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POB group returning from American tour


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the scanned photo was apparently run in a new york newspaper in 1948, perhaps october.

the bit of captioning on the back says: "Also on board were about sixty members of the Paris Opera Ballet Corps ( ), returning home after appearances in New York City Center, in connection with the Golden Jubilee International Dance Festival. They also appeared in Montreal, Quebec, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia."

i think by 'corps' the wording meant full company, not just general ensemble, but i could be mistaken.

anyone notice anyone in particular? i keep thinking i see chauvire then i begin to wonder...

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RG: as far as I know, for the POB the term "corps de ballet" also can be used for the whole company (including étoiles, premiers danseurs, etc.)

Unfortunately I know too little about the dancers of that period to recognize anybody... To me, the lady with a dark skirt and a handbag looks like Chauviré but I'm not sure (I'm not even sure that she was with the POB in that period, considering all the mess with Lifar at the end of the war).

Edited to add: the dark-haired man raising his right hand, on the left hand side in the background, just under the ropes

and close to the man with the hat, looks a bit like Pierre Lacotte, but I'm really not sure: Lacotte was indeed with the company back then, but he was only 16 in 1948 and the man on the photograph doesn't look so young...

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thanks, E.

chauvire is listed as one of the subjects discussed in an essay about the '48 NYC appearances of POB so i think she was w/ the co. for the tour.

i too thought that the same dancer you point to might well be la chauvire.

i didn't think to look for lacotte but i see some real credibility in your hunch about the identification of the man w/ his hand raised in the background.

somewhere among my 'papers' i have a program from one night of the october, 1948 season, if i come across it sooner than later i'll post some of the dancers named on the company roster.

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I wish I could identify the ship! French Line was in bad shape after the war, and the only major transatlantic liner she had in service in 1948 was SS DeGrasse. Normandie had been fired and sunk at her berth in NYC during the war, and Ile de France was laid up for repairs during 1948. SS Washington was on her last legs and mostly relegated to Mediterranean cruises. You would think that they'd use French Line as a matter of national pride, but I can't tell from the picture whether it was a French ship or not.

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Mel, I hadn't thought that identifying the ship could be a mystery too :dry:

rg, I hope that you can find that program, perhaps the names of the dancers could help...

If the man in the background is Lacotte indeed, perhaps he could be able to help identifying the other dancers (but I have no idea how to contact him).

If I can manage to find Guest's POB book, I'll have a look at it to try to find who were the principals back then. Among them, there probably were the dancers of the first "Palais de Cristal" cast (Max Bozzoni, Lycette Darsonval, Alexandre Kalioujny, Roger Ritz, Tamara Toumanova, Michel Renault, Micheline Bardin- sad to think that probably all of them have passed away) and also Chauviré and perhaps Peretti.

But I always find it quite hard to recognize dancers when they wear everyday clothes (especially women, as often the haircuts look so different from their looks onstage...) And finding online phorographs of dancers of that period really isn't easy.

I also wonder about the older people who are on the photograph, were they ballet masters or teachers ? For example the relatively older woman on the right side, wearing a hat...

I wonder if atm saw that POB tour back then ?

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I wonder if atm saw that POB tour back then ?

Yes, I did see that tour and it was the first time I saw Chauvire :dry: The woman with the handbag does resemble her, but I think not. The one dancer I know I could recognize is Michel Renault and he is not among them. Toumanova was not a part of this tour.

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A wonderful picture. It's had to believe that this tour -- and its apparently happy, carefree and prosperous dancers -- took place only 4 years after the Liberation of Paris.

A few of the dancers -- the bushy haired young man in the center of the first row -- seem to have retained a spirit of bohemianism amidst what might be thought to have been a gathering of young businessmen and their chic companions.

Does anyone know what "Golden Jubilee" was being celebrated or commermorated during this International Dance Festival at the City Centre?

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Does anyone know what "Golden Jubilee" was being celebrated or commermorated during this International Dance Festival at the City Centre?

It was New York's own Golden Jubilee, the 50the anniversary of of the consolidation of the five boroughs of Greater New York.

There was a report of the season in Richard Buckle's Ballet - they brought 13 ballets, 10 of them by Lifar, and there were anti-Lifar picket lines outside the theatre. the only dancers mentioned by Buckle's correspondents were Chauvire, Renault and Kalioujny and Mireille Bourgeois*. It sounds as if everyone loved Chauvire but there were very mixed reactions to everyone else and to the company as a whole.

