It was in Germany that Isadora’s ideas made the deepest impression, and any legacy she may have left finds its expression in the “free” school that comes out of that country. If she had no abiding place, Berlin saw more of her when she was at her best than any other country. It was there that the term “goddess” was attached to her. Even the sick were brought to see the performances of theGöttliche HeiligeIsadora in order that they might be cured. The serious German writers were greatly impressed. Isadora expressed it thus: “The weekly receptions at our house in Victoria Strasse became the centre of artistic and literary enthusiasm. Here took place many learned discussions on the dance as a fine art; for the Germans take every art discussion most seriously, and give the deepest consideration to it. My dance became the subject of violent and even fiery debates. Whole columns constantly appeared in all the papers, sometimes hailing me as a genius of a newly discovered art, sometimes denouncing me as a destroyer of the real classic dance, i.e., the ballet.”
InImpresarioI have written about Isadora’s last American tour,under my management, in all its more lurid aspects. In February, 1923, she returned to France, and in 1924 went back to Russia with her poet-husband, Essenin. Not long after, Essenin hanged himself to a hook on the wall of his room in the Hotel Angleterre, in Leningrad. In 1927, Isadora returned to Paris, and on 8th July gave her last concert at the Théâtre Mogador.
Her last conversation with me in Paris was of the “children.” This time she was referring to the pupils at her school in Russia. As I listened, I could only feel that these “children” were to her but symbols of her own two children wastefully drowned in the Seine. She wanted me to bring her Russian “children” to America—a visit, as it were, of her own spirit to her native land which had refused to accept her.
I promised.
In 1928, I was able to fulfill that promise by bringing fifteen of them, chosen by Irma of the “Isadorables,” for a tour. Irma came with them, presided over them; brought them back for a second tour. Irma now lives quietly in the Connecticut countryside.
A twisting scarf, caught in the wheels of the car in which she was riding, ended the earthly career of a misunderstood American genius. Was the end deliberate? I only know she longed to die, she with the passionate love for life.
A tremendous freedom-loving American, she may, I feel, be called the first American dancer, in the sense that she brought a new style and a new manner, away from the accepted form of ballet. I, for one, believe that Isadora did more than any one else I know for the dance in America, and received less gratitude and recognition for her contribution.
Now that she is dead, I feel for her exactly as I always felt. Though we do not love our friends for one particular quality but as a whole, there is usually an element which, while the friend is still with us, especially appeals to us, and the memory of which we most cherish when he or she is absent for a while or for ever. For me that element in Isadora was and is the extreme gentleness hidden in her heart of hearts. Those who knew her only as a combative spirit in the world of the dance may be astonished at that statement. Yet I hold that gentleness to have been absolutely fundamental in her character and that not a few of her troubles were attributable to continuing and exasperating outrage of it.
There was a superficial side of her that may seem to contradictthat gentleness. She had exasperating eccentricities, stupid affectations. Her childishness and capriciousness, her downright wilfulness could drive me nearly to distraction. She could, and often did waste infinite hours of my time, and her own and others’ money. She lacked discipline in herself, her life, her work. She could have been less arbitrary in many things, including her condemnation of ballet. On the other hand, she had a quality of communication rare indeed in the theatre. Her faults were, as I have said, superficialities. At base she was a genuinely gentle person.
Just because she was gentle she could, her sympathy being aroused, exert herself to an extraordinary degree and after no gentle fashion on behalf of those things in which she believed, and of others, particularly artists. For the same reason, she frequently could not properly exert herself on her own behalf. She was weary (weary unto death at the last) when that spring of gentleness, in which some of her best work had its origin, failed her. Hers was an intellect, in my opinion, of wider range, of sterner mettle, of tougher integrity, of more persistent energy and of more imaginative quality than those of her detractors. I hold because of Isadora’s innate gentleness, and the fact it was so fundamental a thing in her, being exasperated both by the events of her life and by her intellect’s persistent commentary upon those events, she became towards the close so utterly weary and exhausted that any capacity for a rational synthesis was lost. Hers was a romantic nature, and a rational synthesis usually proceeds by the tenderness of the heart working upon the intellect to urge upon it some suspension of judgment, and not by the hardness of the intellect working upon the heart and bidding it, in reason’s name, to cease expecting to find things other and better than they are: the hearts of other humans more tender and their heads one whit less dense.
A few words on what has been criticized by many as her “free living.” Today an unthinking license prevails in many circles. If Isadora’s life displayed “license” in this sense, it certainly was not an unthinking “license.” Isadora strongly held theories about personal freedom of thought and behavior and dared to act according to them. Those theories may be wrong. That is a problem I have not here space to discuss. But that, believing in those theories, Isadora acted upon them and did not reserve them merely for academic discussion, I hold to her eternal credit. That Isadora did others and herself damage in the process must be admitted. But Ihave observed that many “conventional” persons do others and themselves a great deal of damage without displaying a tithe of Isadora’s integrity and courage, since they act crudely upon theories in which they no longer in their heart of hearts believe, or contradict their theories in captious action for lack of courage to discover new theories. Let us not forget that “few know the use of life before ’tis past.” Isadora died before she was fifty, endowed with a temperament little calculated to make easy the paths of true wisdom, paths which, I venture to suggest, often contradict the stereotyped notions of them entertained by those who are unable or unwilling too closely to consider the matter. To her personal tragedies must be added the depressing influence of the unfathomable indifference of her countrymen to art and artists and to herself.
I take it I have said enough to indicate that such “conventional” solutions as may occur to some readers were inadmissible in Isadora’s case, just as inadmissible in fact as they would be in a novel by Dostoievsky. In any event, she paid to the end for any mistakes she may have made, and it is not our duty to sit in judgment on her, whether one theoretically disapproves of her use of what sometimes has been called the “escape-road.” It is one’s duty to understand, and by understanding to forgive.
I have heard it remarked that there was a streak of cruelty in Isadora. Gentle natures of acute sensibility and strong intelligence, long exasperated by indifference and opposition to what they hold of sovereign importance in art and life, are apt to turn cruel and even vindictive at times. I never witnessed her alleged cruelty or vindictiveness to any one and I will not go on hearsay.
One of the great satisfactions of a long career in the world of dance is that I was able to be of some service to this neglected genius. I can think of no finer summation of her than the words of that strange, aloof genius of the British theatre, Gordon Craig, when he wrote:
“ .... She springs from the Great Race——From the line of Sovereigns, whoMaintain the world and make it move,From the Courageous Giants,The Guardians of Beauty——The Solver of all Riddles.”
“ .... She springs from the Great Race——From the line of Sovereigns, whoMaintain the world and make it move,From the Courageous Giants,The Guardians of Beauty——The Solver of all Riddles.”
“ .... She springs from the Great Race——From the line of Sovereigns, whoMaintain the world and make it move,From the Courageous Giants,The Guardians of Beauty——The Solver of all Riddles.”
B. COLORED LIGHTS AND FLUTTERING SCARVES
It is a far cry from Isadora to another American dancer, whose “children” I toured across America and back, in 1926.
