Godunov and Bejart

[Meliss]

"It was a delightful, funny and instructive lunch, since Bejart was such a well traveled, knowledgeable and fascinating person; but when we started talking about his latest works, I told him I was jealous he had created a ballet about Alexander the Great for a well-known Russian dancer named Alexander Godunov. (Remember that I am Alexander the Great's greatest fan!) Bejart instantly corrected me, "No I never did the work for him, it just didn't work out"... then he said "... but if you like Alexander, I'll create it for you."

This text is from the autobiographical book by Fernando Bujones. Do you know anything about Godunov and Bejart's plans to work together on a ballet about Alexander the Great?

[Fosca]

Béjart made a ballet "Trois Études pour Alexandre" for his Ballet du XXe Siècle in 1987, which was inspired by Alexander the Great , with Bujones, Serge Campardon, Eiji Mihara as soloists. Check this out, it's all in French, I'm sorry:  http://www.laits.utexas.edu/avis_des_artistes/parttwo/01.php

He also made two ballets for Alexander Godunov:

"Le Minotaure" with Ekaterina Maximova, Alexandre Godounov, Maris-Roudolphe Liepa, Bolshoi 1978
"Six Personnages en Quête d'Auteur", with  Ekaterina Maximova, Maris-Roudolphe Liepa, Alexandre Godounov, Bolshoi 1978

You'll find a list of his oeuvre here: https://www.mauricebejart.be/oeuvres-de-maurice-bejart/

 

 

[Helene]

The quote from Bujones' memoir is:

Quote

It was a delightful, funny and instructive lunch, since Bejart was such a well traveled, knowledgeable and fascinating person; but when we started talking about his latest works, I told him I was jealous he had created a ballet about Alexander the Great for a well-know Russian dancer named Alexander Godunov.  (Remember that I am Alexander the Great's greatest fan!)  Bejart instantly corrected me.  "No I never did the work for him.  It just didn't work out"... then he said, "...but if you like Alexander, I'll create it for you."

The lunch took place in 1995 1985 according to the book, but there is nothing about when Bejart planned the work for Godunov.  Bujones clearly assumed that it had happened.  It's hard to imagine a scenario where Bujones wouldn't have known about it if it were performed at ABT or elsewhere in the Americas or Europe, because he was guesting everywhere and knew everyone, at least within two degrees of separation.  If it was planned for him with the Bolshoi, Godunov's defection would have gummed up the works.   Bujones could have gotten on a plan to see it just about anywhere else but the Soviet Union, and news from the USSR was not always current.

Edited July 3 by Helene
To correct the year

[volcanohunter]

2 hours ago, Fosca said:

"Le Minotaure" with Ekaterina Maximova, Alexandre Godounov, Maris-Roudolphe Liepa, Bolshoi 1978
"Six Personnages en Quête d'Auteur", with  Ekaterina Maximova, Maris-Roudolphe Liepa, Alexandre Godounov, Bolshoi 1978

These must have been performed in a gala setting because they're not to be found in the Bolshoi’s online archive, and that archive doesn't include gala performances or excerpts from ballets performed in "divertissement" programs.

[Fosca]

If you check Béjart's work list, the premieres were on the same day.

 

2 hours ago, Helene said:

The lunch took place in 1995 according to the book, but there is nothing about when Bejart planned the work for Godunov.  Bujones clearly assumed that it had happened. 

Well it HAD happened, and with Bujones. In 1987, please watch the video I posted, Bujones is in it. So how could he have lunch with Béjart in 1995 and wonder about the piece?

[Helene]

26 minutes ago, Fosca said:

If you check Béjart's work list, the premieres were on the same day.

 

Well it HAD happened, and with Bujones. In 1987, please watch the video I posted, Bujones is in it. So how could he have lunch with Béjart in 1995 and wonder about the piece?

I've corrected the typo:  the lunch happened 1985.

The question was not whether Bujones knew Bujones danced the work, but rather whether it was created for and danced by Godunov already.  Bujones assumed the latter, and Bejart corrected him, saying that collaboration had not worked out.   He then went on to create the work  for Bujones.   The only reason I can see for why Bujones wouldn't have heard that the ballet was off for Godunov, given the number of people he knew and with whom he'd share news, plus his great interest in Alexander the Great, is if it were planned for a Soviet theater, since news from the USSR was incomplete.

