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The Diaghileff Heritage
Diaghileff, having collected a splendid company of dancers and a brilliant group of artists round him, provided just this atmosphere of work, friendship and inspiration for them to work in. He was a focussing point, a burning glass; where he was, there something flamed into fire. He brought musicians and artists and choreographers together, he gave them scope, he provided the background in which art could grow. While he himself could not create he could make others creative. It was this spirit of co-operation which led to the creation of masterpieces. Let us take, for example, Le Spectre de la Rose, that lovely pas de deux, so tender, so full of romantic feeling, which is associated for all time with the name of Nijinsky. The theme, taken from Theophile Gautier's Loin du Bal, was suggested to Diaghileff by the poet Jean Louis Vaudoyer, who quoted to him the couplet:
Je suis le spectre de la rose
Que tu portais hier au bal.
The music of Weber's Invitation a la Valse was used to evoke the period, Bakst designed the dresses and scene and Fokine improvised the choreography in three or four rehearsals. Then Nijinsky and Karsavina stepped in and made it their own. During that season and the following one it was performed more than a hundred times.
When we come to the consideration of ballet in England to-day it is this spirit of artistic co-operation which is the most precious heritage which the Diaghileff Ballet has bequeathed to us. Both Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois have instilled these principles into their companies, and while the Ballet Rambert has evolved the ballet intime suitable for the small theatre and the Sadler's Wells Company has gone in for full-scale productions, each has, in its own field, striven for the artistic unity of conception achieved by Diaghileff.
It was as a teacher that Marie Rambert (Mrs. Ashley Dukes) first came into contact with Diaghileff. He engaged her to teach his company the principles of Dalcroze Eurhythmies of which she was an expert exponent, but what happened in the event was that she became an enthusiastic pupil of Cecchetti and the classical method of ballet dancing. The time she spent with the troupe was to prove invaluable not only for her but for the future of ballet in England at its most formative period, for this born teacher came under the influence of the greatest maestro of our time, and since then she has devoted herself to training pupils by his methods.
Only those who had the good fortune to study with Cecchetti or to watch him at work can appreciate to the full his great qualities. The purity of the style which he taught, his wisdom, his charm, his infinite patience and loving care for his pupils and the skill with which he guided them and helped them forward marked him out as a great teacher. Nothing ever escaped him and no fault passed uncorrected. Neither was he a respecter of persons, for Nijinsky and Karsavina, Adolf Bolm, Massine and Lopokova at the height of their fame still had to attend a daily class to ensure a perfect technique, and it was wonderful to see those great artists supreme in the classroom.
Demanding much from his pupils, Cecchetti could be severe at times, and when in the midst of a lengthy and difficult enchamement requiring great concentration one of the girls might be on the point of giving up from sheer exhaustion, she would not be allowed to stop. 'Continuez, Mademoiselle,' he would say, approaching inexorably, and the tune he was whistling would never falter nor the little cane cease tapping out the rhythm until somehow confidence returned and the exercise was completed. The warm affection he inspired showed that his pupils, in spite of their tears and remonstrances, respected the iron discipline which he imposed. He was greatly loved perhaps because he loved the art of dancing so much.
The present Director of Sadler's Wells Ballet, Ninette de Valois, an Irish girl with an Irish name (Edris Stannus), who adopted a French name in the days when it was necessary for a dancer to have a foreign name if she was to get any engagements at all, appeared at first as a child prodigy and afterwards worked with Cecchetti for five years while he was with Diaghileff. Other British members of the company were Sokolova (Hilda Munnings), Markova (Alice Marks) and Anton Dolin (Patrick Healey-Kay). She joined the DiaghilefF Company in 1923 and was with them, off and on, for the next two years. Of this experience she has recorded: 'The writer can say that everything of value to do with the presentation of ballet, the study of choreography and the development of the artist, that she has ever learned, came from this apprenticeship in the most famous of companies; a company whose existence for some twenty-five years was the fruit of the mind and will-power of one individual'. This is a fine tribute from one who was to prove to be the mainspring of English Ballet and a fine choreographer herself.
Between them, Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois have trained most of the young dancers with a real sense of style whom we see in England to-day. Each has made possible the emergence of a new school of English Ballet firmly grounded in the past but reaching out into the future. Other companies have been formed but they revolve round particular stars or personalities and lack a sense of continuity and background. Marie Rambert has known how to bring out latent gifts in her pupils and encourage them to do creative work on their own, whether as choreographers, designers or dancers. When the Ballets Russes went to America, Massine bequeathed his pupils to her and among them was one who was to become a pioneer of English Ballet.
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