For the vast majority of moviegoers, a documentary about a seminal 20th-century ballet troupe may sound about as appealing as a filmstrip on Eastern European tax codes.
But don't let the stultification factor scare you off. Ballets Russes has a little something for everybody: bitter rivalries, scandalous love affairs, movie stars, nudity (well, faux nudity), Batgirl, the Klan, Salvador Dali — plus tons of rare footage of incandescent dancers in performance.
And even though the litany of Russian names (Slavenska, Markova, Krassovska) can get a little befuddling at times, the dancers themselves, many of them now in their 70s and 80s, are charming storytellers.
Ballet's roots trace as far back as the Italian Renaissance and to French court dance of the 17th century. But the dance form as we now know it first came into its own through the vision of impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who founded the first Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 and infused ballet with the creative energy of the avant-garde, commissioning work by Stravinksy and Debussy and launching the careers of legendary dancers Anna Pavlova and Nijinksy. Diaghilev made such an impact that when he died in 1929 it was thought that ballet had died, too.
But that was not to be the case. As filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller show us, Diaghilev's troupe spawned first one, then two troupes that went on to make dance history. A wily Russian colonel named Wasily de Basil founded Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in 1931. His star choreographer, Leonide Massine, left in a power struggle in 1937, taking with him the company's name and many of its best dancers (de Basil resorted to billing his group the Original Ballet Russe). It is the saga of these two companies' rise and fall that make up the bulk of the film's narrative.
Goldfine and Geller, whose previous documentary subjects have included Isadora Duncan and the youth art collaborative Kids of Survival, interviewed many of the Ballets Russes dancers during their first official reunion in New Orleans in 2000, then traveled the U.S. and London in ensuing years doing follow-ups. The contemporary segments are interspersed seamlessly with historic material — stills, playbills, film clips — so that we're simultaneously aware of the interviewees as dazzling young dancers and as venerable survivors.
The effect is, inevitably, bittersweet — intimations of mortality are inescapable. A grainy image of a ballerina twirling in a white tutu opens the film, followed by an excerpt from an interview with one of the Russes' most famous dancers, Alicia Markova, her white hair perfectly coiffed, her demeanor still elegant.
At the end of the film, the image of the grainy ballerina reappears, but this time she fades away — and in the closing credits we see that five of the dancers interviewed, including Markova, have since died. We're looking back at a time that can never be recaptured.
Certainly, the fervor surrounding the Ballets Russes in the '30s and '40s isn't likely to be seen again. At the height of the feud between de Basil and Massine, when their troupes were performing just blocks away from each other in London, one newspaper ran a cartoon touting "The Great London Ballet Wars of 1938."
The companies' tours through the Americas and Australia brought live ballet to people that had never seen it before. Principal dancer Frederic Franklin (now an unbelievably hearty 90-something), remembers small-town audiences staring "slackjawed" at productions like the Dali-designed Bacchanale, with its naked Venus and giant fish.
Dancers from the U.S. joined the largely Russian corps, including Maria Tallchief, one of the first Native American ballet stars; Yvonne Craig, later to achieve fame as TV's Batgirl; Wakefield Poole, later to gain fame as director of gay porn classic Boys in the Sand; and Raven Wilkinson, who was the first African-American to be hired as a permanent member of a major company (and whose appearances during Southern tours were plagued by Ku Klux Klan protests).
Essentially, the Ballets Russes launched ballet as a popular art form — so popular that Hollywood producers came calling with movie roles and long-time contracts. It was all very heady for the dancers. "They were just a bunch of kids," remembers dance critic and photographer Ann Barzel (herself now in her 90s).
In fact, youth was a marketing tool for the Ballets Russes right from the start. Wasily de Basil's first balletmaster was an imperious young man named George Balanchine. Rather than spotlight the more established performers, he awarded the starring roles for the company's premiere to three girls still in ballet school, two of them not yet 13. The vivacity and style of the so-called "baby ballerinas" made them an instant sensation.
Interviewee Irina Baronova was part of that troika; raised in a Russian refugee community in Paris, she remembers being a tomboy whose mother hauled her "by the scruff of the neck" to take "terrifying" dance classes with an émigré from Russia's Royal Ballet Studio.
The obsession with youth, particularly with the idealized image of the perfect young ballerina, had its downside. Balanchine, who went on to create ground-breaking choreography for the New York City Ballet, married Tallchief when she was 22 and he was 43. He would strictly limit her calorie intake, at some meals allowing her only an apple. One reason for the downfall of de Basil's company, the film suggests, was his romantic interest in a mediocre young dancer named Nina Novak; she won roles that she didn't quite deserve, driving the more talented dancers to leave.
But if youth still rules in the world of ballet, one lesson of Ballets Russes is that a life spent dancing keeps you young. Nathalie Krassovska was one of the stars who captured the attention of moviemakers (Charlie Chaplin, among others, vied for her affections); she says she had to leave Hollywood because she "kept falling in love." Principal dancer George Zoritch is described by several women in the film as the best-looking man they ever saw, and photos of him from his starring roles bear out that assessment.
When we meet Zoritch and Krassovska in the film, the former dance partners are both in their 80s. She's matronly but delightfully animated, and still able to practice at the barre in her dance studio; he's still in good enough shape to wear a form-fitting T-shirt and work out at the Y.
When they reprise one of the dances they used to perform, a duet from Giselle, they move gingerly, laughing at their reduced mobility. But if they can't dance anywhere near as well as they once did, what they retain — what all of the dancers in this film possess and can never lose — is an innate sense of grace. Ballets Russes is a suitably graceful tribute to their artistry.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.