The question asked was why it didn't work out with Godunov.  Bejart didn't say. Given the lead-time needed based on Bejart's schedule, which Bujones wrote about in his book, if Bejart proposed the Alexander ballet after Godunov's danced in the two Bolshoi performances of his work in 1978, it would likely have been planned for after his defection, which would have made it impossible to do in the USSR. 

However it happened, it was serendipitous for Bujones.

 

 

[volcanohunter]

1 hour ago, Fosca said:

If you check Béjart's work list, the premieres were on the same day.

I simply find it odd that both sides should have gone to so much trouble for a one-off. Naturally, Béjart's company may have continued performing the pieces, but from the Bolshoi's perspective it strikes me as strange to have invested time and resources into pieces that received one or maybe two performances. 

[Meliss]

I'm at a complete loss. I am so grateful to you all. I thought I knew quite a lot about Godunov, but I DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING about these two works by Bejart for the Bolshoi Ballet and Godunov as well. I don't understand why neither Maximova nor Liepa, who left the memoirs, wrote anything about them. Maximova wrote only about Bejart's ballet Romeo and Julia. I don't understand how this is possible... The great choreographer staged two ballets for great artists - and no one knows about them except ballet connoisseurs at the American forum... Thank you very, very much. I don't think I'll find any traces of these two ballets, but I'll try.

Edited July 4 by Meliss

[Meliss]

16 hours ago, Fosca said:

Béjart made a ballet "Trois Études pour Alexandre" for his Ballet du XXe Siècle in 1987, which was inspired by Alexander the Great , with Bujones, Serge Campardon, Eiji Mihara as soloists. Check this out, it's all in French, I'm sorry:  http://www.laits.utexas.edu/avis_des_artistes/parttwo/01.php

He also made two ballets for Alexander Godunov:

"Le Minotaure" with Ekaterina Maximova, Alexandre Godounov, Maris-Roudolphe Liepa, Bolshoi 1978
"Six Personnages en Quête d'Auteur", with  Ekaterina Maximova, Maris-Roudolphe Liepa, Alexandre Godounov, Bolshoi 1978

You'll find a list of his oeuvre here: https://www.mauricebejart.be/oeuvres-de-maurice-bejart/

 

 

Thank you very, very much.

[volcanohunter]

According to the souvenir program published in 2019, the first official production of a Béjart ballet at the Bolshoi was his Gaîté parisienne, which premiered in Moscow in June 2019. However Béjart's company performed at the Bolshoi in 1978. Presumably, this was the context in which the above-mentioned ballets premiered.

The program states: "[Russian] artists of many generations dreamed of dancing Béjart's ballets. But neither in Soviet nor in post-Soviet times were they staged in Russia. The public had a chance to see them performed by visiting companies. The greatest dancers - such as Maya Plisetskaya, Vladimir Vasiliev, Ekaterina Maximova - were able to dance a few of them as exceptions. But even they were not able to obtain permission from ideological functionaries for the choreographer to work in the USSR. The current premiere of Gaîté parisienne at the Bolshoi Theater is the first official production of a Maurice Béjart ballet in Russia."

(As a disclaimer, I have known the Bolshoi’s programs to contain errors. The same program states that Balanchine was born in Tbilisi. I'm sure Georgians would be happy to accept that claim.)

[Helene]

3 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

But even they were not able to obtain permission from ideological functionaries for the choreographer to work in the USSR

That could be another scenario for things not “working out” for the Alexander ballet with Godunov.  If this part is accurate, it’s similar to offering the work to Bujones and leaving Bujones to work it out with ABT. I don’t mean that choreographers would call the heads of companies and make offers, but there are other ways of starting the conversations indirectly, starting with how wonderful the dancers were to work with, or I saw xyz’s guest performance/tour performance, and it was superb.  Or whispering into the ear of another insider, and letting them broker it.

 Bujones could go anywhere except the USSR and a few other countries to get it done, and even be offered by super-rich super fans to fund it.The biggest names at the Bolshoi couldn’t get Bejart into the USSR to create ballet for the company.  The Soviets were fine with letting Plitsetskaya dance Bejart for cold cash, but in the the West, and she was an exception.

