Nadezda Mosusova

Are folkloric ballets an anachronism today?

Mosusova, Nadezda: "Are folkloric ballets an anachronism today?", 16th International Congress on Dance Research, Corfu, Greece, 30/10-3/11, 2002.

Abstract

The so called folkloric ballets are a Slavo-Balkanic specialty which started to flourish after the First World War in Yugoslavia (called in the postwar years the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), due to the Russians who promoted the theatrical dance in areas like Serbia where dance of that kind was not known at all in the 19th century. Many ballets based on folk tales and folk steps existed in our country between the two world wars, when Russian émigré dancers usually educated in classical ballet discovered the amazing beauty and unexpected flexibility of folk dances in Yugoslavia. First Margarita Froman in Zagreb, in Belgrade Alexander Fortunato, Nina Kirsanova and Anatol Joukowsky introduced folk dances into the ballet scene, from 1924 to 1947, from The Gingerbread Heart to The Legend of Ochrid, crown of the folk ballets in Yugoslavia. In the last decade or more, the whole output of such ballets almost disappeared from the stages in the former and present Yugoslavia. Living folk dances in the Balkans are still cherished by the surviving dance societies and there are many opinions that balletizing of live tradition deserves to be preserved and continued. Maybe the lost and forgotten folk tradition is sometimes only kept in remembrance in the old ballets based on folklore.

1. Introduction

In 1910 a school of “rhythmical and plastic movements” was opened in Belgrade, teaching modern and traditional dances, by a progressive Serbian lady Maga Magazinovich (1882-1968), who studied at the Duncan School in Berlin/Gruenewald, being also a pupil of Max Reinhardt, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and Mary Wigman. Maga Magazinovich performed after the fashion of Isadora Duncan and was also very interested in adapting for stage the national dances of the Balkans. In her conception, folk steps and the modern technique of the plastic dance (German Ausdruckstanz) had to be brought together. Whilst Maga stayed limited in her private studio, organizing concerts with her classes right and left, the Russian émigrés who flooded the newly formed land of South Slaves after the First World War, became at once members of the state National Theatres in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana (consisting of permanent drama, opera and ballet), the institutions badly in need of professionally trained ballet dancers.

2. Development

The Russian artists in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia could be divided in three groups: 1) The “children” of Diaghilev, better to say of Mickail Fokine, Elena Poliakova (1884-1973), from St Petersburg, Maryinsky, Margarita (1896-1970), from Moscow Boljshoi and her brother Maximilian (1889-1981) Froman, the three soloists of the Ballets Russes in its first phase, anyhow the dancers who took part in the Company before and during the first World War, 2) Dancers linked to the Anna Pavlova Company as Nina Kirsanova (1899-1989), from Moscow and 3) pupils of the first, “grandchildren” of Diaghilev-Fokine, like Anatol Joukowsky (1905 -1998), who emigrated with his parents to Greece, a disciple of Poliakova in Belgrade, in some way the central figure of this paper, eventually soloist of the Belgrade National Theatre Ballet from 1926, partner of Kirsanova, leader of the National Theatre ballet ensemble, joining for a shorter period in 1927 the ballet of Teatro Liceo in Barcelona and De Basil’s Ballets Russes in 1937, also in 1948, closing in this way the circle of Diaghilevian dancing enterprises, connected with Russian dancers in Yugoslavia. [1]

The Fromans (Margarita with her two brothers, dancers Maximilian and Valentin, brother Pavel, the stage designer, and sister Olga, the pianist) emigrated first, in 1921, settling in Croatia. Poliakova was in1922 a member of the Ljubljana Theatre, at once becoming the primaballerina and choreographer of Belgrade Ballet, leading a school in the Yugoslav capital like her colleague Margarita in Zagreb. Joukowsky emigrated as a boy and was sent by his parents from Thessaloniki to Belgrade where he was educated in the Russian military school and at the TechnicalUniversity, at the same time learning to dance and making a profession of it. Nina Kirsanova emigrated to the then independent Poland, after passing an audition for the Moscow Bolshoi in 1921, but proceeded to Belgrade in 1923, via Dubrovnik, with her husband, opera baritone Boris Popov, and her Russo-Polish partner from Lvov, Alexander Fortunato. The first task of the pair of dancers Kirsanova/Fortunato, newly engaged in the National Theatre, was to take part in the ballets put on the Serbian stage by Elena Poliakova. Among the Russian dancers, Margarita Froman, Fortunato, Kirsanova and Joukowsky were directly interested in the folk heritage of their new homeland, trying to amalgamate folk choreography with classical ballet technique.

