Choreography to Court

In the Teatro Comunale in ancient Florence one night last spring, it seemed to the swank audience watching the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe, part of the city's "Musical May" festival, that Dancer Leonide Massine was behaving oddly indeed. Dark, wiry, as fleet-footed as ever for his years (40), the maitre de ballet and choreographer of the famed troupe did not appear to have his mind entirely on his work. He kept glancing toward the wings, grimacing and nodding at someone offstage. When the curtain fell, Massine hastened backstage. There, summoned by urgent telegrams both from Massine and from the impresario of the troupe, Colonel Wassily de Basil, stood the beauteous prima ballerina assoluta of the Rome and Milan operas, Attilia Radice, and her journalist and balletomane husband, Paolo Fabbri.

As Massine had seen while taking part in the ballet, the Italians had conversed earnestly with Colonel de Basil, and as the dancer well knew, the tall impresario had been dickering to sign them up for his troupe before Massine could get off the stage. Massine, too, wanted the No. 1 de Basil to take charge of another ballet group. But Massine's onstage frenzies and his backstage pleadings were no use: Colonel de Basil won Radice (and Fabbri) with offers of $700 apiece per month on any U. S. tour he might take them on, $450 in England, $300 in Italy or France.

Last week U. S. balletomanes learned more of the split between Massine and de Basil--a split which forecast an international ballet war--when word came from England that the two had taken certain differences into court. Dancer Massine, whose current contract with Colonel de Basil expires Sept. 15, had joined another company, notified Colonel de Basil that he claimed exclusive right to all the ballets, many of them drawing cards, for which Massine had devised the choreography. Before the Hon. Mr. Justice Luxmoore of Chancery Court the two parties brought this question: can property right be claimed in the dance steps of a ballet? Mr. Justice Luxmoore held that it could, especially since he learned that the design of a ballet, with its successions of pirouettes, entrechats and other steps, is commonly recorded on paper. In the case of the ballets Massine had done while in de Basil's employ (Les Presages, Chorearthim, Cimarosiana, Cantes Russes), de Basil was entitled to an option. Massine retained exclusive rights to the popular Three-Cornered Hat (music by de Falla), Beau Danube (Strauss), La Boutique Fantasque (Rossini), designed prior to the de Basil connection.

Last week it became known that a third person figured prominently in the split-up of the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe--Rene Blum, the tall, bushy-mustached, fiftyish brother of Socialist Leon Blum. Rene Blum long directed the Monte Carlo Theatre, helped Colonel de Basil found the Monte Carlo Ballet, underwrote its early losses with 2,000,000 francs. Blum's new troupe will tour Europe before visiting the U. S., with Massine as director and choreographer, in the fall of 1938. The Blum-Massine ballet is expected to emphasize discipline, detail. The de Basil ballet will be directed by capable Michel Fokine. Italian Dancer Radice will be prima ballerina (but not with the special rating of assoluta--absolute) and Husband Fabbri, who before marrying her won a duel with a disparager of her legs, will be "artistic secretary." In the de Basil company remain three dancers who proved popular on its U. S. tours: Irina Baronova, Alexandra Danilova, David Lichine. Confusingly, the de Basil troupe retains the name "Monte Carlo Ballet Russe" while the Blum-Massine group is called the "Monte Carlo Ballet."

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