Fokine staged more than 70 ballets in Europe and the United States. His best known works were "Chopiniana" (later revised as "Les Sylphides"), "Le Carnaval" and "Le Pavillon d'Armide". Among his works for the Ballets Russes were "The Firebird", "Petrushka", "Le Spectre de la Rose" and "Daphnis et Chloé". Also, for the Ballets Russes, he created a ballet out of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade". His pieces are still performed by the leading ballet troupes of the world.
Lasseter's Reef
Lasseter's Reef was a legendary rich gold deposit that was said to be in remote central Australia. A prospector, Harold Bell Lasseter, claimed to have discovered the site in 1897. But Lasseter forgot the exact location of it. He died when he went back into the desert to look for it again. The gold's location remains a mystery—nobody even knows whether it really exists.
Lasseter told the story in 1929. He said that he had found the gold near the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This area at the time was uncharted (no maps had been made of it). When he came out of the desert, he spent the next thirty years trying to get people to fund an expedition to go back and look for it. But people ignored him because people were already making fortune from the gold rush at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Nobody wanted to risk going into unchartered desert.
But during the Great Depression, people became interested. Lasseter got enough money for an expedition to relocate the gold. But the expedition was hard—there were long distances involved, no maps to guide them, and it was very hard to find water. When the expedition party became lost, the people who went with Lasseter called him a liar. They left him, but Lasseter continued, with one other man. The man later said that Lasseter became crazy in the desert, and he too left him.
Now alone, Lasseter continued in the desert, but eventually became exhausted and dehydrated. He died from exhaustion and malnutrition in early 1931. He was on his way to Uluru or Kata Tjuta. His body was found in March 1931 by a bushman. The story of Lasseter's expedition is known from the stories of his travelling group. The later part of the story is known from Lasseter's diary, which was found on his body. No maps showing the location of the fabled gold reef were ever found. The tale of the reef has become legend. It is probably the most famous "lost mine" legend in Australia.
Altar lamp
An altar lamp, or sanctuary lamp, is the flame kept near the altar in a church or synagogue. The flame is always kept alive, so is commonly called an "eternal flame". It represents that God is always there with the people.
Le Spectre de la rose
Le Spectre de la rose () is a short ballet. It is about a young girl who dreams of dancing with the spirit of a souvenir rose from her first ball. Jean-Louis Vaudoyer wrote the ballet story. He based it on a verse by Théophile Gautier.
The dances were designed by Michel Fokine. The music is Hector Berlioz's 1841 orchestration of Carl Maria von Weber's piano music "Aufforderung zum Tanz" (). Léon Bakst designed the original sets and costumes.
The ballet was first presented in Monte Carlo on 19 April 1911. Nijinsky danced The Rose and Tamara Karsavina danced The Young Girl. It was a great success. "Spectre" became internationally famous for the leap (jump) Nijinsky made through a window at the ballet's end.
In 1911, Ballet Russes producer Sergei Diaghilev hoped to present Nijinsky's ballet "L'Après-midi d'un faune" (). It was not ready for the stage, so he needed another ballet to take its place. That ballet was the idea of writer Jean-Louis Vaudoyer. In 1910, he had sent an idea for a ballet to Ballets Russes set and costume designer Léon Bakst. His idea was based on "Le Spectre de la rose", a verse by Théophile Gautier, and "Afforderung zum Tanz", a work for piano by Carl Maria von Weber. Diaghilev liked Vaudoyer's idea. He thought it could easily take the place of "Faune". He put Vaudoyer's idea into development at once. Diaghilev liked the idea of a ballet based on Gautier's "Spectre" because it could be tied to the centennial of Gautier's birth.
In 1819, Carl Maria von Weber wrote a work for piano called "Afforderung zum Tanz". He also wrote a program for this work about a young man and woman who meet, dance, and part at a ball. The quiet music at the opening of "Afforderung" leads to some beautiful (and busy) waltz tunes before the work ends with the opening music. In 1841, Hector Berlioz orchestrated "Afforderung". This version of the music was used for a short ballet in Weber's opera "Der Freischütz" at the Paris Opéra. It was the Berlioz version that was used for the ballet "Le Spectre de la rose".
Michel Fokine completed the dance in three or four rehearsals. He later wrote that the ballet was almost an improvisation. Grace Robert writes in "The Borzoi Book of Ballets" that "Spectre" is a "pas de deux", but not the sort of "pas de deux" that looks back to complex 19th-century technique and virtuosity. Instead, it is a forward-looking, modern dance of continuous movement and expressiveness.
Fokine dropped the "port de bras" (position of the arms) of classical ballet in designing the dances for Nijinsky. He used instead curving, tendril-like movements of the arms and fingers. Nijinsky became an androgynous character in this ballet, one showing masculine power in his legs and a feminine delicacy in his arms. Some of his gestures, Ostwalt writes in "Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness", "lent a feminine aura (an invisible force)" to the character.
Nijinsky's silk elasticated costume was designed by Léon Bakst. The costume was covered with silk rose petals. Nijinsky was stitched into the costume for every show. After every show, the wardrobe mistress would touch up the petals with her curling iron. Nijinsky's make-up was an important part of the costume design. Romula de Pulszky, later to be his wife, wrote that he looked like "a celestial (heavenly) insect, his eyebrows suggesting some beautiful beetle". Ostwald writes that Nijinsky's costume was like a ballerina's. Sometimes, petals would become loose and fall to the stage. Nijinsky's servant Vasili would collect the petals and sell them as souvenirs. It was said that he built a large house called Le Château du Spectre de la Rose with the profits from the sale of the petals.
The ballet became famous for Nijinsky's leap through one of the two large windows at the back of the stage. The height of the leap was an illusion though. Nijinsky took five running steps from the middle of the stage and leapt through the window on the sixth step. The skirting board (base board) under the window was very low, giving the illusion that the leap was higher than it was. Behind the set, four men caught Nijinsky in the air and put warm towels on him. No one saw Nijinsky land. It looked like he would fly on for all time. The illusion was helped by the conductor in the orchestra pit who held the next to the last chord. In doing so, the leap was given a sense of great length and height.
The curtain rises on a girl's bedroom. The Young Girl comes into the room dressed in a white bonnet and ball gown. She has come home from her first ball. She holds a rose as a souvenir of the evening. She drops into a chair and falls asleep. The rose falls from her fingers to the floor. The Spirit of the Rose is seen at the window. He steps to the floor and nears The Young Girl. Still asleep, she rises and dances with him. He leads her back to the chair, kisses her, then leaps through the window and into the night. The Young Girl awakes and rises. She picks up the rose she dropped and kisses it. The curtain falls.