It should be stressed that the opera goers in Belgrade fell in love at first sight with the classical dancing and also with the Diaghilev’s repertoire staged in Belgrade by Poliakova (Scheherazade!). This pushed aside the efforts of the representatives of the “plastic” ballet such as Maga Magazinovich, and also the achievements of the émigré dancer Claudia Isachenko who soon left the capital of Yugoslavia for guest performances abroad. Even such celebrities as Rudolf Laban and Valeria Kratina, visiting Belgrade in early 1920s left the audience cold and uninterested. There was also no place at all for the folk dances in such circumstances - but the Russians fell under the spell of them very soon, observing the melodic, rhythmic and choreographic richness and variability of the material in every part of Yugoslavia. The new aspects of dancing promised more than the familiar character dances, something alike solos and “mass” scenes in Petruschka by Fokine.

3. Froman and Fortunato - parallel efforts

The first of the Russians to make ballet steps toward the original native traditional/folk dance heritage was Margarita Froman in 1922, choreographing a wedding dance for the music by Kreshimir Baranovich (1894-1975). She continued in this direction, resulting in a ballet called The Gingerbread Heart, with scenario and music by Baranovich, premiered in Zagreb in June 1924, and 1925 in Ljubljana by Maria Tuljakova. With Nina Kirsanova giving several concerts in the Yugoslav capital during the 1923/24 season, Fortunato persuaded Stevan Hristich (1885-1958), then the director of Belgrade Opera to compose the ballet Legend of Ochrid (not the foreseen opera). The scenario for it was also Fortunato’s idea. The impetus was in some way the new folkloric ballet The Gingerbread Heart, and the general idea of the Croatian and Serbian composers to have national ballets (as they had already composed operas in the same national style), which meant ballets conceived musically, literary, choreographically and scenographically on the national, i.e. folk themes. So Alexander Fortunato started from July 1924 with an official dance investigation (inaugurated by the Belgrade National Theatre) in Kosovo and South Serbia, in the villages between Prishtina, Skopje and Veles.[2] One should remember that in the kingdom of Yugoslavia Serbian Macedonia, liberated from the Turks and Arnauts (Albanians) in the Balkan wars, was called South Serbia. In the communist federative Yugoslavia Macedonia became a republic and the inhabitants were promoted into an independent nation – Macedonians with their own language.

The work of Maga Magazinovich in the field of folk dancing was already a stylization which reached a peak in 1926 and 1927, with the compositions, “plastic ballads”, “dancing elegies” such as Yelisavka, mother of Milosh Obilich, Death of the Mother of Yugovichi and Kosovo Maiden, mounted after Serbian medieval epics, using music by contemporary Serbian composers. The spectacle was performed by the Maga’s distinguished pupils, but the event was overshadowed by the guest appearances in the Belgrade National Theatre of Anna Pavlova and the premiere of the Croatian balletized folklore in The Gingerbread Heart, Margarita Froman introducing Croat dances into the ballet scene for the second time.

It was a pity that Alexander Fortunato left Belgrade for Paris at the end of 1926, together with Kirsanova (who eventually joined Bronislava Nijinska in the Teatro Colon, and after that the Anna Pavlova Company), so that the Legend of Ochrid, for which scenery and costumes had already been made by two Yugoslav artists, the Russian set designer Vladimir Jedrinsky one of them, had to wait. [3] The work of Margarita Froman was to be continued in Belgrade, with the choreographies of ballet music in the operas by Petar Konjovich (1883-1970): Prince of Zeta (1929) and Koshtana, the latter also in Zagreb and Ljubljana (1931). The Prince of Zeta showed Margarita’s abilities in Montenegrin folklore and Koshtana with its extended divertissement, The Big Tchochechka Dance, in musical imagination and in choreographic possibilities equal to Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, was a real challenge for her to cope with Serbian folklore (of the very special district of Vranje), for the first time.

