This changed abruptly with the start of the NEP. The state cut back subsidies even to such established theaters as the Maryinsky. Theaters were forced to raise prices and the audiences diminished. The situation was even worse for many private enterprises. They fought for their lives to draw audiences. The experimental “People’s Comedy” run by Sergei Radlov, addressed to a proletarian audience, was forced to shut down under the new conditions. For Balanchine, who had often attended Radlov’s plays at the Iron Hall of the People’s House, this catastrophe was a harsh lesson.
Balanchine explained to me in New York,
The Iron Hall was called that because its two levels were made of iron constructions. The lacework railings of the balconies were also iron. Radlov’s audiences were the simplest people, among them many street urchins. They also had opera at the People’s House, the audience was a bit better there. But the opera itself was rather bad. They had no money. I remember they had to do the Polovtsian dances in
His unpretentiousness and flexibility as both dancer and choreographer made Balanchine the ideal leader for a small ballet ensemble during the NEP. He knew how to survive. Danilova maintained that in hard times Balanchine stole food to keep from starving.118 His character as well as the existence he led completely turned Balanchine away from snobbery. He was no longer affected by Volynsky’s attacks, who in an attempt to publicly humiliate Balanchine sneered in a newspaper article that “he is treading the Petrograd stages in a specific type of piquant, unbridled dance.”119
Shostakovich in his later years liked to quote Chekhov: “I write everything except denunciations.” Balanchine could have signed that
Although the revolution deprived Balanchine of imperial patronage, it taught him to work for the audience. The NEP in Petrograd completed Balanchine’s education. Now he would make a face whenever anyone said he “created” ballets. “Only God creates,” he would counter with a shrug. “I am only a chef cooking up another dish for the audience, that’s all.” That idea, repeated throughout his life with slight variations, would be the linchpin of Balanchine’s aesthetics.
On June 1,1923, a few months after the group of enthusiasts met and elected Balanchine director of the Young Ballet, the new ensemble gave its first concert in a theater appropriately called the Experimental. It was in the building of the former City Duma, located on October 25th Prospect (formerly Nevsky, renamed to commemorate the Bolshevik revolution). “The star turn of the program was Chopin’s ‘Marche funèbre’ choreographed by Georges Balanchivadze,” recalled one of the participants.
It was performed by almost all the females in our little troupe and several men. We moved on the stage in self-oblivion, wearing the fantastic black costumes that barely covered our bodies, designed by Boris Erbstein. We diligently performed the movements invented by the choreographer, shifting groups and poses that were imbued with deepest depression and grief.120
The public liked the Young Ballet. As for the critical reaction, it was predictably divided along aesthetic lines. Volynsky attacked Balanchine; a young critic, Yuri Brodersen, who was under his influence, called the performance “a whole evening of stage triteness.” The progressive critics, among them the authoritative Alexei Gvozdev, an admirer of Meyerhold’s, were approving.
Balanchine got the hall of the Experimental Theater for the debut of the Young Ballet from the director of the theater, Vsevolod Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, who also headed the Institute of the Living Word. Vsevolodsky was one of the first to reconstruct and perform authentic ancient Russian rituals: weddings, wakes, and circle dances. He was fascinated by the folkloric, preprofessional roots of the theater. “We are also for a ‘left theater,’ but a Russian theater,” he announced. “We are not interested in Americanism, or constructivism, circuses, fox trots, or the cinema—no! We want to develop a line of spirituality in the new Russian theater!”121
Vsevolodsky wanted to assert what he called “the theater of Logos.” In practice, this meant the domination of declamation, in which Vsevolodsky’s Experimental Theater became incredibly virtuosic. One of his most sensational productions was a performance, jointly with Balanchine’s Young Ballet, of Blok’s narrative poem
