Michael Fokine was a groundbreaking Russian choreographer and dancer.
Background
He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia; he was christened Mikhail Mikhailovitch but later chose to use the French form of his name. His father, Mikhail Vasilievitch Fokine, was a prosperous middle-class merchant; his mother, Catherine (Kind) Fokina, came from Mannheim, Germany.
Fokine was the last but one in a family of eighteen children, of whom only four boys and one girl survived infancy. Their mother imbued the children with her own love of the theater: Michel's brother Vladimir became a well-known actor, and his brother Alexandre, who married the ballerina Alexandra Fedorova, founded the Troitsky Miniature Theater.
Education
As a child Michel showed such a love and aptitude for dancing that his sister persuaded their father to enter him in the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg.
He became a pupil there in 1889, mastering the classical ballet steps under such teachers as Platon Karsavin, Paul Gerdt, and Nicolas Legat.
In 1898 he graduated from the school and joined the Imperial Ballet as a dancer.
As a member of the company, Fokine attended the classes of Christian Johansson and in a few years acquired a considerable reputation for his strong technique and distinguished presence.
Career
An exceptionally intelligent boy, he also acquired a thorough knowledge of art and music, which helped provide later choreographic inspiration; he learned to play the piano and several stringed instruments and became proficient at painting in oils.
In 1898 he graduated from the school and joined the Imperial Ballet as a dancer. As a member of the company, Fokine attended the classes of Christian Johansson and in a few years acquired a considerable reputation for his strong technique and distinguished presence.
He was appointed to the teaching establishment at the Imperial Ballet School in 1904.
Fokine's sense of theater and his study of arts other than the dance had opened his eyes to the shortcomings and absurdities of classical ballet as produced in St. Petersburg: the concentration of interest on the star ballerina, the repetition of formal dance steps that were often irrelevant to the theme to be expressed, costuming that imposed the short ballet tutu on the performers regardless of the country or historical epoch represented in the story, and a lack of harmony among dance movement, music, and stage setting.
It became his aim from the beginning to eradicate these weaknesses.
In his first ballet, Acis and Galatea, a school performance staged in 1905, Fokine tentatively put some of his ideas into practice.
It was probably in 1907 that he created the famous solo dance The Dying Swan, with music by Saint-Sans, for his colleague Anna Pavlova (Vera M. Krasovskaya, Anna Pavlova, 1964, pp. 19 ff. ) . In the same year, for a charity performance, he staged Eunice and the first version of Chopiniana.
The success of these early efforts led to his first important ballet for the Maryinsky Theater, Le Pavillon d'Armide (1907), and in 1908 he reworked Chopiniana into Les Sylphides, which remains one of the most popular and poetic of standard ballets.
Although Fokine was gradually establishing his ideas of artistically coherent dance productions in St. Petersburg, it was with the Russian Ballet managed by Sergei Diaghilev that he first developed them fully, setting the example which was to give the art of ballet a new direction.
Diaghilev took a company to western Europe for the first time in the spring of 1909, with Fokine as its ballet master. In that historic season in Paris he produced the wild, barbaric Polovetsian dances from Borodin's Prince Igor, the Egyptian splendors of Cleopatra, and revivals of Les Sylphides and Le Pavillon d'Armide. In addition to Fokine and Vera Fokina, the company included such stars as Tamara Karsavina, Pavlova, and Nijinsky.
To the Paris audience the technical strength and vitality of the dancers and the artistic cohesion of the ballets came as a revelation, and the Diaghilev Ballet, although originally formed only for the tour, became a permanent feature of the European theater until the death of Diaghilev in 1929.
Fokine dominated the company as ballet master in its first and most productive period, producing, among other works, Carnaval, Scheherazade, and The Firebird in 1910, Le Spectre de la Rose and Petrouchka in 1911, The Blue God Thamar and Daphnis and Chloe in 1912, and The Legend of Joseph and Le Coq d'Or in 1914.
With these masterpieces Fokine laid the foundation of modern ballet. He reaffirmed the basic principles of classic choreography (though discarding some outmoded traditions) and added a new dimension.
His ballets were produced in collaboration with such eminent musicians as Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel and artists such as Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst. With them, Fokine was able to realize his conception of ballet as a composite art in which, ideally, painting, music, and the dance are allied and no one component is given undue prominence.
In a notable letter to the London Times in 1914, Fokine propounded his "five rules, " which in essence expressed his conviction that all aspects of a ballet must be subordinated to the dramatic expression of its theme. Fokine's association with the Diaghilev Ballet ended in 1914. During World War I he and his wife traveled widely giving concert performances.
In 1918 they left Russia for the last time and the following year went to New York City to stage dances for some of the spectacular entertainments of the producer Morris Gest [Supp. 3].
Thereafter Fokine made his home in the United States; he became a citizen in 1932. During the 1920's he taught dancing and produced minor works such as Le Reve de la Marquise (1921) and Les Elfes (1924), given at the Metropolitan Opera House.
He also staged ballet acts at various theaters and nightclubs. When Fokine and his wife arrived in the United States, they found almost no tradition of a ballet theater. Their joint concert appearances (which continued until 1933), their teaching activities, and such events as their staging of Fokine ballets before an overflow audience in Lewisohn Stadium in New York had great influence in awakening American interest in ballet, an interest that grew to major proportions. Fokine admired such American dancers as Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan, but disliked the work of some other proponents of the modern dance, whom he considered ignorant dilettantes.
He continued to give occasional productions in Europe, and in 1935 returned to Paris and resumed his connection with the mainstream of the Ballets Russes.
The mantle of Diaghilev had passed to Rene Blum and Col. Wladimir de Basil, for both of whom Fokine staged important new ballets: L'Epreuve d'Amour and Don Juan for Blum in 1936, and Cendrillon (1938) and Paganini (1939) for de Basil. The last company with which he worked was Ballet Theater in the United States, for which he produced Bluebeard in 1941.
Fokine was in Mexico City during the summer of 1942, preparing for the production of Helen of Troy, when he was partially crippled by the development of a blood clot in his left leg.
He returned to New York City and died a few days later, of pneumonia, at the West Side Hospital. After Russian Orthodox services, he was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery, Ardsley, New York.
After Russian Orthodox services, he was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery, Ardsley, New York. Fokine's significance in the history of ballet cannot be overstated.
Membership
He was a member of the Imperial Ballet.
Personality
He was a virile, handsome dancer and an excellent mime, with fiery eyes and hair that early began to thin and take the shape of an encircling Roman wreath.
Quotes from others about the person
His biographer, Cyril Beaumont, sums up his career: "As a reformer, he is to the twentieth century what [Jean-Georges] Noverre was to the eighteenth, for he has exerted a profound and beneficial influence in every branch of the art of ballet. "
Connections
In 1905 he married the talented ballerina Vera Antonova, who achieved renown as Fokina. She shared his creative work throughout his life, performing in his ballets and serving as his dancing partner. Their only son, Vitale, also became a dancer.