Random question about men's ballet slippers (c. 1950s)

[l'histoire]

I'm hoping some BalletAlert readers who are better versed in historical dancewear/costuming (especially Russian) will be able to chime in & help me figure out ... what's going on with this guy's shoes?!

I've read plenty of books & seen plenty of pictures regarding mid-20th-century-ballet, and I've never seen a danseur, c. 1958, in what appear to be 18th century heeled pumps. I was doing some scanning for a friend (I am lucky enough to own many physical copies of the Chinese journal 'Theater Gazette' (Xiju bao), so when people need high-quality scans, it's easier to ask me to do some scans than request them from a university library) & the issue I was doing had this as its back cover - a Chinese student performance of Swan Lake. I always take note of ballet performances/articles in these things, but this is the first time I can remember seeing a danseur in pumps! 

The image has obviously been (heavily) retouched (the prince seems to have a pointe shoe on his left foot!), but I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why this footwear might *actually* be on the danseur. I've read a lot about retouching of pointe shoes etc. throughout the 19th & 20th centuries, but can't remember seeing anything about men's slippers. Chinese ballet was mostly imported/influenced by Russian dancers & Russia - is this ever seen in early/mid-20th c. photographs of Russian ballet? I know NYCB men were for sure not dancing in heeled pumps in 1958!

Anyone have any insight, or even just ideas? I'd love to hear them! (BA won't let me insert an image, so an imgur link is below)

https://imgur.com/a/nd9v8i0

[volcanohunter]

This can be seen in the Bolshoi film of Swan Lake from 1957, and it never especially surprised me, since Siegfried's solo dancing didn't come until Act 3.

[sandik]

13 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

This can be seen in the Bolshoi film of Swan Lake from 1957, and it never especially surprised me, since Siegfried's solo dancing didn't come until Act 3.

 

Oh bingo!  I remember seeing that photo, but could think where.

Although there were Russian expats teaching in China as early as the 1910s (Fonteyn's first teacher was a Russian expat, working in Shanghai in the 1920s) consistent training for Chinese dancers didn't really take hold until the 1950s, and was primarily Russian, with teachers sent as a kind of diplomatic project by Stalin's government.  They taught what they knew, and the nascent Chinese ballet presented the second act of Swan Lake in 1958.

Thanks for posting the photo -- this has been a lovely rabbit hole!

[volcanohunter]

The heel shrunk over the decades, but at the Mikhailovsky Ballet the tradition of heeled shoes for Siegfried persisted for a long time.

 

[volcanohunter]

Then there was Nureyev, who in real life was fond of high boots with pretty big heels. He gave his prince in The Sleeping Beauty an extravagant version of them. In Paris the Prince switches from ballet boots to ballet slippers after his entrance, but to this day at the National Ballet of Canada, the Prince does his first dancing on those substantial heels.

 

[l'histoire]

Thank you both for your replies! I'm familiar with the very general outlines of "ballet comes to China(tm)," including Russian influence before & after 1949 - but I haven't done much historical digging, since my work that's adjacent is on traditional Chinese opera - so I generally just take idle note of ballet photographs/articles in the course of my own research, without thinking too much, since I like ballet. 

Interestingly, no one's really done a lot of work on ballet in 20th c. China. I have friends & colleagues who study other forms of dance in China (with some mentions of ballet), and apparently someone was (is?) writing a book, but when I was idly musing about maybe writing on performing Balanchine in China, they rather liked the idea! (Maybe someday)

[Helene]

Francia Russell said in a Q&A, if I remember the timing correctly, when she and Stowel were AD's, that she was asked to work to stage something in China, because The Balanchine Powers That Be at the time learned that at least that one Chinese company was learning the ballets from videotape, and they thought it was a good idea to have one of their people help.  

Chinese figure skating coaches used to reverse engineer Pairs skating especially from Soviet videos, which is how Luan Bo and Bin Yao's coaches learned.

[l'histoire]

2 hours ago, Helene said:

Francia Russell said in a Q&A, if I remember the timing correctly, when she and Stowel were AD's, that she was asked to work to stage something in China, because The Balanchine Powers That Be at the time learned that at least that one Chinese company was learning the ballets from videotape, and they thought it was a good idea to have one of their people help.  

I remember this being mentioned several years ago on this board & I was fascinated - I think, IIRC you (or someone else on this board) relating, she was on her way home from staging Scotch Symphony & maybe some other Balanchine things with Suzanne Farrell in Russia in the late '80s (which, of course, was a Big Deal) & Russell got diverted to China for this task. I can only imagine what a Chinese company would've made of Farrell & vice-versa. I'd love to know what Russell made of the Chinese company & vice-versa!

I'd love to talk to her about it. Alas, I do not have as one of my skills the ability to pursue living subjects or do interviews - I really DO hope someone has talked to Francia Russell about that experience (and WHAT an experience it must have been) & if not, I may have to screw up my courage to inquire further, though I wouldn't know where to start! 

Edit: to be clear, I'm not at all surprised by "learning from Soviet Big Brother" (how the USSR was often referred to in Chinese propaganda in the '50s), even after the Sino-Soviet Split. My other big, leading-to-a-book research interest is mountaineering, which is very much a "learning from the Soviets" kind of thing, even after the split - but mountaineering isn't ballet. It's interesting to me that a Chinese company was maybe/probably learning Balanchine from tapes. What led to that? They weren't directly learning from "Soviet Big Brother" in the 80s, and even the Soviets weren't *really* sold on Balanchine at that time.

Edited April 29, 2023 by l'histoire

[Helene]

In that first trip to the Kirov, Farrell staged Scotch Symphony; she wrote about it in her memoir.  Francia Russell staged Theme and Variations.

Wikipedia says that Russell staged for the Shanghai Ballet in 1987 and the Kirov in 1988.  There's no numbered citation, but it might be in one of the articles linked in the article on Russell.  ' But I do remember that she said she went to China during another staging trip.

Edited to add:  in a search for the ballet(s) and year she staged in Shanghai, I found the Dance Magazine article that places it in 1987:

https://indexarticles.com/arts/dance-magazine/dance-magazine-award-goes-to-pacific-northwest-ballets-russell-and-stowell-tap-star-glover-and-city-ballets-boal/

[sandik]

And in the odd coincidence department, there are the former and current artistic directors of the company getting the DM award at the same time.  Now if I could work Savion Glover into this somehow, I'd have a trifecta.

A couple of my colleagues have interviewed Russell in a general way (that is, not keyed to a specific article), but I'm not sure that they talked much about her work in the bigger world as a Balanchine representative.  I'll ask around...

On 4/27/2023 at 2:24 PM, volcanohunter said:

Then there was Nureyev, who in real life was fond of high boots with pretty big heels. He gave his prince in The Sleeping Beauty an extravagant version of them. In Paris the Prince switches from ballet boots to ballet slippers after his entrance, but to this day at the National Ballet of Canada, the Prince does his first dancing on those substantial heels.

 

It's interesting how the heel changes the whole shape of his foot, even when he's not bearing weight on it.  All the tendu moments are very different.

 

[l'histoire]

@sandik I'd love to hear about her experiences! I think it's the Balanchine Lives documentary where she was pretty extensively, but I loved listening to her insights (and watching her in rehearsals for Midsummer). I'd love to hear more from repetiteurs in general about their experiences, esp. who have been places outside of the US or Europe.