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Abstract
At the turn of the twentieth century, many Russian dancers cast aside careers in the highly regarded Imperial Ballet for unknown futures in the West. Emigrating for a variety of personal and artistic reasons, some decided to remain abroad during the revolution and after the Tsar’s assassination. This microhistory explores one moment in the Russian exile movement when former Imperial Ballet dancers Adolph Bolm, Anna Pavlova, and Tamara Karsavina connected, or just missed connecting, in 1924 Chicago. Their reasons for being there diverged but all believed they had a mission to spread the gifts of Russian ballet.
Acknowledgements
This research was made possible in part by a generous grant from the Emeritus Academy, The Ohio State University.
Notes
1 Alexandre Benois, Memoirs, trans. Moura Budberg (London: Chatto and Windus, 1960), 39-40.
2 Benois, Memoirs, 131-132.
3 Mary Grace Swift, The Art of the Dance in the USSR (University of Notre Dame Press: 1968), 27.
4 Edward W. Said, “Reflections on Exile,” in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 173.
5 Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 4.
6 Raeff, Russia Abroad, 47.
7 Adolph Bolm with Vera Caspary, “Dancer’s Days: American Adventures––Experiments on Broadway––An Intimate Ballet,” (Typescript of Part II), Box 3, Folder 24, Writings, Adolph Bolm Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
8 Adolph Bolm, with Vera Caspary, “A Dancer’s Days: Of the First Glorious Season of the Russian Ballet in Paris and of their Hectic Nights in the New World,” The Dance, September 1926, Box 2, Folder 35, (Photocopies).
9 Suzanne Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” in The Ballets Russes and its World, eds. Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 224.
10 Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 225.
11 Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 227.
12 Adolph Bolm with Vera Caspary, “Dancer’s Days: American Adventures––Experiments on Broadway––An Intimate Ballet” (Typescript of Part III), Box 3 Folder 24, Writings: Bolm’s Recollections and Bios, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
13 Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 227.
14 Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 227.
15 Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 230-231.
16 Bolm quoted in Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 231.
17 Bolm quoted in Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 231.
18 Box Office Statements, Chicago Allied Arts at Eighth Street Theater for November 1924, Chicago Allied Arts Records, Box 1, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago
19 Tamara Karsavina, Theatre Street: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1961), 25.
20 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 27.
21 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 27.
22 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 36.
23 Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 4.
24 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 159.
25 Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 5.
26 S. L. Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet, 1909-1929 (Hampshire: Dance Books, 2009), 26.
27 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 261.
28 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 261.
29 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 268.
30 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 273.
31 Adolph Bolm, “Impressions of a Partner, Before and After the World Spotlight found Pavlowa,” The Dance Magazine 16, no. 4 (August 1931): 14.
32 Preface, The Dance Magazine 16, no. 4 (August 1931): 6.
33 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 70.
34 Karsavina, Theatre Street, 70.
35 Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 175.
36 Keith Money, Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 85.
37 Novikoff, “Pavlova: Divine Revolutionist,” 21.
38 Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 191.
39 Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 191.
40 Anna Pavlova, “Pages of my Life,” trans. Sébastien Voirol, in V. Svetloff, trans. A. Grey, Anna Pavlova (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), 127.
41 Novikoff, “Pavlova: Divine Revolutionist,” 23.
42 Novikoff, “Pavlova: Divine Revolutionist,” 23.
43 Money, Anna Pavlova, 200.
44 Chicago Daily Tribune, July 11, 1915.
45 Chicago Daily Tribune, July 18, 1915.
46 Unidentified clipping, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
47 Glenn Dillard Gunn, unidentified clipping, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
48 Unidentified clipping, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
49 Maurice Rosenfeld, unidentified clipping, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
50 Maurice Rosenfeld, unidentified clipping.
51 Maurice Rosenfeld, unidentified clipping.
52 Vanity Fair, December 1924, 45, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
53 Rutgers Neilson, “An Another ‘Pavlowa’ From the Great Russian School of Dancing––America Welcomes Thamar Karsavina,” 34-35, 70. Unidentified clipping, Box 238, Subject Files, Karsavina, Ann Barzel, Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
54 Karsavina, “Touring in America,” 533.
55 H. J. Bruce, Thirty Dozen Moons (London: Constable, 1949), 70.
56 Neilson, “An Another ‘Pavlowa,’” 35.
57 Neilson, “An Another ‘Pavlowa,’” 70.
58 H. T. Parker, “In New Conditions Karsavina Dances Hardly as of Old,” in Olive Holmes, ed. Motion Arrested: Dance Reviews of H. T. Parker (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1982), 150.
