. . . by pasting here, with Katharine Kanter’s permission, her interview with Dayde.
Then you need to go to her site and read all the other interviews in the “Nuits Blanches” series. More about that later.
Here’s Part I:
Recollections of Alexandre Volinine
By Liane Daydé
Paris, 5th December 2011
At the age of eight, I became a pupil at the Opera School – solely at my
mother’s insistence, since I had no wish to become a dancer at the time!
My first real teacher at the Opera was Mauricette Cebron, who also taught
Michel Renault. Then, at age twelve or thereabouts, I began to study
privately with Blanche d’Alessandri-Valdine (née Blanche Rostand Valdine,
1862-1948), who was by then very elderly. It was she who had trained
Camille Bos, Janine and Solange Schwartz, Olga Adabache, Ludmilla Tchérina
(…).
Beneath a black silk dress that rustled as she walked, Mlle.
d’Alessandri-Valdine still wore the corset, and a snowy wimple. When she
was about 28 and on tour in America, her career had come to an untimely end,
when she fell through a trap-door in the stage. She then began to teach
privately. Shortly before her death, she had me swear that I would be “her
last étoile”. She died in my arms. A dreadful temper she had – to this
day, I bear the scar from her parasol’s broken ivory handle that slashed me
badly. Although I do not recall the enchaînements she gave, I can say that
they corresponded to her own training – Cecchetti. Her studio was rue
Rodier, very close to where we lived, in Square Montholon.
On turning fourteen, I became a private pupil of Alexandre Volinine, and
remained so until his death.
Why do things suddenly “click” with one teacher, rather than another? In
those days, all the Opera dancers “moonlighted” with outside teachers. I
had taken lessons from Carlotta Zambelli, Serve Peretti, Nicolas Zvereev,
Boris Kniazeff … and it had never clicked. But the very first day I was
presented to Alexandre Volinine (1882-1955), I saw in a flash that there
stood the very professor I needed.
What was so extraordinary about Alexandre Volinine? Everything! He knew
how to put your strengths up front, and let the flaws recede into the
background. Where there exist physical shortcomings that resist all
correction, something exceptional can nonetheless be made out of them.
Nowadays, it’s all about rooting out a flaw here and an error there.
Alexandre Volinine saw your qualities first, and although he was rigorous –
never neglected technique – the Dance was always uppermost with him.
Though, indeed, there was less research on technique with Volinine than at
the Opera, but he made dancers of us. He forced us to think. We came to
his studio an idiot savant, and left an artist.
Alexandre Volinine taught me what it means to be an étoile: do not get
entangled in technique, but rather play with it. Every step must convey
something, even at the barre. To dance means giving, endless giving.
Giving of oneself selflessly. At the barre for example, if you do battement
dégagé and present the heel, you are giving a gift. Fouettés are not a
technical exercise. They must say something. And the job of an étoile is
to give more than others.
Lopoukhov, Lopoukhova, Alexandre Volinine en 1910
Every day, I would leave the Opera and go straight to his studio. That is
where I got my technique, because it was not a technique. What he taught
me, was the essence of things. That is why there are masters, and Alexandre
Volinine was a master, a soul.