Variations on the theme of "ballet" in the works of Eric Satie

Porubina Marina Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0003-2501-2764 Post-graduate student at the Music History Department, S. Rachmaninov Rostov State Conservatory 344002, Russia, Rostov-On-Don, ave. Budyonnovsky, 23 vladimirovnamarina9@gmail.com

In the first decades of the 20th century, the art of ballet in France was experiencing an unprecedented rise: it became a genre of active artistic experimentation, which stimulated significant transformations of all components of a ballet performance, as well as a revision of the system of interaction of these components that had developed over the centuries in a single synthetic whole. This shift in the vector of musical and theatrical interests towards plastic art is very accurately expressed in the statement of the Russian artist, art historian and art critic A. Benois: "After all the temptations of our brain, after all the words, sometimes confusing and tedious, then vulgar and stupid, then vague and sincere, I want silence and spectacle on the stage" ^{[1, p. 103]}. Original works created by the efforts of entreprises ("Russian Ballet" by S. Diaghilev and "Swedish Ballets" by R. de Mare, "Paris Evenings" by E. de Beaumont and "Ballet by Ida Rubinstein"), outstanding composers, choreographers, directors, artists, changed the cultural "course of history", the appearance of the French, and with it – and the whole European ballet art. Among the authors whose activities led to artistic-aesthetic, stylistic, compositional-dramatic and musical-linguistic transformations of the genre (M. Ravel, K. Debussy, composers of the group "Six", R. Strauss, I. Stravinsky, N. Cherepnin, etc.), not the least place belongs to Eric Satie, whose name is primarily associated with with the shocking ballets "Parade" ("Parade", 1917) and "The performance is canceled" ("Rel?che", 1924). However, in addition to these two performances, which became a manifesto of the "new art" from all possible points of view, the author wrote three more ballets – "Uspud" ("Uspud", 1892), "The Eccentric Beauty" ("La Belle excentrique", 1921) and "The Adventures of Mercury (plastic poses)" ("Les Aventures de Mercure (poses plastiques)", 1924), the surprise and boldness of whose artistic solutions, provocativeness and sometimes manifested attitude to performativity, become a kind of "bridge" to the art of the second half of the twentieth century. The almost complete absence of these works in the paradigm of scientific knowledge about the work of Eric Satie, as well as the fragmentary study of the two most notable works, does not allow us to fully trace the trend towards changing the genre appearance of ballet performances in his legacy, assess the role of the composer in the search for new artistic solutions, as well as identify those specific features that will later become an integral part of modernist ballet. This article is intended to fill this gap.

Such a rapid breakthrough of the ballet genre in the 1910s - 1920s into a different artistic and aesthetic space filled with ideas of connecting the world of real everyday life and the artist's view transforming it, a new convention involving the rejection of the transfer of the subject in its direct form, poetic absurdity, anti–normative artistic thinking, mixing previously antagonistic cultural phenomena, in In many ways, it became a kind of reaction to the stagnation processes that took place in the French ballet theater in the last quarter of the XIX century. The genre, enslaved by the academic framework, sought renewal more than all the others, drawing meanings for it from the sophistication and decorativeness of modernity and the deliberate simplicity of everyday culture (cafe, music hall and circus traditions), rationality and precision of the neoclassical and the absurdity of the avant-garde, in a different understanding of the plasticity of the human body, the artistic possibilities of cinematography, photography and advertising. One of the characteristic features of this renewal is the individualization of the genre appearance of the play and the increasing figurative and dramatic significance of all its artistic components: the intrinsic value of choreography and scenography, interacting with music and verbal-poetic design on the contrapuntal principle, provides ample opportunities for projections of one art form onto another. Last but not least, the emancipation of the components is due to the fact that, unlike the classical-romantic period, where the composer played a decisive role in the creation of the ballet, at the beginning of the 20th century, the musical and choreographic production became the result of the activity of a team of authors who carried out the "assembly" of the work. It was in such conditions of creative cooperation that all the works of Eric Satie were born, in fact, they were not individual projects of the composer, but the fruit of the joint work of several "demiurges", ensuring the originality of the aesthetic and artistic systems in each new opus. It is significant that only the first of the five ballets – "Uspud" – was fully inspired by the author himself, he was involved in the creation of the other four after the formation of the primary idea, which in no way detracts from his merits and does not reduce the role of those musical discoveries that largely determined the innovative sound of these performances.

