MEETING WITH REMARKABLE WOMEN
Below are some extracts from my project notes. They describe meetings
with some of the dancers and tell how the project eventually came
to be what it is.
TAMARA
FINCH LONDON 1998
I traced Tamara Tchinarova- Finch through a dance magazine. She
agreed to see me and I went along with a camera and friend. She
was a stately elegant and attractive woman in her 70’s but
filming seemed inappropriate. She disliked the idea of her age
being seen on film, felt all the things we feel with ageing only
more so as once her beauty and grace made her famous.
In my footage Tamara appears in Presage and Choreartium. She is
extremely striking, tall, elegant and graceful. In her 70’s
I felt she was still all of those things but she didn’t
see it that way and I didn’t argue. She referred me to Irina
Baronova who was still active in the ballet world.
In 2007 Tamara Tchinarova ‘s autobiography Dancing into
the Unknown was published.
Top of Page
IRINA
BARONOVA LONDON 1998 and AUSTRALIA 2003
Irina Baronova lived in London when I first met her. She later
moved to New South Wales to be near her daughter. I visited her
there a few years later. Irina was one of the famous ‘Baby
Ballerina’s’ (they were about 13 when they started
to perform seriously)
She was a star ballerina and in my footage she is seen dancing
as Aurora. She was 18 when they first toured Australia.
I arrived at her house at 11.30 one morning and left at 8.00 in
the evening one bottle of wine and many memories later. I wrote
in my notes:
'Irina says ‘never talk about retiring’
she has a concept of continuing to be active, doing, being, there’s
so much to do and experience. Growing old is all an attitude of
mind. She is still involved as an examiner for ballet and teaches
mime. From some of the things she said I wonder if she is stuck
in a time warp, unwilling to see progress.
We sat down and watched all my footage. She was eager and excited
talking to all her friends, many long dead, as they appeared on
screen. She addressed them directly by name and by the end I had
identified many of the dancers. She had never seen this film of
them before.
Ringing Irina the next day was so painful. Her voice noticeably
duller, memories churned up by the surprise of seeing herself
and all her dear friends so unexpectedly. ‘We were a family.
Of course those still here stay in touch but I miss them all and
I miss those who are gone.’
In 2006 her autobiography IRINA, Ballet Life and Loves was published.
Top of Page
ANIA
VOLKOVA NEWSOUTH WALES AUSTRALIA 2000
From my notes:
'Ania lives on a farm with her husband
Bill. Both are in their late 70’s I am welcomed enthusiastically.
Soon one of their sons arrives to make the video work. He lives
in a house a few fields away and works on the farm with his father.
We all have supper and then watch the tapes.
Ania probably provides more information than anyone.
The cameraman Ewan became her friend because she stayed in Australia.
In spite of that she had never seen this footage before.
She identifies many dancers with personal details. Like Irina
she talks to the dancers on the screen ‘oh that’s
good Paul’ ‘Oh Paul where’s Grisha, what have
you done with Grisha?’ Paul seems to have been known for
being free with relationships. Whoever Grisha was I got the idea
that he suffered from Pauls behaviour. The homosexuality was just
a fact of life. Paul Petrov turns out to be the man most constantly
in the footage and always playing to the camera.
Ania was one of the four dancers in the ‘Castaways’
scenario they shot on Bungen beach and which I include in PLAYING
WITH THE BALLETS RUSSES'
The others in the castaway scenario were Paul Petrov, from Denmark,
and Betty and Bobby from Canada.
'From time to time Ania sings along
with the silent film, remembering the music of the ballet fragments
she watches.
She reminisces about dancing during the war when their shoes wore
out and they had to stuff them with paper and paint them with
shellac Irina ran off and got married during a performance.'
Before she returned to the man who became her husband in Australia
Ania’s career took her around the world. She was one of
the dancers used by Disney for animators to draw when his studio
were making Fantasia. She was also caught up in the strike in
Cuba and marooned there for 6 months.
