Drawn partly from the scattered remnants of Diaghilev's Ballets
Russes and partly from extraordinary new talent, Colonel W. de
Basil's company of dancers kept alive the heritage of the Russian
ballet for a period spanning virtually twenty years. De Basil's
Ballets Russes, under various titles, and initially founded in
association with Rene Blum, director of ballet at Monte Carlo, not
only preserved the greatest of the Diaghilev ballets but mounted
many new ones, among them major works by Balanchine, Fokine,
Massine, Nijinska and Lichine -the company's one home-grown
choreographer. It provided a brilliant showcase for great dancers
such as Danilova, Woizikovsky and Massine, whose reputations were
already made, and for many younger dancers including the remarkable
'baby ballerinas'. De Basil launched not only the original trio
-Toumanova, Baronova and Riabouchinska - but a whole succession of
teenage dancers of outstanding natural ability whose superb
training had made of them finished artists of the highest quality
well before their eighteenth birthdays. Among many other dancers
whose careers were influenced by de Basil - a White Russian Cossack
officer who emigrated to Paris in 1919 and whose gifts were
entrepreneurial rather than artistic - were Tchernicheva, an
ex-Diaghilev dancer whom he brought out of retirement to become a
leading performer again in her maturity, and Kirsova, suddenly
thrust into stardom by rapturous Australian audiences. The story of
the de Basil ballet is one of glamour, mystery and the obsessive
dedication without which no art form can achieve excellence. Its
locations are many - Europe, the USA, Central and South America and
Australasia were toured by the company, which appeared not only in
the great capitals but in places where classical dance had rarely
if ever been seen before. Travelling through the countryside, this
multi-national troupe would climb out of their coach to hold class
in a wayside field, using the wire fences as barres; and no matter
what conditions they had to face backstage, on stage these dancers
would create magic. Kathrine Sorley Walker's researches for this
eminently readable book have taken her on a tour of duty hardly
less exhausting than those of the de Basil company. The result is a
riveting account of these little-documented years, by one of
Britain's best dance historians and critics, that fills a
conspicuous gap in the literature of the ballet.
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