 

[Meliss]

20 hours ago, Helene said:

The quote from Bujones' memoir is:

The lunch took place in 1995 1985 according to the book, but there is nothing about when Bejart planned the work for Godunov.  Bujones clearly assumed that it had happened.  It's hard to imagine a scenario where Bujones wouldn't have known about it if it were performed at ABT or elsewhere in the Americas or Europe, because he was guesting everywhere and knew everyone, at least within two degrees of separation.  If it was planned for him with the Bolshoi, Godunov's defection would have gummed up the works.   Bujones could have gotten on a plan to see it just about anywhere else but the Soviet Union, and news from the USSR was not always current.

It's really very interesting. I know that Godunov met Bejart in Paris in 1979. Maybe that's when the idea of ballet was born. But why it did not come to fruition is unknown.

[Meliss]

18 hours ago, Helene said:

 

The question asked was why it didn't work out with Godunov.  Bejart didn't say. Given the lead-time needed based on Bejart's schedule, which Bujones wrote about in his book, if Bejart proposed the Alexander ballet after Godunov's danced in the two Bolshoi performances of his work in 1978, it would likely have been planned for after his defection, which would have made it impossible to do in the USSR. 

 

But why couldn't Bejart have staged his ballet for Godunov at the ABT? Before Baryshnikov appeared there, they had chances).

[Meliss]

17 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I simply find it odd that both sides should have gone to so much trouble for a one-off. Naturally, Béjart's company may have continued performing the pieces, but from the Bolshoi's perspective it strikes me as strange to have invested time and resources into pieces that received one or maybe two performances. 

It is really strange. And why has no one ever heard of these ballets - they were not mentioned either in memoirs or in interviews?

[Meliss]

3 hours ago, Helene said:

That could be another scenario for things not “working out” for the Alexander ballet with Godunov.  If this part is accurate, it’s similar to offering the work to Bujones and leaving Bujones to work it out with ABT. I don’t mean that choreographers would call the heads of companies and make offers, but there are other ways of starting the conversations indirectly, starting with how wonderful the dancers were to work with, or I saw xyz’s guest performance/tour performance, and it was superb.  Or whispering into the ear of another insider, and letting them broker it.

 Bujones could go anywhere except the USSR and a few other countries to get it done, and even be offered by super-rich super fans to fund it.The biggest names at the Bolshoi couldn’t get Bejart into the USSR to create ballet for the company.  The Soviets were fine with letting Plitsetskaya dance Bejart for cold cash, but in the the West, and she was an exception.

 

I wonder how Bujones knew about this Bejart ballet. Obviously not from Godunov - but from whom else, if no one knew about it?

Edited July 4 by Meliss

[Helene]

It's impossible to say that no one knew about it.  For Bujones, the conversation led to the offer that eventually led to ABT dropping him; it was a critical piece of his history.  If the offer hadn't been made, he might not have even written about that lunch in his own book.  For everyone else but Godunov, it would have been a piece of trivia among many. Bujones may have heard about it when it was "fresh" news from any of the many, many people he knew in the dance world because of his extensive guesting and his penchant for keeping in touch with people.  His long-time coach, who was a chosen family member, and his mother sounded connected to people as well. The ballet obviously was a thing, because, when Bujones brought it up, Bejart didn't reply, "What are you talking about?"  Instead, Bejart said it didn't work out, which means there was something not to work out.

It would have fit nicely into Godunov's narrative about defecting -- "If they'd given us freedom to work with great choreographers from the West, we wouldn't have to leave"  --, but he might not even have known:   the program quoted by @volcanohunter doesn't list Godunov among the great dancers who couldn't convince management to invite Bejart.  Bejart could have talked up the specifics in Europe, and that wouldn't necessarily have gotten back to the Soviet Union, or even Russia until the internet and smart phones.   It also would have been a tricky issue for company politics, if Bejart were to pick a rising young star over Vasiliev, one of the greats listed, as the center of his first work for the Bolshoi.  Suzanne Farrell couldn't even get her first choice cast when she went to St. Petersburg to stage Balanchine, because the one chosen for her was a higher rank than her preferred dancer.  (Someone might remember whether her choice got to dance it later; I don't have Farrell's book anymore.)

