There is curious documentary proof of the latter. Young Shostakovich and his best friend of those years, Bogdanov-Berezovsky, carried on a lively correspondence in the early 1920s, even though both lived in Petrograd. When Bogdanov-Berezovsky died in 1971, over one hundred of Shostakovich’s letters from his collection were returned to the composer. The letters, as Bogdanov-Berezovsky himself once told me, were priceless: the sixteen-year-old Shostakovich unabashedly shared his impressions of books he had read, plays he had seen, and concerts he had attended. After he got the letters back, Shostakovich destroyed them. When I later asked him why, he looked away and, drumming on the table with the fingers of his right hand, replied laconically, “Too many four-letter words, you see. Youth!”
But in his lifetime, Bogdanov-Berezovsky managed to have published a few fragments from those letters. One was even reproduced in facsimile in one of Bogdanov-Berezovsky’s books. In this miraculously preserved fragment (extraordinary in its open, joyful pleasure that vanished almost completely in the later Shostakovich), the composer lists the stars of the Petrograd ballet he liked: “My dear, why is so much in this world so good? Long live our Ballet!!! Long live M. A. Kozhukhova, Gerdt, Danilova, Ivanova, G. Bolshakova, Dudko, Balanchivadze, Ponomarev, Chekrygin, Leontiev, Khristapson, and many other glories, hurra-a-ay!!!”114
Dmitriev’s group was fascinated by ballet; they argued about it and dreamed of new paths ballet might take. But the only ballet professional in the circle was Balanchine. Moreover, he was the only professional musician. This explains why Dmitriev asked Balanchine to head a small group of young dancers for ballet experimentation.
About fifteen people showed up for the first meeting of the future ensemble. One participant later recalled, “We united to try to use our common efforts (as we so proudly put it) to push our art from its dead spot. Of course, the only justification for our daring was our youth.”115 And so they called the new dance group the “Young Ballet.” It is unlikely it would be remembered today if its chief choreographer had not been Balanchine, all of nineteen years old.
Dmitriev had made the right choice, becoming the first “impresario” to trust Balanchine. Others followed, including Diaghilev and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine was always “selected” to lead companies. He never forced himself, not knowing how nor caring to insist on his superiority. Either that superiority was recognized or the choreographer walked away.
In choosing Balanchine to lead the Young Ballet, Dmitriev had several considerations in mind. Being part of the world of theater and art, Dmitriev proudly recalled, “Meyerhold considered me an adopted son … and was jealous of everyone.”116 The twenty-three-year-old artist, a snob at heart, was impressed that Balanchine’s father-in-law was the famous patron of the arts and influential collector Zheverzheyev, who was respected by Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, and Dmitriev’s teacher at the Academy of Arts, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Dmitriev believed that being related to Zheverzheyev gave Balanchine an entree to the artistic elite of Petrograd.
Moreover, Dmitriev adored eccentricity. He styled himself a “Petersburg eccentric.” His best friend, the theater designer Boris Erbstein, had walked on all fours along the Nevsky Prospect on a dare, to shock the “NEPman shits.” Dmitriev considered Zheverzheyev to be a Petersburg eccentric, too. Balanchine basked in the reflection of his father-in-law’s eccentricity. The fact that Balanchine was a clothes horse was important, too. His white summer trousers were the envy of all his friends. In short, he was a “personality”: Dmitriev’s highest category.
Balanchine was the ideal leader for the Young Ballet not only because of his choreographic gifts; he also knew how to use his talent to help his troupe. Before the NEP theaters did not have to worry about the box office because they were fully subsidized by the state and tickets were handed out free of charge in factories, offices, and military units. Thus Petrograd theaters usually played to full houses. The reactions of the new public were often unexpected. Sailors and soldiers laughed loudly when Othello killed Desdemona. Ballet audiences stamped their feet and whistled when they got bored. “Today’s audience is much more expansive than the old one,” was the cautious assessment of the leader of the Maryinsky Theater’s ballet company in 1918 to a newspaper reporter.
