Léonide Massine

Dancer

  • Born: August 8, 1895
  • Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
  • Died: March 16, 1979
  • Place of death: Cologne, West Germany (now in Germany)

Russian dancer and choreographer

Massine’s career as a performer and creator of dance changed the nature of the art. His stage presence and dance style made a powerful impression in Europe and the United States and helped to establish the companies with which he worked as leading forces in the renewal of ballet. His choreography was especially innovative in its collaboration with music and depth of characterization.

Areas of achievement Dance, theater and entertainment

Early Life

Léonide Massine (LAY-oh-need mah-SEEN) was born Leonid Fyodorovich Miassin; his name was changed by Sergei Diaghilev when he joined the Ballets Russes company. He was the youngest of five children, four boys and one girl, in a closely knit, warm family. His father played French horn in the Bolshoi Theater orchestra, and his mother was a soprano in the Bolshoi Theater chorus. Although his parents were both artists, they never assumed that Massine would have a career in the arts. His elder brothers studied mathematics and engineering. The eldest, Mikhail, became a professional soldier; Gregori became an engineer; and Konstantin died after a hunting accident when he was twenty-one. Raissa, the only sister, was closest to Massine in age and was his frequent playmate. They especially enjoyed dancing folk dances and playing games with the children of a family that worked as household servants for their parents. Often Massine would amuse himself on the mouth organ. As an adult, he recalled the happiness of this time and commemorated it by incorporating his childhood games and dances in his ballets.

A friend of his mother observed Massine dancing alone and suggested that his parents enroll him in the Moscow Theater School to be trained as a dancer. He underwent the entrance examination, which included a physical examination to judge if he could develop into a dancer. He was admitted on a one-year trial basis and, after the year, he was accepted as a permanent student.

Massine fell in love with the world of the theater. His slight build, dark coloring, and skill awarded him his first role. He portrayed the dwarf, Chernomor, in Russlan and Ludmilla, by the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. Although wearing an exotic costume and an immense beard was the most required of him, it was his first character role and the beginning of a series of professional appearances as a child actor. He made hundreds of performances at the Maly and the Bolshoi theaters in Moscow. He also appeared in ballets at the Bolshoi, but by age fifteen, Massine began to think he would be happier in the theater than in ballet. He found the plays more interesting, the actors more intelligent, and, except for that of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, the ballet music second rate. Typical of his lifelong dedication to broadening his education, he began to study the violin and painting while a teenager. His parents retired to a country home, and Massine moved into a room near the theater school. He delved into reading works by Fyodor Dostoevski, an exceptional pursuit for a dancer.

At this time, the leading choreographer for the theater was Alexander Gorsky. Massine admired his personality but believed that he could not transmit his ideas to his dancers, move big groups across the stage, or choreograph dances in authentic foreign styles. These were all to become central concerns of Massine’s mature work. Massine was graduated from the Moscow Theater School in 1912 and joined the Bolshoi company. In 1913, he danced the Tarantella in Swan Lake.

Diaghilev, director of the Ballets Russes, was in the audience. Michel Fokine, the leading choreographer of Diaghilev’s company, was to create a ballet, La Legende de Joseph, based on the biblical story; Diaghilev selected Massine as Joseph. After an interview with Fokine, Massine was offered the role and a position in the company, but he would have to leave Moscow in two days. His friends advised him not to go, as it would abruptly end his blossoming theater career. Massine himself decided to reject the offer. When he met Diaghilev again, however, he suddenly said yes and thus created an entirely new life for himself.

Life’s Work

As a choreographer and dancer, Massine always sought the most encompassing expression by including the finest work not only in dance but also in music, painting and design, and literary and philosophical thought. A fusion of the arts was the ideal of Diaghilev’s ballet. By taking an immediate interest in the education of Massine, Diaghilev helped to develop Massine’s already broad curiosity and learning. Even as a young man, Massine was never content to be only the instrument of his mentors. His artistic contributions went beyond the strictures laid out by Diaghilev to different areas of art, especially in his use of major symphonic works, as Diaghilev had a preference for obscure music. Massine also developed his work further by his precise use of traditional dance from various cultures. Scholarly in his preparation, Massine differed from other choreographers by his interest in and knowledge of arts other than dance and his willingness to study.