I don't read or understand French, and I don't know how many French language resources there are online from the time of ballet's premiere with Bujones.  Perhaps a French-speaker/reference librarian would be able to find if in the previews, reviews, interviews, and/or program book it was ever documented that Bejart wanted to make it for Godunov originally.  Or even if Bejart had it in mind before, but wasn't able to create it until he did for Bujones.

 Edited to combine posts:

 

1 hour ago, Meliss said:

But why couldn't Bejart have staged his ballet for Godunov at the ABT? Before Baryshnikov appeared there, they had chances).

It would not have been impossible, but it wasn't simple, given when Godunov defected in 1979:

1. First, the way it was offered to Bujones:  at lunch, with Bujones having to do the negotiations with ABT.  Bejart did not make an offer to ABT.  He did not find an insider to whisper it into management's ear.  He left it up to the dancer to make it happen.  Godunov would have needed a team to make that happen, between the aftermath of defection and the language barrier.  A few years later, if Bejart were still interested and available -- he was asking for over a year of lead-time for ABT to make a commitment in Bujones' case -- Godunov would have had the language skills, but he would have had to have sold it to Baryshnikov .

2. In the mid-'70's, it might have been a double-coup for Chase to get Godunov and a Bejart ballet in one fell swoop, assuming that there was no mishegas* between Bejart and Chase, and Chase thought a Bejart work was worth having.  It might have brought Suzanne Farrell back to NYC, if it was early enough in the 1970's, because she hadn't yet returned to NYCB and was still dancing with Bejart's company.  Maybe a triple-coup.

*Choreographers have removed works from companies as long as Artistic Director A was still affiliated with the company.

3. However, among the knowns in 1979 when Godunov defected were:

a. ABT was in a really bad place for money.

b. The Board composition was changing as long-time Chase supporters left the Board.

c. Even her Board was trying to come up with a succession plan, and she was having none of it.

d. The Board pushed Chase out.

e. As early as 1979, there were rumors that Baryshnikov was going to take over ABT, which came to fruition the next year, after Board turnover.

Even if Baryshnikov had agreed, he fired Godunov before Bejart would have had a chance to choreograph it, and then it would have been a mess, if contracts were already signed.

[Fosca]

4 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

But even they were not able to obtain permission from ideological functionaries for the choreographer to work in the USSR.

Béjart did work ten days in St. Petersburg with his company, during the White Nights in 1987. Vinogradov had invited the company, Kirov and Bolshoi stars like Maximova, Vasiliev, Asylmuratova, Ruzimatov, Tchenchikova or Neff danced Béjart works like excerpts from Héliogabale, Notre Faust or Roméo et Juliette. There is even an official Russian documentary about the visit, search for "Grand Pas in the White Night" - and watch the end, where both companies, the Kirov and the Ballet du XXe Siècle, cheer and laugh for Jorge Donn, Farukh Ruzimatov, Vadim Gulyayev and Michel Gascard, a very touching document of dancers breaking the Iron Curtain.

 

 

[Meliss]

1 hour ago, Helene said:

it wasn't simple, given when Godunov defected in 1979

Thank you. I wonder why Bejart didn't stage this ballet with one of his dancers when it didn't work out with Godunov. But now it is unlikely that we will find out about it.

Edited July 4 by Meliss

[volcanohunter]

10 hours ago, Fosca said:

Béjart did work ten days in St. Petersburg with his company, during the White Nights in 1987.

Presumably much the same thing had happened when the Ballet du XXe Siècle performed in Moscow in 1978.

The Bolshoi's online archive does not include performances by visiting companies, whether Russian or foreign. It lists a single performance of Béjart's Isadora and Boléro starring Plisetskaya on 23 May 1978. The program I cited also acknowledges a Bolshoi tour of Australia in 1976 during which she performed Boléro with the company's men's corps.

The archive also lists 6 performances of Roméo et Juliette with Maximova and Vasiliev between September 1979 and June 1987. (A duet only, not the entire ballet.)

The "official" Gaîté parisienne received 15 performances between 2019 and 2021, after which the ballet dropped out of the repertoire.

https://archive.bolshoi.ru/entity/PRODUCTION?sa-person=587&sort=120

Again, I know for certain that there are errors in the archive.

