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    Days With Ulanova: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Russian Ballerina
    Days With Ulanova: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Russian Ballerina
    Days With Ulanova: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Russian Ballerina
    Ebook286 pages1 hour

    Days With Ulanova: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Russian Ballerina

    By Albert E. Kahn and Arnold L. Haskell

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    In the great world of dance, Galina Ulanova is considered by many to be as great, if not greater, than Pavlova. Onstage, the miracle of her performances has enraptured vast audiences. But offstage, to the millions of her devotees, she remains an enigma. This exceptional biography—one of a kind—explores the world of Ulanova, and offers a unique look at the woman behind the legend.

    As a result of his friendship with Ulanova, writer-photographer Albert E. Kahn had the singular opportunity to study Ulanova as dancer, teacher, performer, warm friend, and a shy, modest woman seeking solitude among her beloved birch groves in the Russian countryside. Kahn has captured it all in words and pictures—from the magnificent performances to the intimate glimpses of her day-to-day life.

    “Days with Ulanova is the most exciting ballet book I have ever seen.”—Anatole Chujoy, Editor of The Dance Encyclopedia

    “All lovers of the dance, as well as libraries, museums and schools, will welcome this treasure of a book.”—Arthur Todd, New York Times

    “Mr. Kahn’s work is without precedent in the theatre world. His photographs of Ulanova are undoubtedly the finest imaginary job of visual commentary on any dancer.”—Genevieve Oswald, Curator Dance Collection, Library & Museum of Performing Arts, Lincoln Center

    “The particular treasure of her life has been lovingly and sensitively apprehended. Mr. Kahn has made us all a wonderfully valuable gift.”—Dance Magazine

    “This book must rank among the half-dozen most beautiful books on ballet ever published…a monument and a memorial.”—P. W. Manchester, Dance News
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMuriwai Books
    Release dateDec 2, 2018
    ISBN9781789127300
    Days With Ulanova: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Russian Ballerina
    Author

    Albert E. Kahn

    ALBERT EUGENE KAHN (1912-1979) was an American journalist, photographer, author and nephew of modernist industrial architect Albert Kahn. Born on May 11, 1912 in London, England into an affluent politically conservative Jewish family, he was educated in the United States, where he attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Dartmouth College. He graduated Dartmouth Class Poet in 1932 and, after marrying in 1934, moved to California, where he became executive secretary of the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda. A writer of singular versatility, Kahn had earned a celebrated international reputation for his political exposés prior to his widely acclaimed work on Galina Ulanova. His book Sabotage!, dealing with Fascist conspiratorial activities, was one of the top best-sellers of the Second World War; and his subsequent books on secret diplomacy and the Cold War era were translated into more than twenty languages. Permanent collections of his photographic studies of Ulanova and Casals are housed at the Library and Museum of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Art; and the Dartmouth College Library. Kahn died on September 15, 1979, aged 67. ARNOLD L. HASKELL (1903-1980) was a British dance critic who founded the Camargo Society in 1930. He was influential in the development of the Royal Ballet School, later becoming the school’s headmaster. He went to Australia in 1936 with the visiting Monte Carlo Russian Ballet as a publicist/reporter, writing articles and reviews for several Australian newspapers and journals. He returned to Australia in 1938 to gather material for Waltzing Matilda: A Background to Australia (1943) and continued writing articles and reviews for Australian newspapers and magazines. In 1974, Haskell was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) by the University of Bath.

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      Book preview

      Days With Ulanova - Albert E. Kahn

      This edition is published by Papamoa Press – www.pp-publishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – papamoapress@gmail.com

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

      © Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      Days with Ulanova

      An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Russian Ballerina

      by

      Albert E. Kahn

      With an Introduction by Arnold L. Haskell

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

      GALINA ULANOVA — An Introduction by Arnold L. Haskell 5

      Theme and Variations 7

      Chapter 1 — Talent Is Work 12

      Chapter 2 — The Magic Word 43

      Chapter 3 — Science of Life 85

      Chapter 4 — City of Birth 126

      Chapter 5 — Seeds and Blossoms 152

      Chapter 6 — Precious Heritage 181

      Chapter 7 — Among the Birches 223

      Principal Dates in Ulanova’s Career 245

      Acknowledgments 247

      About the Author 249

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 251

      GALINA ULANOVA — An Introduction by Arnold L. Haskell

      I have been fortunate enough to have had some forty years of experience watching dancing all over the world and discussing the art with its greatest exponents. But I have the strong feeling that all my years of watching dancing have been a preparation for the few fleeting moments of watching Ulanova. Now, through this book, those moments are prolonged and intensified.

