In 1925 Virginia Woolf wrote the following words in an article entitled âThe Russian Point of Viewâ in her collection The Common Reader:
This concludes the article, a piece that questions whether âfor all their enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literatureâ at all. 2 For Woolf (whose Russian translation work was often undertaken with Russian-born S.S. Koteliansky) 3 the problem lies in language; works stripped of their original contexts and linguistic utterances, and mediated through the mouths of scholars and artists who cannot speak the original language, exist in a confusing, disturbing, unfamiliar sea of multifarious meanings. as Woolf puts it, âdashed to the crest of the waves, bumped and battered on the stones at the bottom, it is difficult for an English reader to feel at easeâ. 4But the mind takes its bias from the place of its birth, and no doubt, when it strikes upon a literature so alien as the Russian, flies off at a tangent far from the truth. 1
While Woolf focuses on the act of reading, the same could be said for performance. How can theatre productions, with linguistic and cultural idiosyncrasies, transcend geographical barriers and become intelligible for audiences many miles away? While this might seem a self-defeating question for a book predicated on transnational engagement, I am led to ask whether British audiences could/can understand Russian performance at all, and indeed what the verb âunderstandâ even means in this context. The Ballets Russesâ performances were arguably the most influential and accessible for early twentieth-century British audiences, and so this chapter starts with Sergei Diaghilevâs company in order to unpack the sort of cosmopolitan Russianness presented during its British travels. It is vital to remember that the troublesome question of transnational artistic engagement was as difficult for Russian audiences as for British, and in the work of Alexander Tairov, mediated through the travels of Basil Dean, we find the most prominent examples of British plays performed in the Soviet context. This book constantly reveals the intricacies and complexities of the relationship between British and Russian theatre, and the final part of this chapter illustrates this by discussing the intermingled, migratory tradition of Jewish theatre. All these examples complicate, to borrow Pitchesâs words, âthe linearity of transmissionâ, 5 setting up an intricate framework of appropriation, repudiation, emulation and inspiration, fraught with political, linguistic and cultural tensions though prompted by a mutual desire to understand, that grounds the claims of the next three chapters.
The Ballets Russes: Choreographic Internationalism
Susan Jones suggests that âdramaturgy of the early twentieth century frequently developed in tandem with specific forms of choreography and movement practicesâ, confirming the centrality of dance for modernist art in a general sense. 6 Dance performance influenced an enormous range of artists, not just dramatists, actors and directors, but also visual artists, poets and novelists. The gradual turning of modernist studies towards performance and vice versa is mirrored by a similar, more specific, exchange between modernism and dance studies. Carrie Preston contends that this choreographic expansion of modernist studies is vital, âas dance highlights early twentieth-century preoccupations with varieties of movement: motions and rhythm in performance and other arts, bodies transported on stages and across national, racial, and ethnic bordersâ. 7 Prestonâs identification of modernist dance innovations with movement in art and in everyday life, particularly the migration of bodies through geographical spaces, matches the intentions of this book.
While the Ballets Russesâ Russian heritage remains clearly embedded in the companyâs title and personnel, it was its transnational journeys that defined its location and ultimately led to its profound influence on the British scene. The Ballets Russes travelled to many countries and is associated less with Moscow or St Petersburg than Paris. Lynn Garafola even suggests that âbeginning with its name (French for âRussian Balletâ), the company was a creature of the Westâ. 8 Russian citizens were prominent members of Parisâs foreign community. 9 Educated and wealthy Russians often spoke fluent French, and the number of Russian Ă©migrĂ©s who found their way to Paris meant there was a ready community for newcomers. Due to the arrival of writers, artists and performers, Paris became less the capital city of France than a meeting space, a confluence of ideas and innovations. However, as often with migratory spaces, this engendered tension as well as creativity. Reviews of the Ballets Russesâ groundbreaking The Rite of Spring (1913) often pointed to the companyâs perceived Jewishness, Otherness or homosexuality. One commentator complained of a âso-called Parisian âaudienceâ made up of people who are as foreign to France as they are to artâ. 10 In addition, complicating its nationality still further, the Ballets Russes played with Eastern exoticism, a facet of its performance aesthetic that chimed with a general vogue on the London stage exemplified by the astonishing success of Oscar Ascheâs Arabian Nights-inspired spectacle Chu Chin Chow, which played for 2,235 performances between 1916 and 1921 while the Ballets Russes toured Britain. 11
The Ballets Russes utilised the talents of artists from various countries so that, despite the clear national identification mark in its title, it did not have a particularly Russian complexion. Coupled with this diversity of contributors, the Ballets Russes looked to avant-garde experiment in Italy, Spain and France as well as Russia, engendering what Garafola refers to as âa supranational character to company modernismâ. 12 In a sense the Ballets Russes transcended national boundaries in terms of aesthetics and personnel, becoming the migratory modernist company par excellence. On the other hand, leader Diaghilev seemed eager to retain a distinctly Russian feel. He even gave mocked-up Russian names to some of the English dancers in the company; Hilda Mannings, for example, became Lydia Sokolova. 13
The Ballets Russes significantly impacted the British cultural scene and references to the companyâs productions, particularly while resident in London, appear in the writings of many of the most prominent characters of British modernism, as well as in journals like Rhythm and The New Age. Osbert Sitwell, for example, recalls dining with Diaghilev and choreographer/dancer LĂ©onide Massine on the evening of Armistice Day. He comments, âthe return of the Russian Ballet to London has constituted a private and sole omen of peaceâ. 14 Woolf notes likewise, associating the ââapproach of peaceâ with the return of âthe Russian dancersââ. 15 It seems that the presence of the Ballets Russes in London felt like a political act, a direct comment on the changing nature of planetary transnational relations. Famed stage actor Ellen Terry casts further light on Britainâs response to the Ballets Russes. Recognising that other European countries have their national ballets, she acknowledges âEnglish audiences, like children presented with a new toy, firstly shyly wondered at the novelty of the agile strangers, and then fell into transports of enthusiasmâ. 16 Terry partially detaches the Ballets Russes from the shackles of nationalism, suggesting that the company worked predominantly with âimagination which is neither the property of a nation nor the result of patriotismâ. 17 For Terry the work of the Ballets Russes expounded a universal sense of creativity unencumbered by the restraints of national identity.
British opinions of the Ballets Russes varied, often falling into one of two camps: those who wanted to emulate Diaghilevâs techniques and ideas in a British context, and those who regarded the Ballets Russes as ethically irresponsible, with its dreamlike, detached art. 18 That most contrary of modernist artists Wyndham Lewis, however, seemed in two minds about the Ballets Russes. He famously criticises the company as âHigh-Bohemiaâ in Time and the Western Man (1927) but, years earlier, actually planned a ballet with William Walton and Sacheverell Sitwell to offer to Diaghilev. 19 The Ballets Russesâ effect could be felt throughout modernist drama, particularly in the work of T.S. Eliot, who imagined the Russian ballet as âthe model for a potential new form of poetic drama that is simultaneously primitive and thoro...