4. Nina Kirsanova

In April 1933 Stevan Christich had his gala evening with The Legend of Ochrid on the Belgrade stage, but only with one act. It was a big day for the choreographer and dancer of the leading role Nina Kirsanova, in Belgrade again (but without Fortunato), supported now by her young partner and leading male soloist Anatol Joukowsky. According to his memoirs, [4] he was Nina's main consultant in The Legend. Spending his free summer months for several years learning and writing down the steps of the fascinating dances of South Serbia (unofficially, he was a scout, using his holiday time to explore nature), Anatol also visited the most southerly area of Yugoslavia, that of Ochrid, another very special district, where the composer of The Legend was also dwelling for some period to create the first Serbian folkloric ballet, for the time being presented as a one-act piece.

Like Margarita Froman, Kirsanova was also led by artistic intuition and great choreographic talent in balletizing the steps and the story of the girl captured by Turks and set free by her beloved. “The characteristic steps and movements are adapted to my music which is also stylized after musical idiom of our southern districts,” said the composer. The critics of the 1933 premiere praised new movements and combinations of gestures of the first Serbian national ballet. The piece was successful but not with an acclaiming echo in the audience, being forgotten after two seasons. It was a “national ballet” gap in the Yugoslav repertoire until the new appearance of Margarita Froman mounting in Zagreb and Belgrade 1935 and 1937 a new work, a short ballet-pantomime Imbrek with the Nose by Baranovich. After that a noted event in Zagreb and Belgrade was the first full-length folkloric ballet The Devil in the Village 1937 and 1938, composed by another Croat composer Fran Lhotka, the first national ballet in Yugoslavian National Theatres by non-Russian choreographers - Pia and Pino Mlakar.

5. Anatol Joukowsky

In the last decade before the war, Joukowsky made his career in Belgrade as a distinguished danseur noble (and character dancer, especially skillful in Spanish dances, like Kirsanova) and also the connoisseur of Yugoslav folk dances “from Ochrid to Triglav”. The general increase of interest in folklore, inspired also by the investigation of dance scholars, sisters Ljubica and Danica Jankovich, [5] by the work of Maga (her school closed in 1935), who organized students’ dancing groups at the Belgrade University in 1936, giving concerts and touring abroad, made Joukowsky, now leading person and choreographer of the Belgrade Ballet, determined to present his own findings independently in ballet concerts. He began to train a dozen of his dancers from the National Theatre Ballet in folklore. The action was undertaken directly for the premiere of Migrant Workers in 1936, a play by Anton Panovich with incidental music by Josip Slavenski (1896-1955), where the dancers had to perform teshkoto.

Another “push”, but from the authorities of the theatre, came after the appearance of the guest choreographer from Prague Elizabeth Nikoljska, who mounted in Belgrade 1937 the Polish national ballet Harnasie by Karol Szymanowski, and after Joukowsky’s group taking part in an event of international significance - the gathering of the Slavonic dancing societies in Prague, June 1938. It was a revelation for the Czech and international audience, Joukowsky returning home with his small company as a first prize winner. Now he was sent officially to make further investigations in the traditional dancing (“How much of time do you need to make a national ballet?” the director of the National Theatre asked him. “Two months, Sir.”) [6]. But it took more than two months (the only period for excursions being summertime) for the new research in the nearby localities of Migrant Workers (Debar and monastery St. John Bigorski), composing music and working with dancers.

The summer of the year 1938, the Joukowskys, husband and wife, also did research in Greece (visiting islands), Bulgaria and Romania. The result was “a real folkloric ballet”, with the music specially written for it by Alfred Pordes (1907-1941), The Fire in the Mountains (scenario by Joukowsky) with the premiere in February 1941. Another achievement was based on music by Svetomir Nastasijevic (1902-1978) In the Valley of Morava, performed in March 1942, bringing to the stage Serbian national heroes like Prince Marko, Milosh Obilich and Jug Bogdan. The second ballet came to the Belgrade stage in the Serbia already occupied by the Germans.