VERA
NELIDOVA (BETTY TWEDDLE) MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA 2000
From my notes:
'Betty lives in Muranmeena. Her house
is way out in the suburbs. A big car sat in the carport and although
there was a reasonable sized garden most of her plants seemed
to be in hundreds of pots. She’s 80 and as lively as 80
year olds seem to be these days. I liked her immediately. The
house was pretty cluttered, not least with hundreds of vases and
pots stacked everywhere. And stacks of plates. These turned out
not to be a collecting mania but all the things she had made at
pottery over the last ten years. She’s stopped now because
of arthritis.
I also noticed some rather good paintings -one reminded me in
style of Rupert Bunny. Turns out they are the work Betty’s
mother in law. Moderately successful and hung in some galleries.
I thought several rather better than many male Australian painters
in galleries - quite magical native plants, exquisite light and
colour.
We watched the tapes but not in the emotional and concentrated
way Irina had, as she sang along to the ballet clips. Betty identified
many more people. She trained with Rambert in London and was with
Ballets Russes from age 17-23. A short time in life’s length
but so powerful - a young girl touring the entire world. A whole
live packed into those 7 years and never forgotten.
At 74 she was asked to perform the role of the old woman in Le
Concorde - ‘just a silly part’, a fussing ballet mother.
I can just imagine it! She worried before hand about how it would
feel but when she walked onto the stage it was as if she’d
never left. She thoroughly enjoyed it.
She has a very good collection of old programmes and a photo album
of signed photos of many dancers. She remembers Ewan but missed
most of the events around him because she was off being courted
by her husband to be - a businessman who died aged only 58.
Betty also told me a story I don’t remember hearing before
about Petrov being found stabbed in a New York lift - nobody knew
who did it (well surely Paul knew?) Suspected Grisha because Paul
was messing about with some famous persons wife,
She spotted Sono Osato in deckchair on the beach - a Japanese
Canadian who she thought might still be alive?'
Sono Osato published her book DISTANT DANCES in 1980.
'She also spotted Tamar Grigorieff -
in Tamar – and reckoned she must have been at least 50 at
the time.
She told me how she (or they) often had to go on and perform roles
without rehearsal having just learnt parts from watching them
from the wings.'
After speaking to Betty I heard and read about this practice several
more times. I wonder what the performances were like as a result?
Does this ever happen today?
'She thought the balletomane Arnold
Haskell was a funny little man - sucked up to some people, ignored
others. Bit of a creep. Can’t remember her phrase but it
seemed to confirm my instinct about hangers on.
She and her friend both commented often about the ‘rounded’
bodies of the women, which they liked, compared with today. Not
for the first time comment was made that this thin body shape
has meant dancers lack strength and therefore altered what they
can do in terms of jumps and turns. They were more gymnastic then.
Betty says Irina and TamaraToumanova would turn several times
- and you see it in the tapes -whereas today dancers never turn
more than twice. Is this true? They had limits about weight though
and Betty talks of Tamara’s ‘weight problem’
she went fat and thin up and down. She showed me a photo of Tamara
and Tatiana in Los Angeles with the other Tamara and Irina. The
two “Americans ‘are both fat in their old age.
Like the other dancers Betty has an amazing face and eyes. She
is lively and willing to have a go but perhaps not to the same
extent as Irina. She hasn’t remained so active in the ballet
world. She looks perfectly ordinary unlike the made up glamour
of Irina.
This was another all day do. She and Ania had talked (speculated
no doubt) on the phone. I’m sure they will have phoned again
afterwards. When I left she invited me to stay with her if I came
to Melbourne to follow the project up.'
Top of Page
TATIANA
LESKOVA RIO DE JANEIRO 2000
In Rio I met Tatiana Leskova and later I filmed her re-creating
Choreatium in Amsterdam.
'I was staying with my friend Renee
in Rio and contacted Tatiana. I visited her in a well to do block
of flats facing the Copacobana beach. I thought I might go back
and film but strangely I could think of nothing. The flat was
spacious and heavily furnished, dark and polished. She made it
clear it wasn't her flat but that of a friend. I am, as I think
back, still puzzled about her life. She seems to still run a dance
school - which I didn't have time to visit. But husband? Children?
