Alexandra Danilova

Ballerina

• Born: November 20, 1904
• Birthplace: Peterhof, Russia
• Died: July 13, 1997
• Place of death: New York, New York

Russian-born American dancer

An internationally acclaimed ballerina from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, Danilova carried on the traditions of classical ballet and helped bring them to the United States, where she worked as a master teacher from the 1960’s through the 1980’s.

Areas of achievement Dance, education

Early Life

Alexandra Danilova (dehn-yihl-YOHV-ah) was born in a royal suburb of St. Petersburg. Details of her early childhood are somewhat sketchy: After their parents died, she and her younger sister Elena were shunted between their relatives and godparents before being placed in adoptive families. Alexandra was taken in by a wealthy society woman, Lidia Mstislavna Gototsova. Shortly after adopting Alexandra, Gototsova obtained a divorce from her philandering husband and later married Mikhail Ivanovich Batianov, a high-ranking czarist general who had received numerous military honors.

The elderly Batianov’s extended family included children from his first two marriages as well as his grandchildren. The entire family was apparently gracious to the new wife and her adopted daughter. Nevertheless, Alexandra found herself to be somewhat of an outsider, even though one of the general’s unmarried daughters, Machuta, took a special interest in her. Alexandra later remarked that her unsettled and occasionally lonely childhood had schooled her in self-reliance.

Like many children reared in genteel families of the period, Alexandra received lessons in ballroom dancing. Chosen to dance a solo in her grammar-school Christmas pageant, Alexandra evidently impressed her family so much that they submitted an application for her to attend the ballet school of the Maryinsky Theater, the home of the Russian imperial opera and ballet. Despite the school’s policy of only accepting children between the ages of nine and twelve, Alexandra passed the required physical and artistic examinations and entered the Maryinsky school as a boarding student at the age of eight. She continued to see her sister Elena from time to time, and General Batianov continued to regard Alexandra as his own adopted child; nevertheless, Alexandra began to consider her fellow students to be her real family. One of those students was Georgy Balanchivadze later to gain fame as George Balanchine, a renowned choreographer and founder of the New York City Ballet.

The children of the Maryinsky School not only took academic courses but also performed in ballets and operas at several of the imperial theaters. Alexandra was singled out for many of the featured children’s roles and received a scholarship, a rare reward given only to those who showed great promise. The school gave her more than a technical education in dance; it gave her a solid grounding in music and the other fine arts and it established within her a habit of discipline. She later remarked that all of these elements were essential to the making of an intelligent dancer.

The Maryinsky School survived the Russian Revolution of 1917, although not without tremendous hardships. Families and teachers were scattered, the facilities had no heat or water, and the school did not function for nearly a year. Eventually, it did reopen, and Alexandra graduated in 1920. She was immediately invited to join the school’s performing company, renamed the State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet.

Life’s Work

In the middle of a society racked by hunger and civil war, the former Maryinsky company offered Danilova a level of stability she desperately craved. With two hundred dancers and a repertoire retained from pre-Soviet times, the State Academic Theater provided Danilova with her professional debut in its corps de ballet. She soon graduated to larger roles in classics such as La Bayadère and Swan Lake as well as solo roles in Une Nuit d’Egypte and Coppélia. Her first principal role came as the title character in The Firebird. Danilova had performed so well in her first two years with the company that its directors offered her a much-welcomed bonus a full winter’s supply of firewood.

In spite of Danilova’s own successes, material hardship and the state’s increasing interference in the private lives of its citizens augured a bleak future in the Soviet Union. The ballet theater itself seemed to become more rigid and blinkered. When Vladimir Dmitriev, a former light-opera singer, proposed leaving Soviet Russia for a summer tour of Western Europe in 1924, Danilova eagerly agreed to accompany Balanchine and five other dancers on the tour. All of them assumed that they would be returning home for a new season of theatrical engagements in the fall.