6. The Legend of Ochrid by Margarita Froman

In 1939, just before the Second World War, was the time when Stevan Hristich was ready to finish his Legend of Ochrid. Kirsanova was abroad on her tours for several years, so perhaps Joukowsky could be predicted as the choreographer of Hristich’s ballet. But a star from the Metropolitan Opera, Boris Romanov, made his guest appearance in Belgrade, mounting three short ballets with enormous success (especially Ravel’s Bolero) and the officials of the National Theatre Ballet, as well as the composer himself, looked to Romanov for the new choreographic creation [7], it is to be supposed, with Joukowsky as the possible assistant, for Romanov was not at all acquainted with the Serbian folk dancing. But the war changed all these plans.

The Legend was brought to an end after the Second World War and given for staging to Margarita Froman (not Kirsanova who was back during the German occupation, working in the National Theatre as before), seeing its opening night in Belgrade in November 1947. While the one-act version of the ballet (1933) fell into oblivion, the full-length ballet became a “hit” which attracted the big audience and the specialists for a long time, and was regarded as a musical composition of distinguished qualities of a true symphonic development. The composer of The Legend transposed folk melodies into his musical conception in the modernized fashion of Russian composers of the “Five”. Referring to the celebrated choral work, the 10th Wreath by Stevan Mokranjac (1856-1914), which bears the subtitle Songs from Ochrid, Hristich used also some musical motives from Vranje and Pirot. He brought quotations-leitmotivs in the musical elaboration of the mimic scenes, narration atmosphere, for the action, attaining a balance between drama and ballet. For the “pure” dancing, with some exceptions, the composer invented his own music in the style of Serbian-Balkan imaginary folklore.

The scheme of the ballet presents a very interesting picture:

Act I. In a medieval village near Lake of Ochrid, there is an enamored couple, Biljana and Marko (once Kirsanova and Joukowsky). The girl is very unhappy. Instead of her beloved she has to marry a rich man. He is arriving with his parents to become betrothed to Biljana. Dance 1, Allegretto, wheel dance, boys and girls. Dance 2, Allegro moderato, young men dancing, also solo of Marko. The arrival of the suitors, dance of the bridegroom, the best man and the cousins. Dance 3, the vowing guests wheel dancing, the ensemble and the soloists. Marko is absent. Suddenly the Turks are attacking, setting the village to fire, killing the men and the bridegroom. With other girls Biljana is taken away as slave.

Act II. The same night Marko starts his search for Biljana. Moderato.

Followed by the Morning Star he arrives on the banks of the Ochrid Lake where the water nymphs are dancing (two Variations). Adagio. Marko’s pas-de-deux with the Fairy of the Lake. She presents him with a ring and a sword from the mysterious treasure cave. With the help of these magic objects Marko is to liberate Biljana. Marko’s sword dance. Classical ballet dancing reaches its expression in this act. In the first version of The Legend the solos of peasant girl Biljana was also sur les points, which was not the case in the definite version.

Act III. The sultan’s palace in Constantinople. Andantino, dance of the odalisques, Vivace frenetico, the appearance of janissaries. Sostenuto, procession of the slaves - a divertissement conceived dramaturgically by the dances of captured girls, in the sultan’s presence, Moderato, Rumanian dance, Allegro moderato, Bulgarian dance, Moderato, Greek dance, Largamente, the dance of Biljana. Marko enters the palace resisting the attacks of the Turkish guards, when Biljana, in the midst of the fight, disappears – transformed into a dove. Marko clears his way back and runs away.