Loie Fuller, “the lady with the scarf,” was at that period championed by her friend, the late Queen Marie of Roumania, when that royal lady embarked upon a lecture tour of the United States that same year. Loie Fuller was loosely attached to the royal entourage.
“La Loie” had established a school in Paris, and wanted to exhibit the prowess of her pupils. I was inveigled into bringing them quite as much by Loie Fuller’s dynamic, active manager, Mrs. Bloch, as I was by the aging dancer herself.
Loie Fuller was something of a phenomenon. Born in Chicago, in 1862, her first fame was gained as a child temperance lecturer in the mid-west. According to her biographers, she took some dancing lessons, but found the lessons too difficult and abandoned them after a short time. Switching to the study of voice, she gave up her youthful Carrie Nation attacks on alcohol and obtained a singing part in a stage production. As the story goes, while she was appearing in this stage role, a friend in India made her a gift of a long scarf of very light weight silk. Playing with her present, watching it float through the air with the greatest of ease, she found her vocation. It was as simple as that.
Here was something new: a dance in which a great amount of fluttering silk was kept aloft, the while upon it there constantly played variegated lights, projected by what in the profession is known as a “color-wheel,” a circular device containing various colored media, rotated before an arc-lamp. Thus was born theSerpentine Dance.
Here was no struggle on the part of the artist to find her medium of expression, no seeking for a new technique or slogging effort perfecting an old one; no hours spent sweating at thebarre; no heartache. Loie Fuller was not concerned with steps, with style, with a unique and individual quality of movement. Loie Fuller had a scarf. Loie Fuller had an instantaneous success. Her career was made on theSerpentine Dance. But she also had one other inspiration. A “sunrise” stage effect that she used was mistaken by the audience as a dance of fire, as the light rays touched her flowing scarves and draperies. “La Loie” was not one to miss a chance. She gathered her electricians about her—for in the early days of stage lightingwith electricity nothing was impossible. The revolving “light-wheels” were increased in number, as were the spot-lights.
Since all this happened in Paris, Loie Fuller’sDanse de Feubecame to France what theSerpentine Dancehad been to America. The French adopted her as their own. Widely loved, she became “La Loie.” Her stage arrangements were often startling; they could not always be called dancing. The arms and feet of her “children” were always subordinated to the movements of the draperies. So tricky was the business of the draperies that it is said that none of her designers or seamstresses were permitted to know more than a small part of their actual construction.
Her imitators were many, with the result that, for a time, the musical comedy stages of both Europe and America had an inundation of illuminated dry goods. It was the “children” who kept “La Loie’s” serpentine and fire dances alive.
When Loie Fuller suggested the American tour, the idea interested me because of the novelty involved. It was, incidentally, my only “incognito” tour. I accepted an invitation from Queen Marie of Roumania to visit her at the Royal Palace in Bucharest to discuss the proposed tour with Her Majesty and Loie Fuller, who was a close friend and confidante of the Queen. The tour was in the interest of one of the Queen’s pet charities and, moreover, it had diplomatic overtones. Naturally, under the circumstances, no managerial auspices were credited on the programmes.
In addition to the purely Loie Fuller characteristic numbers, the Loie Fuller Dancers, on this tour, offeredSome Dance Scenes from the Fairy Tale of Her Majesty Queen Marie’s“The Lilly of Life,” aspresented at the Grand Opera, Paris.
Apart from this, the “children” had all the old Loie Fuller tricks, and a few new ones. Their dance vocabulary was far from extensive, but there was a pleasant enough quality about it.
When I made the tour, in association with Queen Marie, the “children” were, to put it kindly, on the mature side; and it took a great deal of their dramatic, vital and dynamic managers drive to keep the silks fluttering aloft. Mrs. Bloch was a remarkable woman, who had handled the “children” for Loie Fuller a long time.
The tour of the Loie Fuller Dancers is not one of my proudest achievements; but I know the gay colours, the changing lights brought pleasure to many.
Years later, on a visit to Paris, I received a telephone call fromMrs. Bloch, requesting an appointment. It was arranged for the following day. At the appointed hour I went down to the foyer of the Hotel Meurice to await her coming.
Some minutes later, I observed an elderly lady, supported by a cane, enter and cross the foyer, walking slowly as the aged do, and using her cane noticeably to assist her. I paid scant attention until, from where I sat near the desk, I overheard her explaining to theconciérgethat she had a “rendezvous” with Monsieur Hurok.
I simply did not recognize the human dynamo of 1926. A quarter of a century had slipped by. Much of that time, she told me, she had spent in Africa. Despite the change in her physical appearance, despite the toll of the years, the flame still burned within her.
Her mission? To try to get me to bring the Loie Fuller Dancers to America for another tour.
As I observed the changes that had taken place in their manager, I could not help visualizing what twenty-five years must have done to the “children.”
C.A TEUTONIC PRIESTESS
My dance associations in what I may call my “early middle” period led me into excursions far afield from that form of dance expression which is to me the most completely satisfying form of theatrical experience.
For the sake of the record, let us set the date of this period as 1930. Surely there have been few in the history of the dance whose approach to the medium was so foreign to and so different from the classical ballet, where lie my deepest interests and my chief delight, than that Teutonic priestess, Mary Wigman.
When I brought Wigman to America, shortly after the Great Crash, she was no longer young. She had been born in Germany, in 1886, and could hardly have been called a “baby ballerina.” Originally a pupil of Emile Jacques Dalcroze, the father of Eurhythmics, whose pupils in a “demonstration” had kindled Wigman’s interest in the dance, she did not remain long with him. Dalcroze himself, at this stage, apparently had little interest in dancing. However, he established certain methods which proved of interest to certain gifted dancers. The Dalcroze basis was musical, and his chief function was to foster a feeling for music in his pupils. Music frustrated, handicapped, restricted her, Wigman felt. Individualist that shewas, she left her teacher in order to work out her own dance destiny. There followed a period of some uncertainty on her part, and, for a time, she became a pupil of the Hungarian teacher, Rudolf von Laban, who laid down in pre-war Germany the foundations for modern dance. Unlike Isadora Duncan, Laban had no aversion to ballet. As a matter of fact, he liked much of it, was influenced by it; was impressed by the Diaghileff Ballet, was friendly with Diaghileff, and became an intimate of Michel Fokine. His later violent reaction from ballet was certainly not based on lack of knowledge of it.
At the Laban school, Wigman collaborated with him, and having a streak of choreographic genius, was able to put some of Laban’s theories into practical form. However, Mary Wigman’s forceful personality was greater than any school and, in 1919, she broke away from Laban, and formed a school of her own. She abandoned what were to her the restricting influences of formal music, as Isadora had abandoned clothing restrictions. A dancer of tremendous power, like Isadora she had an overwhelming personality. Again, like Isadora, all this had a tendency to make her pupils only pale imitations of herself. Wigman’s public career, a secondary matter with her, actually began in Dresden, in 1918, with herSeven Dances of Life. Dresden was her temple. Here the Teutonic Priestess of the Dance presided over her personal religion of movement. German girls were joined by Americans. The disciples grew in number and spread out through Germany like proselyting missionaries. Wigman groups radiated the gospel until one found schools and factories and societies turning outen massefor “demonstrations” of the Wigman method. I have said that Wigman found music a deterrent to her method.
