THE BALLET
Aspiration and Frivolity
MASSINE'S three new ballets, given during the summer season at Drury Lane, are now to be seen at Covent Garden. Two 3f. them—The Seventh Symphony and Nobilissima Visione-- tspire to the highest plane of artistic creation ; the third is an musing frivolity. Beethoven's Symphony in A offered inevitable temptations to a choreographer in search of a new " symphonic " ballet. It has been called "The Apotheosis of the Dance" and its rhythms certainly are of the kind most stimulating to responsive movement in the listener. The odd thing is that Massine was not content to make his ballet an apotheosis of the dance. Instead he has thrust upon the Symphony a programme that is neither consistent in itself nor particularly congruous with the music. The slow Introduction suggested to him the idea of the Creation, and the movements devised to accompany this section of the score are not without an imaginative power that almost reconciles one to the arbitrary imposition of a story upon music that has none. But why, one may ask, if Massine wanted to tell the story of the Creation in dancing to music by Beethoven, did he not use the Prometheus ballet which was intended for that purpose ?
Having started thus biblically and reached the creation of Adam and Eve and their temptation by the serpent—an effective piece of theatre—Massine uses the second movement to present a version of the Descent from the Cross, which is not in the best of taste. For the third movement shows us mythological gods prancing in the sky, and the last a sort of Roman Saturnalia terminated by a conflagration from which only the figure of Nero fiddling is lacking to give it a definite time and place. But, questions of taste apart, the choreography of the Allegretto stumbles over the usual obstacle presented by a symphonic movement. An effective dramatic climax is built up during the first quarter of the movement, but, that having been done, there remains nothing but to repeat it several times more. As usual the movement is too long for the choreographer's invention. As to the finale nothing could be more incongruous with the jubilant music than the action fitted to it, and the fully developed rondo-sonata form of the movement has again proved too much for the dance. Massine must be credited with an attempt to do something fine and transcendental, but the limitations of his medium defeat him and the result is a tedious ballet with occasional moments of genuine beauty and dramatic power.
In Nobilissima Visione the choreographic style evolved for the symphonic ballets is applied to the relation of a definite ' story—the legend of St. Francis of Assisi. Hindemith's music, which, like the " Mathis " Symphony, proves that the composer has got away from his obsession with mechanical rhythms and counterpoint, does not, of course, present the problems of symphonic form, and it is, apart from its intrinsic musical merit, admirably suited to its purpose. I do not feel, however, that Massine, who dances the part himself, has found the right convention for the presentation of Sr. Francis's simple saintliness. He is something too sophisticated. The best thing in this ballet is the dancing of Miss Theilade as Poverty, the Saint's spiritual bride. Here is a dancer whose whole body responds to the stimulus of the emotion she sets out to portray. Every movement, every gesture was significant and beautiful. (Earlier in the evening she had given distinction to an otherwise unimaginative performance of Les Sylphides.) The legend of the Wolf of Gubbio came off much better than could be expected. One feared a pantomime creature in the Disney style, but the scene was carefully devised to avoid incongruous comedy. Nobilissima Visione ought to be another Job, and I should like to see what Miss de Valois would do with it using settings after the Sassetta panels of the National Gallery. The scenery and costumes at Covent Garden did their best to neutralise Massine's efforts to keep the piece on a high artistic plane.
Gaiete Parisienne is great fun. Offenbach's lively tunes brilliantly rescored by Manuel Rosenthal make an admirable accompaniment to a mid-nineteenth century frolic wittily dressed by Mme. Karinsky It is not quite on the level of Massine's other essays in the same vein—Le Beau Danube, for instance, or The Good-humoured Ladies—and Massine's own dance as the Peruvian parvenu, though witty in its observation, is not to be compared with his Can-can Dancer or his Barman
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