Accelerando: BJMD (Feb 2020)
Ballet scene in Belgrade (1930-1940)
Abstract
The author based his observations and his conclusions upon memoires of Ksenia Grundt Duma (Ксения Грундт-Дюме). She was a well-known ballerina throughout Europe, as she was dancing on many stages from Russian Kharkov to Paris. From her memoirs, the copy of which the author found in his archive, he learned about many ballet life details and things that enriched his previous knowledge on this matter. The author redacted the paper and selected lines which describe the life of Ksenia Grundt spent in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, particularly those lightening ballet life in Belgrade, and the National Theater Belgrade scene. In the Belgrade National Theater Ksenia came from Zagreb in April 1926, and had her debut in the 3rd act in ‘Swan Lake’ ballet, the choreographer of which was Alexander Fortunato. He had just staged ‘Swan Lake’ with great imagination’, as she recorded in her memoirs. From that time onward her biography was closely related with the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In fact, there are several related topics in her memoirs: first, depictions of a difficult emigrant life, living drawings of Russian ballet dancers’ lives far from their homeland, and far from the glamorous and light stage effects; second, there are many famous names and recordings of them previously unknown but now revealed to the researcher: there are details about her contacts and work not only with Fortunato, but also with Nina Kirsanova, Elena Polyakova, to mention a few. In addition, many pages of her memoirs addressed the name of her protege Igor Yushkevich, a talented dancer whom she thought in Belgrade. From his first ballet steps made under her supervision, he established his name as a well-known ballet dancer associated with the famous Russian Monte Carlo Ballet and with the birth of the American Ballet Theater. So, from Ksenia Grundt’s memoirs many unknown pages of Igor Yushkevich’s life could be learned along with the whole of ballet world from that period, the dancers, the critics, the repertoire, and primarily the role and place of the Russian ballet masters in the vast Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The author selected lines which describe the ballet scene of Belgrade of the time, the relationship among Russian emigres and the ballet scenes in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and from those facts the author built his views and his conclusions on this matter, which has been his research field for decades. The importance of these memoirs are notably in the fact that the selected pages not only expanded, but also enriched the ideas and knowledge about the life of Russian ballet actors in Serbia. Further, implications of the publication of the selected pages are that the publication lays the foundation for the further works on the history on Serbian ballet, and can be effectively used for research of the development and beauty of the Serbian ballet in which many Russian ballet names have invested a lot of their work and talent.
