Serge Lifar

Russian dancer and choreographer

• Born: April 2, 1905
• Birthplace: Kiev, Russia
• Died: December 15, 1986
• Place of death: Lausanne, Switzerland

As a dancer and choreographer, Lifar reestablished the Paris Opéra’s leading role in the world of ballet by a series of innovative reforms: enhancing the role of male dancers, bringing modern concepts to the classical repertoire of the Opéra, and making dance the dominant element by emphasizing rhythm independently of music. His ballets are considered modern in subject and decor but classical in structure.

Early Life

Serge Lifar (SYIR-gey lyi-FAHR) grew up in Kiev, where he attended the gymnasium, studied violin and piano at the Kiev Conservatory, and practiced dance at the State School under Bronisława Nijinska, sister of the great Vaslav Nijinsky. Lifar says in his autobiography, Ma Vie (1965; English translation, 1970), that, although Russian composers bored him, he found consolation in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. At fourteen, he served in the White Army. When the Red Army occupied the Ukraine in 1920, Lifar fled to the forests, where he learned the kamarinskaia and gopak dances from the peasants. He returned to Kiev and resumed ballet with Nijinska, but she left Russia to join Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo. In 1923, Diaghilev asked her to recruit her five best Russian pupils at the Kiev Opera. When Lifar joined this select group, he was barely seventeen. After Lifar had escaped Soviet Russia and made his way to Monte Carlo, Diaghilev was disappointed in his dancing but agreed to keep him on.

Lifar first studied Les Noces of Igor Stravinsky as a member of the ensemble and later was given a small role in Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s Schéhérazade as the slave, because he had attracted the eye of Aleksandr Benois, Diaghilev’s close friend. He also danced the officer in Les Facheux (1924), based on Molière’s play, with music by Georges Auric and decor by Georges Braque. Again, he was spotted in Darius Milhaud’s Le Train bleu the same year. Two of Diaghilev’s closest collaborators and patrons, Misia Sert and Coco Chanel, insisted that Lifar had talent; Sert and Chanel were later to become Lifar’s good friends. Through their influence, Lifar was given a major role in Cimarosiana, choreographed by Léonide Massine with decor by Sert. By 1925, Lifar had become Diaghilev’s premier danseur and did Borée in Vladimir Dukelsky’s Zephyr et Flore. He also took leading roles in Les Matelots and Barabau.

In 1926, Lifar had to pass an examination to please Nijinska, which he did brilliantly, and danced opposite the great Tamara Karsavina. Beginning in 1927, he began dancing with another newcomer, Diaghilev’s new prima ballerina, Olga Spessivtzeva. Many roles now fell to him: He did a revival of Romeo et Juliette, La Pastorale, and The Triumph of Neptune. By 1927, he had danced in La Chatte for Diaghilev’s new choreographer, George Balanchine, with Spessivtzeva. This ballet is famous for its constructivist decor by two émigré Soviet artists, Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner. Interestingly, in 1927 he also did Le Pas d’Acier, Sergei Prokofiev’s first score commissioned by Diaghilev.

The years 1928 and 1929 marked the apex of Lifar’s career with Diaghilev. He danced the title roles in Diaghilev’s most famous productions, The Prodigal Son of Prokofiev and Apollo of Stravinsky. Also, he did his first choreography for Le Renard by Stravinsky. Balanchine choreographed both Apollo and The Prodigal Son, perhaps the two most important ballets of the twentieth century. These last two years were epochal for ballet, and Lifar was at the center, giving definitive interpretations to each role. In Renard Lifar gained some notoriety because of his ingenious idea of having a double cast of dancers with acrobatic doubles dressed and masked alike so that the audience would believe that the cast was doing an amazing range of actions.

His apprenticeship ended with Diaghilev’s death on August 19, 1929. It was Lifar who stood vigil at Diaghilev’s bedside, ordered the death mask, and made all the funeral arrangements. At that moment it was clear to Lifar that he must not carry on Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes but take other opportunities that now presented themselves.