Edited July 5 by volcanohunter

[volcanohunter]

If Béjart had really wanted to create a ballet for a particular dancer, the most obvious thing to do would have been to mount it for his own company, as Roland Petit did with Baryshnikov in La Dame de pique or Béjart did with Guillem in Sissi. 

Béjart's work has never been well received in the United States. He may have really wanted ABT to perform one of his ballets, but it's never happened, not with Godunov, not with Bujones, not with anyone else.

[Fosca]

5 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Béjart's work has never been well received in the United States.

How different the taste was, the Russians of 1987 seemed to be mad about him - already hungry for choreography from Europe/the West, as they were after the Soviet regime fell. As Grigorovitch, he loved strong, masculine dancers, maybe that's a reason why Vasiliev, Godunov, Ruzimatov wanted to dance his works, while ballet was still woman in the US.  

[volcanohunter]

Resistance to Béjart can be felt throughout the Anglophone world. For decades his works were criticized for being more theater than ballet, for structural weakness, for having too little "real dancing," for being decadent, gratuitously "sexed up," bombastic, overwrought, uninventive, simplistic, phony and for having aged badly. Anna Kisselgoff seemed to regard the appeal his choreography had for Soviet dancers with pity: "Like his fellow French choreographer Roland Petit, Mr. Bejart was the symbol of modernism, no matter how dated, for Soviet dancers starved for creativity until the 1990's."

 

Clive Barnes: "What I saw and why I really went was fascinating, a European phenomenon known as Maurice Bejart. For continental Europe. Maurice Bejart is the most important figure in continental European ballet. He is enormously popular. Yet, or so it seems, what General de Gaulle so neatly used to call 'the Anglo-Saxons' have never strongly responded to Bejart. I had seen Bejart's work a great deal before and had been largely unimpressed. He is clearly a great man of the theatre, after the pattern of Roland Petit, but as a choreographer his talents have always struck me as minimal, and a naughtily pretentious air of pseudo-intellectualism has, for me, always damaged his theatricality... Bejart's 'Romeo and Juliet' is cheap and cheerful - it takes liberties with Berlioz, it plays outrageously on the basic political responses of its young audiences ('Hands up - Who are for the good guys?') And it is a travesty of Shakespeare. The political relevance of Romeo and Juliet hardly needs people telling us 'to make love, not war,' and its significance is as an eternal tragedy, not an opportunist theatrical document on the naturally popular theme of peace." (1970)

 

Anna Kisselgoff: "Inadequate choreographers such as Maurice Bejart have made cosmic themes a specialty with their own simplistic results. One would hate to see Miss [Twyla] Tharp turn into a Bejart who can choreograph." (1984)

 

Anna Kisselgoff: "...the two-hour 'Concours' is simplistic, as bereft of wit as it is of choreographic ingenuity. Classroom steps are generally used as a substitute for choreography (two duets are the exception) and the ballet's parodies are naive." (1985)

 

Anna Kisselgoff: "The way to enjoy Maurice Bejart's ballets, some of his American fans insist, is simply not to take him seriously. Just forget that putting steps together is not his forte and see what ideas he will come up with next... This kind of primitive approach to serious music did have to be considered, however, more seriously in the muddle Mr. Bejart has fashioned out of Stravinsky's 1928 ballet score, 'Le Baiser de la Fee.' Here was Stravinsky's heartfelt homage to Tchaikovsky's music reduced to aural sound effects while the dancing was pasted on in the most unmusical manner imaginable." (1985)

 

Anna Kisselgoff: "As someone who saw Bejart's 'Romeo and Juliet,' set to Berlioz's score of the same title, shortly after its premiere in 1966, I was thankful that the full-length version with its simplistic 'make love, not war' message was not inflicted upon us." (1999)

 

Alastair Macaulay: "Part of what's irksome about Bejart's treatment [of Ravel's Boléro] is its mixture of showiness and thinness. It pounds its way to excitement by doing very little, very emphatically. Then there's its ludicrous soft-porn atmosphere: a mixture of group eroticism (I get the giggles when the supporting men stand and bump their pelvises) and fake-fervent inspiration." (2012)

 

Sarah Kaufman: "A long strand of satin dangled between her legs like a rat's tail during this [Romeo and Juliet] duet, as if she and Michael Cook had rolled around on barn floor beforehand and she'd snagged her dress on a nail. Bejart's choreography suggested barn-rolling, with its splayed legs and awkward squats. These gave the torn hem ample time in the spotlight." (2015) 

 

Kaufman was relieved when the program moved on to Balanchine's Emeralds. (The same Sarah Kaufman who has bemoaned the predominance of Balanchine's ballets in the repertoire of American companies.)