On the other hand, one of the most important features of her “school” was a serious, thorough, Germanic research into the question of what she felt was the proper musical accompaniment for dance. Her pupils learned to devise their own rhythmic accompaniment. In her show pieces, at any rate, Wigman’s technique was to have the music for the dance composed simultaneously with the creation of the dance movements—certainly a new type of collaboration.
In addition to forming a “schule,” where great emphasis was laid on “spannungen,” perhaps best explained as tensions and relaxations, she also created a philosophical cult in that strange hot-house that was pre-war Germany, with an intellectualized approach to sex.
I had known about her and her work long before I signed acontract with her for the 1930-1931 season. Pavlova had talked to me about her and had aroused my curiosity and interest; but I was unable to imagine what might be America’s reaction to her. I was turning the idea over in my mind, when there appeared at my office,—in those days in West Forty-second Street, overlooking Bryant Park,—a young and earnest enthusiast to plead her case. His name was John Martin.
In an earlier chapter I have pointed out the low estate of dance criticism of that period. In its wisdom, theNew York Timeshad, shortly before the period of which I now write, taken tentative steps to correct this deficiency by creating a dance department on the paper, with John Martin engaged to report the dance. Martin’s earnest and special pleading on behalf of Mary Wigman moved me and, as always, eager to experiment and present something new and fresh, I decided to cast the die.
The effect of my first announcement of her coming was a bit disconcerting. The first to react were the devotees. There was a fanaticism about them that was disturbing. It is one thing to have a handful of vociferous idolaters, and quite another to be able to fill houses with paying customers night after night.
When I met Wigman at the pier on her arrival in New York, I greeted a middle-aged muscular Amazon, a rather stuffy appearing Teutonic Amazon, wearing a beaver coat of dubious age, and a hat that had seen better days. But what struck me more forcibly than the plainness of her apparel was the woman herself. She greeted me with a warm smile; her gray eyes were large, frank, and widely set; and from beneath the venerable and rather battered hat, fell a shock of thick, wavy brown hair. She spoke softly, deeply, in a completely unaccented English with a British intonation.
There was no ballet company with her, no ship-load of scenery, properties and costumes. Her company was made up of two persons in addition to herself: a lesser Amazon in the person of Meta Mens, who presided over Wigman’s costumes—one trunk—and her percussion instruments—tam-tams, Balinese gongs, and a fistful of reedy wind instruments; the other, a lanky, pale-faced chap with hyper-thyroid eyes, Hanns Hastings, who composed and played such music as Wigman used.
On the day before the opening, I gave a party at the Plaza Hotel as a semi-official welcome on the part of our American dancers, among whom were included that great pioneer of our nativecontemporary dance, Martha Graham, together with Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and, of course, that champion of the modern dance, John Martin.
Much depended upon Wigman’s first New York performance. A tour had been arranged, but not booked. There is a decided difference in the terms. In the language of the theatre, a tour is not “booked” until the contracts have been signed. The preliminary arrangements are called “pencilling in.” The pencil notations are inked only when signatures are attached to the contracts. If the New Yorkpremièrefizzled, there would be no inking. I had taken the Forty-sixth Street Theatre, and the publicity campaign under the direction of my good friend, Gerald Goode, had been under way for weeks.
It was a distinguished audience and a curious one that assembled in the Forty-sixth Street Theatre for the opening performance. It was an enthusiastic one that left at the end. I had gone back stage before the curtain rose to wish Wigman well, but the priestess was unapproachable. As she did before each performance, she entered the “silence.” Under no circumstances did she permit any disturbance. She would arrive at the theatre a long time before the scheduled time of the curtain’s rise, and, in her darkened dressing-room, lie in a mystic trance. Later she danced as one possessed.
If the opening night audience was enthusiastic, which it was, I am equally sure some of its members were confused. At later performances, as I stood in my customary position at the rear of the auditorium as the public left the theatre, I was not infrequently pressed by questions. These questions, however they may have been phrased, meant the same thing. “What do the dances mean?” “What is she trying to say?” “What does it all signify?” I am not easily embarrassed, as a rule. The constant reiteration of this question, however, proved an exception.
For the benefit of a generation unfamiliar with the Wigman dance, I should explain that her dances were, as she called them, “cycles.” In other words, her performances consisted of groups of dances with an alleged relationship: a relationship so difficult to discern, however, that I suspect it must have existed only in Wigman’s mind. The one dance that stands out most vividly in my mind is one she calledMonotonie. InMonotonie, Wigman stood in the dead center of the stage. Then she whirled and whirled and whirled. As the whirling continued she was first erect, then slowly crouching,slowly rising until she was erect again; but always whirling, the while a puny four-note phrase was endlessly repeated. Through a sort of self-hypnosis, her whirling had an hypnotic effect on her. In a sort of mystic trance herself, Wigman succeeded, up to a point, in inducing a similar reaction on her public.
But what did it mean? I did not know, but I was determined to find out. Audience members, local managers, newspaper men were badgering me for an answer. To any query that I put to Wigman, her deep-throated reply was always the same:
“Oh, the meaning is too deep; I really can’t explain it.”
It was much later, during the course of the tour following the New York season, that I arrived at the “meaning” of Wigman’s dances, and that will be told in its proper place.
After the tumult and the shouting had died that opening night at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre, I took Wigman to supper with some friends. As we left the theatre together, Wigman was still in her trance; but, as the food was served, she came out of it with glistening eyes and a rapid-fire sort of highly literate chatter, in the manner of one sliding back to earth from the upper world.
The party over and Wigman back in her hotel, I sat up to await the press notices. They were splendid. No one dared describe her “meaning,” but all were agreed that here was a dynamic force in dance that drove home her “message.” The notice I awaited most eagerly was that of theNew York Times. The first City Edition did not carry it, something which I attributed to the lateness of the final curtain. I waited for the Late City Edition. Still not a line about Wigman. I simply could not understand.
For years I had struggled to have the dance treated with respect by the press. Through the Pavlova days I talked and tried to convert editors to a realization of its importance. Any readers who are interested have only to turn up the files of their local newspapers and read the “reviews” of the period of the Pavlova and Diaghileff companies to find that ballet, in most cases, was “covered” by disgruntled music critics, who had been assigned, in many cases obviously against their wills, to review. You would find that the average music critic either overtly disliked ballet and had said so, or else treated it flippantly.
At the time of Wigman’s arrival in America, the ice had been broken, as I have said, by the appointment of John Martin at the head of a full-time dance department at theNew York Times. MaryWatkins, eager, enthusiastic, informed, was fulfilling a like function on theNew York Herald-Tribune. Thus dance criticism was on its way to becoming professional; and the men and women of knowledge and taste and discernment who criticize dance today, I cannot criticize. For I have respect for the professional.
