Footnotes To Dance History
Last month you read about the performance that Petipa's father presented on a minimal budget, using potatoes as candleholders, "glued in place with wax. You may remember that the potatoes did not stay stuck and rolled about onstage much to young Marius Petipa's delight.
After that disastrous ballet performance, the family's financial problems were worse than ever. Author Lillian Moore, who edited Petipa's memoirs, reminded readers that Petipa was writing his personal history in his '80s and had confused some facts, such as his own birth date. Petipa listed 1822, but the actual date was 1819, according to Moore. Note that dance historians and writers Mary C. Clark and Clement Crisp list his birth year as 1818 in their book, Ballet, An Illustrated History.
The following is another example of the many discrepancies writers find between recorded facts and memories. According to Petipa, Talma, the famous French tragic actor (tragedian), had seen the Petipa children on the street. He learned of their troubles and gave the children some figs to share with their parents, slipping some money into them to help them by until better times returned.
The family was twelve years in Belgium. Petipa's father took the job of ballet master in Bordeaux and Marius began to take ballet more seriously. At sixteen, he had his first serious position as premier danseur and ballet master in Nantes:
"Here I had only to create dances for the opera, stage one-act ballets of my own creation, and devise ballet numbers for divertissements. Besides myself, as premier danseur, the troupe had: (a) second male dancer, comic, two premières danseuses, one second, sixteen male supernumeraries, and sixteen female supernumeraries. The body of the ballet troupe was not large, but I composed and staged with them three ballets: "Le Droit du Seigneur," "La Petite Bohemienne," "La Noce ]a Nantes."
In his words, edited by Lillian Moore, he continued:
"Besides the salary I received for the ballets I created, I got a special author's fee on the scale of ten francs for each performance. This insignificant fee strongly flattered my ego, and I decided to devote myself to this specialty.
I was happy in this position, and remained a second season, but misfortune fell upon me: on stage, dancing, I broke my shinbone, and spent six weeks in bed. There I came to know how the majority of impresarios treat the actors whom they exploit. At the end of the month, I gave my mother power of attorney to receive my salary, but although I had broken my leg during the fulfillment of my duty on stage, the director still refused to make any payment on the basis of the conditions of my contract.
What to do? How to get the second month's salary from them? I still could not use my leg, but I had to take part in the performance. I devised a new Spanish pas, in which with my hands, I showed another dancer how to work the feet, and myself appeared, accompanying the pas with castanets. The management found itself legally defeated, and with a change of heart paid all my salary for the second month. But the job with these gentlemen did not appeal to me anymore, and with pleasure I set out for New York with my father. We took a sailing ship, and crossed the ocean in exactly twenty-two days.
Sad was our acquaintance with the United States, where an impresario, a certain Lecomte, had brought us promising mountains of gold, and where we soon found that we had fallen into the hands of an international adventurer. (Lecomte, a female, stole the box office income from the Petipas).
My father was engaged as a ballet master, I as premier danseur, and we appeared within five days of our arrival in New York. The opening took place with some kind of play and ballet: the first performance had full box office receipts, bits of which fell into our hands in the form of an insignificant advance. (The Petipas' American debut seemed to successful, judging by what Petipa remembered of finances).
A week passed, the receipts were good, but they paid us only half of the salary due, and after the second week they cynically, categorically explained that there was no money and they couldn't pay us, but asked us to be patient. We waited patiently for the third and fourth weeks, but then the impertinence of the swindler-impresario passed all bounds, which circumstance, together with the danger of catching yellow fever, then raging there, obliged my father to escape from this, for us, inhospitable city."
Next month in Footnotes, more on Ms. Lecomte and the Petipas' misadventures in New York in the 1839.
One reason for writing Footnotes is to let young dancers, and balletomaniacs of all ages know that the people who created the art we love today are much closer, geographically, physically and spiritually, than one might have imagined. •