A MEMOIR OF THE DANCE WORLD By S. Hurok HERMITAGE HOUSE / NEW YORK 1953 COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY S. HUROK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published simultaneously in Canada by Geo. J. McLeod, Toronto Library of Congress Catalog Number: 53-11291 MANUFACTURED IN THE U.S.A. AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK S. HUROK PRESENTS...

In the mid-forties, after the publication of my first book, a number of people approached me with the idea of my doing another book dealing with the dance and ballet organizations I had managed. I did not feel the time was ripe for such a book. Moreover, had I written it then, it would have been a different book, and would have carried quite another burden. If it had been done at that time, it would have been called To Hell With Ballet! In the intervening period a good deal has happened in the w

I T was The Swan who determined my career in dance and ballet management. Whatever my confused aspirations on arriving in America, the music and dance I had imbibed at the folk fonts of Pogar remained with me. I have told the story of the gradual clarification of those aspirations in the tale of the march forward from Brooklyn’s Brownsville. The story of Music for the Masses has become a part of the musical history of America. I had two obsessions: music and dance. Music for the Masses had becom

A. A NEGLECTED AMERICAN GENIUS—AND HER “CHILDREN” A LTHOUGH my association with her was marked by a series of explosions and an overall atmosphere of tragi-comedy, it is a source of pride to me that I was able to number among my dance connections that neglected American genius, Isadora Duncan. It was Anna Pavlova who spurred my enthusiasm to bring Isadora to her own country, in 1922, a fact accomplished only with considerable difficulty, as those who have read my earlier volume of memoirs will r

A. A SPANISH GYPSY S UCH was the influence of The Swan on my approach to dance that, although she was no longer in our midst, I found myself being guided subconsciously by her direction. There were arrangements for a tour of Pavlova and a small company, for the season 1931-1932, not under my management. Death liquidated these arrangements. Had the tour been made, Pavlova was to have numbered among her company the famous Spanish gypsy dancer of the 1930’s, Vicente Escudero, one of the greatest Ib

U P to now I have dealt with those artists of the dance whose forms of dance expression were either modern, free, or exotic. All had been, at one time or another, under my management. The rest of this candid avowal will be devoted to that form of theatrical dance known as ballet. Since I regard ballet as the most satisfactory and satisfying form of civilized entertainment, ballet will occupy the major portion of the book. Nearly two full decades of my career as impresario have been devoted to it

I F ever there were two people who seemingly were inseparable, they were Michel and Vera Fokine. Theirs was a modern love story that could rank with those of Abélard and Heloïse, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde. The romance of the Fokines continued, unabated, till death did them part. The story of Michel Fokine’s revolution in modern ballet has become an important part of ballet’s history. The casual ballet-goer, to whom one name sounds very much like another, recognizes the name of Fokine.

T HE last of the two American tours of Serge de Diaghileff’s Ballets Russes was during the season 1916-1917. The last American tour of Anna Pavlova and her company was during the season 1925-1926. Serge Diaghileff died at Venice, on 19th August, 1929. Anna Pavlova died at The Hague, on 23rd January, 1931. W. de Basil’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo gave their first American performances at the St. James Theatre, New York, on 21st December, 1933. Such ballet as America saw between Pavlova’s last

I N order that the reader may have a sense of continuity, I feel he should be supplied with a bit of the background and a brief fill-in on what had been happening meanwhile at Monte Carlo. I have pointed out that de Basil’s preoccupation with London and America had soon left his collaborator, René Blum, without a ballet company with which to fulfil his contractual obligations to the Principality of Monaco. The break between the two came in 1936, when Blum formed a new company that he called simp

T HE condition of the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe in 1941 being as I have described it, it became imperative for me to try to improve the situation as best I could. It was a period of perplexity. The “Colonel,” once more installed in the driver’s seat of his company, with its name now changed from Educational Ballets, Ltd., to the Original Ballet Russe, had been enjoying an extended sojourn in Australia and New Zealand, under the management of E. J. Tait. Although I knew deterioration had set in wi

D URING the very late ’thirties, Mikhail Mordkin had had a ballet company, giving sporadic performances on Sunday nights, occasionally on week-day evenings, and, now and then, some out-of-town performances. It was a small company, largely made up of Mordkin’s pupils, of which one, Lucia Chase, was prima ballerina . Miss Chase was seen in, among other parts, the title role of Giselle , in which she was later replaced by Patricia Bowman. This little company is credited with having given the first

W ITH Ballet Theatre gone its own way, I was placed in a serious predicament. According to a long established and necessary custom, bookings throughout the country are made at least a season in advance. This is imperative in order that theatres, halls, auditoriums may be properly engaged and so that the local managers may arrange their series, develop their promotional campaigns, sell their tickets, thus reducing to as great an extent as possible the element of risk and chance involved. Since my

S ADLER’S WELLS —a name with which to conjure—had been a part of my balletic consciousness for a long time. I had observed its early beginnings, its growth from the Old Vic to Sadler’s Wells to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with the detached interest of a ballet lover from another land. I had read about it, heard about it from many people, but I had not had any first hand experience of it since the Covent Garden Opera Trust had invited the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to move to Covent Garden f

I N the minds of many I am almost always associated with ballet more frequently than I am with any other activity in the world of entertainment. This simply is not true. While it is true that more than thirty years of my life have been intensely occupied with the presentation of dance on the North American continent, these thirty-odd years of preoccupation with the dance have neither narrowed my horizon nor limited my interests. I have simultaneously carried on my avowed determination, arrived a