The Red Shoes & Leonide Massine

I came across my subject for this month's blog while watching for the first time a movie I've wanted to see for a long time: The Red Shoes, which is one of the most famous films about dance not only of the 1940s, but perhaps one of the most famous ever. Strangely enough I took such a long time to make up my mind to watch it, that when I finally did I had come to a point where I wondered what could possibly have made this movie that famous and talked about. Everywhere I looked for movies about dance - which I do every now and then - there was this title popping up before my eyes, that somewhat suggestive title, The Red Shoes. This was of course before watching it: because once I'd gone not halfway through it I instantly understood the feature's reputation.

So perhaps before delving into the real subject of this blog - Leonide Massine - I should introduce the movie first. The Red Shoes originally is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the plot of which presents that somewhat ominous atmosphere which surprisingly characterizes so many fairy tales. A young girl sees behind a shoemaker's shop display the daintiest & most beautiful pair of red ballet slippers and instantly decided they were meant for her. The moment the shoemaker puts them on her feet she realizes the pair is magical: she leaps and twirls all evening long at the ball, to her delight and that of all who watch her. Unfortunately the shoes also have a flaw, or perhaps rather, a price; and as the girl grows tired, and wants to go home and sleep, the shoes are never tired - and the unfortunate dancer is condemned to dance throughout the night, and through all eternity without ceasing.

Leonide Massine (1896-1979)

This story is exploited in the movie as the subject of the main ballet, which the heroine - danced & acted by Moira Shearer, a great figure of ballet at that time - inspires the impresario, Lermontov, who wants none other than her to dance it. Of course the stereotypical tragedy happens when the ballerina falls in love with the young composer who writes music for the company ballets, and thereby brings upon herself the jealous wrath of the impresario, who has also fallen for her in a fashion of his own. In the movie the ballet of The Red Shoes, which has given its name to the feature, is provided with a significant and very Hans Christian Andersen ending, when the call of the Church and the eventual removal of the demoniacal shoes from the unfortunate girl's feet puts an end to the dreadful, never ending agony to which she has been submitted. And the movie itself, echoes that ending in its own even more tragic outcome: but in case you've been talked into watching the movie by this blog, which would make me very happy, I won't spoil the ending...

Since nothing more can be revealed about the movie, I'll now proceed to discuss the main feature I wanted to discuss about the movie: Leonide Massine. Last month's blog was about Nijinsky: Leonide Massine was his replacement as main choreographer and dancer in Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. By the time he was cast in the 1948 The Red Shoes as the charming and somewhat eccentric "Grischa" Ljubov, the ballet master and teacher of Lermontov's company, Massine was already a renowned figure in the dance world. The film indeed features several personalities of importance in the ballet world of the time. Massine's role is at once a background role and a very symbolically important one. In reality he is the ballet master, coach, and teacher of the company, with a very strict though humorous personality, in which is detectable a certain parody of the stereotypical merciless image the position usually holds in the common mind; quite a harmless character, in truth, who proves to be more attached in private to the prima ballerina than he demonstrates in public, where he constantly admonishes & rebukes her, in his assumed role as the ruthless company tyrant. But it is perhaps on a symbolic scale that the character of Ljubov takes on greater meaning in the movie. It is significant that it is on the stage, that he takes on this meaning. In the production of the Red Shoes ballet he is the shoemaker, who has crafted these peerless shoes which are in fact magical shoes. It is he who introduces them to the girl, and to the audience also. He is a sort of magician: this being perhaps a symbolic representation of what a dancer appears to be in his own epoch, much like the generation of Massine was considered to be in that time, when a mystic aura still surrounded much of the arts, and their practitioners were considered as a race apart from common humanity.

Massine in two scenes of The Red Shoes, top: as the enigmatic and magical shoemaker in the ballet and bottom: with Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) in class as the exacting but sympathetic ballet master of Lermontov's company.

At this point it seems relevant to discuss the stage which dance and particularly ballet had reached at that time. Ballet was still very much to be improved: but the main characteristic which pops to mind was the tremendous speed and vivacity with which the movements were executed. I mention this here because in my blogs I always like to highlight a specific quality of a dancer, unique to them, which can be an inspiration to later generations in the practice of the art. Leonide Massine appears to me to be striking in this movie precisely because of that speed and precision of movement, which makes him the at once mischievous and mysterious character he enacts in the story. This is particularly relevant as his role in the ballet is that of a magician, as it were.

Massine was born in Russia in 1895 to a family of musicians, who performed at the Bolshoi. Like most successful dancers of his nationality and generation, he auditioned for the Moscow Imperial Theatre school where he started his formal dance training at eight, and got his first role as a little boy when Alexander Gorsky, director of the Bolshoi Theatre, selected him to play Chernomor in Ruslan & Ludmilla. That first experience instilled in him a love of performance and acting. After his graduation from the school he was approached by Diaghilev who had lost Nijinsky for his Ballets Russes: he became the principal choreographer of the company. It gives us quite an idea of Massine's talent when we reflect that it was the position of a Nijinsky which had to be filled. Diaghilev was attracted by Massine's stage presence, which must have been tremendous at that time in spite of his limited height & relatively frail build.

In The Tales of Hoffmann (top) and in Noblissima Visione (bottom) a ballet on the life of St Francis of Assisi, with libretto by Hindemith and Massine.

Massine was the principal choreographer of the Ballets Russes from 1915 to 1921. During that period he took over all of Nijinsky's roles, and created numerous works of his own, among which Le Soleil de Nuit, which incorporated Russian folklore elements, was his first. Around that time he also replaced Balanchine as resident choreographer of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo: it was then that he developed a style of choreographing that gave preeminence to the music, foreshadowing his symphonic ballets. He had the advantage of also being able to take on his most famous roles in his own comic ballets, such as Can-Can or La Boutique Fantasque. The rest of his dance career is marked by various engagements with other companies, notably in the San Francisco Bay, where he began a series of choreographic workshops, and of course his participation in film, including precisely The Red Shoes. He also appeared in another full-length film of Powell and Pressburger, the 1951 The Tales of Hoffmann, and several other short films about dance.

Leonide Massine has been described as an enigmatic, wayward personality with a reluctance to discuss certain aspects of his life, and a man given to rash, sometimes brusque replies when his artistic views were put into question. His stage persona was always imbued with a particular dynamism and energy, as well as often being representative of comical roles, as indeed he is in the ballet of the Red Shoes movie and The Tales of Hoffmann, probably due to just that energy and dynamism which make him appear as a character from a play more than reality. I think the stage presence of such a man somewhat epitomizes what sets the dancer apart from their non-dancing peers: a lightness, an ease in mobility, a sort of elusiveness and also, almost of ubiquity, darting from one place to another in less time than the common mortal. And in reflecting, as we would do for other great figures in dance history of the size of Pavlova, Nijinsky, Nureyev, Fonteyn, Baryshnikov, and many more, on the heritage left by this fascinating man, we may gather some treasures of inspiration for our own discipline, whether this be in the performing arts also or something entirely different. For swift, light, and surprising movement, and the ease to execute it, are the material images of the wayward, fantastic, and wonderful spirit of music, which plays with our feelings, exalting them to heights undreamt and then laughing it all back to nothingness.

A dramatic portrait.