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By Root 1312 0

this new production of Firebird, I believe there was history at work. First, Gelsey was a budding muse, and he wanted to challenge and develop her. His experience with Maria Tallchief’s monumental success in the first Firebird cautioned him. Balanchine’s original Firebird molded and shaped Maria Tallchief, and her performance made the ballet a sensation, catapulting her to international stardom. He had had enough of celebrity stars in his life, to whom he had to kowtow and whom he had to please, and of cliques of fans who would attempt to dictate artistic policy: audiences chanting, “Tallchief! Tallchief!” as they had for the star Serge Lifar at the premiere of Balanchine’s ballet Apollon Musagète in 1928. He didn’t want this version to showcase and be a vehicle for a new star.

Secondly, he may have been making up to Chagall. Recreating Chagall’s designs and featuring scenery over choreography might have salved the wounds of his own discomfort over that earlier controversy in Paris. Balanchine said, “I didn’t want a woman. I didn’t want a personality or a passionate performance … I didn’t want people. I wanted Chagall.”

Amazingly, he did a third version some two years later, with Karin von Aroldingen as the Firebird, and he eviscerated even more the Firebird’s central place in the ballet. “In Firebird, everyone is a monster. It’s a strange world. All of a sudden, you can’t have a ballerina in a tutu come in and start turning.”

Perhaps he was erasing the image of Tallchief’s fabulous pirouettes. Karin was so encumbered by the new costume (yet again a new design), with wings and an elaborate headdress and trailing tail, that choreographic possibilities were almost nil. “I took the Firebird and made her a Chagall woman, like the figure on the front curtain, so now she looks like part of the mysterious world. Most important is the music accompanying Chagall—Chagall and Stravinsky. There is no Balanchine in there. You’re not supposed to do anything. Just let the costumes flow. It’s like a moving exhibit.”3

This version of Firebird did not even rate a mention in my diary. I thought, “Going to a museum, gazing at a Chagall painting, and listening to the Stravinsky music on headphones would be more interesting.” In any case, the entire evening of the Firebird premiere was eclipsed by the first performance of Violin Concerto, up there with Apollo and Agon as one of Balanchine’s greatest masterworks.

Looking at the recreated scenery for this new Firebird, I wondered, “Where is the old Chagall scenery?” and started asking around. Generally, the replies were, “Uhh. Umm. I don’t know. Maybe in a warehouse?” One night at a cocktail party, I blabbed out loud that in some warehouse Chagall’s original Firebird drops lay sleeping. “Oh my God,” piped up a voice. It was Campbell Wylie—a man knowledgable and passionate about visual arts—“you have Chagall’s backdrops, and they’re going to waste? Chagall painted those himself! You could cut them into picture-sized pieces, and sell them! You could probably raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe millions.”

Making a stab as an art broker, I asked our company manager, Betty Cage, and Balanchine, “Where are the original Chagalls?” Neither knew, and both said, “Ask Ronnie Bates.” Straight to our company stage manager, Ronnie, went I, and out of the side of his mouth, he mumbled, “Let me check it out.” About a month later, he informed me, “I found them and it’s a good thing. There was a lot of water damage from a leak in the warehouse. So we have them … and we don’t. They’re nothing but piles of moldy, wet, stuck-together, painted goo.”

Balanchine, in his previous life, had risen from the ashes of dozens of missed opportunities, failed marriages, broken love affairs, disappointments, unrealized dreams, and short-lived companies. One of the biggest disappointments had been Lincoln! Believing Lincoln’s grandiose promises—“Come to New York! We’ll have the greatest ballet company in the world!”—Balanchine and his manager/agent, Vladimir Dimitriev, had gotten off the boat in New York City on