Background
Michel Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg on April 26, 1880. Fokine was the 17th of 18 children, but only five survived to adulthood. His father, however, discouraged him from pursuing a dance career.
Michel Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg on April 26, 1880. Fokine was the 17th of 18 children, but only five survived to adulthood. His father, however, discouraged him from pursuing a dance career.
Fokine's education at the Imperial School was a broad one.
He studied the piano, mandolin, and balalaika, became a painter and read classic literature, and was a noted soccer player.
A handsome, athletic dancer, Fokine was a standout student.
After graduating from the Imperial School in 1898, Michael Fokine quickly began to find solo roles at the Maryinsky and elsewhere.
In 1902 he was invited to join the school's dance faculty. By that time, the ballets of Petipa were several decades old.
Fokine grew frustrated with the inconsistencies of the ballets staged at the Maryinsky: they showcased Russia's greatest dancers, but they often failed to make sense dramatically.
Fokine himself never became fully sympathetic to the wilder experiments of modern dance, and he later deplored Duncan's work specifically, but at the time the expressivity of Duncan's solo dances unleashed his own creativity.
Pavlova performed The Dying Swan all over the world, and years later, on her deathbed, she uttered her last words: "Prepare my swan costume. "
Fokine's 1907 ballet Le Pavillon d'Armide was his first to be staged at the Maryinsky Theatre and marked another breakthrough: he coordinated his work closely with designer Alexandre Benois to produce carefully wrought visual effects.
His Chopiniana of the same year was a novelty; based on the music of composer Fryderyk Chopin, it may have been the first plotless ballet.
Fokine revised the work in 1908 and retitled it Les Sylphides, under which name it became one of the most famous ballets of the twentieth century.
He drew on Russian folklore in Polvotsian Dances from Prince Igor and Scheherazade, the latter based on the famed orchestral tone poem by composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov.
His vigorous choreography, using male dancers to an unprecedented degree, was matched by explosively colorful sets designed by artist Leon Bakst.
Where traditional ballet emphasized footwork and leg motions, Fokine demanded that dancers use their entire bodies to express the ideas that a composer or writer was trying to communicate.
Sometimes [when] he wanted a pose, he wouldn't explain very much, he would show it and then come and arrange it. "
The revolution that Fokine helped to unleash partially overtook him as Europe lurched toward political crisis.
After touring in Scandinavia they settled in the United States the following year.
The Fokines opened a dance studio on Riverside Drive in New York and undertook more of their relatively inexpensive duo concert tours, traveling around the country.
He had little interest in the world of real modern dance, where America led the world in new developments; in a celebrated 1931 incident he wrangled with modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, who told him that he knew nothing about body movements.
Fokine founded two short-lived ballet companies, the Fokine Ballet in 1922 and the American Ballet in 1924.
Some felt that Fokine's talents were being wasted in America; New York Times critic John Martin, quoted on the Yonkers History website, bemoaned Fokine's scramble to make a living and opined that "it is as if Beethoven were giving piano lessons instead of composing. "
Yet Fokine drew huge crowds to some of his performances; a trio of Fokine concerts at New York's Lewisohn Stadium drew a total of 48, 000 people.
Fokine became a U. S. citizen in 1932.
Fokine continued to travel widely, premiering new works in South America as well as in the U. S. Between 1934 and 1936 he returned to Europe and choreographed several new works there for the Ballets Russes.
In Germany he clashed with cultural officials from the new Nazi regime.
The new Ballet Theater company, later renamed the American Ballet Theater, formed in the early 19406 and developed into the nation's most influential dance organization.
Fokine created the ballet Bluebeard for the new company in 1941.
He traveled to Mexico City for rehearsals of another new work, Helen of Troy, in the summer of 1942 but cut his trip short after suffering a blood clot in his left leg.
His condition worsened, and he contracted pneumonia.
Toward the end of the twentieth century his works were performed less frequently, but a slew of revivals in the early 20006 testified to his continuing influence.
Michael Fokine married Vera Fokina.