“Chauve Souris ”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 288, 25 February 1928, Page 22

“Chauve Souris ”

Success in America QUAINT RUSSIANS AND THEIR QUAINTER ACTS San Francisco is having its first look at Nikita Balieff’s “Chauve Souris,” and the city has capitulated to the charm of this unique entertainment as did the capitals of the world — Paris, London and New York. Balieff and his company are on a world tour which will probably include New Zealand. One is at a loss jfor words or ideas that exactly describe the exhibition given by these Muscovite songbirds, comedians and dancers. It might be called cream puff vaudeville; a frothy mixture of sweets whipped into ineffably delightful fluffiness and served at the point of perfection. More nearly, perhaps, this gallimaufry is a mosaic, created from brilliant bits of colour, with occasional darker pieces to emphasis© the gaudy glories of the composition; a dashing, bizarre, glamorous feast of colour and beauty. And Balieff himself, the heart, the centre, the beginning and the end of the show. His unusual and expressive personality spreads itself over the performance, and gives it character and distinction. The more showy of its gauds, “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” “Katinka,” with its vivid mechanics, and the melodious “Night at Yard’s,” force themselves into notice so definitely one forgets in reviewing the entertainment such exquisite and lovely bits as the delicate “Souvenir of the Past,” its tender, faded gentility giving out an odour of lavender; the charm and ravishing beauty of “Porcelain de Copenhagen”; and the tragic brilliance of “The King Orders the Drums to be Beaten.” Geva puts wit into her dancing; conveys a sense of satire and travesty that is daintiness itself, and yet so stressed it is unmistakable. She manages the touch of burlesque in her first dance. “Romanesque,” in which she is a silken-clad shepherdess with comic painted sheep, her dancing here having a suspicion of acid intent that gives it vibrancy and makes it a comment on life. In her second dance, “Grotesque Espagnol,” the purpose is to mock at the rhythms of the ordinary dance and to give new meaning to steps and pirouettes and gesturing. In the added dance, “Sarcasm,” all attempts at mere beauty is thrown to the winds, and Geva gives herself up to intentional angularity, while at the same time performing marvels of contortion tliat rival the feats of those dancers who do nothing else. There is only room to mention the fun that runs through Balieff’s programme. beginning with “The Pastry Cook’s Wife,” a brittle Pasquinade, that jibes at matrimony, and continuing through the pantomimic absurdities which are a joy in themselves. Estelle Fratus, who first visited New Zealand with the Midnight Frolics, was married, at Honolulu, to Carl Dennis, the trap-drummer with the Henry Santry band. Estelle Fratus in recent years was a favourite on the Tivoli circuit with her miniature doll act.