The group toured Germany and Austria and, despite threats of dismissal from their Soviet ballet company, stayed on tour through the fall to accept an engagement in Great Britain. In London, they were contacted by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the famous Ballets Russes. His company’s Russian Seasons in Paris in 1909-1910 had created an immediate sensation and had changed the course of ballet history. Interested in adding new performers to the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev offered contracts to Danilova, Balanchine, Tamara Geva (Balanchine’s wife), and Nikolai Efimov.

The Ballets Russes not only had introduced Russian performers to the West but also had ushered ballet into the modern age. Programs read like a roster of twentieth century genius, with musical scores written by Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, and Francis Poulenc and sets and costumes designed by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Aleksandr Benois, and Léon Bakst. Despite these innovations, the company also performed many of the classics, including Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, and excerpts from Sleeping Beauty. In her appearances with the company, Danilova performed a wide range of principal roles in these traditional pieces. She also danced the lead in new ballets created by Balanchine in the Romantic vein, The Triumph of Neptune and The Gods Go A-Begging, as well as his innovative Apollo Musagète and The Prodigal Son, both of which became signature pieces.

Although she was not yet an established ballerina like older counterparts from the Maryinsky such as Tamara Karsavina and Olga Spessivtzeva, Danilova was on the brink of stardom when the company was suddenly dissolved after Diaghilev’s death in 1929. Most of the dancers scattered to find work wherever they could. At the same time that her professional career was in limbo, Danilova’s personal life was also in flux. Since 1926, she had been living with Balanchine, but his work as a choreographer was taking him further afield. She began having doubts about the direction of their future as a couple. When she was offered the chance to dance in a London musical entitled Waltzes from Vienna in 1931, Danilova took the role and wrote Balanchine to announce her decision to break off their relationship. Believing that someone not involved in the arts might make a more reliable partner, Danilova was married to Italian businessman Giuseppe Massera later that same year.

The marriage faltered when Massera announced that he expected Danilova to abandon her ballet career after their wedding. Instead, Danilova joined Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a troupe that sought to carry on Diaghilev’s legacy. Although de Basil had neither the aesthetic taste nor the entrepreneurial skills of Diaghilev, he did create a strong company that showcased the talents of Léonide Massine, a former Diaghilev dancer and choreographer. As part of the new company, Danilova had to contend with the so-called baby ballerinas that were heavily promoted by de Basil, but once she performed a principal role, she usually kept it. Partnered by Massine, Danilova danced the lead in the troupe’s production of his ballet La Boutique fantasque. Her performance as the Street Dancer in Le Beau Danube added a new signature role to her repertoire. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo toured constantly in Europe and America; by the end of the 1930’s, Danilova had become an internationally known ballerina.

Despite the strength of its dancers, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was chaotic and ill-run. When economic chaos began encroaching on the artistic direction of the company, Danilova decided that it was time for her to leave. Léonide Massine had left the company earlier to become balletmaster of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; in 1937, he invited her to join the new company. He was able to mount a production of his long-promised new version of Coppélia featuring Danilova, and engaged artist Raoul Dufy to design the costumes and sets. The production was a tremendous success, and Swanilda became one of Danilova’s most famous roles. Balanchine, who occasionally worked as a guest choreographer with the company, reentered Danilova’s life this time on a friendly but purely professional basis. She danced in Balanchine’s Danses Concertantes, to a jazz-influenced score written by Stravinsky. Balanchine rechoreographed his ballet Mozartiana especially for her, and a year later created Night Shadow (later known as La Somnabula), an entirely new one-act ballet featuring Danilova. Together, they revived Raymonda, a full-length ballet from the Maryinsky repertoire that had always been popular in Russia but was little known in the West. By the late 1940’s, Danilova herself had completed a select body of choreographed work; her most notable piece was Paquita, a reworking of another Maryinsky standard.

Massera, who had never granted Danilova a divorce, died in 1936. While Danilova was touring in the United States with the Ballet Russe in 1941, she was married to Casimir Kokic, another dancer with the troupe. Their marriage lasted until 1949. The Ballet Russe had spent the war years touring in the United States, and the company decided to stay there permanently after the war. Having established her residency, Danilova became an American citizen in 1946.

