This time the festival will feature classical ballet stars from the Bolshoi and Mariyinsky Opera and Ballet Theater, Vienna Opera, British Royal Ballet, Swedish Youth Ballet, Ukrainian National Opera, as well as students of Kyiv’s Dance Academy along with the prize holders and laureates of all previous Lifar contests.
Last spring, festival audiences were first acquainted with Lifar’s original version of P С tr Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, staged by the Paris Opera Ballet in 1939. The ballet was revived by Kyiv choreographer Viktor Yaremenko and Lifar’s pupils Christian Vlassi and Attilio Labise of the Paris Opera Ballet visited Kyiv shortly before the premiere. They found practically no faults with the rendition. Romeo and Juliet were first danced by Yevhen Kolesnyk and Natalia Kalynychenko. The audience responded warmly to the rejuvenated production. The performance was attended by Lifar’s widow Lillian Ahlefeldt who brought her husband’s Gold Ballet Shoe (the highest ballet award conferred on Serge Lifar) and contributed it to the Ukrainian Museum of Historical Treasures. Mme. Lillian asked to place Serge’s old cloth shoe (the one he had used when practicing in Kyiv) with the gold one on display. “Please never let them part,” she said, “because there is pain and sweat in one and glory in the other.” The countess presented the diplomas and said she hoped Serge’s best renditions would return to his native land. Before returning home in Lausanne, she promised that she would transfer her husband’s legacy to Kyiv, his native city which he had revered all his life.
Serge Lifar, famous dancer, choreographer, historian and theoretician of European ballet who headed the Paris Opera Ballet, UNESCO’s World Ballet Council, and French Academy of Choreography for over thirty years, would have marked his 96th birthday April 2. Associated with his name is a whole epoch in twentieth century ballet. He lived an eventful and multifarious life. People admired his talent and spread gossip. What was he like onstage and in daily life?
PRODIGAL SON
In his autobiographic book Busy Years Serge Lifar recalls his childhood with an aching sorrow, how he sang with St. Sophia’s choir and studied at the Kyiv conservatory. Incredibly, his classes at the ballet studio of Bronislava Nijinska (sister of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky) were purely accidental. She did not favor Serge as a pupil and did not think he would ever make a good ballet dancer. He saw that he stooped his shoulders and called him humpback. Years would pass and his body would be described as divine, as though cut with a sculptor’s chisel, and he would be referred to as the Icarus of the twentieth century.
In the fall of 1923, Kyiv was a gloomy, war-devastated, and hungry city. Lifar decided to seek his fortune abroad. He left his home on Iryninska St. and headed for the railroad station. He almost stole across several borders before he reached Paris. There he joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He studied and practiced indefatigably, and his part in Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet, The Prodigal Son, became his triumph. In George Balanchine’s choreography he reached the peak of dramatic impact on the audience. As a dancer, Serge Lifar remained a mystery to many. The ballet Icare became the most precious gem in his creative collection. Incidentally, this ballet will be the next Lifar production to be staged by the National Opera of Ukraine, copyright courtesy of Mme. Ahlefeldt. As a choreographer, Lifar staged over 200 ballets and divertissements for operas, yet none of his productions appeared in Ukraine during his lifetime.
“Of course, Serge Lifar was the most spectacular figure on the Parisian ballet horizon,” Aleksandr Vertinsky wrote in his memoirs, A Quarter of a Century without Fatherland. “Bestowed with a luxurious stage presence, talented, and highly cultured, he won recognition immediately. His ballet performances at the Grand Opera [i.e., Paris Opera Ballet], where he was ballet master, always turned into holidays of art. He rallied round himself gifted youth, taught them, working six-eight hours a day, and created French ballet. Lifar’s work was highly valued by the government and his triumphant European tours were often government- financed.
“I was introduced to Lifar by actor Ivan Mozzhukhin. We became very good friends and often met. Serge was an avid reader, well-educated, and an acknowledged expert in Pushkin studies. He earned very big money and spent it buying unpublished documents relating to Pushkin, his letters, poems, and drawings.
“‘I will present all this to my Fatherland,’ he said, showing us the precious manuscripts.”
Russian ballet owes much of its triumph in other countries to Diaghilev. Serge Lifar wrote the book Twenty Years with Diaghilev where he traced the interesting and bold innovator’s path step by step. He loved art and treated everything connected with it with jealous care. As an actor, he was perhaps like a burning torch. His every performance was a miracle. With his Gypsy mother’s blood he inherited the itinerant people’s explosive temperament. Incidentally, the latter often caused him trouble. Once, at a gala performance at the Paris Opera Ballet, he refused to dance just because they did not install the stage props he wanted. The French president was in attendance and everybody looked forward to Serge Lifar’s appearance on stage. A flustered company manager suggested the cast dance in frocks. Lifar refused point blank. The manager announced his refusal from the podium. A scandal ensued. Lifar could be fired right there and then. The following day he was summoned to the president’s office.
“Why did you refuse to dance?” the president asked him.
“I love and treasure my art too much to scandalize it by such haphazard performances, and that was precisely what they wanted to do.”