Act IV. The previous village now rebuilt. Marko is sad, not knowing Biljana’s whereabouts. Suddenly, in flies a white dove turning into Biljana. Marko’s joy is never-ending. There are no more obstacles for them to be married. There are many “mass” scenes, dances, into which the rite of wedding is woven. Dance 1. Allegro, young men and girls, with Marko aside, the peasants gather when Biljana appears, dance, Allegro moderato, the girls embellish the bride-to-be Biljana. Dance 2, Allegro, the young men’s wheel dance, Marko is being adorned for the wedding ceremony, the dance with friends, Marko’s solo. Dance 3 and 4, Allegro moderato, Biljana with Marko and the whole ensemble.[8]

The Legend was mounted in two months (famous two months!), in the National Theatre, with an almost completely new ensemble. Many Russians of the Belgrade Ballet, among them Anatol Joukowsky with his dancer wife Janya Vasilieva left the country to avoid the communist regime (some important Serbs from the ballet also fled), and the troupe had to start achieving some dancing dexterity from the beginning. Many young people were engaged from the then existing choral and (folk) dancing societies, quite a number from Maga Magazinovich’s student’s group. In contrast to the work of Joukowsky who taught classical dancers to perform folklore, now the folk trained dancers had to learn classics (from Nina Kirsanova, one among few Russians left in Belgrade) in turn, to restore at least a part of the former ballet repertoire in the National theatre.

The Legend of Ochrid was a big school for all dancers in many directions. This ballet became at once very popular, gladly seen by the wide audiences, mounted in other Yugoslav towns, presented in the guest performances abroad. The first stage in this direction was the United Kingdom in 1951, the next Greece in 1952. “This night the soul of Serbian people trembled in many perplexed rhythms of the South…” Athenians said in their writings about the event. Maybe some of them remembered The Gingerbread Heart seen in Greek capital in 1933, performed by the Belgrade dancers!

The 1951 Edinburgh Festival was the scene of the big Yugoslav show, the main item being The Legend of Ochrid. The English spectators favoured the folkloric expression in music and choreography of The Legend (which in the meantime entered some ballet cyclopedias), although they were aware of the difficulties imposed on the choreographer of folk ballets where traditional dancing is mixed with classics: "The Legend of Ochrid is more successful in the national dancing acts than in the romantic scene by the Lake of Ochrid where the nymphs and stars dance sur les points. The male character dances, in particular, are most effective and satisfying in pattern”. [9] The Legend was not forgotten even ten years later when John Haylok referred to Cairo musical life: ”Country dances are essentially limited and are not in themselves enough to make a ballet”, describing the choreography of Margarita Froman as pas seul, pas de deux with country steps, dancing in circles with much trotting and knee bending, including jumping dance as well. [10] But the ballet was made, of a very compact structure, surviving for many years on the Yugoslav stages, mounted by many different choreographers.

7. After The Legend

What was left of the efforts of Froman, Fortunato, Kirsanova and Joukowsky? Margarita had to emigrate again in 1950 while The Legend was making her triumphal performance through Yugoslavia and sometimes in Europe, even USA. [11] Many of the stagings were by other choreographers, like the version 1958 by Vladimir Burmeister, in the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre of Moscow, being one of the greatest satisfactions for the composer. In Yugoslavia, The Legend was overtaken by Mlakars, and by Dimitri Parlich (1916-1986), a pupil of Poliakova and Joukowsky (dancing in his folk group in 1938-1940, and in his folkloric ballets as well). A Thessaloniki born actor and dancer was for a considerable time interpreting Marko of Margarita’s The Legend, being her counselor, it is said, in choreography for the Hristich ballet.

There were some ideas to reconstruct the first version of the Legend by Kirsanova, but nothing was preserved, the National Theatre of Belgrade being heavily damaged in the bombardments of 1941 and 1944. Almost nothing was left, not even the score of the Legend’s first version. Nobody could say anything either about the cooperation between the composer Hristich and Fortunato (his name as the scenario writer was missing in the post war Legend). Leaving Yugoslavia never to return again, Fortunato took all his notes with him, never to use them anywhere. Obviously he gave nothing to the Theatre authorities or to his partner Kirsanova. During the war Joukowsky was kept several dances from Nina's Legend on his program, but she herself showed no eagerness to renew or make new ballets based on Serbian folklore.

