The Chinese Dance from The Red Poppy. The ballet takes place at a seaport in 1920s-era China. Ships carrying sailors from many lands, including the Soviet Union, are docked in a Chinese seaport. The Captain of the Soviet Ship notices a group of half-starved, overworked Coolies being brutally driven to work even harder by their cruel harbormaster. One night while dancing for the sailors aboard the ship, the beautiful Taï-Choa notices the Soviet Captain trying to rescue the poor Coolies from the Harbormaster. Impressed by the captain's act of kindness, she gives him a red poppy as a symbol of her love. When Taï-Choa's fiancé learns of this, he is jealous and orders her to kill the captain, but she refuses. She is later killed when a riot breaks out on the dock — thus sacrificing her life for the captain. As she dies, she gives another red poppy flower to a young Chinese girl as a sign of love and freedom. This ballet was quite controversial, as it portrayed a Soviet vision of Chinese revolution in which Soviets were heroes, and the Chinese were downtrodden victims in need of saving. in February 1950, Chairman Mao was invited to see The Red Poppy while he was in the USSR signing the Sino-Soviet Treaty. He declined, though, after the Chinese ambassador's wife who had seen the dress rehearsal warns Mao not to attend. Another member of his delegation attended instead, who then informed the Bolshoi's top brass that he found the ballet offensive. The ballet, a Soviet staple and one they thought would be especially pleasing to the Chinese delegation instead served only to insult. The offense that Mao’s delegation took at The Red Poppy was just one in an array of slights that left Mao stewing over his treatment by the Soviet Union – this resentment that would later culminate in the Sino-Soviet Split, which in turn helped ensure Western victory in the Cold War. All of that said, the wonder of ballet still left its mark on the Chairman during his Moscow stay. Though he declined to attend The Red Poppy, he went to see Swan Lake instead. It was Mao’s first ballet, and reportedly, he enjoyed it very much. (Courtesy of the BBC)
Danse Russe from Swan Lake. The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and/or German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. In 1871, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky was passing the summer in Ukraine with his sister, Alexandra Davydova. It was in her home at Kamenka that he wrote a short ballet about swans for her children to perform. The story of the ballet was based on "The Lake of Swans," a German fairy tale. Tchaikovsky used a musical theme from this children's ballet in the mature Swan Lake. Little else is known of this ballet for children. In 1940, San Francisco Ballet became the first American company to stage a complete production of Swan Lake and was enormously successful, assisted in no small part to San Francisco's large population of Russian émigrés, headed by Princess and Prince Vasili Alexandrovich of Russia, who helped ensure that the production succeeded in its goal of preserving Russian culture in San Francisco.The Danse Russe variation occurs in Act 3 and was originally composed for the ballerina Pelagia Karpakova (Appendix II – No. 20a Danse russe pour Mlle. Pelageya Karpakova). It is danced as one of the ballroom divertissements, where the various foreign princesses are formally presented to the Prince during his coming-of-age birthday ball as candidates for marriage. It is listed consistently as a 'reference' or 'supplemental number' and is, unfortunately, often left out in most productions of the ballet performed in the West. The Russian princesses' dance variation is, therefore, a relatively unknown and special treat to close out this evening's program.
