant Pierrette appears on the balconywith a key in her hand. We have no doubt thatthis scene is authentic. Thanks to the amaz-ing skill of Karsavina, we discovered some important details – for example, how “to lis-ten” differs from “to hear,” and that “pretty”is different from “beautiful.”
In general, pantomime, which has beenlargely eliminated in the twentieth century,was the most important part of Petipa’s aes-thetic. He was himself an unsurpassed mimeand master of mise-en-scène, which he com-posed with the precision of a jeweler. In eachof his ballets there are bright pantomime roles, principal and secondary, male and fe-
50 B al l e t r e vi e w
male, completely different in character, de-signed for great artists.
I was brought up on the textbooks of theSoviet era, which copiously quote Fokine, whohad an aversion to traditional pantomime.How ever, my negative attitude changed whenI worked in Denmark. I saw firsthand how awell-performed mime scene could be no lessexciting than a virtuoso solo. It can bring tearsor delight the viewer. Everything depends onthe skill of the performer.
In Bournonville’s ballets, no one would everthink of replacing the mime scenes with danc-ing. Everyone understands that with out thepantomime they would not be Bournon ville.But with Petipa, for a long time – without hisconsent – this was not the case.
Petipa’s mime was cut out of his ballets fora long time, and many people still consider itoptional and obsolete, but that loss impover-ishes and distorts his ballets. It violates thebalance of dance and acting scenes, to which
Petipa always paid close attention. This is amatter of scenic time, of the ability to alter-nate theatrical stunts with costume parades,pantomime scenes with dances – dramatic ordivertissement, children’s groups with virtu-osic solo dancing. And the notations demon-strate this all with particular clarity.
Other Versions of Harlequinade
I would like to briefly touch on other versionsof the ballet. First of all, we considered twodissimilar extant productions, George Balan-chine’s and Peter Gusev’s. The timeline hereis interesting. In 1965 Balanchine created hisrecension for New York City Ballet. Gusevstaged his at the Leningrad Chamber Ballet in1967. (According to Gusev, the dancers weretaught by Boris Shavrov, the last Harlequinperformer of the old production.)
In 1973 Balanchine made a new version, andin 1975 Gusev made another one at the Maly
s p r i n g - s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 51
(Photo: Erin Baiano, ABT)
[Leningrad State Academic Maly Opera The-ater (MALEGOT)]. Maybe it is just a coinci-dence. Maybe there were rumors from acrossthe ocean, and they thought, “They staged it,let’s do it too.” I don’t know. There are practi-cally no similarities in the choreography ofthe two productions.
In Dobrovolskaya’s book about Lopukhov,his 1933 version is described. In that staging,Harlequin and Leander sang aloud, Columbineand Pierrette jumped from the balcony, re-placed after the premiere by circus perform-ers. And instead of the Fairy there was a clowndressed as a rich American uncle, and so on.Her book says that the pas de deux in the Lopu -khov choreography was still being performedin concerts. Probably, she means the dancefilmed by Leningrad TV, with Ninel Kurgap-kina and Nikolai Kovmir.
In England at one time, there was a popu-lar pas de deux set by Alexander Volinin, a star of the Bolshoi in the 1910s. This is a charm- ing and very effective number, although halfof the music is from The Fairy Doll. Perhapsthere was something left in it from Gorsky,who staged his version on the Bolshoi in 1907.The scenery and costumes for Moscow wereborrowed from the Mariinsky.
In the RGALI [Russian State Archive of Lit-erature and Arts] there is an epic correspon-dence between the Petersburg and Moscow of-fices of the Imperial Theaters, about unwashedsocks and torn-off buttons, including reportswritten by Moscow dressers and laundresses.According to them, everything came from St.Petersburg in poor condition, and the Moscowstaff was not to blame.
In 1950, Balanchine set a pas de deux to themusic of Drigo for Maria Tallchief and AndréEglevsky. And there are three other concertpas de deux from Harlequinade, each with dif-ferent choreography. We studied all them inorder to search for points of overlap with thenotation. We did not find any.