Life’s Work

Jacques Rouche, chief of the Paris Opéra, asked Lifar to produce Ludwig van Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus and star in it. Lifar asked Balanchine to do the choreography, but Balanchine fell sick and Lifar had to do it. He called on Spessivtzeva to be his partner. Lifar’s idea was to make Prometheus the central character, not his creatures, such as Death or Love. The chorus was to be a living backdrop of protagonists. This plastic conception was influenced by Diaghilevism, especially sharply broken lines and abrupt gestures. The success of this production led to his engagement as both premier danseur and maître de ballet at the Paris Opéra, posts that he retained, with the exception of the two years after the Occupation, until his retirement in 1959. His virtually unchallenged reign at the Opéra conveys the importance of his reputation and achievement. It was there that he raised the ballet company’s position to its former excellence.

Lifar produced more than one hundred ballets and revitalized the teaching and reputation of ballet in France. He also created the cult of Diaghilev. In his most celebrated roles, especially ballets created for himself such as Icare, Joan de Zoarissa, and David Triomphant, or in the revival of classics such as his part as Albrecht in Giselle, he became a performer of magnetism and worked with the greatest ballerinas of his time, particularly Yvette Chauvire and Nina Vryubova. He demanded and created at the Opéra an outstanding troupe by using Diaghilev’s methods. To choreography he added heroic boldness. He had his dancers work in parallel formation, feet placed in his own invented sixth and seventh positions with sharply held bodies and a brilliant use of beaten steps. To these highly angular positions and staccato movements he added his own rhythms before devising steps. Thus, for Lifar, ballet expresses certain fundamental emotions in choreographic terms and is created out of rhythms dictated not by the composer but by the choreographer himself.

Lifar had to have a first-class troupe, building it up from nothing by turning to the ballet schools of famous Russian émigrés. Out of these ballet schools came such dancers as Alicia Markova and Nina Vyrubova. Furthermore, Lifar tamed the wealthy subscribers to the Paris Opéra by eliminating them from rehearsals. At this time, during the 1930’s, Lifar was busy organizing an homage to Diaghilev’s memory, and he produced an original ballet for this purpose, Bacchus et Ariadne . Lifar did the choreography and danced Bacchus with Spessivtzeva as Ariadne. All of this was dedicated to the aesthetic tradition of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. What provoked a storm was Lifar’s leap of some eighteen feet into the wings, where he was caught by stagehands. It was at this time that he revived the Suite de Danses and Le Spectre de la Rose, in which he used Léon Bakst’s decors done for Diaghilev.

In the young Lifar’s first pieces, he had tried to revive Diaghilevism. Now he began to turn to a new classicism, a return to roots, but with the lessons of modernism having been learned. In 1931 and 1932, he gained a clearer idea of himself and instituted needed reforms at the Opéra. When Spessivtzeva left the Opéra, Lifar was fortunate in replacing her with Camille Bos. It was a time to think through his own theory and style. He was against expressionism and the theories of Kurt Jooss, who presented this alternative. To counter the ideas of Jooss, Lifar created his own. The catalyst for his ideas was a ballet incarnating man’s flight, Icare , in which dance could emerge independently of music. Lifar realized that dance was, in its purest form, an autonomous art, and to this end he wrote his now famous Le Manifeste du choregraphe in 1935.

In this manifesto, Lifar maintained that musical rhythm is born out of the dance’s rhythm, not vice versa. He did not assert, as he is widely misinterpreted to have done, that ballet should not be accompanied by music. Rather, what he did maintain was that rhythmic patterns were the true accompaniment of dance, not necessarily music. The choreographer, or, more correctly, the “choreauthor,” must compose his own rhythms, be free to invent, and not be bound by a musical framework. Furthermore, he developed the idea that dance at its purest attempts neither to express shades of emotions nor to be a narrative but that it can be an independent art. Though it can be a part of a spectacular production, dance cannot ultimately be used to illustrate another art, for it remains opposed to any kind of a program.

Lifar’s credo was “In the beginning was the dance,” which he called the alpha and omega of the dance’s art. The composer must construct a score in accordance with the rhythms laid down by the choreographer. It is the choreographer and he alone who is the true creator of the ballet. Dance, for Lifar, is built up from definite rhythmic patterns, and a dance movement is inseparable from its rhythm. The choreographer is responsible for the rhythm. Lifar wants the composer to work to the rhythms and patterns created by the choreographer. The ideal situation, he hints, is for the choreographer to be the composer to avoid any ambiguity. The next best is to persuade the composer to create a score on the rhythmic plan of the choreographer.