59 Parker, “In New Conditions,” 151.
60 Blanche Matthias, “’Ballet Intime’—Chicago’s Contribution to the Arts,” Arts & Decoration (March 1925): 26-27.
61 John Dougherty, “Perspective on Adolph Bolm, Part II” Dance Magazine, February 1963, 45.
62 O. L. Hall, unidentified clipping, Box 8, Folder 153, Miscellaneous Clippings, 1916-1990, Edna L. McRae Papers (photocopy of original), Newberry Library, Chicago.
63 Hall, unidentified clipping, Newberry Library, Chicago.
64 Hall, unidentified clipping, Newberry Library, Chicago.
65 Hall, unidentified clipping, Newberry Library, Chicago.
66 Hall, unidentified clipping, Newberry Library, Chicago.
67 Richard Philp, “The Legendary Tamara Karsavina Remembered, An Interview with Felia Doubrovska,” Dance Magazine, September 1978, 37.
68 Philp, “The Legendary Tamara Karsavina Remembered,” 37.
69 Philp, “The Legendary Tamara Karsavina Remembered,” 37.
70 Bolm with Caspary, “Dancer’s Days: American Adventures––Experiments on Broadway.”
71 Bolm with Caspary, “Dancer’s Days: American Adventures––Experiments on Broadway.”
72 Unidentified clipping, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
73 Program from Woman’s Club, Subject Files, Box 238, Karsavina, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
74 Pandora, “Mme. Karsavina of Russian Ballet is Feted by Society,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Wednesday, November 26, 1924, 21.
75 Carbonneau, “Adolph Bolm in America,” 244.
76 Michel Fokine, “Michel Fokine Remembers Pavlowa as She was in the Beginning,” The Dance Magazine 16, no. 4 (August 1931): 11.
77 Anna Kisselgoff, review of Keith Money, Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art
The New York Times. Unidentified clipping, Subject Files, Box 341, Pavlova, Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.
78 Diana Menuhin, A Glimpse of Olympus (London: Methuen, 1996), 48.
79 Arnold L. Haskell, In his True Centre: An Interim Autobiography (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1951), 302.
* Alexandre Benois, trans. Moura Budberg, Memoirs (London: Chatto and Windus, 1960). Born in 1870 in St. Petersburg, Benois died in Paris in 1960. His earlier designs for productions at the Maryinsky Theatre include: Sylvia (never staged); Cupid’s Revenge (1902); and Le Pavilion d’Armide (1907). In his years with the Ballets Russes, he designed Les Sylphides (1909); Le Festin (1909); Giselle (1910); and Song of the Nightingale (1914). His best known designs are those for Petrushka (1911). After an argument, Benois left Diaghilev’s circle, subsequently working with Ida Rubinstein’s company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and the London Festival Ballet. He is the author of Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet (London, 1941) and Memoirs (2 Vols., London 1960, 1964).
† Although Benois put some effort toward working with the new government in an artistic capacity, he was gloomy about the future of his country. On Tuesday 28 February/13 March he wrote in his diary: “This is revolution!” Again on Friday 3/16 March he wrote: “If today no one weeps for the Monarchy, then surely tomorrow even those will be weeping who have now pinned red ribbons on themselves and sincerely believe themselves revolutionaries.” Tony Devereux, “Alexander Benois and the Russian Revolution,” Dance Research 15, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 72. (Note: In 1918, Russia moved from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, joining with Europe in following the Western calendar. The first date refers to the Old Style calendar and the second to the New Style.)
* Transliteration is often applied inconsistently. In most cases I have chosen to use the most familiar spellings of Russian words in English. In direct quotations, I have retained the original author’s spelling. Thus, words like “Maryinsky” may be also spelled “Mariinski” or some other variation.
* Gudrun Andersson and Jon Stobart explicate the goals of microhistorical research: through “thick description,” they aim to reveal “deeper truths and broader structures in people’s lives,” and “through a better understanding of the small-scale and everyday . . . to throw new light on broader processes . . . and on the ability of ordinary individual people to affect historical change.” Daily Lives and Daily Routines in the (Very) Long Eighteenth Century, Andersson and Stobart, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2022), 2. For more on microhistorical approaches see: Carlo Ginsburg, John Tedeschi, Anne C. Tedeschi, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things that I Know about It,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (Autumn 1993): 10-35; Vladimer Luarsabishvili, Ideas and Methodologies in Historical Research (New York: Routledge, 2022); Joanna Sliwa, Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021).
