Michel Fokine

Russian choreographer and dancer

• Born: April 23, 1880
• Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
• Died: August 22, 1942
• Place of death: New York, New York

Fokine was the quintessential ballet choreographer. His works combine the brilliant technique of the traditional Russian ballet with his innovative concept of ballet dancing as a dramatic and emotive interpretation of a story line in which the dancer uses his or her entire body to convey the meaning of the fiction.

Early Life

Michel Fokine (mee-shehl foh-keen) was born Mikhail Fokin in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the seventeenth of eighteen children born to his parents. Five of the children survived into adulthood. His father, Michael Fokine, was a successful middle-class merchant. His mother, Catherine, was from Mannheim, Germany, and was particularly fond of the theater. Fokine’s older brother Nicolas, an officer in the Russian cavalry, shared his mother’s love of the arts and often attended ballets. Fokine grew up listening to his brother describe the ballets he saw.

When Fokine was nine years old, he hoped to be admitted to the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg, which accepted only ten or twelve students each year. Because his father was strongly opposed to his son having a career in dance, Fokine was forced to perform in a “secret” audition. Not only was he accepted into the school, but he also attained a number one ranking among those admitted. When his father was told that Fokine had placed first, he agreed to let him attend the school.

Life’s Work

In 1898, Fokine had his debut performance with the Maryinsky Imperial Ballet as a soloist. The ballet was Pakhit, and it was performed on his eighteenth birthday. By 1902, he was teaching a junior-girls ballet class. At age twenty-two, he was the youngest teacher ever employed by the Imperial Ballet School. He also started teaching classes for senior boys and girls. He continued to perform with the ballet troupe and partnered with dancer Anna Pavlova. He was promoted to first soloist in 1904.

Soon, however, Fokine began to find himself at odds with the management of the Imperial Ballet. Fokine believed that too much importance was placed on the movement of legs and feet and that the arms were neglected in the traditional ballet technique. He also objected to the Imperial Ballet’s practice of showcasing virtuoso technique at the expense of the story of the ballet and its dramatic portrayal. He was also concerned about the lack of attention to costuming the dancers. He believed the costumes should reflect cultural authenticity and be appropriate to the time period portrayed. The Imperial Ballet traditionally costumed its dancers in short skirts and pink pointe (or toe) shoes. Fokine insisted that the dancer’s entire body be used to express emotion and interpret the ballet’s dramatic story line. He was not opposed to virtuoso ballet technique but believed it should also be used as a means of dramatic interpretation and not as a dazzling spectacle, which, he thought, interrupted the story.

In 1907, Fokine had the opportunity to create a dance and apply his theories. Pavlova, scheduled to dance in the Hall of Nobles, asked Fokine to help her select music for the occasion. Fokine not only chose the music for her but also choreographed a dance for her. The music was Charles Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Swan and the solo dance was The Dying Swan, which would become synonymous with Pavlova’s name. Fokine concentrated particularly on arm movement in this dance. He created movements that made Pavlova’s arms appear like the wings of a swan.

Fokine remained dissatisfied with his lack of opportunities for innovative choreography at the Imperial Ballet. In 1909, he and dancer Vera (Verotchka) Antonova, who had been his student and whom he had married in 1905, left the Imperial Ballet and school. Fokine then joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes as the company’s chief choreographer. At the Ballets Russes, Fokine established the role of the choreographer as a visual artist who used dance movement to dramatize and interpret a story. While working with Diaghilev, he choreographed Les Sylphides , The Firebird, Le Spectre de la Rose, and Petrouchka, ballets that are still performed. Collaborating with composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Fokine continued to synthesize his choreography with the story line and music. In 1912, he left the Ballets Russes because of problems arising from Diaghilev’s association with dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Fokine worked in Russia until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. With Vera and their son, Vitale, he moved to Sweden, then to Denmark, and finally in 1919 to the United States. Fokine had a contract with Morris Gest to create the bacchanal in Aphrodite. Fokine found the United States very different from his native Russia when he tried to find dancers for his production. Due to the scarcity of ballerinas and the almost nonexistence of male dancers, he had to rely on amateur ballet and ballroom dancers for the performance.

During the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Fokines toured through many of the large cities in the eastern United States, starting their tour at the Metropolitan Opera House. They also opened a school of dance in their home. The Fokines continued to tour and to dance at galas, charities, and even movie theaters, but Fokine no longer had a ballet company. He began choreographing dances for Broadway musicals and other shows. He worked with the Shubert family, creators of Broadway as the center of theater in New York, and with the Ziegfeld Follies. The Fokines were well received in their performances. In three nights at Lewisohn Stadium, they danced before a combined audience of forty-eight thousand spectators. However, ballet had not yet caught the attention of the American public.

By the mid-1930’s, the aging Fokine had given up his idea of founding a ballet school in America. He returned to Europe and was once again creating ballets, soon choreographing seven new ballets. In 1942, Fokine was back in the United States. His last ballet, The Russian Soldier, had its first performance at the Boston Opera House on January 23, 1942. The following summer he went to Mexico City to direct the performance of Helen of Troy. He injured his leg and returned to New York. Shortly thereafter, he was hospitalized with pleurisy and developed pneumonia. He died on August 22 in New York. Fokine was honored by a memorial tribute in which seventeen ballet companies in various parts of the world simultaneously performed his ballet Les Sylphides.

Significance

Fokine was one of the most important ballet choreographers of the twentieth century. His ballets are part of the repertoire of all major ballet companies around the world. Harmonizing music, scenery, and dance, he created productions that were spectacular both in technical virtuosity and in the dancers’ emotion.

As chief choreographer for the Ballets Russes, he created ballets that revived the popularity of ballet in Europe. When he came to the United States, ballet was not a popular form of entertainment, and he found no important companies or schools. Fokine, however, did much to pave the way for the creation of the New York Ballet in 1948. Although the Russian Imperial Ballet (Maryinsky) had rejected his ideas when he was just beginning his career, a program entitled The Return of the Firebird was presented in his honor at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg on January 5, 1993. The Firebird, Petrouchka, and Scheherazade were performed under the direction of the premier dancer of the Bolshoi and Maryinsky Ballets, Andris Liepa, with the assistance of choreographer Isabella Fokine, Michel Fokine’s granddaughter. Fokine transformed ballet into a consummate artistic form and assured its enduring place among the great art forms.

Bibliography

Beaumont, Cyril W. Michel Fokine and His Ballets. Highstown, N.J.: Princeton Book Company, 1997. One of only a few books about Fokine’s work as a choreographer. Extensive detail about his ballets.

Chujoy, Anatole, ed. Fokine: Memoirs of a Ballet Master. Translated by Vitale Fokine. New York: Little, Brown, 1961. Fokine’s own comments on his choreography and his career. Translated by his son. Illustrated.

Garafola, Lynn, ed. The Ballets Russes and Its World. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Collection elucidating the impact Diaghilev and the company had on the dance world. Discusses how they changed ballet, its choreography, and its performance.

Reynolds, Nancy, and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. A rare look at Fokine’s work. Includes the chapters “Experimentalism in Ballet: Diaghilev, Fokine, and the Russian Legacy, 1900-1930’s” and “A World Apart: Dance in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-1960’s.”

Surits, Elisabeth. The Great History of Russian Ballet: Its Art and Choreography. Richford, Vt.: Parkstone Press, 1999. A detailed, in-depth treatment of ballet technique and performance in accord with Russian standards, which Fokine challenged.