The new "artistic format" of the ballet is actively manifested in updating both the actual content of the performance and in a different relationship of the plot with the rest of the components of the artistic whole. Eric Satie's early ballet "Uspud", created by him in collaboration with librettist Contamin de Latour, according to many researchers, is a parody of G. Flaubert's drama "The Temptation of St. Anthony", the idea of which, as is known, was formed as a result of the reception of the painting of the same name by P. Brueghel Jr. Called "Christian" by the author himself, instead of sublime and spiritualized images, he presents to the viewer the central character – Uspuda (from the French – "freak") – surrounded by animals, phantasmagoric creatures and saints unknown to religion. The plot motifs of faith and unbelief, heavenly punishment, martyrdom, the appearance of Christ, visions and visionary, concentrated in three acts ^[1], are presented in the ballet grotesquely exaggerated, with a significant share of fiction, as if a kind of exercise that saves from the dangers of religious fanaticism, ridiculing precisely those things that are most holy and dear.

Eric Satie's appeal to the embodiment of a plot of this type in the genre of ballet is in itself a remarkable fact, since Christian issues have actively begun to take root in the subject of this art since the XX century^[2]. Even more radical is the grotesque way of presentation, manipulating the meanings of religious rituals, metaphors and symbols in the spirit of denunciation, not so much characteristic of Flaubert's drama and Brueghel Jr.'s The Temptation of St. Anthony, but rather for the canvases of the "surrealist of the XV century" I. Bosch, who also created a triptych on this plot. No less important are the compositional and dramatic intersections with the manner of the Dutchman: in Eric Satie and de Latour everything is also multi-figured, detailed (in Act II – 33 zoological objects, in III – 16 martyrs)^[3], rhythmically (due to repetition), montage (due to the abrupt switching of episodes of different meanings).

If "Uspud" is written to a sufficiently detailed libretto, even overly eventful for this genre, then in the following scores the author abandons this principle, gradually turning into the plane of a plotless ballet. So, and "The Parade" (libretto by J. Cocteau, sets and costumes by P. Picasso, choreography by L. Myasina, premiered on May 18, 1917 at the Thtre du Ch?telet under the direction of conductor E. Ansermet) and "The Adventures of Mercury" (sets and costumes by P. Picasso, choreography by L. Myasina, premiered at the Thtre de la Cigale on June 15, 1924 under directed by R. Desormieres) do not contain either traditional dramatic moves or a pronounced storyline. The plot of the "Parade", as you know, is centered around the display of three main characters impersonal in the spirit of masks or their groups – a Chinese magician, an American Baby, Acrobats and three Barker Managers who tell each other that the crowd is confusing the performance on the street with the show that should take place inside, and try in the most rude way convince the public to come and see the spectacle inside. The final musical hall and circus performance "parade alley", as if in fast-forward, once again presents all the characters to the viewer. Such a modest eventfulness, minimal cause-and–effect relationships and processality, and the concentration of attention on the representation of the characters form a completely new type of ballet performance - "exhibiting" (the term Yu. Pakkonen ^[2]). 

Along with the religious "Miracle" and the banal everyday "Parade", ballet appears in the work of Eric Satie, actualizing another very common sphere of pastoral themes in French art at the turn of the century, often appealing to the value universals of antiquity^[4]. In The Adventures of Mercury, a simple parody of stories about Greek deities, there was initially no setting for plot as such, since the main idea of its mastermind, Count E. de Beaumont, was to create a series of "tableaux vivants" on a mythological theme: "I don't want to involve literature in this," he wrote, "and I don't want a composer or choreographer to do it... we did everything you want" ^{[3, p. 258]}. However, brief synopses for each of the three paintings dedicated to showing different facets of the essence of Mercury, in its interaction with representatives of Greek and Roman mythology (Apollo, Venus, Proserpine, Pluto, Cerberus, Chaos, the three graces, zodiac signs, etc.)^[5] nevertheless form a certain sequence of actions and situations. Just like in the "Parade", they form independent and meaningfully independent episodes that allow Eric Satie to realize in a traditional ballet suite an innovative – collage – type of drama and a peculiar – mosaic – type of composition.