Mime, to Lifar, is only a legitimate element if used as an integral part of the dance itself. Gestures are of three kinds: unconscious, conscious, and conventional. The first is the best, the second should be used restrictively, and the third used little or not at all. In short, Lifar employs classical technique but distorts it to his own ends, which are to express fundamental emotions choreographically out of the rhythms dictated by the dance itself. Lifar gave these views their ultimate expression in his 1935 ballet, Icare. Lifar’s new aesthetic was that rhythm formed the link between dance and music but that everything rhythmical was not necessarily danceable. To prove his point, Lifar omitted music from Icare. Arthur Honegger orchestrated rhythms for an ensemble of percussion instruments. No music could be sober and austere enough for the Greek myth of flight. For Lifar, the ballet gained in abstraction without music. Icare was performed July 9, 1935, and answered affirmatively the question whether a ballet can exist without music.

From 1938 to 1939, Lifar left the Opéra to stage a grand homage to Diaghilev. In 1939, France nationalized the ballet. Maurice Chevalier, the popular singer, dubbed Lifar the “Prince of Paris.” The onset of World War II, however, saw Lifar trying hard to preserve the Opéra during the Occupation, even if it meant an arrangement with the Nazis. Under the Vichy regime, he was ordered to defend and preserve the national heritage of France. He sought to preserve it from Nazi persecution. His actions were often interpreted as collaboration and meant a two-year suspension after the liberation. He returned triumphantly in 1947 to the Opéra. His postwar ballets include such outstanding successes as Lucifer, Endymion, Phèdre, Les Noces fantastiques, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

Significance

Most of Serge Lifar’s ballets were considered modern but classical in structure, with dramatic themes drawn from mythology, legend, or the Bible. Lifar considered these themes appropriate for a restoration of the prestige of the Opéra, where classical ballet was first developed. Lifar attempted to convey drama through appropriate technique and choreography rather than through mime. His work was inspired by Diaghilev, and he carried on Diaghilev’s tradition during his undisputed reign at the Paris Opéra. Nevertheless, the critics believe that, as a choreographer, he did not leave much behind. It is as Lifar the dancer and theorist that he left his ultimate mark. Lifar was a pioneer of modernism and for that he will be remembered.

Bibliography

Anderson, Jack. Dance. New York: Newsweek Books, 1974. A general work on the realm of dance that places Lifar in context. Contains a chronology of dance, a selected bibliography, an index, and numerous photographs and drawings.

Brinson, Peter, and Clement Crisp. A Guide to the Repertory Ballet and Dance. London: David & Charles, 1980. This book is good for placing Lifar in the twentieth century world of ballet. It contains an especially enlightening section on him.

Buckle, Richard. Diaghilev. New York: Atheneum, 1979. Beyond being a superb biography, this book is an excellent history of ballet in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Buckle treats the formative years of Lifar’s career with great detail and places Lifar’s role into the larger picture.

Crisp, Clement. “Icare: Remembering Serge Lifar.” Dance Research 20, no. 2 (Winter, 2002): 3. Profile of Lifar, explaining his contributions to dance. This issue also features selected criticism of Lifar by André Levinson, an influential critic.

Franks, A. H. Twentieth Century Ballet. New York: Pitman, 1954. Chapter 5 is an excellent and succinct summary of Lifar’s career and a fine analysis of Lifar’s famous manifesto.

Grigoriev, S. L. The Diaghilev Ballet, 1909-1929. Translated by Vera Bowen. London: Constable, 1953. This personal recollection by Diaghilev’s stage manager contains a good, intimate picture of Lifar with an assessment of his strengths and weaknesses as told by a friend.

Lifar, Serge. Ma Vie. Translated by James Holman Mason. New York: World, 1970. This lively and entertaining autobiography is free of bias and reasonably objective. It is especially good on Lifar’s supposed collaboration with the Nazis.