* wrong Bourgeois - as rg's post below shows, it was Denise of that name - Mireille came much later -sorry!

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i have now found the 'snake' that was tucked into the one house-program from City Center in 1948 i bought some time ago.

i'll post more about the program contents and cast lists when i have more time.

for now here is a 2-part scan of the 'snake' advertising the POB season in NYC.

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Very interesting program. I note that, although Lifar is mentioned as a choreographer under individual ballets, he is not listed as maitre de ballet. Only the dancers are listed. Wasn't Lifar banned (or discouraged) from dancing at the time despite running the company and even adding new works to the rep?

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I wonder if atm saw that POB tour back then ?

Yes, I did see that tour and it was the first time I saw Chauvire :dry: The woman with the handbag does resemble her, but I think not. The one dancer I know I could recognize is Michel Renault and he is not among them. Toumanova was not a part of this tour.

Ah, atm, you really saw *everything* ! :wub: If you have some time, I'd really be interested in knowing more about what you saw then

(which ballets, which dancers, the audience reaction, etc.)

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Very interesting program. I note that, although Lifar is mentioned as a choreographer under individual ballets, he is not listed as maitre de ballet. Only the dancers are listed. Wasn't Lifar banned (or discouraged) from dancing at the time despite running the company and even adding new works to the rep?

The post-war period was quite complicated for Lifar, as he had been accused of collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation of Paris and so had to leave the direction of the POB by the "comité d'épuration" for some time (between 1945 and 1947, I think, but I'm not sure of the exact dates) and went to Monte-Carlo then, and came back later. I don't know what his exact title was after he came back (also, he was 43 in 1948, so probably danced less often then- even though he really liked to cast himself in his ballets...)

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I'm looking for the ship in order to find passenger lists. After 50 years, these lists have a "sunrise" provision which makes them open to anyone, so we can narrow the search for who's in the picture. This kind of picture isn't the kind of thing that would run in The New York Times, but would run in The New York Daily News, New York Post,, or the old World, Telegram and the Sun, or even Herald Tribune all of which went heavy on pictures. Maybe I could find identification by looking at those old papers, but I'd have to go to the New-York Historical Society, or the New York Public Library for the microfilm. N-YHS might even have the papers in hardcopy!

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how ever clever of you, Mel, to think of this route to further info.

the stamps on the photo's back indicate two dates: one is 10/13, the other says: USED OCT 14 1948 - i assume it was received on the 13th for publication on the 14th.

the paper was the N. Y. STAR (City dept. & 1st Edition) the caption pasted on the back is the same as what i keyed into the initial post, including those odd placed open and empty parentheses. since this copy begins w/ "Also aboard were..." maybe there was some other text that went w/ another photo.

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Thanks, rg, for the additional information. Both the repositories I mentioned have runs of the Star. If this were directly connected to my day job, I could schedule a research trip there and get more detail. As it is, I'll have to sandwich it in for a time when I'm doing exhibit-connected research there anyway, and maybe find it in that way.

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all donations gladly accepted, Mel and to be sure the info sought isn't crucial in any way.

footnotes to history are footnotes.

when time permits i'll scan the program copy i have for the casting of PALAIS DE CRISTAL - it's oddly given and i'm not sure i understand it all, but more of that anon.

for now, ALL this will keep.

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Estelle, unfortunately for Lifar at the time the Company was probably performing for a Balanchine audience. It was at the City Center where I saw my first Balanchine with the Denham Ballet Russe. Palais de Cristal made the best impression on me and I loved the delicate colorings of each movement. I wish I could give you the complete cast, but I only recall the two dancers who made the greatest impression on me---Alexandre Kalioujny in lst mm., and Michel Renault in the 3rd mm. The Lifar ballet I liked the most was 'Mirage', due mostly to the performance of Chauvire. There was another ballet that was great fun to watch that had a grand guignol theme, but I am not sure of the name. There was indeed a large group of picketing outside the theatre. One night, after a performance I got Lifar to autograph my copy of his biography of Diaghilev; he seemed pleased to see a friendly face and w rote a very nice inscription in the book. I tell you, what a handsome man he was up close.

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Thenks for sharing your recollections, atm !

I saw "Palais de Cristal" only once, around 1994, and loved the colorings too (and of course the choreography), I regretted it when they later chose to perform the "Symphony in C" version with the black and white costumes (they were beautiful too, but what a pity to abandon a tradition which was part of the POB's history...)