In Balanchine’s 1973 Harlequinade, we see anexact replica of Petipa’s scenario. Almost theentire plan is used, with minor cuts, but thechoreography is Balanchine’s, although there
are several points of overlap with the nota-tions. One example is the grand pirouette à la seconde at the end of Harlequin’s act 2 vari-ation, and, in part, in the children’s dances.Balanchine wrote that he considered Harle-quinade an important monument in the histo-ry of dance, a kind of benchmark of comedicballet. He was enthusiastic about “its geniusin telling a story with clarity and grace.”
The Gusev Harlequinade of 1975 was almostcanonical in the Soviet Union, but stylistical-ly and structurally it turned out to be muchfarther from the original Petipa than Balan-chine’s. To begin with, it is in one act, not two. The main characters have one variationinstead of two, and there is only one adagio,not two.
In addition, in the pas d’ensemble of act 1,Petipa had two pairs of soloists dancing sideby side (the Harlequin with Columbine andPierrette with a cavalier, plus four couples),which is very unusual in structure for an ada-gio. Gusev had one solo couple and six couplesin the ensemble. This dramatic change seemsto have happened back in 1917, when Pierretteis not mentioned in this scene. Also a singerwas added to Harlequin’s Serenade.
For the first scene of the ballet, Gusev usesthe introductory music to present the maincharacters. In the original Petipa, the musicwas played with the curtain closed. Here Gusev unwittingly gives himself away, be-cause in Petipa the main characters never appear right away. At the same time, Guseveliminated the very heart of the ballet, the bigact 2 “La Chasse aux Alouettes,” a beautifulmeta phor of love, where the Harle quin/hunt -er pursues the Columbine/lark and wounds her.
Petipa had a history of staging “lark hunts”;the first was for a piece made for the TheaterSchool in St. Petersburg, and later in the orig-inal 1869 Don Quixote for the Bolshoi, in a scenewith comedians. After the Harlequin/hunt ershoots the Columbine/lark, a big adagio be-gins with a dozen corps dancers portrayinglarks, accompanied by Drigo’s beautiful mel -ody. Over the course of a difficult four-minute
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variation, accompanied by a lullaby, Colum -bine can no longer hide her love for Harle-quin.
Gusev did not include this, nor did he in-clude the children’s Harlequinade, a seven-minute dance for thirty-two children dressedas little Harlequins, Pierrots, Polichinelles,and Scaramouches. I shall not dwell on otherdifferences in the Gusev production, as thereare many, but only state the obvious – that heset himself a completely different task and not a re-creation of Petipa’s original at all. In-stead Gusev’s version was made in the spiritof “save the best, remove the outdated.” Theruthless hand of the editor is visible both inthe Balla bile for the Masks and in Harlequin’sSerenade, as well as in other dances, although,to be sure, Gusev preserved many of Petipa’sori ginal steps.
The variation for Columbine differs fromthe notated one and is somewhat similar tothe version of Karsavina. It must have beenperformed differently by various soloists. In Sergeev’s notations, we have Preobrajen-
ska’s version. She danced the role of Columbineat the third performance. Kschessinska wasnot satisfied with her part. She considered itnot very interesting in pure dancing terms,and when she returned to the role in 1910, tomake it more exciting, she added tours fromfifth to the coda, as well as a manège of turns.We know this from the reviews. None of it isin the notations.
We also managed to see very interestingfragments of a production by Boris Romanovfor the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in a record-ing from the 1950s, with Alicia Alonso in therole of Columbine. The Ballet Russe dances areinteresting, extremely difficult, designed forAlonso’s phenomenal technique.
Before that, in the 1920s, Romanov stagedThe Millions of Harlequin with his troupe Ro-man tic Ballet for his wife Elena Smirnova. Un-fortunately, Romanov’s choreography has notbeen preserved. We did not notice any over-lap with the notations, but it is more than like-ly that he knew the original.
