Buckles Blog: Elephant Ballet #4

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Elephant Ballet #4

9 comments:

Eric said...: I have always been of the opinion that the '42 Elephant Ballet was inspired by the DANCE OF THE HOURS segment from Disney's FANTASIA, which featured elephants, hippos and ostriches doing ballet routines. (According to Mary Jane Miller, music from DANCE OF THE HOURS was part of the score for this act. Later, after the American Federation of Musicians pulled the band off of the show and records were used, a recording of DANCE OF THE HOURS was purchased by Henry Ringling North to use with this act.; 17 April, 2014 10:49
klsdad said...: Per Wikipedia:
Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine first met in 1925, as Balanchine, who just had started working for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, choreographed the ballet version of Stravinsky's Le chant du rossignol.[1] This was the start of a long friendship and many years of collaboration, which continued after both emigrated to the United States in the 1930s.

In late 1941, the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus made Balanchine the unusual proposal to do the choreography for a ballet involving the circus's famous elephant group in the spring of the following year in New York. Balanchine immediately suggested bringing in Stravinsky, much to the delight of the circus company. However, Stravinsky was only contacted by phone on January 12, 1942. Balanchine would later recount the conversation as follows:
Balanchine: "I wonder if you'd like to do a little ballet with me."Stravinsky: "For whom?"Balanchine: "For some elephants."Stravinsky: "How old?"Balanchine: "Very young."Stravinsky: "All right. If they are very young elephants, I will do it."[2]
Although Stravinsky was busy with other projects at the time, he negotiated a high fee with the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus for a short instrumental, which he composed within a few days. The piano version of Circus Polka, subtitled "For a Young Elephant" as an allusion to the phone conversation with Balanchine, was finished on February 5, 1942.

Although the piece is, according to its name, a polka, it does contain a number of changes in rhythm. It only sounds like a polka towards the end, but this part is actually a borrowing from Franz Schubert's Marche militaire No. 1 in D major, D. 733. Stravinsky always denied that this was a parody of the Marche militaire.[3] He later called the whole piece a satire, the musical equivalent to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's drawings, but his notes do not reflect this.[4]

By the time the ballet was performed, Stravinsky was no longer involved with the project. The arrangement of the piece for an organ and a concert band was done by David Raksin. Balanchine choreographed the Circus Polka for fifty elephants and fifty human dancers, led by the cow elephant Modoc and by Balanchine's wife and principal ballerina Vera Zorina respectively. The elephants, including the bulls, were forced to wear pink ballet tutus. Reporters were at first concerned that Stravinsky's music might cause the elephants to panic. Balanchine was eventually able to teach Modoc the choreography.[5]

The show, advertised as a "choreographic Tour de Force", premiered at Madison Square Garden on April 9, 1942. The performance was successful and the crowd was particularly enthusiastic about Balanchine's extraordinary ballet.[6] After this debut, Ringling Brothers performed the ballet another forty-two times, but Stravinsky did not attend any of the shows.[7]; 17 April, 2014 12:19
klsdad said...: Here's the Stravinsky "Circus Polka"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnMkb9sWrf0; 17 April, 2014 12:23
klsdad said...: comment on Youtube Stravinsky..
"Circus Polka"
Indeed! I believe that it was Stravinsky's fixation on the youth of the baby elephant that became fixed in Stravinsky's mind: hence, the cleverly-concealed reference to "Rock-a-Bye Baby" at 1:34. Stravinsky would LIKE for us to believe he's alluding to Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours," but through rhythmic distortion and octave displacement he proves that it's possible to fool all of the people all of the time (he was under the assumption --like many at the time-- that this was Barnum's axiom; 17 April, 2014 12:29
Chic Silber said...: Beyond any shadow of a doubt

Eric since Fantasia premiered

in January of 1940 & I'll send

Buckles a few images for proof; 17 April, 2014 14:00
Roger Smith said...: Vera Zorina was originally cast in the lead role of Maria in Paramount's FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (1943). For the male lead, Robert Jordan, the studio favored Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Franchot Tone, or Paul Muni. In an unheard-of case of an original author influencing Hollywood, Hemingway campaigned for and won the leads for his hand-picked stars, Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.; 17 April, 2014 18:14
Eric said...: Careful Chic, the Disney people come down even harder than the Felds when someone uses some of their property without permission.; 17 April, 2014 19:58
Chic Silber said...: Then it must be some fight for

litigious supremacy when there

is an infringement of licensed

Disney elements on Feld ice

A battle of solicitors for sure

Since I've worked for both of

them I must stand mute for now; 17 April, 2014 22:56
Chic Silber said...: I must say they were both very

good to me over the years; 17 April, 2014 22:57

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