TheNew York Timesreview of Wigman’s opening performance did not appear. Since John Martin had urged me to bring Wigman to America, it was the more baffling. Prior to Martin’s engagement by theNew York Times, that remarkable and beloved figure, William (“Bill”) Chase, for so many years the editor of the music department of theTimesand formerly the music critic of theSun, and to the end of his life my very good friend, had “reported” the dance. Since he insisted he knew nothing about it, he never attempted to criticize it. I had frequently suggested to “Bill” that theTimesshould have a qualified person at the head of abona fidedance department. Eventually John Martin was engaged, and I am happy to have been able to play a part in the beginnings of the change on the part of the American press.
I have mentioned that the change was gradual, for Martin’s articles at first were unsigned and had no by-line. In the early days, Martin merely reported on dance events. To be sure, at that time, there was little enough to report. Then Leonide Massine was brought to the Roxy Theatre by the late Samuel Rothapfel to stage weekly presentations of ballet; and then there was something about which to write. Since then John Martin has helped materially to spread the gospel of ballet and dance.
It was at approximately the Massine-Roxy stage of the dance criticism development that I searched theTimesfor the Wigman notice. Most of the newspapers carried rave reviews, and because they did, I was the more mystified, since in theTimesthere was not so much as a mention even that the event had taken place. However, out-of-town friends, including the late Richard Copley, well-known concert manager, telephoned me from New Jersey to congratulate me on the glowing review they had read in the Suburban Edition, and read it to me over the telephone. There were dozens of other calls from suburban communities to the same effect.
I called the editorial department of theTimesto enquire about its omission from the New York City edition. There was some delay, but eventually I was informed that it would seem that the night city editor had read John Martin’s story in the Suburban Edition,saw that it carried no by-line, no signature; read its glowing and enthusiastic account of the Wigmanpremière; and because it was so fulsome in its enthusiasm, assumed it was merely a piece of press-agent’s ballyhoo, and forthwith pulled it out of all other editions.
Armed with this information, I proceeded to bombard theTimeswith protests. One of these was directly to the head of the editorial department, whom I asked to reprint the notice that had been dropped. I was rather summarily told I was not to try to dictate to theTimeswhat it should print. By now utterly exasperated, I got hold of my friend “Bill” Chase, who drily counselled me to “keep my shirt on.” Chase immediately went on a tour of investigation. He called me back to tell me that the Board of Editors at their daily meeting had gone into the matter but were unwilling to print the notice I had asked, since they had been “scooped” by the other newspapers and it was, therefore, no longer news: but, they had decided that, in the future, Martin would have a by-line. Then Chase added, with that wry New England humour of his for which he was famous, that, with the possession of a by-line, no editor would dare “kill” a review. It might, of course, be cut for space, but never “killed.”
The next Sunday the readers of theNew York Timesread John Martin’s notice of Mary Wigman’s first performance, and it was uncut. But it was a paid advertisement, bearing, in bold-faced type, the heading: “THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO REPRINT.”
As a result of the New Yorkpremière, the “pencilled” tour was “inked,” and I traveled most of the tour with the Priestess. Newspaper men continued to demand to know the “meaning” of her dances. Since Wigman, most literate of dancers, refused any explanation, I made up my own. I told a reporter that Wigman was continuing and developing the work of Isadora Duncan. The reporter wrote his story. It was printed. Wigman read it without comment. From then on, however, Wigman’s reply to all queries on the subject was: “Where Isadora Duncan stopped, there I began.”
The quickly “inked” tour was a success beyond any anticipations I had had, and a second tour was booked and played with equal success. The mistake I made was when I brought her back for a third season, and with a group of her disciples. America would accept one Wigman; but twenty husky, bulky Teutonic Amazons in bathing suits with skirts were more than our public could take.
Moreover, the group was not typical of the Wigman “schule” atanything like its best. As a matter of fact, it was a long way from the Teutonic Priestess’s highest standards.
It was after the war. Mrs. Hurok and I were paying our first post-war visit to Switzerland, and stopped off at Zurich. My right-hand bower, Mae Frohman, had come to Zurich to join us. We learned that Wigman was there as well, giving master-classes in association with Harald Kreutzberg. Our initial efforts to find her were not successful.
Mrs. Hurok, Miss Frohman and I were at dinner. We were unaware that another diner in the same restaurant was Mary Wigman. It was Miss Frohman who recognized her as she was leaving the room. Wigman had changed. Time had taken its inevitable toll. The meeting was a touching one. We all foregathered in the lounge for a talk. Things were not easy for her; nor was conversation exactly smooth. Her Dresden “schule” had been commandeered by the Nazis. She was now living in the Russian sector of Germany. It had been very difficult for her to obtain permission from the Russian authorities to come to Zurich for her master-classes. She was obliged to return within a fixed period. She preferred not to talk about the war. Conversation, as I have said, was not easy. But there are things which do not require saying. My sympathies were aroused. The great, strong personality could never be quite erased, nor could the fine mind be utterly stultified.
I watched and remembered a great lady and a goodly artist. It is gratifying to me to know that she is now resident in the American zone of Berlin, and able to continue her classes.
A. A SPANISH GYPSY
SUCHwas 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 Iberian dancers of all time.
Pavlova had championed Duncan and Wigman. I had brought them. I determined to bring Escudero to help round out the catholicity of my dance presentations. Spanish dancing had always intrigued me, and I had a soft spot for gypsies of all nationalities.
Escudero, who had been the partner of the ineffable Argentina, had earned a reputation which, to understate, bordered on the picturesque. Small, wiry, dark-skinned, with an aquiline nose, he wore his kinky, glossy black hair long to cover a lack-lustre bald spot. He, like most Spanish gypsies, claimed descent from the Moors, and there was about him more of the Arab than the Indian. As I watched him I could understand how he must have borne within him the stigma of the treatment Spain had meted out to his people;for it was not until the nineteenth century that the gypsies in Spain had any freedom at all. Until then, they were pariahs, hounded by the people, hounded by the law. Only within the last fifty-or-so years has the Spanish gypsy come into his own with the universal acknowledgment of being a creative artist, the originator of a highly individual and beautiful art.
Escudero was a Granada gypsy, a “gitano” from the white caves hollowed out in the Sacred Mountain. I point this out in order to distinguish him from his Sevillian cousins, the “flamenco.” His repertoire ranged through theZapateado, theSoleares, theAlegrias, theBulerias, theTango, theZamba. His special triumph was theFarruca.
It was on the 17th January, 1932, that I introduced Vicente Escudero to New York audiences at the 46th Street Theatre, where Wigman had had her triumph. A number of New York performances were given, followed by a brief tour, which, in turn, was succeeded by a longer coast-to-coast tour the following year. His company consisted of four besides himself: a pianist, a guitarist; the fiery, shrewish Carmita, his favorite; and the shy, gentle-voiced Carmela.
But it was Escudero’s sinister, communicative personality that drew and held audiences. His gypsy arrogance shone in his eyes, in the audacious tilt of his flat-brimmed hat, in his complete assurance; above all it stood out in his strutting masculinity. Eschewing castanets, for gypsy men consider their use effeminate, he moved sinuously but majestically, with the clean heel rhythm and crackling fingers that marked him as the outstanding gypsy dancer of his day and, quite possibly, of all time. For accompaniment there was no symphony orchestra, only the hoarse syncopation of a single guitar. Through half-parted lips shone the gleaming ivory of small, perfectly matched teeth.
