La Boutique fantasque (1926)

What it contains

• Classical Ballet · Throughout, framing and linking the character numbers — The scenario explicitly combines comic mime and named folk dances with classical ballet technique as the connecting vocabulary of the whole piece. Source: "incorporating elements of comedy, national folk dance and mime, as well as classical choreography"
• Mazurka — Playing-card mazurka · The playing-card doll number — A discrete character number for dolls costumed as playing cards, danced as a mazurka, one of the string of national/character dances performed for the shop's customers. Source: "followed by other dolls dressed as playing cards who dance a mazurka"

What is danced

The ballet is built as a sequence of discrete 'doll' turns rather than a continuous classical narrative: a tarantella, a mazurka danced by dolls costumed as playing cards, a comic mime duet for a 'snob' and a melon vendor, a traditional dance for five Cossack dolls, a novelty animal act for two dancing poodles, and the central can-can pas de deux for the two lead dolls. The article states directly that the choreography combines 'comedy, national folk dance and mime, as well as classical choreography,' which is the clearest statement of its vocabulary: a revue-like alternation of character/folk idiom, pantomime, and set-piece classical dancing rather than a single sustained technique.

Context

The ballet arrived in 1919 as part of Diaghilev's post-war turn toward lighter, wit-driven, design-led works after the more austere experiments of the 1910s, pairing a fashionable Fauvist designer (Derain) with a score built from salon Rossini rather than a newly commissioned modernist score. Massine's structure of self-contained character numbers strung together by a toyshop frame reflects the period vogue, seen also in Bayer's Die Puppenfee and Andersen-derived toy ballets, for animated-doll scenarios as a vehicle for virtuosic divertissement.

Staging history

After its London premiere by the Ballets Russes in 1919 and a Paris opening the same year, it stayed in the company's repertoire until Diaghilev's death, appearing on the bill of the company's very last performance in Vichy in 1929. It later passed through Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (with an Australian premiere in Adelaide in 1936), became entangled in a 1937 copyright dispute over Massine's pre-1932 works that returned performance rights to the choreographer, was remounted by the re-formed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1939 alongside Massine's Gaîté Parisienne and Le Beau Danube, crossed to Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre) for its 1943 American premiere, and entered the Royal Ballet's repertoire in 1947 and its touring company's repertoire from 1968, with Massine himself returning to coach the piece as late as 1978.

How to watch it

Watch for the shift between the doll-like, mechanical stiffness the dancers must hold as 'toys' and the sudden release into full-bodied national and classical dancing once the toys perform for customers or come alive at night. The can-can pair is the technical and dramatic centre, deliberately modelled on Toulouse-Lautrec's grotesque, hyper-extended dance-hall style rather than on decorous ballroom can-can, and the Cossack, tarantella and mazurka numbers function as discrete character-dance showpieces within the frame story.

Structure

1. Act one act · Tarantella
   Dolls perform a tarantella for the English ladies and American family visiting the shop.
2. Act one act · Playing-card mazurka
   Dolls dressed as playing cards dance a mazurka for the guests.
3. Act one act · Snob and melon vendor
   Two dolls perform a comic mime routine involving a snob and a melon vendor.
4. Act one act · Cossack dance
   Five Cossack dolls perform a traditional dance for the newly arrived Russian family.
5. Act one act · Dancing poodles
   An animal-act number featuring two dolls dancing as poodles.
6. Act one act · Can-can pas de deux
   The shopkeeper's prize dolls, a can-can couple, perform the routine that leads to their sale to rival buyers.
7. Act one act · Night finale
   The dolls come to life overnight, hide the can-can lovers, and the Cossack dolls defend the shopkeeper before all the dolls dance in celebration of the reunited couple.

Structure read from an encyclopaedia article, not from a libretto or score we hold. Confirm against a programme before treating the numbering as authoritative.

Credits

• composer: Gioachino Rossini

Questions