I would also like to mention the work of
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(Photo: Erin Baiano, ABT)
Act 1 1. La clef dérobée (Cassandre, Pierrot, Pier-rette): 100 percent Petipa. The scene for Pierrot andPierrette is notated twice (notation was in the fileof another ballet), with minor differences, so wemade choices. 2. Ballabile par une compagnie desmasques (Bobèche and his wife, 16 corps couples):100 percent Petipa, except the number of couples;originally there were twenty-four couples and weonly had sixteen. Each of the three front lines at thebeginning consisted of eight couples (we had six ineach and used two couples, who already had entered,repeat in the last row). 3. La serenade (Co lumbine,Harlequin, 4 solo couples): Not notated. We took ourversion from Karsavina’s 1961 staging of Harlequin’sSerenade. 4. Le rendez-vous des amou reux, pasd’ensemble (Columbine, Harlequin, Pierrette, hercavalier, 4 solo couples): The adagio is poorly notat-ed. Only floor plans, pirouettes, a couple of poses,“on pointe” symbol, and some descriptions in wordslike “lift,” “attitude,” “ara besque,” “holding hands,”“carry” “on the knee,” “pas de chat,” “2 times.” Weworked on it for five months and I kept changingand changing, because it is so unusual to have twoequally important couples, with one slightly subor-dinate. The last change was made on the day of theopening: we had the four men change costumes fromblue to gray, as in the original. The dance for Har-lequin’s friends and Pierrette is well notated, twice.I would say 90 percent is Petipa (no actual steps arewritten for the four men, only a floor plan, so wetook some steps from Gusev). Colum bine’s Preobra-jen ska variation is beautifully notated (it was foundin the “miscellaneous” file). Another version, alsofor Preobrajenska, is slightly differ ent. That is whyour principal women were given op tions. (SkylarBrandt does the most difficult variation; the wholefirst part is on one leg.) So the Co lumbine variationis 100 percent Petipa. 5. La batte enchantee (Fairy,Harlequin, 8 little harlequins, 5 squires, officer, 6soldiers ): All mise-en-scène (except the soldiers,which are my invention) done according to floorplans and word descriptions. Harlequin’s variationis 100 percent Petipa. There is another version, verysketchy, with a different final diagonal. The Sere-nade of Leandre is mine, including the steps for thelittle harlequins (I looked to Balanchine and Gusev).The final little dance for Harlequin, Co lum bine, Pier-rette, her cavalier, and their four friends’ couples,after the balcony descends, is not notated, but sincethe music repeats the galop from the Mask dance we quoted from it.
Act 2 1. Polonaise (Columbine, Harlequin, Pier-rette, cast): 100 percent Petipa, even though thepolonaise step itself is not notated, but there isno doubt here. The children’s polonaise is verywell notated. The trick with the money fountainis described in the Mariinsky production book(all the props are described there in great detail).2. Harlequinade (16 children’s couples): 90 per-cent Petipa. Well notated with some small gaps.The last 56 bars I had to invent. I took my inspi-ration from Balanchine (a big circle that breaksinto little circles). 3. La reconciliation de Pier-rot et Pierrette (Pierrot, Pierrette, 4 women fromthe solo couples): 100 percent Petipa. Very wellnotated, twice, with minor variations (one nota-tion is from the “miscellaneous” file). Chaînés forwomen are notated on pointe. 4. La chasse auxalouettes (Columbine, Harlequin, 12 women):Har lequin’s entrance is mine. It’s not notated(some quotes from Legat’s 1909 film “Valse-caprice” with Alexandra Baldina and Fiodor Ko-zlov). The quality of notations for La Chasse issimilar to Le Rendez-vous, sketchy, not precise,with gaps. Luckily everything is notated twiceand so there are different details here and there.We followed all the floor plans and all the remarkssuch as “run,” “on the knees,” “arms down /up,” “carry,” “walk,” “turns under the arm,” “ara -besque,” “head movements,” “arm on the floor,”“by the stick,” “tour jeté,” “ballonné,” and so on.Some of poses and movements are given in theStepanov notes. It was less challenging to inter-pret than Le Rendez-vous, because the struc-ture is more traditional. I would say the organi-zation is pure Petipa, but two-thirds of the cho-reography is mine – except for two variations:both Harlequin’s and Columbine’s are 100 percentPetipa. Colum bine’s Preobrajenska variation isthe best ever, notation initialed A. K. (Alex andraKon stantinova), also from the “miscellaneous”file. The Harlequin and Columbine coda is mine.The chaîné turns for twelve larks when Harle-quin shoots Columbine are notated on pointe. 5. Quadrille des merveilleuses (8 corps couples):90 percent Petipa. I added little chassés here andthere, as in the quadrille. 6. Galop (entire cast):two-thirds is mine. The children are no tated well.The steps for the four women and the larks arealso written down. No codas for the principals or the concluding galop. The final stage pictureis described in the notations. — A. R.
