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An amazing year for British ballet with a home-grown company performing the first full length versions of Giselle, Nutcracker and Swan Lake. Markova dominated everything, appearing in all three as well as creating leading roles in three new ballets.
Event of the Year
On 1st January 1934 Giselle was performed by de Valois' Vic-Wells Ballet company (now The Royal Ballet). Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin lead with Robert Helpman as Hilarian. There was a massive London fog and people had great difficulty in getting to the theatre. Markova was only 23 and it was a role that she would make her own. After the performance Marie Rambert kissed her and whispered "You have come of age".
20 years later the critic Richard Buckle wrote "No one can dance Giselle like Markova, and no one should try to. Hers is a personal and extraordinary interpretation which defies analysis and which it would be fatal to copy. She breaks every rule and gives one of the great performances of our day".
Dancer of the Year
Besides the triumph in Giselle, Alicia Markova also led out full-length versions of Casse-Noisette and Le Lac des Cygnes or The Nutcracker and Swan Lake as we know them today. All were based on original Russian - Marynsky Imperial Ballet - choreography, recorded in Stepanov notation and brought to the west by Nicholas Sergeyev in 1918. In all she captured the imagination of the public and the critics:
"... There is no dancer, now dancing, male or female, to hold a candle to her. She is as classical as Mozart and as vertebrate in her liveliness as Scarlatti, achieving irresistible freedom without ever betraying the fundamental formalities. No one should miss her in Casse-Noisette ... or Giselle". Evening Standard
or
"..if Markova is not filmed for posterity the future will have a black mark against 1934". Herbert Farjeon
Some Numbers
During the year Markova had her pay increased to £10 a show (up from £5!). For the extra money Markova was expected to contribute choreographically!
The Vic-Wells Ballet had 36 dancers. There were about 18 student-dancers in the school and they were used to bolster numbers on stage for the larger ballets.
The Dancing Times cost 1 Shilling (12.5p in 'new' money). And from the Dancing Times that year...
Calendar
| January |
The Vic-Wells unveiled their Giselle on 1st January with Dolin and Markova leading (see above). On 30th January, Casse-Noisette (Nutcracker), their largest production to date, was also led out by Markova and Stanley Judson, a former member of the Pavlova company. They used extras from the school and the Lord Mayor's Boys Players. Actress Elsa Lanchester, wife of Charles Laughton, was cast in the Arabian dance, giving a "characteristic and fantastic interpretation"! The following year she became the Bride of Frankenstein in the Hollywood film! Robert Helpman was also said to be "conspicuous" in the Chinese dance.
It was also reported that Ruth French (to join the Vic-Wells later that year) had been engaged by the BBC for a series of television broadcasts about ballet/dance.
Meantime George Balanchine & Lincoln Kirstein opened the School of American Ballet (SAB) in the USA on New Year's Day.
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| February |
Frederick Ashton was responsible for the staging and choreography of a new opera in New York (Hartford) called Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson. He had arrived in December 1933 and was getting $10 a week pocket money for his trouble. The audience's reaction was said to be ecstatic and Lincoln Kirstein said it was "a wonderful vision". Afterwards Ashton seriously thought about staying on in New York.
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| March |
First performance of The Mermaid by Rambert Ballet with "imaginatively economic designs"(?!) by Andree Howard and Susan Salaman.
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| April |
De Valois' The Haunted Ballroom (a Gothic tale...) opened on 3rd April. This was the first ballet in which Helpman and Markova danced together as partners. Dolin, her usual partner until, then was a guest with the Vic-Wells but often seemed to have other commitments forcing de Valois to establish new partnerships.
A 15-year-old Peggy Hookham, later known as Margot Fontes and then Margot Fonteyn, joined the Vic-Wells Ballet School in April. De Valois considered her stubborn and a "little devil". |
| May |
On 15th May, Rambert opened at the Mercury with de Valois' Bar aux Folies-Bergere - the only work she choreographed for them. The piece was inspired by an Edouard Manet painting owned by a friend of Marie Rambert. Markova was the can-can dancer lead. Leslie Edwards also appeared and continued to dance with The Royal Ballet all the way through into the 1990's.
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| June |
Ashton's Mephisto Valse for Rambert Ballet is unveiled on 13th June. Music by Liszt, designs by Sophie Fedorovitch and... Markova leads again. It lasted only 11 minutes and David Vaughan refereed to it as "a perfect Romantic ballet in miniature".
Over in America, the School of American Ballet (SAB) students premiered Balanchine's Serenade some 3 days earlier.
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| July |
A new company called the "National Ballet' was supposed to commence
operations in July backed by a Mrs. Herbert McDougall and engaging
English dancers. Some wondered why, rather than beginning a new enterprise,
the lady in question didn't just donate her time and money to one
that already existed...
The Vic-Wells supported an International Opera Season at Covent Garden. Opera ballets were despised by all the dancers, but Fonteyn had fun appearing as an old gnome complete with long grey beard and wig in Das Rheingold. In more conventional pieces she had problems with her make-up and plastered her face with it so inexpertly that a lady in the audience was overheard to say, "Fifteen, indeed! She looks more like fifty!"
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| August |
Following his American and Rambert successes, Ashton enters a dark period of depression with little to do. Friends became worried but nothing immediately turns up.
Colonel de Basil Company had a summer season at Covent Garden, the first of several running through to the outbreak of war in 1939.
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| September |
A new season starts and de Valois' The Haunted Ballroom reappears but this time the part of the small son was taken by Margot Fontes - her first meaningful role. She appeared in a Lord Fauntleroy velvet suit and opened and closed the ballet alone on stage.
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October |
For Rambert Ballet, Anthony Tudor created The Planets to three movements of Holst's suite - "his first significant ballet" according to some. For once Markova did not lead - though I'm afraid we don't know who did!
We have no record of what it may have been like, but there was a production of something called 'The Pageant of Labour' planned for October which had '1000 players of all ages, the London Labour choir of over 100 voices, a symphony orchestra of 50 players, and a ballet of 200 dancers' to be given at the Crystal Palace.
Meanwhile over at the Vic-Wells Markova and Helpman perform Giselle for the first time. That's before going on to....
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| November |
Markova and Helpman premiere Swan Lake (or Le Lac des Cygnes as it was called at the time) on 20th November. It's the first time it had ever been seen full length in England. Realising the importance of it all, Markova paid for extra coaching from Nicolai Legat in the Ballroom act. Legat was directly linked with the 1895 Marynsky production and had taught both Nijinsky and Fokine.
"Last night the role of the Swan Queen was danced with surprising grace and beauty by Markova. It is doubted if it has ever been done more perfectly."
Daily Telegraph, 21st November 1934.
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December |
Ashton choreographs for the light musical-comedy Jill, Darling! while still waiting for the offer to join the Vic-Wells under de Valois. Finances were tight and they could not immediately take him on. (no change there then!)
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Most Poignant Story of the Year
The committee of the Nijinsky foundation announced that as a result of the appeal made a short time before, it had been possible to send over £200 to the sanatorium in Switzerland where Nijinsky was under
treatment. This was to be a recurring theme over the next few years.
Next Month
The year we'll be looking at will be 1979. Anyone with particular memories of that year should write to us!
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