Massine’s role as Joseph had been a success though the ballet was not. Performed in Paris in 1914, it elevated Massine to sudden stardom. He still wanted to improve his technique, however, and studied with ballet master Enrico Cecchetti. He found that the academic ballet he had learned in the Moscow Theater School was not enough to meet the demands of Fokine’s style, inspired by the freer movement of Isadora Duncan.

When World War I broke out in Europe, in 1914, Diaghilev’s leading male dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, and much of the company were in the United States. This gave Massine the opportunity to work with composer Igor Stravinsky and designer Mikhail Larioniov and to experiment in new work with Diaghilev. In 1915, Massine created his first ballet, Soleil de nuit (midnight sun), in which the Russian dances and games of his childhood appear as the basis of the choreography. The music was by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov.

In only four years, Massine produced masterpieces of ballet. In each one, he pushed the art form into new areas. In 1917, he premiered Les Femmes de bonne humeur (the good-humored ladies), with music by Giuseppe Scarlatti, and Parade, a collaborative work with costumes and sets by Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau and music by Erik Satie.Les Femmes de bonne humeur incorporated the Italian commedia dell’arte style of masked characters representing personality types. Massine created the first of many parts no one has adequately been able to fill after him because of his stage presence and precisely choreographed characterization.

La Boutique fantasque (1919), Massine’s next work, is the story of a shop whose toys come to life. The characterization of the shopkeeper, assistant, Russians, Americans, dolls, and even poodles is presented in careful detail. Massine appeared with Lydia Sokolova in a cancan, which became one of the celebrated dances in ballet history. Le Tricorne (the three-cornered hat) premiered in 1919 in London. It was the result of Massine’s wartime studies in Seville of Spanish classical and folk dance. Massine’s accomplishment was to take the true movement and rhythm of the dances and put them into ballet without giving them a false prettiness.

Massine’s last work for Diaghilev’s company at this time was a reproduction of The Rite of Spring. The ballet for Stravinsky’s music had been originally choreographed by Nijinsky. When Diaghilev was angered by Nijinsky’s marriage, Nijinsky left the Ballets Russes. Massine rechoreographed the controversial piece. The primitive-sounding music with its complicated and jagged rhythms supported the creation of modern movements to express an ancient story of a community sacrificing a young woman. Latter-day dance enthusiasts have engaged in pointless debate over which was the superior version of the dance. Massine’s was not adequately recorded, and Massine himself would not involve himself in such a debate. His version was a great success when performed. The chief choreographic element was the use of the dancers’ weight to create an earth-bound look and shape to the movement. This was the opposite of the ethereal look of classical ballet and its appearance of airborne lightness. The use of weighted movement was a basic element of modern dance, and Massine understood its usefulness in creating dramatic tension and expression.

A personal dispute with Diaghilev led Massine to quit the company in 1921. In only six years, he had created a body of work that made major changes in ballet. He formed his own company and produced several works for the “Soirées de Paris” organized by Le Comte Étienne de Beaumont. These included Salade, music by Darius Milhaud; Mercure, music by Satie and decor by Picasso; and Le Beau Danube, music by Johann Strauss; all appeared in 1924. Diaghilev convinced Massine to rejoin his company after these successes; the second engagement with Diaghilev lasted from 1925 to 1928.

Massine’s second time with the Ballets Russes produced still more experiments with movement, themes, and the adventurous use of music. Zéphere et Flore (1925) had costumes and decor by the cubist artist Georges Braque and music by Dukelsky. Les Matelots (1925) was the first of an ongoing tradition of lighthearted dances about three sailors on the town. Les Pas d’acier (1927), with music by Sergei Prokofiev, started another tradition in dance that of the dancers taking on the angular, abrupt movement style of machinery, expressing fear of automation and the encroaching “steps of steel” of the title. During this same period, Massine worked as dancer-choreographer for the London Cochrane Revues and as solo dancer and ballet master of the Roxy Theater of New York. In 1930, he revived The Rite of Spring for Martha Graham. He also choreographed for the Rubinstein company from 1929 to 1931.

