Most of the time, when something is created, its creator hopes it will be well received. A common trope in media features creators spiralling downwards after their work receives negative reception. On the other hand, it’s also common in media for works to receive rapturous applause, and a standing ovation. These tropes are on extreme ends of the scale, but there are times when these extremes have occurred in reality.

Today I’d like to look at some historic examples of audience responses to ballet, focusing primarily on the 19th and 20th centuries. These examples come mostly from first-hand accounts and reviews, and highlight the history of audience applause, jeering, and throwing.

The Good

A wartime Nutcracker

The Nutcracker is a Christmas tradition today, and is often many children’s introduction to ballet. However, the ballet wasn’t always a ‘Christmas ballet’ – companies performed it year-round, and this story comes from April 1944.

The Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, one of the successor companies to the Ballets Russes, had spent the war touring the United States, and in April were performing at New York City Center. A Saturday matinee included the company’s shortened version of The Nutcracker, along with Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo. This combination delighted the children in the audience, who oohed and aahed over the dolls in the Nutcracker, along with divertissements like the Waltz of the Flowers and the Grand Pas de deux.

The children reacted very similarly to Rodeo, laughing as Vida Brown (playing the heroine) fell off her imaginary horse. Their joy at seeing the ballet shows the importance of the Monte-Carlo’s wartime tours. They were able to entertain a vast range of people during a difficult time.

The happiest performance of Romeo and Juliet

In 1956 the Bolshoi Ballet made their first visit to London. There was an immense sense of anticipation surrounding the tour. The prima ballerina assoluta of the company was Galina Ulanova, who was the performer the balletomanes were most eager to see. Clement Crisp recalled that the queue started three days before booking even opened, and that tickets for the first night were not even to be sold through the box office: people had to apply by post if they wanted to be the first to see the Bolshoi, and they had started applying in March.

The ballet that opened the engagement was Romeo and Juliet on October 3rd, with Yuri Zhdanov and Galina Ulanova in the starring roles. The attendees were like a who’s who of the British ballet world: Adeline Genée, Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, Margot Fonteyn, Alicia Markova, Beryl Grey, Michael Somes, Pamela May, John Cranko, Kenneth MacMillan, Svetlana Beriosova. Rowena Jackson had been dancing Swanilda with the Royal Ballet in Croydon, yet still managed to make it back to see part of the performance.

The audience was so good the performers initially thought they’d failed. In reality, the audience was spellbound, making hardly any noise throughout the performance. And then at the end, when the curtain fell, they applauded and applauded and applauded. They applauded for 40 minutes, and the dancers knew they had succeeded then. Beryl Grey recounted Ulanova’s performance of Juliet was ‘the greatest interpretation I have ever had the good fortune to see’.

Audiences responded to the Bolshoi incredibly positively. Ulanova made a grand impression in Giselle, with Peter Wright naming her the her the best Giselle he’d ever seen. The British ballet dancers were impressed by the standard of the Bolshoi, and inspired by the ballets they presented. The season left a lasting impression on many audiences, and Clement Crisp named it ‘one of only two great first nights in the history of 20th-century ballet’. The other was the first performance of the Ballet Russes. Both were legendary.

The Bad

The Whistlers of the Opera

The 1837 ballet Les Mohicans received 2 performances at the Paris Opera before being dropped from the repertoire completely. Reviewers felt the theme of the ballet was unsuited to the medium, and that the choreography and mime did not properly represent an already weak scenario. Critic Théophile Gautier attended the second (and final performance), where the audience were not enjoying themselves.

The ballet had a score by Adolphe Adam (most famous for Giselle), but at the second performance the audience made some improvised changes. The orchestra was joined by whistling from the spectators, and Gautier particularly singles out the occupants of the proscenium boxes (the boxes closest to the stage) for their behaviour. In response to the whistling, the orchestra began to fire insults at the audience, and the audience responded in kind. Ivor Guest’s translation of Gautier’s review characterises the atmosphere on the evening as ‘violent and stormy’, and Gautier sides with the audience in the end, ‘for never was whistling more deserved’.

A revolutionary interruption

Olga Preobrazhenskaya was one of the most well-liked ballerinas of the Imperial Ballet, especially by her colleagues. She was admired for her hard-working nature and her kindness. In 1905 she was given a benefit performance, a special performance in which the dancer was given part of the profit (and this could be lucrative: an 1837 benefit for Marie Taglioni recorded receipts of 34,000 francs). Preobrazhenskaya was allowed to choose the programme for her benefit, which was to include Les Caprices de Papillon, a ballet that she gave a celebrated performance in.