* For further discussion of this aspect of Karsavina’s legacy, please see my “Turning Movement into Words: The Technique Writings of Tamara Karsavina and Agrippina Vaganova,” Dance Research 40, no. 2 (2022): 158-182.
* “I enjoyed choreographing, inventing new combinations, new steps––this I loved. As I used to walk to my studio in [London on] York Street, I would become quite oblivious to everything, all the while composing dances.” Carl Wildman, “Conversation with Karsavina,” Dancing Times, June 1965, 462.
* For more on Bolm’s work as dancer, choreographers, and sometime ballet master in the Ballets Russes see Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998).
* Rosalind Shaffer Notes, Box 3, Folder 27, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Shaffer was a long-time friend of Bolm’s wife, Beatrice, and the two couples’ children were close as well. Shaffer’s daughter, also named Rosalind, studied ballet with Adolph. Trained as a journalist, the elder Rosalind prepared notes toward a biography of Bolm. At her death, these notes were passed on to her daughter, Rosalind Shaffer de Mille. These notes are housed at Syracuse University and copies are archived at the Library of Congress.
* For more on Nicholas Remisoff and his collaborations with Adolph Bolm, see Oleg Minin, “Russian Artists in the United States: The Case of Nicholas Remisoff (1887-1975),” Experiment 20 (2024): 229-259.
* Karsavina’s biographer Andrew Foster points to confusion about her rank at graduation. Karsavina writes that she was accepted as a coryphée, a rank above the corps de ballet and the records of her salary and the roles allocated to her suggest this was the case. However, the official archives indicate that Karsavina graduated at the level of corps de ballet––the more accepted pathway for a first-year dancer. The accuracy of the Maryinsky Theatre archives might be questioned, Foster says, because in her second year, Karsavina was promoted to Second Soloist, an improbable jump in position and salary from the corps. Andrew R. Foster, Tamara Karsavina: Diaghilev’s Ballerina (London: Andrew R. Foster, 2010), 23.
* Fokine spelled out his theories in “The New Ballet,” an article published in the Russian periodical, Argus, in 1916 and in a famous “Letter to ‘The Times’” in 1914. Both of these articles appear as appendices in Cyril W. Beaumont’s book, Michel Fokine and his Ballets (London: Dance Books, 1996). In brief, Fokine argued for a more realistic approach to storytelling and a more integrated theatrical experience. For example, costumes and set should evoke the specific character and location called for in the narrative rather than the more orthodox approach which retained the ballerina’s choreographic and spatial centrality, her conventional tutu and pointe shoes, her ability to insert solos and pas de deux of her choice, and allowed for the interruption of performances so that artists could receive applause. Fokine created streamlined, one-act ballets which often utilized concert music and called for décor and costumes that helped to create a specified mood, atmosphere, and plot. His use of the classical ballet vocabulary was similarly nontraditional as he dispensed with turnout or pointe shoes when they were deemed inappropriate and he utilized a greater freedom and mobility of the torso and arms.
* Karsavina’s impressive body of writing includes two manuals devoted to aspects of classical ballet technique, her memoir Theatre Street, and over three decades’ worth of essays, mainly in Dancing Times, others in literary and arts journals. These articles honor her teachers at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, assess her experiences with Ballets Russes artists, document her tours with various dance partners, and analyze ballet choreographies. Examples of each category include: Tamara Karsavina, “A Ballerina’s Education at the Russian Imperial Ballet School,” Dancing Times, August 1944, 495-497; “Imperial Schooldays,” Dancing Times, December 1927, 429-435; “A Recollection of Strawinsky,” Tempo 8 (Summer 1948): 7-9; “A Sidelight on ‘Giselle,’” Dancing Times, October 1940, 13-14; “Touring with Vladimirov,” Dancing Times, June 1967, 473, 475, 477; “Why Ballet Russe Could Not Survive Diaghileff,” in Arnold Haskell, ed., Ballet Decade (New York: Macmillan, n.d.), 149-152.
* Lev Karsavin’s daughter was arrested by the Soviet authorities in 1948. In 1949 she was deported to Mordvinia. Lev himself was arrested in July of that year and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. In 1950 he was convicted of counter-revolutionary activities and sent to a Stalinist labor camp where he died in 1952. See Dominic Rubin, The Life and Thought of Lev Karsavin, “Strength Made Perfect in Weakness” (Rodopi, Amsterdam: 2013).