I realise she gave little away. Because of my claustrophobia I
came up to the flat by the back stairs. The front entrance is
bright and marbled with doorman, mirrors and lifts. Entering the
flat by the servant’s stairs I noticed a maids room. The
maid wore a uniform. Did she live in? I had seen shops in Rio
full of these uniforms. Rene told me that some of the maids like
to wear them. She had once had a maid who insisted on it.
Tatiana was, I would say, guarded, at first. And conservative.
This is my sticking point. She mentioned royalty with admiration.
Showed me some photos. She couldn’t look at my tape because
it was the wrong format for her machine. Being still very active
she was interested in having a copy of the Choreatium passages
because she was about to go to Amsterdam to re-create it. I sent
her a copy later. The conversation did not take off although her
English is excellent. The maid served coffee. The visit was not
the daylong kind I spend with Irina and then Betty and Ania. Yet
I kept in touch and went and did the filming in Amsterdam.'
Top of Page
MEETING
TATIANA AGAIN AMSTERDAM 2002
'In 2002 Tatiana came to Amsterdam to
revive Choreatium.
In my 1930’s footage it looked before its time in choreography
and costume. Busy with another film I almost let this meeting
go. And then I thought, it’s got to be done. She is lively
and working at 76 or 78, she has been working with my tapes -
footage she never saw until now, 60 years later! Half her colleagues
are dead.
She asked me to the premiere. And I said yes. She was certainly
the Grande Dame. Following her down the corridor backstage she
turned regally from dancer to dancer-speaking English, Russian,
French, Portuguese, Spanish…. I had never been on a stage
before let alone been there a few moments before the curtain rose.
It seemed so huge. Here Tatiana went from dancer to dancer giving
final advice. The stage was just a mess of figures inside themselves
as they rehearsed last moment steps. That, to me was choreographically
interesting because everyone was moving differently at different
times, in different places, using the space around them, starting
and finishing differently.
We moved quickly to very good seats in the auditorium. Choreatium
is an interesting ballet. The second movement I think of as the
stunning one that looks a bit like Martha Graham. It's quite extraordinary
in its abstraction for the time and holds up well today. The third
movement is less inspired. I couldn't read the whole because the
movements differed so much in style. Only the lighting and rhythm
of the second movement have stayed in my head.
The footage we shot is not very interesting. And it's handheld.
I don't have a clue how I'll use it.'
I have never used this footage and probably won’t now. Tatiana
and I have again lost contact with each other.
Later in 2002 I returned to Australia with the hope and intention
of filming Irina and Ania at least. I seemed to have decided to
concentrate on the Russians.
Top of Page
IRINA
AGAIN BYRON BAY AUSTRALIA 2003
In 1999 a Ballet organization in the United States hosted a four-day
event in New Orleans to celebrate 90 years since the birth of
the original Ballets Russes. Several remaining Ballets Russes
members attended and agreed to give interviews.
'I ring Irina feeling apprehensive.
I explain what I would like to do. She tells me that after the
New Orleans conference she decided that she wouldn’t do
any more interviews. She was too old. It destroyed the myth of
the young and beautiful. Let the dream remain. They were just
a load of (ugly) old women. She had seen these people she hadn’t
seen for 50 years. She paused when I asked if she had a good time.
She had been disturbed at the process of ageing.
By way of information she said that the Americans were making
a two and a half hour programme about the Ballets Russes. They
had all been thoroughly interviewed in LA.
This feature documentary deals more with the American end of the
Ballets Russes. See www.balletsrussesmovie.com
A rather surprising omission from the conference and the film
was dancer BETTY LOW. See below.
I told Irina something of my thought about the role model of growing
old and the need to see active 80 years olds. Her feeling is something
like Janes except that Jane wanted to be recognised for current
creativity rather than always being asked about her past with
Martha Graham. (Jane Dudley dancer, choreographer and teacher
of Graham technique. I made a film called DANCING INSIDE with
Jane when she was in her 80’s. It concentrated on the process
of ageing)
This confirms, in a way, the feeling I have that I want to show
who these people are now. What the rest of their lives have been.