8. New ways in ballet with folklore

With his two ballets The Fire in the Mountains and In the Valley of Morava, performed in the 1940s Joukowsky tried, as he said afterwards, to avoid stylization or balletization of dancing folklore. He wanted to perform something genuine or something very close to the original village dancing, believing in folklore as a right and the rich source for the new ballet scene, the old one being full of the omnipresent standard repertoire.[12] Maybe it would be possible to practice genuineness in smaller ballets or in excerpts, but not in full-length ballets like The Legend of Orchid or Zorbas the Greek by Mikis Theodorakis, made recently for Novi Sad. Joukowsky also had problems with genuineness in smaller extracts when choreographing music for the Migrant Workers. He brought migrants from Galichnik and Lazaropolje working in Belgrade into the pageant to perform the men’s dance teshkoto with the tupan (drum) and zurlas on the stage and the Slavenski’s music played by the orchestra in the pit. This experiment was possible at the premiere but not for other performances when Joukowsky normally had to rely on the theatre’s staff.[13]

And what is genuine after all? What is authenticity in such cases? The dances are executed to the composed music, rarely with the accompaniment played by peasants. So was it in Prague, with the orchestra and the conductor from the Belgrade Theatre, when Joukowsky’s work was compared with that of “the great La Argentina who spread all over the world glory of Spanish dance”. The works of choreographers in general depend on music by more or less talented composers (there are no good ballets without good music!) and one has to remember that the folk ballets in Yugoslavia were put on or conceived with the music by distinguished artists. That is what Joukowsky realized, remembering his performance in Prague with the symphony orchestra playing symphonic music by Yugoslav composers. [14]

Of course, the most desirable way for creating the new style of ballet dancing is with the cooperation between choreographer and composer. The first folkloric ballet of that kind was made by Pordes who adapted his music based on the folk tunes written down by Alexei Butakov (the pianist following Joukowsky in his “pilgrimages”), strictly after the steps noted down by Joukowsky. But the ballet master had no time to finalize his project in Belgrade, no time to develop a system, leaving Serbia never to see it again, aware that nobody afterwards carried out his ideas and intentions “to preserve the fragrance of primitive charm and sincerity”, searching for the dance of ethnic truth. [15] And what is truth in the art? What is truth in ballets and operas?

The main loss is that Joukowsky never regained the opportunity to carry out his visions, having settled in the United States as university professor of Ethno dance but with no official ballet scene as in Europe, where he did his only last work after his aesthetics, in Vienna 1944: the new (according to his words from the tapes) Gingerbread Heart completely based on the folklore. We do not know how much he could be acquainted with Froman’s The Legend of Ochrid, but the fact is that nobody succeeded in doing what Margarita has done, or what Anatol made with his investigations and their results.

9. Conclusion

Is today anybody interested in reviving folk ballets or making new ones? Are the simple plots about abducted girls (the similar story was used in the ballet The Fire in the Mountains), village fairs with heart-cakes and devils menacing lovers still attractive in our postmodern era? The ballets of Joukowsky are lost forever but not the music. The Legend in the meantime has been modernized and sometimes impoverished, losing all her flair when deprived of the folklore. Is the tradition left only for dance societies now, not for ballet? We have to reconsider our modern views after the success of Zorbas the Greek in Novi Sad and Belgrade for the whole of the last decade. There are still the audiences, spectators who are much in need of féeries, folklore and expressive music to support the dancers able to carry the new style forms of ethnic ballet choreographers. Let us think about the effect Margarita’s Legend had in Britain, indirectly inspiring Benjamin Britten for a full-length (national?) ballet, and the idea of Froman and Joukowsky brought to life in Skopje 1953 when Parlich made the Macedonian national ballet after the story of Migrant Workers with music by Gligor Smokvarski.

Destiny was made by the fact that until 1947 the Yugoslav ballet was not made by local specialists. The Russians succeeded in creating something in Yugoslavia that was never achieved in Russia of the 19th century, when the rise of national opera took place: whole pieces of ballet based on folklore. There were six made in prewar Yugoslavia and they are worth keeping on the stage.

10. Notes

[1] This division was made by the author of the paper in The Heritage of the Ballet Russe in Yugoslavia Between the Two World Wars, Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars in North Carolina School of the Arts (Winston-Salem), University of California, Riverside, 1988, p. 112.

[2] Interview with Mme Kirsanova, Comoedia, Belgrade, No 2, Sept. 8, 1924, p. 14.