† Pierina Legnani (1863-1923) was an Italian ballerina who performed in Russia during the so-called Italian wave of the 1880s and 1890s. A much-admired ballerina, she famously introduced the thirty-two fouettés sequence in the third act of Petipa’s Swan Lake. Her technical virtuosity spurred many Russian dancers to incorporate Italian training into their more traditional, decorous French technique. See Nadine Meisner, Marius Petipa, The Emperor’s Ballet Master (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
* Keith Money, Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 68. Money notes the clouds of mystery surrounding the facts of Pavlova’s life. Dates are not always clear and even the circumstances of her birth and paternity are open for question. Dandré, who was most often called her husband in press accounts, “failed to provide legal title to that relationship after Pavlova’s death.” Further, writes Money, “Notwithstanding Dandré’s paternal presence in her life, Pavlova seems to have struck up a romance with the young Adolph Bolm” in the years 1907-08.
† These circumstances led to Fokine’s eventual resignation as well, as he began to resent the attention paid to Nijinsky’s nascent choreographic efforts. Garafola writes, “Leaving the Ballets Russes, [Fokine] abandoned the dance family that had nurtured his choreography since 1905. By 1912, the most creative phase of his career had ended.” See Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 32.
* Once again in need of funding to support her company, Pavlova presented a condensed version of The Sleeping Beauty, with designs by Léon Bakst, in Charles Dillingham’s The Big Show, at the Hippodrome in New York City. It was a spectacle that featured acrobats, animals, and aerial performers. When even this shortened version of the nineteenth-century ballet proved too demanding for American audiences, Pavlova resorted to reducing it to a series of divertissements that were more suited to the tastes of ballet novices. For a full description of this entertainment and the audience response, see Money, Anna Pavlova, 234-241.
* Andreas Dippel (1866-1932) was a German-born tenor with a background in banking who was the joint manager with Giulio Gatti-Casazza of the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1908-1910. From 1910-1913 he managed the Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Company, and by 1914 was heading up his own Dippel Opera Comique Company.
† Max Rabinoff (1877-1966) was a Russian-born American impresario with a background in finance who founded the Boston Grand Opera Company in 1914 and was central in introducing Anna Pavlova and her company to American audiences.
* Friedrich “Fritz” Kreisler (1875-1962) was a much-loved Austrian-born American violinist and composer. Noted for his pleasing tone, he composed some pastiches in the styles of other composers, as well as works for solo violin, encores, a string quartet, and operettas.
* Lopokova “seemed to Diaghilev to offer a most marketable substitute” for Karsavina, writes Judith Mackrell, Bloomsbury Ballerina: Lydia Lopokova, Imperial Dancer and Mrs John Maynard Keynes (London: Phoenix, 2008), 93.
* Tamara Karsavina, “Touring in America,” Dancing Times, July 1967, 532.
† Karsavina was truly reluctant: “The next year, 1924, [Wollheim’s] offer was renewed. I plucked up my courage to accept but oh, that vast expanse of water between me and my home—now in Sofia [Bulgaria]!” Karsavina, “Touring in America,” 532.
* The October 1928 The Dance Magazine, for example, listed the “Foremost Schools of Dancing” in Chicago, including an advertisement for the Adolph Bolm School of the Dance. In a headshot, Bolm appears in a simple but commanding pose, wearing an open-necked shirt, probably teaching attire, and gazing into the far horizon. His glamour and pedigree need not be overstated. In contrast, other schools, offering a variety of dance styles, worked harder to attract their students with more dramatic photos of acrobatic lifts, orientalist costumes, and price lists for accompanying technique books and phonograph records. Newberry Library, Chicago.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Karen Eliot
KAREN ELIOT is Professor Emerita, Department of Dance, The Ohio State University. She was a co-editor of Dance Chronicle from 2016-19 and edited the special issue entitled Dances of Loss, Grief, and Endurance in the Face of Trauma in 2019. Her books include: Dancing Lives: Five Female Dancers from the Ballet d’action to Merce Cunningham (UIP, 2007); Dance on its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies (co-editor with Melanie Bales, OUP, 2013); Albion’s Dance: British Ballet During the Second World War (OUP, 2016); and Risk is a Relative Term (co-editor with Alana Ryder and student writers, Wexner Center for the Arts, 2020). Her recent research focuses on the development of ballet in early twentieth-century Britain and asks how larger historical narratives in dance intersect with the lives of the individuals who shape that history. Her research articles have appeared in Dance Research Journal, Dance Research, and Dance Chronicle among other publications.