      My memories of Ulanova are, to me, a part of life itself, bringing a total enrichment of experience. To me, hers are not theatrical miracles but triumphs of the human spirit. Where Pavlova was supremely conscious of her audience and could play upon its emotions as upon an instrument, Ulanova is remote in a world of her own—which we are privileged to penetrate. She is so completely identified with the character she impersonates that nothing outside exists. The master craftsman by an act of humility has become the truth-revealing, life-giving artist. When Ulanova takes her curtain call, it is immediately obvious that she has been called from afar, and that the salvos of applause are as much of an intrusion to her as they are to the more sensitive in her audience. For once this grateful noise seems horribly out of place.

      Ulanova’s complete concentration carries us with her through the period artificialities of Giselle to a statement about life and love, through the highly skilled ballet-making of Romeo and Juliet to a true communion with the mind of Shakespeare. Working through the medium of what has sometimes been called the most sophisticated, stylized and artificial form of theatre, she has brought the dance for a brief moment back to its primitive origins in magic. I have felt, no, I feel, this strongly, for the enchantment persists. I have talked with Ulanova of her art; she is exceptionally intelligent and highly articulate. One has the strong impression that she would have succeeded in any walk of life—which explains the craftsman but leaves the artist a mystery. And what a superb craftsman, the most fluent and effortless exponent of the greatest of all schools of classical ballet, that of St. Petersburg—Leningrad.

      There is, however, something revealing in her personality. The sense of dedication and integrity is common to all artists of the dance. With Ulanova there is the quality of exceptional humility, something quite distinct from modesty, and a feeling of completeness, a withdrawal into herself that can at times be strangely disconcerting through lack of contact. One can sense tremendous will, strength held in reserve. In no one have I ever been conscious of so great a feeling of power, of a powerful spring held in check. She safeguards her private life, her essential recreation, with absolute determination, placing an implacable barrier between herself and all intrusion. Her very acceptance of grateful praise is coldly impersonal.

      Her character reveals itself strongly when she is coaching a young ballerina. There is first the careful scientific explanation, and then, without any detailed demonstration of the whole, so as not to impose her own interpretation, she seems by a tremendous act of sympathy to inspire the pupil to dance. I must be careful not to suggest hypnotism, for the pupils are in no sense automata; it is an act of generous inspiration, a giving of self, and not a command.

      Her beauty—and to me she is infinitely beautiful—is beauty of character and intelligence, a positive nobility that has nothing to do with accepted classical canons. It is as truly Russian as Pushkin or Tolstoy. Albert Kahn studied her for a long period and under all circumstances, following her so closely that she was no longer aware of his presence. The result is a complete record of an extraordinary personality. In this book there is the real Ulanova, as none but a few of her intimates can have seen her. I find it an inspiration not only for the memories that it underlines, but for the introduction to aspects of Ulanova I have never seen. I cannot conceive of a more precious or intimate document.

      Theme and Variations

      In the late spring of 1959 the Bolshoi Ballet came to San Francisco and concluded their first American tour, fittingly enough, in the city christened after the gentlest saint and set by the Pacific which in the name of peace joins their continent and ours. It was then this book had its conception.

      I had met Galina Ulanova for the first time a few weeks before in New York. I happened to be there when the Bolshoi troupe arrived, and I sent her a note of greeting, mentioning I had visited Moscow the previous year as a guest of the Soviet Writers’ Union. Knowing something of the demands of her schedule, I was surprised to receive a reply inviting me to call at her hotel the following evening. Hardly less surprising were my first impressions of Ulanova.

      I am aware that

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