The performance took place on the 9th January. Fellow ballerina Tamara Karsavina wasn’t dancing, and attended the performance as an audience member. The performance was going well until the final act, when the show was disrupted.

At the time Russia was in a period of unrest (historians consider the 1005 Russian Revolution to have begun just two weeks after Olga’s benefit). Rumours had worked their way into the theatre – rumours that riots had broken out across the city, and that a revolutionary mob had stormed the Alexandrinsky Theatre and halted the performance. Their next target, according to the rumour mill, was the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre. The audience began to leave. Karsavina stayed.

The reason this is not an ‘ugly’ reaction was the fact that, in Karsavina’s words ‘On stage the performance never so much as flickered’. The dancers continued performing, only letting their panic set in after the final curtain fell. Karsavina went backstage following the show to find the dancers and crew hurriedly packing up, eager to get home while it was still safe. Preobrazhenskaya continued to be loved by her colleagues and the audience, and following the 1917 revolution become well-known to a new audience, performing for workers and soldiers.

The Ugly

The Riot of Spring

It seems improper to talk about audience response to ballet and not mention the most well-known incident. The Rite of Spring’s premiere in 1913 caused an almost inconceivable reaction from the audience, who hissed and laughed as Vaslav Nijinsky danced. But how bad really was it?

First-hand accounts of the evening focus more on the noise of the audience, rather than any actual fights. The composer of the ballet, Igor Stravinsky, writes in his autobiography that he left the auditorium after the first bars of the music were met with laughter. He went to stand with Nijinsky, who he had to hold by clothes, to stop him from going on stage and causing even more of an incident.

The ‘riot’, to call it that, didn’t stop the audience from applauding the composer, the dancers, and the choreographer. And it’s worth taking into account that after the ballet the performance continued – The Rite of Spring was only the second piece (out of four) on the evening’s bill. None of the other performances in the original run of the ballet stirred such a noisy reaction from the audience, though there was still some hissing and jeering.

A 1912 ballet by Nijinsky, L’Après-midi d’un faune, garnered a similar but less intense reaction upon its premiere. There were reports of both applause and booing during the curtain calls, but after the ballet was repeated, there was much more applause. Nijinsky’s choreography was so different to the classical style that initial reactions to it were mixed, but a century his distinct sense of movement is still well-remembered.

The Jellicle Moon is shining bright…

Yelena Andreyanova (1819-1857) joined the Imperial Ballet in the late 1830s, a time where the great ballerinas were from Western Europe. Marie Taglioni had just guested in Saint Petersburg, and the public weren’t keen to see anyone else perform ‘Taglioni’s roles’. Andreyanova, along with Tatiana Smirnova, were among the dancers who stepped into Taglioni’s shoes, and won the audiences over. Perhaps the crowning achievement of Andreyanova’s career was Giselle: in 1842 she was chosen to perform the title role at the Russian premiere of the work, becoming the first Russian ballerina to dance the part. She also conquered Paris, successfully appearing with the Paris Opera Ballet in 1845. However, her name is well-remembered for another incident.

Andreyanova was sent to Moscow in 1847, accompanied by brothers Marius Petipa. They had previously danced together in the ballet Paquita, which Marius had both staged and danced in in Saint Petersburg. Unfortunately, a faction of the Moscow audience were enamoured with their prima ballerina Ekaterina Sankovskaya, and even more unfortunately, it took a lot more for Andreyanova to win this audience over.

In a December performance of Paquita, one member of Sankovskaya faction went all out to show how they felt about Andreyanova’s presence in Moscow. Following the first act a dead cat was thrown onto the stage – attached to its tail was a note that read premiere danseuse. Naturally Andreyanova was shocked by the incident, and left the stage (according to some accounts, she fainted and was carried off).

The horrific nature of the incident prompted the rest of the audience to cheer ever louder for Andreyanova, and after the dead cat was cleared from the stage the performance was continued. At the end, both the artists and audience applauded Andreyanova, and she was called from behind the curtains three times. It can be reasonably assumed that the rest of her Moscow performances passed without incident, and at her benefit performances flowers were thrown onto the stage, and not dead animals.

Sources

Beaumont, C.W. (2020). A history of Ballet in Russia. Noverre Press.

Crisp, Clement. (2021). Clement Crisp reviews: six decades of dance (Edited by Gerald Dowler). The International Dance Writing Foundation.

Denby, E. (1986). Dance writings. Dance Books.

Guest, I. (1966). The Romantic Ballet in Paris. Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd.

Guest, I. (Ed.). (2012). Gautier on dance. Noverre Press.

Karsavina, T. (1950). Theatre street: the reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina . Readers Union.

Stravinsky, I. (1936). Igor Stravinsky: an autobiography. Simon and Schuster.