the reconstruction of petipa’s harlequinade
the choreographers Natalia Voskresenskaya,who reconstructed Shiryaev’s choreographyfrom his animation The Harlequin Joke, and YuriBurlaka, who staged Gusev’s version, addingthe original version of Harlequin’s act 2 vari-ation (from the notations) to the act 1 ensem-ble. There was also an interesting productionby Alexander Mishutin, who staged a two-act Harlequi nade in Tbilisi. This is what wemanaged to see on YouTube. I applaud my col- leagues with respect, but I must say that, judg-ing by what we saw, we all set ourselves com-pletely different tasks.
Designs and Scenic “Tricks”
For the first time in my practice (with the ex-ception of the swan costumes for Swan Lake inZurich), we decided to use the original sets andcostumes, of 1900, as the basis for our designs.I had always thought that the choreographyof Petipa was the most important element inany reconstruction and that new designs couldconnect the old ballets with our day. But, Imust admit, Harlequinade changed my mind. Itseems to me that we were right to use the orig-inals.
The American artist Robert Perdziola usedproduction sketches by Ivan Vsevolozhsky andOrest Allegri, kindly provided us by the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Music. The extravagant costumes, with theirbold com binations of colors, aroused doubtsat first. But, combined with the scenery andthe intricate patterns of dancing and the var-ious groupings, they created a balanced whole,and, in the end, seemed the only possiblechoice. Once again, this convinced us of thewisdom of Petipa and his colleagues. It seemsthey knew much more about theater than wedo now. For me, it is obvious.
Take, for example, what we might call “the-atrical tricks.” There are several of them inHarlequinade, all of which provoked a lively re-action from the audience: 1. throwing Harle-quin (a mannequin) from the balcony; 2. tear-ing apart the mannequin, followed by his res-urrection; 3. the appearance of the Fairy from
the fountain; 4. the lowering of the balconywith Columbine and Pierrette on it with thehelp of Harlequin’s magic; 5. the transforma-tion of the notary into the Fairy (an instantcostume change); 6. the fountain of gold coinsemerging from the table top through Harle-quin’s magic.
After the golden fountain, which is the laststage trick in the ballet, the dances begin: chil-dren, Pierrette’s variation, larks, quadrille,and gallop. The dance logic is to warm the audience’s attention as soon as it wanes. Thatsame purpose is served by Harlequin’s slap-stick and an umbrella fitted with mirrors, usedduring the lark hunt. We might have over-looked these details if not for the productionbooks and lists of props from the collection ofthe theater museum in St. Petersburg, impor-tant sources of information about the ballet.
*I should talk in more detail about the “dan -sante” quality and artful dramaturgy of Ric-cardo Drigo’s wonderful score, about the con-struction of Petipa’s dance phrases and theharmony of his ensembles, about the way inwhich all the characters in the ballet are balanced and how each has his or her own special moments. And also about the exact passages in which I was forced to create myown choreography to fill gaps in the text. (Seeopposite page for a summary of each sectionof the ballet and its sources.)
Of course I would like it if our work couldbe evaluated in terms of its faithfulness to thesource, but who would do that? Dig into thearchives, read the notes, which are now free-ly available on the Harvard website? I thinkno one will. Only fellow reconstructors coulddo it, and professional courtesy will probablyinhibit their comments. What I can say is thatwe made a sincere homage to Marius Petipaand, in accordance with that idea, presentedhis work, not our own. We were guided, andlimited, by the desire to restore it as it was.With each restoration project, we understandmore. The opportunity to be Petipa’s appren-tice is a great privilege. I can’t complain.
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