[3] These sketches were presented at the Art Deco Exhibition in Paris 1925. In fact the stage and costume design preceded music and choreography of the future ballet by Hristich/Fortunato. See Olga Milanovich, The Staging of, and Costumes for “The Legend of Ochrid” by Stevan Hristich in Life and Work of Stevan Hristich, Belgrade, 1991, pp. 55-74.

[4] A. Joukowsky, My Confession, audio tape sent to Ksenija Shukuljevich-Markovich on Jan. 30, 1987, published in The Russians without Russia-Serbian Russians, Belgrade, 1994, p. 292.

[5] The first volume of their monumental work Folk Dances (Narodne igre), appeared in Belgrade in 1934.

[6] My Confession, p. 287.

[7] See Mirka Pavlovich, The Composer of “The Legend of Ochrid” Stevan Hristich - as Personality and a Theatrical Man in Life and Work of Stevan Hristich, p. 139.

[8] This synopsis was adapted from the original Hristich’s score and presented in the article Fléerie, Folklore and Fin-de-siècle by N. Mosusova, in Folklore and its Artistic Transposition, Belgrade, 1990, pp. 165, 167.

[9] Margaret Crossland, Ballet Carnival (A Companion to Ballet), London, 1955, p. 255.

[10] Ballet Today, London, April 1961. pp. 26, 27.

[11] On the American TV, together with the Stravinsky’s Noah and theFlood. See Looking at the Television with Ann Barzell, Dance Magazine, New York, Aug. 1962, p. 20.

[12] The audio tape sent to Mosusova on April 26, 1993: “Let the Giselle and Swan Lake to the Soviets who are for fifty years retarded” (first published in this paper).

[13] A. Joukowsky, Macedonian Folk Dance on the Ballet Stage between the Two World Wars in Macedonian Folklore in the Music and Drama till 1945, Skopje, 1986, pp. 84, 85.

[14] A. Joukowsky, My Life, audiotape sent to Aleksei Arsenjev in Dec. 1993, published in Teatron, Belgrade, No 90, 1995, p. 86.

[15] Audiotape by Joukowsky sent to Mosusova.

11. References

1. Audiotapes from Anatol Joukowsky:

A. in Serbian to Ksenija Shukuljevich-Markovich, published in Serbian as My confession, in The Russians without Russia - Serbian Russians, Belgrade, 1994.

B. in Russian to Aleksei Arsenjev, published in Serbian as My Life in Teatron, Belgrade, No 90, 1995.

C. In Serbian to Skopje, published in Macedonian as Macedonian folk dance on the ballet stage between the two World Wars in Macedonian Folklore in the music and drama till 1945, Proceedings of the MacedonianAcademy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, 1986.

D. In Russian to Nadezda Mosusova, quotations first published in this paper (in English).

2. Nadezda Mosusova: The Heritage of the Ballet Russe in Yugoslavia Between the Two World Wars, Proceedings of the SDHS, University of California, Riverside, 1988 (in English).

3. Nadezda Mosusova: Féerie, folklore and fin-de-siècle in Folklore and its Artistic Transposition, Proceedings of the FMU, Belgrade, 1990 (in English).

4. Olga Milanovich: The Staging of, and Costumes for “The Legend of Ochrid” by Stevan Hristich in Life and Work of Stevan Hristich, Proceedings of the SANU, Belgrade, 1991 (in Serbian).

5. Mirka Pavlovich: The composer of “The Legend of Ochrid” Stevan Hristich - as Personality and a Theatrical Man in Life and Work of Stevan Hristich, Belgrade, 1991 (in Serbian).

6. Margaret Crossland, Ballet Carnival (A Companion to Ballet), London, 1955.

7. Interviews with Kirsanova and Hristich in Comoedia of 1924, Belgrade, in Serbian.

12. The author

Nadezda Mosusova, musicologist and composer, worked as researcher at the Institute of Musicology SANU and as music history professor at the Faculty of Music (University of Art) in Belgrade, now in retirement. Her main themes include musical nationalism in Serbian art and other Slavic cultures, the works by Serbian composers Petar Konjovich and Stevan Hristich, and the opera and ballet in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Nadezda Mosusova