Franklin Talks
American Ballet Theatre--
An Evening with Frederic Franklin
Works & Process
Peter B. Lewis Theater
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York NY
January 14, 2008
by David Vaughan
copyright 2008 by David Vaughan
As anyone knows who has ever spent any time with him, for Frederic Franklin to talk for a mere evening is nothing. Leslie Norton, the author of the recent biography of him and one of the panelists on this occasion, said that the first time she went to see him, he talked for eight hours. Franklin seems to remember every step of every ballet he ever danced in, and not only his own part but everyone else's, which has enabled him to stage 19th century classics and ballets from the repertory of 20th century Russian ballet companies, but he also apparently has total recall of his own career, from his early days in vaudeville and at the Casino de Paris (as one of the back-up chorus boys for Josephine Baker and Mistinguett), through cabaret in London and the first Markova-Dolin Ballet to Massine's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and on to the various companies for which he has been director or co-director. At the age of 93 (and a half, as he put it), he shows no sign of slowing down, whether as a régisseur or as a performer of character parts such as Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet" or the Charlatan in "Petrouchka."
At the Guggenheim Museum in the latest Works & Process program, Franklin once again showed that he is a marvelous raconteur--he always has new stories that he hasn't told before. His own reminiscences were interspersed with clips from the great "Ballets Russes" documentary that has introduced him to a whole new audience. My own favorite story was of his audition for one of those early music-hall jobs, when he was shown some steps, which he easily picked up and repeated. The person giving the audition said, "Where did you learn all this?" and he replied, "From you."
Something that I have always found difficult to understand is why Ninette de Valois, in the early days of the Vic-Wells Ballet (forerunner of today's Royal Ballet), when classically trained male dancers were few and far between, didn't snap him up. (A feature article in the New York Times erroneously stated that he had "a stint" with that company: the only connection was a gala performance in 1934 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, by the Camargo Society, a pick-up company, in "Coppélia" and "Swan Lake, Act II," at least until 1949, when he and Alexandra Danilova were guest artists with the then Sadler's Wells Ballet.) The answer proved to be that he was too busy with his various commercial engagements, until Anton Dolin told him "It's about time you became serious about your art," and took him into the company that he was forming with Alicia Markova.
It happens that I saw that company, in what must have been one of its last performances, in 1937 at my local theatre in Wimbledon. In Nijinska's "Beloved One" (La Bien-aimée) I remember someone in a red devil's suit coming forward at the end of a line and jumping over a chair because the stage was too small--Freddie (as everyone calls him) confirmed that it was he. He and Markova both left the company (which promptly folded) to join Massine's newly constituted Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but there he found himself partnering Danilova--most famously in "Gaîté Parisienne," in which they danced together for almost twenty years. At one of the last performances of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the old Met, in the mid-50s, they danced it as effervescently as ever.
At the Guggenheim the waltz pas de deux from that ballet was performed by Julie Kent and David Hallberg. They are both wonderful dancers, of course, and it is no reflection on them to say that they could not match the abandon with which Danilova and Franklin dance it in the film clip that was also shown. The evening began with the first of two excerpts from Coppélia, the Czardas from Act I, danced by members of ABT II. Later students from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School danced what was billed as "The Friends Dance," actually part of the Theme and variations, also in Act I, which Balanchine once said was the source of all his own choreography. Danilova was unforgettable in that, too. We actually watched Mr. Franklin coach the dancers in this, as much of a treat for us as it must have been for them. The program credited the choreography of Coppélia to Arthur Saint-Léon--I'm sure Franklin knows as well as I do that the version we know has long left that original choreographer behind and is variously attributed to Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and Enrico Cecchetti, who probably all had a hand in it.
The most interesting dance excerpt of the evening was from Balanchine's "Mozartiana"--the first, Ballets 1933 version as revived by Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1945, shown in a video of Franklin reconstructing the pas de deux for The George Balanchine Foundation, with Julie Kent and Nikolaj Hubbe, and then live with Kent, again partnered by David Hallberg. As far as one can tell, the ballet as a whole had that Kochnoesque, neo-Romantic, faintly decadent atmosphere, but surprisingly the pas de deux, what we saw of it, was in recognisably neo-classic Balanchine style.
As well as Frederic Franklin himself, the panel, with Wes Chapman as moderator, included Georgina Parkinson, former Royal Ballet principal now an ABT ballet mistress. There was a charming story about the day Franklin had received a telephone call telling him that he was to be made CBE in Queen Elizabeth's birthday honors, but was told not to tell anyone until after the official announcement. He went to rehearsal at ABT looking, justifiably, somewhat starry-eyed. Parkinson said to him "You look as if you've been knighted," and all he could say was "Not quite." She then spoke feelingly of the effect Franklin's presence has had on the company: "He changed our lives," she said, and brought "joy, wisdom, fun, and passion” to the company. To us, too, the lucky audience at the Guggenheim.
Photo: Frederick Franklin as Harlequin in Le Carnaval with the Markova-Dolin Ballet.