"Mirages" was one of Chauviré's best roles, and the music by Sauguet is especially lovely.

The Guignol ballet probably was "Guignol et Pandore" (in the program scanned by rg, it appears as "Punch and the cop"- actually "Pandore" is a slang term for "gendarme" (cop), and not a very positive one, it comes from a 19th century song...)

Why was there some picketing outside the theatre ? Was it because of Lifar's war behavior ?

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I saw "Palais de Cristal" only once, around 1994, and loved the colorings too (and of course the choreography), I regretted it when they later chose to perform the "Symphony in C" version with the black and white costumes (they were beautiful too, but what a pity to abandon a tradition which was part of the POB's history...)
I saw Palais twice, during one of POB's visits to New York, and was fascinated by it. I am very sad that, for whatever reasons, the earlier version is being abandoned for a later one. It is not only a loss of a bit of the company's history, but also a loss of a big piece of Symphony in C's history.

It's a big ballet world. As we've seen with other ballets, there's plenty of room for multiple versions.

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Why was there some picketing outside the theatre ? Was it because of Lifar's war behavior ?

Yes, and not even limited to Lifar. The whole Opéra ballet, practically speaking, had remained in Paris during the occupation and was seen by many Americans, center and left-of-center, as having been complicit in Nazi activity there. A similar set of demonstrations took place outside of appearances by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, only in 1971 it was center and right-of-center people who picketed.

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the following double-page scan comes from the '48 City Center house program from the POB season, which covered the dates 21 sep - 24 sep, 1948.

The page on the left is an undated loose leaf - perhaps to indicate some changes from the information given in the staple-bound 'playbill' itself. (similar credits to those at the top of loose leaf - in English - occur on the previous page of the house program and read as follows: "LE PALAIS DE CRISTAL (Crystal Palace) Music by Georges Bizet (Symphony in C) Choregoraphy by George Balanchine Decor by Leonore Fini" [for some reason this translation leaves out the the costume credit clealy given on the French insert]

the breakdown in the actual program copy seems clear enough but that in the "French" insert is harder to figure out with regard to roles per movement, etc.

all thoughts about interpreting this document gratefully appreciated.

and additional scan shows the title page of the house program with the roster of the company, in what one assumes to the hierachy, which may or may not help sorting out the casting of Palais de Cristal.

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Mel, thanks for the explanation. I didn't know that the POB could have such reputation after the war...

By the way, while searching some information about Lifar, I came across some excerpts of the book "La vie musicale sous Vichy"

by Myriam Chimènes, Josette Alviset (on google books) which are quite appalling for him (especially an excerpt of correspondence of 1940 in which he claims his antisemitism):

http://books.google.com/books?id=qcBpfEu74c8C

rg, thanks a lot for these scans !

So Lacotte was a part of that tour indeed- it seems likely that he was the man with the raised hand...

Like you, I don't understand well the reason for the loose leaf, it seems to give the cast for "Palais de Cristal" but with hierarchical order rather than by movement.

The list of dancers on the other paper seems to be by hierarchical order too. I wonder if, back then, there still were 7 categories in the corps de ballet instead of 5 now (seconds quadrilles, premiers quadrilles, coryphées, petits sujets, grands sujets, premiers danseurs, étoiles).

I don't understand why there is a difference between "Melles" and "Mmes", as usually all female ballet dancers are called "mademoiselle" whether they are single or married...

The beginning of the list clearly corresponds to the étoiles (the list beginning with Chauviré and Ritz) and Lafon, Moreau, etc. were premières danseuses, but I'm a bit lost with the organization of the rest of the list.

Anyway, it's interesting to spot in the list the names of dancers as Claude Bessy (born in 1932, who joined the corps de ballet in 1946 and became a principal in 1956, and POB school director in ), Jean-Paul Andréani (who became a principal in the 1950s, and was the first male Franz in Coppelia), Serge Golovine (who was to become a principal dancer of the Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, and later a teacher at the POB school and Claude Bessy's second husband), Raymond Franchetti (premier danseur in the 1950s, and POB director between 1972 and 1977)...

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Some portraits of POB dancers (I guess it's from the 1950s or very early 1960s) are on that page:

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/soorce/20071005

It includes a portrait of Madeleine Lafon, she could have been the lady on the first row, with light curly hair and a sort of hat, kneeling on the ground, with a dark jacket and dress and raising her right hand and holdiing something in her left hand. The dark-haird man on her side could be Jean-Paul Andreani (but wityh a very different haircut...)

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