During the postwar years, dance in the United States was on the rise. The Ballet Russe began losing many of its stars including Alicia Markova, Igor Yuskevich, and others to new companies such as Ballet Theatre (later the American Ballet Theatre). Although Danilova at first turned down offers to leave, she was disheartened by both the quality and the artistic management of the Ballet Russe and ultimately left in 1951. After her departure from the Ballet Russe, Danilova danced with smaller companies such as the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet and the Markova-Dolin Ballet. In 1956, Danilova founded her own small concert troupe known as Great Moments in Ballet; in addition to touring the United States and Canada, the troupe toured South America, Japan, and the Pacific. Although she later appeared for a season on Broadway, Danilova gave her farewell performance as a ballerina in Japan in 1957. She then worked for two successful seasons as a choreographer for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

Danilova launched a new career in 1963, when Balanchine invited her to teach a variations class at the School of American Ballet, a school affiliated with the New York City Ballet. In 1964, she became a full member of the faculty and taught and coached there until her retirement in 1989. Although she had left the stage, Danilova gave one more major public performance this time as herself, coaching young dancers in the 1976 film The Turning Point. In 1989, Danilova received both a Kennedy Center Award and New York City’s Handel Medallion for her contributions to the arts.

Significance

As a performer, Danilova was known for a stage presence that combined quick grace, sophistication, and allure. Although she was often cast in the standard soubrette role, she had a wide range as a prima ballerina and proved her dramatic power in the leads of such ballets as Swan Lake, The Firebird, and La Somnabula. She was one of the stars of international ballet for nearly three decades. Early in her career she helped introduce modern art and movement to conservative ballet audiences; later, she helped introduce the classics to new viewers unfamiliar with the world of ballet. Struggling against sexism and social conventions that would limit her career as a dancer, Danilova chose to sacrifice many of her personal relationships to find lasting fulfillment in her art. The dedication and discipline she learned during her childhood at the Maryinsky School translated into a thoroughgoing professionalism and devotion to the fundamentals of her art as an adult. These traits established Danilova as a model for younger dancers onstage and off. As both a dancer and a teacher, Danilova was herself a link between the classical traditions of the imperial Russian ballet, particularly the choreography of Marius Petipas, and the innovation of twentieth century choreographers such as Massine and Balanchine. Providing the foundation for the growth of ballet in the United States, Danilova and her fellow émigrés served as an inspiration to a later generation of dancers who defected from the Soviet Union in search of artistic freedom in the West.

Bibliography

Anderson, Jack. Ballet and Modern Dance: A Concise History. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Book Company, 1992. Although Danilova herself is mentioned only in passing (“the scintillating Danilova”), this work provides essential background information on her art. It includes chapters on Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and on the development of American ballet.

Danilova, Alexandra. Choura: The Memoirs of Alexandra Danilova. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. Danilova’s memoirs are the only source available for information on her childhood. Long on verve and charm while short on dates, these memoirs assume that readers are familiar with ballet terminology and repertoire.

Dunning, Jennifer.“But First a School”: The First Fifty Years of the School of American Ballet. New York: Viking, 1985. A history of the school founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein to train dancers for work with the New York City Ballet. Danilova’s classes and teaching style are discussed; she herself is often quoted. Includes a glossary of ballet terms.

Farrell, Suzanne. “Master Class.” The New York Times Magazine, January 4, 1998, 14. Farrell, herself a prima ballerina, recounts her experience of being taught by Danilova and provides information about Danilova’s life and ideas about ballet.

Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. A thorough and detailed history of Diaghilev’s company. Particularly useful for providing an overview of the company’s struggle for survival, its cultural milieu, and its far-ranging influence on ballet and dance theater in the twentieth century.

Walker, Kathrine Sorley. De Basil’s Ballets Russes. New York: Atheneum, 1983. An account of the company from 1931 to 1952, with a critical look at the much-maligned impresario himself. Discusses Danilova’s many roles and reviews as well as the entire company’s impact on the dance world. The book includes a list of all productions by de Basil, including dates and names of choreographers, composers, and librettists; it also includes a list of dancers and their tenure with the company.

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