For two successful seasons I toured Escudero across America, spreading a new and thrilling concept of the dance of Spain to excited audiences, audiences that reached a tremendous crescendo of fervor at the climax of hisFarruca. No theatricalFarrucathis, but a feline, animal dance straight from the ancient Spanish gypsy camp.
I had been forewarned to be on my guard. However, though his arrival in America had been preceded by tall tales of his completely unmanageable nature, Escudero proved to be one of the simplest,most tractable artists I ever have handled. There was on his part an utter freedom from the all too usual fits of “temperament,” a complete absence of the hysterics sometimes indulged in—and all too often—by artists of lesser talents. I happen to know, from other sources than Escudero, that he took a dim view of American food, hotels, and the railway train accommodations in the remoter parts of this great land. He never complained to me. Escudero had his troubles with Carmita and Carmela, as they vied with each other for position and his favors. But these troubles never were brought to my official attention. Like the head of a gypsy camp, he was the master. He ruled his little troupe and distributed both favors and discipline.
In 1935, Escudero made his last American appearance, when I presented the Continental Revue at the Little Theatre, now the New York Times Hall. Among those appearing with Escudero in this typical European entertainment were the Frenchchanteuse, Lucienne Boyer, Mrs. Hurok, Lydia Chaliapine, Rafael, together with that comic genius, Nikita Balieff, as master of ceremonies.
Other and younger dancers of Spain continue to spread the gospel of the Iberian dance. I venture to believe that, highly talented though many of them are, I may say with incontrovertible truth, there has been only one Escudero.
B. A SWISS COMEDIAN
In 1931, a slight, short Swiss girl named Trudi Schoop with the dual talents of a dancer and a comedienne—a combination not too common—organized a company in her native Switzerland. She named it the Trudi Schoop Comic Ballet.
The ParisArchives Internationales de la Danse, formed in 1931 by Rolf de Maré, the Swedish dance patron who was responsible for the Swedish Ballet in the early ’twenties, in 1932 sponsored the first International Choreographic Competition in Paris. The prize-winning work in this initial competition was won by Kurt Joos for his now famousThe Green Table. The second prize went to this hitherto almost unknown Trudi Schoop, for her comic creation,Fridolin.
In 1936, I brought her with her company for their first tour. Here again was a fresh and new form of dance entertainment. Tiny, with a shock of boyishly cut blonde hair, Trudi Schoop had the body of a young lad, and a schoolboy’s face alternating impishnesswith the benign innocence of the lad caught with sticky fingers and mouth streaked with jam.
Her repertoire consisted of theatre pieces rather than ballets in the accepted sense of the term. Trudi herself was a clown in the sense Charles Chaplin is a clown. Her range was tremendous. With a company trained by her in her own medium of gentle satire, she was an immediate success. Her productions had no décor, and there was a minimum of costume. But there was a maximum of effective mime, of wit, of satire. Her brother, Paul Schoop, was her composer, conductor, accompanist.
Trudi Schoop’s outstanding success was the prize-winning work,Fridolin. Schoop was Fridolin; Fridolin was Schoop. Fridolin was an innocent boy in a black Sunday suit and hat who stumbled and bumbled through a world not necessarily the best of all possible, wringing peals of laughter out of one catastrophe after another.
Other almost equally happy and successful works in her repertoire includedHurray for Love;The Blonde Marie, the tale of a servant girl who eventually becomes an operatic diva; andWant Ads, giving the background behind those particularly humorous items that still appear regularly in the “Agony Column” ofThe Times(London); you know, the sort of announcement that reads: “Honourable Lady (middle fifties) seeks acquaintance: object matrimony.”
The critical fraternity dubbed her the “funniest girl in the world”; the public adored her, and theatre folk made her their darling. Prior to the outbreak of the war, I sent Trudi and her Swiss Comedians across America. When, at last, war broke in all its fury, Schoop retired to her native Switzerland and disbanded her company. She did not reassemble it until 1946; and in 1947 I brought them over again for a long tour of the United States and Canada. On this most recent of her tours, in addition to her familiar repertoire, we made a departure by presenting an evening-long work, in three acts, calledBarbara. This was, so far as I know, the first full-length work to be presented in dance form in many cities and towns of the North American continent. Full length, of course, in the sense that one work occupied a full evening for the telling of its story. This is another form of dance pioneering in which I am happy to have played a part.
Today Trudi Schoop, who has retired from the stage, lives with her sister in Hollywood.
C. A HINDU DEITY
Back in 1924, in London, I had watched a young Hindu dancer with Pavlova in her ballet,Hindu Wedding. I was struck by the quality of his movement and by the simple beauty of the dance of India.
His name was Uday Shan-Kar. From Pavlova I learned that he was the son of a Hindu producer of plays, that he had been trained by his father, and had worked so successfully in collaboration with him in the production of native Hindu mimed dramas that Pavlova had persuaded Shan-Kar to return to London to assist her in the production of an Indian ballet she had in mind, based on the Radna-Krishna legend. Pavlova succeeded in persuading him to dance in the work as well.
Later I saw him at the Paris Colonial Exposition, where, with his company which he had organized in India, he made a tremendous impression, subsequently achieving equal triumphs in England, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Switzerland. At the Paris Exposition I saw long Hindu dramas, running for hours, beautifully and sumptuously produced, but played with the greatest leisure. Since I am committed to candor in this account of my life in the dance, I must admit that I saw only parts of these danced dramas, took them in relays, for I must confess mine is a nature that cannot remain immobile for long stretches at a time before a theatre form as unfamiliar as the Indian was to me then.
Gradually I came to know it, and I realized that in India formal mime and dance are much more a part of the life of the people than they are with us. With the Indian, dance is not only an entertainment, but a highly stylised stage art; it plays an important part in religious ritual; it is a genuinely communal experience.
As night after night I watched parts of these symbolic dance dramas of Hindu mythology, fascinated by them, I searched for a formula whereby they might be made palatable and understandable to American audiences. I was certain that, as they were being danced in Paris, to music strange and unfamiliar to Western ears, going on for hours on end, the American public was not ready for them, and would not accept them.
I put the matter straight to Shan-Kar. I told him I wanted to bring him and his art to America. He told me he wanted to come. Possessed of a fine scholarship, a magnificent three-fold talent asproducer, choreographer, and dancer-musician, he also possessed to a remarkable degree a sense of theatre showmanship and an intuition that enabled him to grasp and quickly understand the space and time limitations of the non-oriental theatre.
Shan-Kar’s association with Pavlova, together with his own fine intelligence, made his transition from the dance theatre of the Orient to an adaptation of it acceptable to the West a comparatively simple task for him.
His success in America exceeded my most optimistic predictions. Until the arrival of Shan-Kar, America had not been exposed to very much of the dance of India. Twenty years before, the English woman known as Roshanara had had a vogue in esoteric circles with her adaptations of the dances of India and the East. On the other hand, the male dancing of India was virtually unknown. As presented by Shan-Kar, this was revealed in an expressive mime, with an emphasis on the enigmatic face, the flat hand, using the upper part of the body as the chief medium of expression, together with the unique use of the neck and shoulders, not only for expression, but for accentuation of rhythm. New, also, to our audiences were the spread knees, a type of movement exclusive to the male Indian dancer.