Irina talked with enthusiasm about a recent visit to a dance school
in Melbourne but she says that sadly she has to stop teaching
mime because her sght is so bad she can’t see the girls
faces well enough.
My first visit to show her the footage in London was private.
It seemed intrusive to film her engagement with her friends on
screen, who she hadn’t seen for so long. Footage she had
never seen before at all. People who are long dead and recently
dead. I’m glad I didn’t film it although it was exciting
to watch and listen to her.
Now, at this second viewing a few years later she had changed
her mind.
She says it’s amateur footage – doesn’t show
the dance properly. Is that also fear that the performance doesn’t
stand up? Even amateur footage is sufficient to show sloppy technique
or great talent.
‘WHO WOULD WANT TO KNOW ABOUT AN OLD WOMAN?’
I left Irina with the archive tapes to show her son and his wife.
I also left a short contemporary dance film I made with 73 year
old Diane Payne Myers. This was really to test the water since
Irina was a classical ballet person all her life. I wondered what
she would make of it.
Irina herself in going blind. Her sight is very poor. She is tired
by her family visitors, her grandchild is ill. Twice she has falling
and bruised herself badly when she went down to her swimming pool,
perhaps having a mini stroke. Her daughter has banned her from
going to the pool alone but Irina is willful and still does.
'Today I go and face Irina and collect
the tapes I left with her. Of the contemporary dance tape:
Irina turned her face into a sneer and pout ‘what is she
doing, its not ballet, not dancing’. I was somewhat lost
for words although trying to answer her seriously. I wasn’t
successful. Also she was not well. Feeling sick, feeling dizzy
when ever she got up.
Having looked at some of the archive with son/wife she now continued
in dismissal. ‘Its amateur, the cameras were new and no
good. Filmmakers weren’t interested in filming us so these
amateurs did it and we sat around laughing as we watched ourselves’
( She was describing the Ringland Anderson footage here.) Its
important as archive I ventured. As archive yes, she agreed, but
its scraps, fragments, it doesn’t show the ballet as it
was. When there’s properly professionally filmed performances
and then you look at this you think so what, its nothing, they
aren’t worth their reputation.’
Exactly. This isn’t the moment to remind her of the good
things. She insists it’s all out of focus. In fact none
of it is, this must be her eyes . I suppose some people can’t
‘see’ archive. She insists you can’t tell who
anyone is although she could the first time I showed it and identified
most of the dancers! And so could Betty and Ania. I suppose the
first time they were all watching their younger selves and their
dead friends. This time she could think about the dancing.
Times and dance have moved on. As she was part of the teaching
in that world she knows the dancing doesn’t always stand
up to scrutiny in modern times by ballet standards of today. Is
she afraid that if people saw it that would mean she lost her
mythical status. That’s why, maybe she wants to’ leave
the audience with their dreams.‘ She is putting her finger
on exactly what I’ve picked up on. That people will laugh
where once they admired. And she’s too old to take that
on board. Why should she?
I repeat that I don’t want to use the performance footage.
And after all there are many interesting things – character,
acting, strength, joy and energy, personality and spirit. I am
someone not of the dance world, the small classical ballet world,
and I see so much to appreciate. Like any other art or sport or
like film itself, style and technique evolve and change.
Maybe she’s right and I should leave them there.'
ANIA,
Sydney Australia 2002
I discovered after my first visit that these remaining Russian
dancers phone each other all the time.
'Ania is immensely welcoming and friendly.
I know that she and Irina and the others chat on the phone about
every move I make. Today Johnnie (Ania’s son) reports that
Ania and he argued yesterday when she said ‘well Irina got
out of doing any filming’ It seems they are wound up about
the film that has been made for the Australian archive. Ania says
word for word what Irina said. They look amateurish because it
was an amateur cameraman, that it doesn’t show the ballet
as it was etc. All this makes me decide I don’t want to
do a documentary with them because they cannot be pleased. They
cannot be pleased because they can’t accept their place
in history and want to be the same now as they were then. And
if they cant they don’t want to be seen. I succeed in being
a good person because I don’t push them. But it costs me
a film. Somehow I don’t mind.
