BALLET
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like to see
him
partnering Sizova, who achieves the same idealization of
the happy normal.
The Bolshoi has a large number of presentable-looking men with
strong classical technique, and I don't mean to diminish the importance
of this famous fact when I note how quickly one takes it for granted and
how quickly therefore one sees that only Vasiliev is really first-class. Tik–
honov and Lavrovsky are strong and clean, always a pleasure to see.
Fadeyechev I saw too often: he is rather ill-favored, dull
in
stage
presence, and except for his unexpectedly long legs in leaping he is not
a notable dancer. Aside from Vasiliev, I admired most Koshelev, whose
comical face limits him to character dancing: his Jester was the only
bright moment
in
Swan Lake,
though the part itself is not a particularly
good one.
The Bolshoi's immense success is no surprise in a country that paid
Louis B. Mayer the world's largest salary, and the almost equal success
of the mild and tasteful Royal Danish Ballet is probably due to the ex–
pertise of another great showman, Sol Hurok. In the three performances
I saw I was unlucky enough to miss Bruhn, Schanne, Simone and Laer–
kesen, four of the most important dancers. But what I saw could, I
think,
fairly be called the norm of this famous old company's work, and
it was not a very exciting experience. The Danes are at their best in
their own classics, Act III of
Napoli
and
Konservatoriet,
charming small–
scale pieces danced with an admirably untarnished, sweet and unaffected
spontaneity: this beautifully modest curatorship represents the best of
the company's traditions and procedures. But a great company should
not empty a greater classic like
Coppelia
of all importance by giving the
lead to so insipid a dancer as Ruth Andersen, and there were other prac–
tices that made it impossible to
think
of the Royal Danish Ballet as a
very important artistic enterprise.
It
is, again, admirably modest of them
to show so international a repertory, but most of the ballets they brought
over were weak and too many of them encourage the Danes' misplaced
emphasis on dance "acting." Actually, there are very few first-class
ballets anywhere in which acting is of primary importance. Bruhn's
aristocratic elegance may make his Don Jose in Petit's trashy
Carmen
and
his Jean in Culberg's trashy
Miss Julie
worth seeing once, perhaps even
twice; but Bruhn is unique. I saw Kronstam as Don Jose: he is a
splendid dancer and actor, but this didn't make the piece worth seeing.
Moreover, the Danish performances suggest that a concern for acting
tends to discourage attention to the expressivity of dancing
in
itself. I am
not saying that dancers should pay attention only to their bodies and
shouldn't perplex their pretty heads with thoughts about characteriza–
tion. I am saying that
if
they do the latter to the detriment of the former