Here was an art and an artist that seemingly had none of the conventional elements of a popular success. About him and his presentations there was nothing spectacular, nothing stunning, nothing exciting. Colour was there, to be sure; but the dancing and the general tone of the entertainment was all of a piece, on a single level, soothing, and with that elusive, almost indefinable quality: the serenity of the East.
Our associations, save for a brief period of mistrust on my part, have always been pleasant. In addition to the original tour of 1932, I brought him back in the season 1936-1937, and again in 1938-1939. The war, of course, intervened, and I was unable to bring him again until the season 1949-1950.
At the outbreak of the war, through the benefaction of the Elmhirst Foundation of Dartington Hall, England, an activity organized by the former Dorothy Straight, Shan-Kar was enabled to found a school for the dance and a center for research into Hindu lore, which he set up in Benares. One outcome of this research center was the production of a motion picture film dealing with this lore.
After seeing many of the Eastern dances and dancers who have been brought to Western Europe and the United States, I am convinced Uday Shan-Kar is still the outstanding exponent. I hope to bring him again for further tours, for I feel the more the American people are exposed to his performances, the better we shall understand the fine and delicate art of the East, and the East itself.
D. A SPANISH LADY
Although my taste for the dances of Spain had been whetted by my association with Escudero, I had long wished to present to America the artist whom I knew was the finest exponent of the feminine dance of the Iberian peninsula. The task was by no means an easy one, for her first American venture had been a fiasco. The lady from Spain was anything but eager to risk another North American venture.
Her name was Encarnacion Lopez. But it was as Argentinita that she was known to and loved by all lovers of the dance of Spain, and recognized by them as its outstanding interpreter of our time. Her story will bear re-telling. My enthusiasm, my utmost admiration for the Spanish dance, and for the great art of Argentinita is something that is not easy for me to express. Diaghileff is known to have said with that unequivocation for which he was noted: “There are two schools of dancing: the Classic Ballet, which is the foundation of all ballet; and the Spanish school.”
I would have put it differently by saying that Classic Ballet and the Spanish school are the two types of dancing closest to my heart.
My first view of Argentinita was at New York’s Majestic Theatre, in 1931, when she made her Americandébutin Lew Leslie’s ill-fatedInternational Revue. This performance, coincidentally enough, also brought forth for his first American appearance, the British dancer, Anton Dolin, who later also came under my management and who, like Argentinita, was to become a close personal friend. For Dolin, the opening night of theInternational Revuewas certainly no very conspicuous beginning; for Argentinita, however, it was definitely a sad one. This charming, quiet-voiced lady of Spain knew that she was a great artist. Thrust into the hurly-burly of an ineptly produced Broadway revue, where all was shouting and screaming, Argentinita continued her quiet way and, artist that she was, avoided shouting and screaming her demands.
I was present at the opening performance. Although she was outwardly calm, collected, restrained, I could sense the ordeal through which Argentinita was going. In order to insure properrhythmic support, she had brought her own orchestra conductor from Spain. This gentleman was able to speak little, if any, English. From where I sat I could see the musicians poring over their parts and could hear them commenting to each other about the music. Obviously the parts were in bad order and, equally obviously, there had been little or no rehearsal; and, moreover, it appeared the music was difficult to read at short notice.
It was one of those strange ironies of fate that ruined something that, properly handled, should and would have been a triumph. Yet it was not only the orchestra and the music that were at fault. Argentinita herself was shockingly presented, if she can honestly be said to have been presented at all. She made her entrance as a Spanish peasant, in a Spanish peasant costume which, though correct in every detail, was devoid of any effect of what the average audience thinks is Spanish. She was asked to dance in a peasant scene against a fantastic set purporting to be Spanish, surrounded by a bevy of Broadway showgirls in marvellous exotic costumes, also purporting to be Iberian, with trains yards in length, which were no more authentically Spanish, or meant to be, than were those of the tango danced by that well-known ball-room dancing team of Moss and Fontana, who came on later in the same scene.
Under such circumstances, success for Argentinita was out of the question. So bitter was her disappointment that she left the cast and the company two weeks after the opening. Later she gave a Sunday night recital in her own repertoire, and although I set to work immediately to persuade her that there was an audience for her in America, a great, enthusiastic audience, such were her doubts that it took me six years to do it. I knew she was a born star, for I recognized, shining in the tawdry setting of this revue, a vivacious theatre personality.
When Argentinita finally returned to America, in 1938, under my management, and made her appearance on 13th November of that year, at the Majestic Theatre, on the same stage where, seven years before, she had so utterly and tragically failed, this time to enthusiastic cheers and a highly approving press, she admitted I had been correct in my judgment and in my insistence that she return.
There is little point in recounting at this time her subsequent triumphs all over America, for her hold on the public increased with each appearance, and she is all too close to the memories of contemporary dance lovers. I have said that Argentinita was a great artist. That will bear repeating over and over again. Every gesture she made was feminine and beautiful and, to my mind, she portrayed everything that was lovely and most desirable. While her castanets may not actually have sung, they spoke of many lovely things. Argentinita was a symbol of the womanhood of Spain, warm, rich-blooded, wholesome, and I always felt certain there were not enough hats in the world, least of all in Spain, to throw at her feet to pay her the homage that was her due.
Argentinita was born of Spanish parents in Buenos Aires, in 1898, and taken back to Spain by them when she was four years old. At that early age she commenced her training in the Spanish dance in all its varied forms and styles, for she was equally at home in the Spanish Classic dance as she was in the Gypsy or Flamenco dances. Those who saw the poem she could make fromlas Solearesof Andulasia, the basic rhythm of all Spanish gypsy dances, know how she gave them the magic of a magic land; or the gayAlegrias, performed in the sinuous manner, rich with contrasts of slow, soft, and energetic movements, with the characteristic stamping, stomping, sole-tapping, clapping, and finger-snapping. It was in theAlegriasthat Argentinita let her fancy roam with the slow tempo of the music. The European dance analysts had noted that here, as also at other times and places, Argentinita danced to please herself. When the tempo quickened, her mood changed to one of gaiety and abandon.
It is a difficult matter for me to pin down my memories of this splendid artist and her work:las Sevillianas, the national dance of Seville, danced by all classes and conditions of people, the Queen of Flamenco dances; or theBulerias, the most typical of all gypsy dances, light and gay, the dance of the fiesta.
Argentinita was not only a dancer. She was an actress of the first order. She had been a member of Martinez Sierra’s interesting and vital creative theatre in Madrid. She sangChansons Populairesin a curiously throaty, plaintive little voice that could, nevertheless, fill the largest theatre, despite the cameo-like quality of her art, fill even the Metropolitan Opera House, with the sound, the color, the atmosphere of Spain.