In 1932, Colonel de Basil began his Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and Massine joined the company as ballet master in 1933. In this period, Massine choreographed three of his symphonic ballets: Les Présages (1934), for Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony; Choréartium (1934), for Johannes Brahms’s Fourth Symphony; and Symphonie fantastique (1936), for music by Hector Berlioz. Although these works are among Massine’s greatest achievements, they are also perhaps the least appreciated. They demonstrated his mastery of music of the greatest scope and complexity and his interest in themes of the broadest human concerns. It is rare for ballet reviewers to know music well or for music reviewers to know ballet. Massine’s fusion of art forms reached for a unity of art and understanding on a scale as grand as human aspirations.

Massine choreographed more than one hundred ballets. He worked with other companies including New York’s Ballet Theater in 1942-1943. In 1945-1946, he toured his own company, Ballet Russe Highlights. His work continued to grow by using the best of music and the widest variety of human concerns and expressions from the frivolity of Gaîté parisienne (1938) to the religious inspiration of Laudes Evangelii (1952). In keeping with his interest in innovations, he made three notable films: The Red Shoes (1948), Tales of Hoffman (1951), and Carosello Napoletano (1953; Neapolitan Carousel). He continued his dedication to the study and presentation of dances of specific cultures by studying the dances of American Indians and presented lecture-demonstrations on the subject throughout the world. He devoted much of his later life to the study of the theoretical essentials of choreography and wrote a book on the subject while a teacher at the Royal Ballet School in London.

Significance

As a dancer, Léonide Massine’s greatest accomplishments were his own performances, celebrated for not only his technique but also the delicate and precise characterizations that no one has been able to duplicate. As a great performer, it will be possible to memorialize him only through the accounts of his audience. He was best known for his character roles in lighthearted ballets, and he captured the imaginations of all who saw him. His greatest contributions, however, were in his unification of the arts of the actor, dancer, and musician. His reputation suffered sometimes in commentary by those who preferred the discrete categorization of the arts or those who were displeased when he left Diaghilev, but his curiosity, energy, and restless self-education made him a great artist. His gifts of understanding several art forms and his willingness to study outside his own cultural sphere allowed his work to transcend more narrow outlooks and encompass the broadest sense of the human comedy.

Bibliography

Antony, Gordon. Massine: Camera Studies by Gordon Antony, with an Appreciation by Sacheverell Sitwell. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1939. Excellent black-and-white photographs of Massine in his most famous roles. Sitwell’s commentary credits Massine for a unique greatness combining the skills of both dancer and choreographer, and for his unusually fine intelligence, especially in identifying great artists in other fields and bringing them to the public.

Grigoriev, S. L. The Diaghilev Ballet, 1909-1929. Edited and translated by Vera Bowen. London: Constable, 1953. The memoirs of one of Diaghilev’s company who was with the company from beginning to end. There is much discussion of Massine.

Gruen, John. The Private World of Ballet. New York: Viking Press, 1970. A collection of descriptions and interviews. Gruen interviewed Massine while he was in New York working with the Joffrey Ballet. He includes information from an interview with Eugenia Delarova Doll, a ballerina who had been married to Massine.

Haskell, Arnold. Diaghilev: His Artistic and Private Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935. Places Massine at the center of the rebuilding of Diaghilev’s company and portrays him as a key figure of the renaissance of ballet; this is a thorough history of the Ballets Russes and its founder.

Kochno, Boris. Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe. Translated by Adrienne Foulke. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. Kochno became Diaghilev’s private secretary in 1921, edited programs, and composed ballet librettos. His is an insider’s look at the company, dancers, and ballets. This is a large-format book with illustrations and photographs.

Massine, Leonide. Massine on Choreography: Theory and Exercises in Composition. London: Faber, 1976. Massine considered this study the crowning achievement of his life’s work and a way to transmit what he had learned through experience to successive generations.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. My Life in Ballet. London: Macmillan, 1968. An autobiography that narrates family life as well as artistic accomplishment. Massine reflects on the relationship within the ballet world and the vagaries of his personal fortune and maintains a generous attitude toward all of his colleagues and a consistent modesty about himself.

Norton, Leslie. Léonide Massine and the Twentieth Century Ballet. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. Biography containing detailed analysis of Massine’s major ballets, including information about their music and composers, set design, and literary sources. Assesses Massine’s impact on the development of twentieth century ballet.

1901-1940: May 19, 1909: Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Astounds Paris; May 29, 1912: L’Après-midi d’un faune Scandalizes Parisian Audiences; May 29, 1913: The Rite of Spring Stuns Audiences; April 5, 1938: Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Debuts.