Ania and Jim are living in a retirement village. Their house faces
a paddock but they have just learnt it will be divided into plots
and built on. Jim is most hard hit by this and finds life boring
because he cant get into the jeep and drive across a few paddocks
to the stables or cow sheds to tinker about with stuff. They both
look city smart now. Ania has a hair do and makeup. The house
is spotless. She seems delighted with the hibiscus I took her.
It is a huge variety with brilliant orange and yellow flower.
Fortunately she hasn’t one already.
Johnnie arrives. She is just telling me I had misunderstood her
phone call, she and Johnnie had argued. There is so much phoning
going on. Anyway. We set up after lunch and go through the Bungen
tape, which has her in stitches. She admits I have some better
footage than on the Australian archive tape. She tells an endless
and interesting story about the company being stuck in Cuba for
6 months at the beginning of the war and having a strike –
sides seemed to be the older company against the new comers (mostly
American?). Very hard to follow about contracts and solo roles
promised and not delivered. De Basil seemed to piss off. I must
look this up in Sorley Walkers book.
We go to Bungen Beach ( the beach where the film was shot) in
Johnnies car. He then decides he can’t risk driving down
the rough road in his car and I feel put out since I offered to
go in the Chestermans four-wheel drive. Ania didn’t like
the idea of driving down the steep slope and I didn’t want
her scared so that was that. Disappointing. We settled on the
next beach, Newport, which was fine just shooting against the
sea. Ania paddled uncaringly in the water getting her smart lemon
trousers soaked and covered with sand. Like all Australians she
wandered about bare foot from the car park. Somehow I find this
appealing in an 82 year old. I shot very little because she wasn’t
particularly enjoying the filming although she loved the excursion
to the beach. After all the years away from the stage you could
still see the performer there, a return of that professional attitude.
I viewed a bit of the footage later and certainly there will be
useable fragments.
I was intrigued to find out that she speaks French Russian Spanish
Portuguese and English. Johnnie says her conversations with many
of her old friends just go between several languages. Subverting
the stereotypes this is not something you except to find on a
farm way out in New South Wales. She answered the phone once while
I was there, speaking in French with bits of English. I would
like to record this kind of conversation between her, Tatiana
and Irina.
After our chats she seems happy with the idea that I am making
portraits of people not a history of the Ballets Russes.
Ania tells me a few more personal anecdotes, a bit of stuff about
Petrov. Grisha, his boyfriend seems to have looked after the child
Petrov had with his wife. An interesting arrangement
And she remembers two more dancers still living: Pamela Catchpole,
living in Dartmouth, Devon and Valerine Tweedie living in Double
Bay. Although I don’t think she’s in my footage, Valerene
is said to still perform and of course that interests me.
I also made contact at this time with Alberto Alonso, a Cuban
dancer who is in Ewan’s footage and appears in the beach
sequences. We exchanged e-mails but then I dropped the project
for some years.
After taking it up again in 2007 I decided to try and identify
a few more people. In particular, the graceful blonde woman who
features a lot in PLAY and who Ania referred to as ‘Betty’.
Also a terrific male dancer who is in the black and white sequences.
He is alone on the beach.'
Top of Page
LUDMILA
LVOVA (BETTY LOW)
'Betty turns out to be Betty Low. I
traced her through the internet and a former pupil of hers who
I got in touch with. Betty is now 92 and lives in Manhattan. I
rang her and we had an interesting conversation. I have sent her
the film I have cut, as yet with no sound on it. She remembered
Ewan but not dancing on the beach so I am waiting to see how she
responds. (February 2008)
2009 This year has been a celebration of 100 years since the founding
of the Ballets Russes. Unfortunately I have still not made it
to New York to meet Betty but she has been enjoying a lot of outings
to events where she has spoken about her Ballets Russes days.
She attended a screening of my film at the Lincoln Centre in New
York and did a Q and A. I received an enthusiastic card from her
afterwards telling me she wished she could spend the rest of her
life like this!'
There is a long sequence, shot in black and white, of a very
impressive male dancer, Still nobody has managed to identify him.
|