Dancer of Spain that she was, her repertoire was not by any means confined to the dance and music and life of the peoples of the Iberian peninsula. She traveled far afield for her material,through the towns and villages of South and Central America. Yet she was no mere copyist. Works and ideas she found were transmuted into terms of the theatre by means of a subtle alchemy. She had a deep knowledge of the entire Spanish dance tradition, and knew it all, understood its wide historical and regional changes. In her regional works, from Spanish folk to the heart of the Andes, she kept the flavor of the original, but personalized the dances. About them all was a fundamental honesty; nothing was done for show. There were no heroics; no athleticism. In addition to theAlegrias,Sevillianas,Fandangos,Jotasof Spain, the folk dances and folk songs of Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and the remote places of Latin America and of its Indian villages were hers. None who ever saw her do it can ever quite obliterate the memory ofEl Huayno, implicit as it was with the stark dignity and nobility of the Inca woman, and called by one critic, “the greatest dance of our generation.”
I have a particularly fond memory ofOn the Route to Seville, in which a smoothie from the city outwitted and outdid the gypsies in larceny; and also I remember fondly that nostalgic picture of the Madrid of 1900, which she called, simply enough,In Old Madrid.
As our association developed and continued, I was happy to be able to extend the scope of her work and bring her from the solitary and non-theatrical dance recital platform on which, one after the other, from coast to coast, her journeys were a succession of triumphs, to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Here, with her own ensemble, chief among which was her exceptionally talented sister, Pilar Lopez, I placed them as guests with one ballet company or another—with Leonide Massine in Manuel de Falla’sThe Three-Cornered Hatand inCapriccio Espangnol, by Rimsky-Korsakoff, on the choreography of which she collaborated with Massine.
In addition to these theatre adaptations of the dances of Spain, she danced in her own dances, both solo and with Pilar Lopez. She trained and developed excellent men, notably José Greco and Manolo Vargas. I am especially happy in having been instrumental in bringing to the stage two of her most interesting theatrical creations. One was the ballet she staged to de Falla’sEl Amor Brujo, which I produced for her. The other was the Garcia LorcaEl Café de Chinitas. Argentinita had been a devoted friend of the martyred Loyalist poet, and to bring his work to the American stage was a project close to her heart and a real labor of love. Argentinita belonged to a closelittle circle of scholars, poets, and composers, which included Martinez Sierra, Jacinto Benavente, and the extraordinarily brilliant, genius-touched Garcia Lorca.
The production ofEl Café de Chinitaswas made possible during a Spanish festival I gave, one spring, at the Metropolitan Opera House. For this festival I engaged José Iturbi to conduct a large orchestra composed of members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Argentinita had succeeded in interesting the Marquis de Cuevas in the project. ForEl Café de Chinitasthe Marquis commissioned settings and costumes from Salvador Dali. The result was one of the most effective and best considered works for the theatre emanating from Dali’s brush. Dali, like Argentinita, had been a friend of the martyred patriot-poet-composer. His profounder emotions touched, Dali designed as effective a setting as the Metropolitan Opera House has seen. The first of the two scenes was a tremendously high wall on which hung literally hundreds of guitars, a “graveyard of guitars,” as Dali phrased it; while the second scene, theCafé de Chinitasitself, revealed the heroic torso of a female dancer with her arms upstretched in what could be interpreted as an attitude of the dance, or, if one chose, as a crucifixion. From where the hands held the castanets there dripped blood, as though the hands had been pierced. In terms of symbols, this was Dali’s representation of the crucifixion of his country by hideous civil war. This was Argentinita’s last production, and one of her happiest creations.
A victim of cancer, Argentinita died in New York on 24th September, 1945. I was at the hospital at the end, together with my friend and hers, Anton Dolin. Her doctors had long prescribed complete rest for her and special care. But her life was the dance, and stop she could not. Heroically she ignored her illness. If there was one thing about her more conspicuous than another, it was her tiny, dainty, slippered feet. No longer will they dart delicately into the lovely positions on the floor.
In Argentinita there was never either bitterness or unkindness to any one. I have seen, at first hand, Argentinita’s encouragement and unstinted help to others, and to lesser dancers. The success of others, whether it was the artists in her own programmes, or elsewhere, was a joy to her; nothing but the best was good enough. Her sister, Pilar Lopez, who survives her and who today dances with great success in Europe, carrying on her sister’s work, is a magnificent dancer. When the two sisters danced together, everything that could be done to make Pilar shine more brilliantly was done; and that, too, was the work of Argentinita. Her loyalty to me was something of which I am very proud.
Above all, it was the dignity and charm of the woman that played a great part in the superb image of the artist who was known as Argentinita.
E. A TERPSICHOREAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
The mixture of dance and song and anthropology, with a firm accent on sex, that struck a new note in the dance theatre, hailed from Chicago. Her name is Katherine Dunham. She is a dynamo of energy; she is elusive; she is unpredictable. She is a quite superb combination of exoticism and intellectuality.
Daughter of a French-Canadian and an American Negro, Katherine was born in Joliet, Illinois, in 1914. Her theatrical experience has ranged from art museums to night clubs, from Broadway to London’s West End, to theThéâtre des Champs Elyséesin Paris, to European triumphs. Her early life was spent and her first dancing was done in Chicago. She flashed across the American entertainment world comet-like. More recently she has confined her activities almost exclusively to England and Europe.
I had no part in her beginnings. By the time I undertook to manage her, she had assembled her own company of Negro dancers and had oscillated between the rarefied atmosphere of women’s clubs and concert halls, on the one hand, to night clubs and road houses, on the other. The atmosphere of the latter was both smoky and rowdy. Katherine Dunham, I suspect, is something of a split personality, so far as her art is concerned. Possessor of a fine mind, it would seem to have been one frequently in turmoil. On the one side, there is a keen intellectual side to it, evidenced by both a Bachelor of Philosophy and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago, two Rosenwald Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. Her Masters degree is in anthropology. These studies she pursued, as I have said, on the one hand. On the other, she studied and practiced the dance with an equal fierceness.
Her intellectual pursuits have been concerned, for the most part, with anthropological researches into the Negro dance. Her first choreographic venture was her collaboration with Ruth Page, in Chicago, inLa Guiablesse, a ballet on a Martinique theme, with ascore based on Martinique folk melodies by the American composer, William Grant Still, a work with an all-Negro cast, seen both at the Century of Progress Exhibition and the Chicago Opera House, in 1933. Dunham became active in the Federal Dance Theatre, and its Chicago director. It was when she was doing the dances for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union depression-time revue,Pins and Needles, that she tried a Sunday dance concert in New York at the Forty-eighth Street Theatre. So successful was it that it was repeated every Sunday for three months.
Turning to the theatre, she added acting and singing to dancing and choreography, both on the stage and in films, appearing as both actress and singer inCabin in the Sky. She intrigued me, both by the quality of her work, her exoticism, and her loyalty to her little troupe, for the members of which she felt herself responsible. I first met her while she was appearing at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, in San Francisco. She was closing her engagement. She was down and out, trying to keep her group together. I arranged for an audition and, after seeing her with her group, undertook to see what could be done. Present with me at this audition were Agnes de Mille, then in San Francisco rehearsing with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo what was to become her first choreographic triumph,Rodeo, together with Alexandra Danilova and Frederick Franklin.
