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Adolph Bolm's Apollo


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Every so often, most recently in the Spring 2005 issue of Ballet Review, one comes across a reference to the first performance of Stravinsky's Apollon Musagete. But all we're told is that the score was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and was choreographed by Adolph Bolm. The otherwise-exhaustive Ballet Review article on Apollo didn't even use the word "choreographed" --author Aleg Levenkov marely said the premiere was "produced" by Adolph Bolm. Does anyone know the story? Why didn't Balanchine choreograph the premiere? Was Bolm's version ever seen again? What did he think of Balanchine? What did Stravinsky think of Bolm?

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This is all that I came up with: ballet in 2 scenes, choreo: Adolph Bolm; comm. ES Coolidge, first prod. Library of Congress, Wash. April 27, 1928 (B's was June 12) with Bolm, Ruth Page (Terp) Berniece Holms (Poly.) Elise Reiman (Cal.) I have often wondered what is was like, too.

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as early as 1925 there is a film of another ballet of adolph bolm's, i think it's called 'danse macabre'. it would be interesting if there were film of the apollo. the library at lincoln center has some photos and references to entries in scrapbooks that ruth page kept and donated to them, but no film.

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Coolidge was a friend of Bohm.

According to Charles M. Joseph in “Stravinsky and Balanchine,” Elise Reiman, who danced Calliope at the D.C. premiere, remembered that the most difficult choreography amounted to an attitude promenade with one arm around Bohm’s neck. Bohm thought the Coolidge stage was too small for the four dancers stipulated in the scenario. Bohm found the scenario "not so very stimulating." The conductor, Hans Kindler of the NSO, found the composer's piano reduction "very ugly," and replaced some of the dissonances with "blander harmonies" for the premiere. The premiere was poorly received, although John Martin praised the choreography.

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Here is a description from the NYTimes, May 6, 1928: (It's rather long, I hope it's legal)

Before the curtains a priest bears a hugh glowing urn to the front of the platform. Three maidens in ballet skirts perform a brief symbolic worship before it and withdraw. Thus is Apollo born, in a manner less literal than the original scenario demanded. The curtains then open, and before us is a scene which suggests nothing so much as an 'elegant engraving' after Veronese. On our left is a hugh pile of rocks and on our right a group of Corinthian columns in ruins. Between the two stands Apollo, clad in gold sandals, pink tights, and a gold tunic decorated with red festoons. Upon his long folden curls he wears a helmet from whose crest burst many fulsome plumes. In his hand is a Lyre.

To Apollo come Caliope, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore wearing the ballet costume of Taglioni, with a border of gold about their skirts, and fillets in their hair to show that they are Greek. To each of them he gives a particular mission. Calliope is presented with a tablet and pencil and is made the patroness of epic poetry; Polyhymnia receives the mystic veil and is charged with the care of sacred hymns; Terpsichore is given the Apollonian lyre itself and is made a priestess of choral song and dance. This great business performed, the Leader of the Muses climbs up the slope of the rocks and is transfigured by a strong light. His three followers do obeisance to him and the curtains close.

more to come in the next post.........

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The Article continues:

"The composer in the present work turned to the melodious Bellini as hius model, even renouncing his former aversion to strings and employing them exclusively because of their greater sweetness. Superficially, here was ballet music of the most conventional sort; but to the ear of the choreographer this pseudo-lyricism proved to be a little more than candy-coating for the most vicious contrary rhythms and the most persistent irregularities of time,which bore no more relation to the conventional ballet than to Bellini, under whose style they were so neatly tucked away. Yet the spirit of the music was undoubtedly of the early nineteenth century, and just as certainly the ballet of the early nineteenth century was strictly conventional.

The ingenious fashion in which Mr. Bolm reconciled these two seemingly irreconcilable conditions furnished the chief delight of the performance. The obsolete elegances of the ballet of Taglioni's day, struggling against the underlying obstinacies of modernistic rhythms, mirrored the quality of the music exactly.

End of quote.(Borzio Book of Ballets, Grace Roberts)

The author of the review is not noted.

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if it's still there, farrellfan, if you go to www.nypl.org, and find the digital collection, the whole film of 'danse macabre' is on line (about 10 minutes). it's in a section about the performing arts in america 1875-1923. it actually dates from 1922, not 1925 as i said before. besides being very interesting itself, at the end there are some short vignettes of bolm and his students in the classroom, dancing, etc.

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Grace Roberts gives us a few more interesting remarks:

Other critics were less pleased with the score than the choreography. Lawrence Gilman referred rather bitterly to Apollo Smintheus* and thought the choreography unimaginative and tepid.

*destroyer of mice :)

'Stravinsky espressed a lack of interet in Apollo's transatlantic apotheosis.......but this did not mean that he was without ideas about how he wanted it produced....he revised the orchestration of the score and worked closely with Balanchine who he said had arranged the dances exactly as he had wished....in accordance with the classical school'

'Stravinsky was less enthusiastic about the decor (Andre Bauchant)...he wanted the muses to be dressed in the classical short tutu.....

I also read where Apollo was a curtain raiser at the Met '37/38 season of 'Salome'.Grace Roberts goes on to say:

'It would be idle to pretend that the opera audience appreciated the ballet. They have never accepted operas that have any breath of musical controversy about them until a lapse of at least twenty years....'

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The Article continues:

"The  composer in the present work turned to the melodious Bellini as hius model, even renouncing his former aversion to strings and employing them exclusively because of their greater sweetness.  Superficially, here was ballet music of the most conventional sort; but to the ear of the choreographer this pseudo-lyricism proved to be a little more than candy-coating for the most vicious contrary rhythms and the most persistent irregularities of time,which bore no more relation to the conventional ballet than to Bellini, under whose style they were so neatly tucked away.  Yet the spirit of the music was undoubtedly of the early nineteenth century, and just as certainly the ballet of the early nineteenth century was strictly conventional.

The author of the review is not noted.

Pretty perceptive for 1928 in America. Though I wonder about that word "vicious".

RE: the Dance Macabre film on www.nypl.org. Thanks, Mme. Hermine. What a wonderful record, especially the brief shots of rehearsals of other dances in Bolm's Chicago studio, including a Javanese Court Dance and a Botticelli inspired I-don't-know-what.

Question: what are those shoes Ruth Page is wearing in Dance Macabre? They seem to be pointe shoes, but appear very flat and odd-looking at the front of the foot as she bourees backward at one point.

Edited by bart
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I'm not sure about the shoes. Miss Page had very arched feet, and I thought that there might have been something attached to the shoes at the front. I'm told that Adolph Bolm's papers went to the University of Syracuse, BTW, though there are some things that the library at Lincoln Center has; I got a very nice answer from the person who keeps the site I referred to, and I pointed her here, so I hope she shows up!

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There's a discussion of the premiere (it's just a couple of pages) is in Charles Joseph's book Stravinsky & Balanchine. Joseph is always a lot better on the music than on the choreography, but he confirms that Stravinsky was never really interested in the U.S. premiere, and intended the piece all along for Balanchine:

"After a single staged performance, to the near affacement of any memory of the Washington premiere, Coolidge's Apollo became Diaghilev's Apollo forevermore.

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