In two more performances – "The Eccentric Beauty" (costume idea – J. Cocteau, choreography – E. Tulemon, premiered at the Thtre du Colis?e on June 14, 1921 under the direction of V. Golshman) and "The performance is canceled" (artist – F. Picabia and M. Duchamp, directed by R. Clair, choreographer by J. Bjorlen, conductor by A. Sauget, premiered at Thtre des Champs-?lys?es on November 27, 1924) – Eric Satie completely abandons not only the plot, but also at least a minimally expressed script. Consisting of three dances ("Marche franco-lunaire" – "Franco-moon march", "Valse du mysterieux baiser dans l'il" – "Waltz of a mysterious kiss in the eyes", "Cancan Grand-Mondain" – "Secular cancan") and alternating with them instrumental ritornel ("Grand Ritornello" The one–act ballet "The Eccentric Beauty" is a divertimento accompanying the plastic poses of the avant–garde dancer and choreographer E. Tulemon, who commissioned this ballet to the composer. Eric Satie's latest experience "The Performance is canceled", which can fully be considered the apogee in overcoming the traditional patterns of the genre, in fact is not even a ballet, but an intermediate performance project combining two main components - choreographic (two acts of ballet) and cinematic (demonstrated before Act I instead of the overture and in between Act I and II of the absurdist film "Intermission"^[6]). In conditions of such a complex education, where each component is not self-sufficient and "corrodes" the boundaries of the other, plot and genre structures are destroyed, there is practically no narrative process, as well as the very idea of a work of art as such is rejected, the plot of the "ballet part"^[7] is reduced to a meaningless set of actions of characters whom Eric Satie himself called "priceless" ^{[4, p. 139]}. Thus, the composer and his co-authors eliminate the signified, that is, the artistic idea, in the musical and choreographic part of this intermedial spectacle, which leads to the absence of an end-to-end meaning, the appearance of unmotivated images and the rejection of the psychological depth of the semantic space, which is replaced by irony.

The boldness of the plastic and scenic solutions, the extravagance of the plots in no way obscure the significance of the musical solution of the performances, which still remains the "titular" component in this multi-genre complex. And despite the fact that Eric Satie was not always the dominant figure who defined the idea of the play, his experimentalism actively contributed to the stylistic "emancipation" of the genre and formed new ideas about the relationship between musical and choreographic language. In contrast to the trend of "music-centric" ballets continuing their active development during this period, which plastically comprehend symphonism, the composer's opuses manifest "a special type of dance, combining contrasting composite dance structures typical of ballet music with a new melodic-harmonic and rhythmic language" ^{[5, p. 6]}. A new one is emerging in his work the understanding of space-time relations, the original structure–forming logic based on the kaleidoscopic stringing of sections, the predominance of the function of exposure over the development and weakening of the procedural features of the form, the creation of sound space through repeated repetition of unstrained structural formations, metrorhythmic variability - all this allows his music to be highly "dansant" and provides the combinatoricity that allows the choreographer can create an infinite number of plastic configurations. Tracing the author's approach to the compositional and dramatic structure of the works, one cannot ignore the fact that, in general, he is marked by a tendency to suite, which is the basic principle of the organization of the performance, and in this sense, the experiments of Eric Satie are firmly connected with the traditions of the French ballet theater. However, along with this structure, which is quite familiar to ballet, those formative patterns begin to mature that will later determine the innovative appearance of many twentieth-century works. Already in the first ballet "Uspud", due to the "personnel change", stringing together multi-extended episodes, each of which is incomplete and acts as part of a longer section, a new compositional-dramatic approach develops, later referred to in musicology as a montage. Instead of symphonizing the musical fabric, the author relies on his favorite principle of repetition of more than a dozen intonation-thematic formations with a length of one to eleven bars, genre-stylistically and texturally contrasting, given "butt-to-butt", without transitions and bundles, modified over the course of three acts. The alternation of this equally functional thematism weakens the processality and creates a discreteness of form. At the same time, a special feeling of the flow of musical time is formed through the deformation of its natural course (the metrorhythmic organization is a "kaleidoscope", since the size varies not only in each of the 12 themes-"patterns", but also within individual of them), fragmentation and discontinuity, compression and expansion (the same thematic formation fluctuates in length and can either lengthen or contract).

On the one hand, the dominance of such a rationally logical approach to composition using non-stretched structures, as well as the saturation of these structures with short phrases, motifs, individual chords, repetition in the absence of development should be difficult to coordinate with both the choreographic fabric and the plot outline, which indicates that Eric Satie's score is pure music that has its own patterns, independent of the events taking place on the stage. On the other hand, it is precisely this separation of music and action, the unconditionality of the composer's decision by the dramatic plot, that gives the choreographer complete freedom in the plastic interpretation of the plot and the creation of all possible choreographic configurations. However, certain moments of its figurative and semantic synchronization with the event canvas do not allow us to fully call the musical solution of the performance "background". For example, one of the leading "patterns" appearing at key structural points associated with the transformation of the main character – the stylization of the Gregorian chorale set out in octave duplication (in the initial conduct) – can be analogized to the leitmotif embodying the spirit of the Miracle. A number of plot points in a ballet performance are subjected to a fairly straightforward sound-imaginative illustration. The appearance in all its triumphant and radiant clarity of the C major chord accompanying the arrival of the Christian Church at the climax of the second act is perceived in the midst of chromatically active passages as a very symbolic and significant moment. In many ways, it resembles the reaction of a taper to an unexpected scene change in a silent movie. The episode accompanying the following text of the libretto turns out to be equally illustratively accurate: "We hear a chorus of angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim, powers, thrones and dominions singing a hymn to the Most High," based on the following in the chord-chorale texture. At the same time, a number of vivid plot motifs laid down by the author of the libretto de Latour – loud thunderclaps, the transformation of stones into fireballs, the fall of a statue, etc., are not marked in the score by vivid musical "events" (change of texture, dynamics, etc.).