My idea in taking over her management was to try to help her transform her concert pieces into revue material, suitable not only to the country’s concert halls, but also to the theatre of Broadway and those road theatres that were becoming increasingly unoccupied because of the paucity of productions to keep them open. Certain purely theatrical elements were added, including some singers, one of them being a Cuban tenor; and, to supplement her native percussion players, a jazz group, recruited from veterans of the famous “Dixieland Band.”
We called the entertainment theTropical Revue. TheTropical Revuewas an immediate success at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York and, thanks to some quick work, I was able to secure additional time at the theatre and to extend the run to six weeks. This set up some sort of record for an entertainment of the kind. As an entertainment form it rested somewhere between revue and recital. Miss Dunham herself had three outstanding numbers. These were her own impressions of what she called different “hot” styles. These were responsible for some of the heat that brought on the sizzlingof the scenery to which the critics referred. The first of her numbers wasBahiana, a limpid and languid impression of Brazil; thenShore Excursion, a contrasting piece, fast, hot, tough, and Cuban. The third wasBarrelhouse, an old stand-by of hers, straight out of Chicago’s Jungletown.
Tropical Revue, during its two years under my management, was in an almost perpetual state of flux. It was revised and revised, and revised again. As the tours proceeded, Dunham did less and less dancing and more and more impersonation. But while her “bumps” grew more discreet, there was no lessening of the heat. Dunham’s choreography was best in theatricalized West Indian and Latin American folk dances, some of which approached full-scale ballets. The best of these, in my opinion, wasL’Ag’ya, a three-scened work, Martinique at core, the high light of which was the “ag’ya,” a kicking dance. Here she was able to put to excellent use authentic Afro-Caribbean steps, and in the overall choreographic style, I would not feel it unfair to say that Dunham’s style had been considerably influenced by the Chicago choreographer and dancer, Ruth Page, with whom Dunham had collaborated early in her career.
It did not take me long to discover the public was more interested in sizzling scenery than it was in anthropology, at least in the theatre. Since theTropical Revuewas fairly highly budgeted, it was necessary for us, in order to attract the public, to emphasize sex over anthropology. Dunham, with a shrewd eye to publicity, oscillated between emphasis first on one and then on the other; her fingers were in everything. In addition to running the company, dancing, singing, revising, she lectured, carried on an unending correspondence by letter and by wire, entertained lavishly, and added considerably, I am sure, to the profits of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Columns were written about her, and fulsome essays, a good deal of which was balderdash.
The handling of this tour presented its own special set of problems. Not the least of these was the constantly recurring one of housing. We have come a long way in the United States in disposing of Jim Crow; but there is still a great deal to be done. Hotel accommodations for the artists of theTropical Revuewere a continual source of worry. One Pacific Coast city was impossible. When, after days of fruitless searching, our representative thought he had been able to install them in a neighboring town, the Chinese owner of the hotel, on learning his guests were not white, canceled the reservations.
A certain midwestern city was another trouble spot, where, in one of the city’s leading hostelries, the employees threatened to strike because of the presence there of some of the principal artists. This was averted by some quick work on the part of our staff. It should be noted, too, that these unfortunate difficulties were all in cities north of what we hoped was the non-existent Mason and Dixon Line.
Miss Dunham, quite naturally, was disturbed and exercised by this discrimination. In order to avoid this kind of unpleasantness, I had tried to restrict the bookings to northern cities. However, it became necessary to play an engagement in a southern border city. The results were not happy. At the time of making the booking, I did not realize that in this border state segregation was practiced in its Municipal Auditorium.
The house was sold out on the opening night. Owing to wartime transportation difficulties, the company was late in arriving. Just before the delayed curtain’s rise, Miss Dunham requested four seats for some of her local friends. She was asked by the manager of the Auditorium if they were colored. Miss Dunham replied that they were; whereupon the manager offered to place chairs for them in the balcony, since colored persons were not permitted in the orchestra stalls. Miss Dunham protested, and objected to her friends being seated other than in the orchestra. The fact was there were no seats available in the stalls, since the house was sold out. However, had it not been for the segregation rule, four extra chairs could have been placed in the boxes.
The performance was enthusiastically received, with repeated curtain calls at its close. Miss Dunham responded with a speech. She thanked the audience for its appreciation and its warm response. Then, smarting under the accumulated pressures of discrimination throughout the tour, climaxed by the incident involving her friends, she paused, and added: “This is good-bye. I shall not appear here again until people like me can sit with people like you. Good-bye, and God bless you—and you may need it.”
While there was no overt hostile demonstration in the theatre, there were those who felt Miss Dunham’s closing words implied a threat. The press, ever alert to scent a scandal, demanded a statement about my attitude on segregation in theatres, and to know if I approved of artists under my management threatening audiences. It was one of those rare times when, for some reason, I could not be reached by telephone. Faced with the necessity of making somesort of statement, my representative issued one to the effect that Mr. Hurok deplored and was unalterably opposed to discrimination of any kind anywhere; but that, as a law-abiding citizen, however much he deplored such regulations, he was bound to conform to the laws and regulations obtaining in those communities and theatres where he was contractually obliged to have his attractions appear. But I have taken care never again to submit artists to any possible indignities, if there is any way of avoiding it.
I shall relate a last example of the sort of difficulties that arose on this tour and, to my mind, it is the most stupid of them all, if there can be said to be degrees of stupidity in such matters.
In addition to the large orchestra of conventional instruments we carried, Miss Dunham had four Guatemalan percussionists who dramatically beat out the Caribbean rhythms on a wide assortment of gourds, tam-tams, and other native drums, both with the orchestra and in several scenes on the stage.
It happened in a northern city. The head of the musicians’ union local demanded to know if there were any “niggers” in our orchestra. My representative, who feels very strongly about such matters and who resents the term used by the local union president, replied that he did not understand the question. All members of the orchestra, he said, were members of the American Federation of Musicians, and had played as a unit across the entire country, and such a question had never arisen. The local union official thereupon tersely informed him the colored players would not be permitted to play with the other musicians in the orchestra pit in that city; if they attempted to do so, he would forbid the white players to play. My representative, refusing to bow to such an ukase, appealed to the head office of the Musicians’ Union, in Chicago—only to be informed by them that, however much headquarters disapproved of and deplored the situation, each union local was autonomous in its local rulings and there was nothing they could do.
Now comes the irony of the situation. My representative, on visiting the theatre, saw that the stage boxes abutted the orchestra pit on the same level with it “Why not place the percussionists there?” he thought. He proposed this to the union official, and was informed that this would be permitted, “so long as there is a railing between the white players and the black.”
It was only later, on thumbing through the local telephone directory, my representative discovered there were two musicians’ locals there. One of them was listed with the word “colored” after it, in parenthesis.
Yes, we still have a long road ahead in the matter of fair employment practices and equal opportunities for all.
Having had a satisfying taste of the theatre, Miss Dunham eventually turned to it as her exclusive medium of expression, and branched out into a full-fledged theatre piece, with plot and all, calledCarib Song, which, transmuted intoCaribbean Rhapsody, proved more successful on the other side of the Atlantic than it did in the States.