La Nijinska by Lynn Garafola

Author:Lynn Garafola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

The term “pantomime” was much bandied about in reviews of the ballet, and not favorably, given the widespread acceptance of Levinson’s notion of ballet as “pure” dance. Brillant sought to refute this prejudice by placing Hamlet within the context of eighteenth-century theory of the ballet d’action. This, Brillant explains, is “a drama or comedy in silence, a ballet that tells its story without words and in which, by necessity, gesture and pantomime have a part and sometimes a very big part,” which for those who believe that ballet first and foremost is dance is “heresy.”139 In Hamlet, Brillant argued, Nijinska was following the tradition of Jean-Georges Noverre and being attacked, as he had been, for dispensing with “technique.” “Entrechats,” Brillant declared, “have no part in the tragic adventures of the Danish prince.”140

Some critics found themselves unexpectedly drawn into the mysterious heart of the work. “A poignant emotion reigns” throughout the final tableau, Albert Lestray wrote in La Liberté, “and one follows with passion the evolutions of the dancers who, by their precise gestures, render the most complex and beautiful feelings.”141 Henry Malherbe singled out Nijinska’s “arresting image” as Hamlet and Ruth Chanova’s “penetrating charm” as Ophelia.142 Max Frantel, a writer and man of letters who reviewed the ballet for Comoedia, was enchanted by Annenkov’s “stylizations . . . on transparent hangings” and the ballet’s “expressive atmosphere above all for the death of Ophelia.”143 As for Brillant, he left two snapshots of Nijinska. In one she is handsome and melancholy, in the other pale, feverish, and tragic: in both she is dressed all in black and seemingly beyond gender categories.144

A few days later in Figaro, Reynaldo Hahn savaged not only Hamlet but Nijinska’s undertaking in general.

Dance Hamlet? Why not? Does any subject exist with a chance of escaping the choreographic mania of Russians and their imitators? . . . You will see that little by little . . . they will adapt, orchestrate, choreograph, decorate, costume, dance, and mime Pascal’s Pensées, Czerny’s exercises, . . . Palestrina’s Masses, Cicero’s speeches, . . . Molière’s Misanthrope, and the railroad timetable—this at least could give rise to picturesque evocations. But all these efforts would not be equally happy, and this is the case of Hamlet. Reduced to a slender plastic scheme, the “Tragic History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” has no mystery, grandeur, or any meaning. Decors that at first delight the eye . . . soon tire it by a preference for smokiness . . . ; a pantomime so vague, so “stylized” that a spectator ignorant of what is going on can understand nothing; a musical accompaniment . . . played, so to speak, without having been rehearsed—this is the “novelty” intended as a treat for the Parisian public by the Ballets Russes at the Châtelet.145

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