“But your performance was part of the program. The whole diplomatic corps was in attendance. Do you realize that you created a very embarrassing situation for the management?”
“I am prepared to be punished for that in any way,” Lifar replied stubbornly and handed the president his resignation.
“What are you going to do if I grant your resignation?”
“I will work as a taxi driver.”
The president smiled. The resignation was refused and the Paris Opera Ballet manager received a reprimand.
Aleksandr Vertinsky wrote that Serge Lifar was a gifted interlocutor, he enjoyed meeting with friends and colleagues. He was an excellent guitar player, knew old Gypsy romances no one else remembered, and sang them in a beautiful voice.
ICARUS AND THE COUNTESS
“I first met Serge at the house of Grand Prince Andrei Romanov, grandson of Alexander II,” his widow recalls with a smile. “I was invited to the reception by his [Grand Prince’s] wife Matilda. Driving up to the porch, I was surprised to see a cavalcade of taxis parking there. Many a driver was getting out of the cars clad in general’s uniform, with combat decorations. Those were White Guard ОmigrО officers earning their living in Paris as private taxi drivers and their French was mixed with Russian phrases. Sometime in the middle of the evening party a handsome slim dark-haired man appeared, carrying a luxurious bouquet which he presented to the oldest lady in attendance. At once he was surrounded by many guests. We were introduced, but I remained unperturbed even at hearing the name. You see, at the time I spent most of the time living with my parents in Sweden or visiting with my sister in America, so I knew nothing about the Paris ballet star. This must have touched a nerve in Lifar; he was used to admiring stares and compliments, so my cold shoulder was totally unexpected.
“‘Lillian, would you like to watch a rehearsal at the Paris Opera Ballet?’ he asked. ‘Good. I’ll be waiting by the service entrance tomorrow.’
“Just imagine! I came and waited 10, 15, 30 minutes. He was nowhere in sight. I was beside myself and about to leave when a ballerina appeared and took me to the rehearsal hall. It was under the theater’s cupola. Serge was dancing. Seeing me, he just nodded and continued. I found myself glued to the seat. I was afraid to move because it creaked awfully (laughing). I sat mad at myself, ‘Just look at that Narcissus! Is this the way for a gentleman to behave? He didn’t even apologize.’ Well, as he continued dancing I let off the steam and could now watch calmly. The music was charming: Beethoven. Serge was staging a ballet based on a biblical story. After the rehearsal he invited me to a restaurant, but warned that he was not going to splurge; he did not have that much money. We talked at the table for several hours. It was then I realized that Serge Lifar was an extraordinary person. I liked him very much and I decided to check his feelings in a very simple manner. I left for New York to visit my sister. The ship was setting off from Le Havre. Lifar saw me to the port and several minutes before the departure he said, ‘Lillian, do write to me often.’
“‘Will you write to me?’ I asked.
“‘No, I never write letters, but I am very fond of reading them. Why? Is it so difficult? The more so that women like to commit their thoughts to paper.’
“All the way to America I relived the conversation and was not sure what I would do,” the countess continues, “He was older than me, spoilt by publicity. Why should he need me? In New York, I waited for two days and then called him. Serge wanted to know if I’d received his telegram. He sounded anxious. ‘Well, never mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll read it to you, I remember it by heart. PARIS EMPTY WITHOUT YOU. WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK?’ I bought a ticket for the first ship I could board... We spent 31 years together. At times it seems to me that they flashed by like a day. It was the brightest and happiest period of my life.”
Despite the marriage, Serge Lifar was rumored to be sexually deviated all his life. He hoped that the rumors would end after Lillian became his wife, but his enemies persisted that his marrying Countess Ahlefeldt was just a front, that they were not spouses but merely good friends.
Serge Lifar did not accept French citizenship on principle. He loved his native land too much. In his words, becoming a foreign national would mean severing his ethnic roots, disowning the land of his forefathers. At the ceremony of awarding him a Legion of Honor, President Charles de Gaulle offered Serge French citizenship. He thanked and said, “I am Ukrainian and I am proud of my nationality.” To his dying day in 1986 Lifar formally remained a stateless person.
During her last visit to Kyiv, Mme. Lillian donated Lifar’s unique collection to the Library of Art of Ukraine, thus complying with her husband’s last will, she said. All his life Serge Lifar collected articles of spiritual and cultural value relating to the Slavic heritage. His library numbers 2,000 titles, including encyclopedias and a lifetime Complete Collection of Works by Aleksandr Pushkin, original letters written by Lermontov and Turgenev. She wanted all these book to be available to Ukrainian readers. The Kyiv library stock is now complimented by Picasso’s portrait of Serge Lifar.
There is a laconic inscription on the black granite gravestone at the cemetery of Sainte Genevieve de Bois: “Serge Lifar from Kyiv.”
“It was in his last will,” says Mme. Ahlefeldt . “He remained lucid until his heart beat its last. He did not complain of pain and he was constantly in pain. He bravely fought cancer for two years. I took and finished nursing courses and was constantly by his side. Serge sustained three operations. Alas, God called him. ‘I regret nothing’ were his last words.