 

Gia Kourlas: "The somber and sentimental Béjart ballet 'Song of a Wayfarer' falls into an uninspiring category: the not-worst ballet by a hollow choreographer... The choreography returned to a frequent pattern: A leg stretched forward and then to the side. A deep plié with the feet spread apart in second position followed, with one heel raised. That repeated movement phrase had a formal austerity, but it couldn't keep 'Wayfarer' from succumbing to mawkishness." (2019)

 

Then there was this line from Mark Morris' memoir about why Béjart's troupe was ousted from Brussels: "It may have been that [Gerard] Mortier, who had good taste, had finally decided that Béjart's work was simply crap, which it had been for many years."

 

Anglophone dance critics routinely pour scorn on Béjart works. And if French companies couldn't help being French, I can just imagine how they would have howled if a major American company had decided to spend money and dedicate time and resources in order to dance one of his ballets.

Edited July 5 by volcanohunter

[Meliss]

25 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

 

Anglophone dance critics routinely pour scorn on Béjart works. And if French companies couldn't help being French, I can just imagine how they would have howled if a major American company had decided to spend money and dedicate time and resources in order to dance one of his ballets.

September 18, 1983,  New York Times. By Barry Laine. 

"Mr. Bejart's productions have been regularly greeted with popular acclaim here and in Europe. It must be noted, however, that some American critics, especially, have taken Mr. Bejart to task for supposedly melodramatic sensationalism and a seeming disregard for classical balletic technique.

Yet the French-born artist has established his own - perhaps characteristically European - ethos. Physical sensuality, literary and philosophical themes and over theatricalism are decidedly Bejartian".

Bujones left the theater, which he considered his home for many years, in order to perform in Bejart's ballet. It means a lot.

[volcanohunter]

If dancing Béjart's choreography had been so important to Bujones, he could have joined Béjart's company, but he didn’t. 

In the aftermath of his departure Bujones said that he didn't insist on dancing Béjart. Rather, he wanted to have a ballet choreographed on him by a leading choreographer.

"Bujones also emphasized that if the company had proposed a new ballet for him by Kenneth MacMillan (choreographer of 'Romeo and Juliet') or someone else of international stature, he might well have accepted the offer. 'I am open to negotiations,' he said." (Los Angeles Times, 11 September 1985)

When he returned to dance with ABT it wasn't because the company relented and finally commissioned a ballet for him.

(And to be clear, I was a great admirer of Bujones. In the classics I preferred him to Baryshnikov.)

Edited July 5 by volcanohunter

[Helene]

2 hours ago, Meliss said:

Bujones left the theater, which he considered his home for many years, in order to perform in Bejart's ballet. It means a lot.

That isn’t what he wrote or said: he left because he wanted a ballet choreographed for him, feeling he had earned that privilege, and he came with an already made offer on a subject he was passionate about.  ABT never said that they’d find a different choreographer because Bejart would be panned by the critics in America.  They never said it was about money, either, because he was later offered a check by a rich patron who thought it was about the money.  

Bujones was being offered a lot of money to dance around the world and was given star treatment.   Something that is inconceivable now is how as a company member, he repeatedly told ABT when and where he would’t dance for ABT.  This was not only when he chose to do other gigs instead, but also when he didn’t like the rep, like when Chase offered him only Undertow during one short season. He fully expected to spend a year doing something else and then to rejoin ABT.  The press release made that impossible for him while Baryshnikov headed the company and it was managed by that administrative staff.

I’d always admired Farrell, who after being told by many that Bejart’s choreography was, as Morris put it, “crap,” that she was wasting her talent dancing for him, and that she would lose her technique, said (paraphrase) that Bejart was the person for whom she was dancing then, and she would give him total dedication as a choreographer and company director.