If in "Uspud" montage acts as an independent principle of compositional thinking, then in the next ballet – "Parade" – it is largely mediated by the generic suite for a ballet performance based on contrast, which is key to the logic of this type of organization, which turns out to be the engine of the development process both in ballet as a whole and in each number/ episode. The suite is manifested, firstly, in the alternation of contrasting numbers in genre and stylistic terms, most of which have a pronounced dance character, secondly, at the level of a "parade" of portraits of diverse characters, thirdly, in the very construction of ballet scenic action as in close-up - through an appeal to the basics of classical ballet suite, albeit presented in a rather "blurred" form ("Chinese Magician", No. 2 – male variation), ("American Baby", No. 3 - female variation), ("Acrobats", No. 4 – pair dance and "Finale", No. 5 – code with exit all participants), and in a smaller way – in a series of choreographic configurations and circus tricks in ballet scenes. At the same time, the principle of gradual building of the whole used by Eric Satie by changing closed, self-sufficient formations with deliberate emphasis on "seams", moments of "gluing" of frames-episodes and polystylistic collisions caused by the diversity of thematic material goes back to the famous Eisenstein principle of "installation of attractions".

At the same time, the composer and his co-authors achieve almost perfect architectonic integrity through a number of methods. Most of them lie in the plane of the formative patterns of instrumental music, providing sufficient autonomy to the musical component of a ballet performance. As a result of their influence, a concentric mirror structure is formed^[8] with a center of symmetry in the episode "Steamboat Ragtime" from the Dance of the American Girl, in which the main numbers alternate with the exits of the Barker Managers and are framed by a thematic arch. The latter is formed by, firstly, the "inner frame" - the galloping call of the barkers, sounding before the Magician's Dance and after the Dance of the American Baby, and secondly, the "outer frame" – a kind of prologue "Prelude of the Red Curtain" and an epilogue, designated as "Continuation of the prelude of the Red Curtain." These two numbers are nothing but a fugue, interrupted at the moment of exposure by a farcical chaos that broke into its static-rational world and continued already in the code. Such a decision turns out to be not only an important factor in achieving integrity, bringing the installation structure closer to the standard form and compensating for its mosaic, but also an essential dramatic move in the formation of the figurative and semantic logic of the "Parade", since it ensures the operation of the "theater within the theater" principle, and the functioning of a number of antinomies – statics / dynamics, order / chaos, past / present, elite / mass.

The collage noted above is manifested not only in the alternation of ballet numbers and episodes within the numbers. The same principle of compositional thinking also determines the movement of musical thought within episodes collected from various intonation-themed "ideas", each of which is repeatedly and compulsively repeated by the author. The musical blocks formed as a result of such repetitions form some semblance of a rehearsal process – the technique of organizing musical fabric in the works of minimalist composers so in demand in the second half of the twentieth century. The most characteristic example of this kind is the music accompanying the exit of the first Manager–barker, consisting of five such blocks (repeated over 16 bars of a giga-like motif, over 9 bars of a gallop, etc.), "sewn" into a kind of patchwork quilt.

In the next two performances, Eric Satie does not go beyond the patterns of divertimentation, building the logic of the musical process in strict accordance with the images of the mythological and pastoral plot - in "The Adventures of Mercury", and with the tasks of creating an original sound design for choreographic improvisation – in the plotless "Eccentric Beauty". At the same time, if the compositional solution of "Mercury" is based solely on suite patterns with a characteristic genre-stylistic, tempo, metrorhythmic and dynamic contrast between the ballet numbers and is not burdened by the formation of a "second plan" form due to thematic arches, grouping into larger sections, etc., then in "Beauty" the mosaic of the form is overcome by rondality, formed as a result of the return of the opening instrumental rythurnel after each dance number. The latter is most likely caused solely by applied needs: the need for time to rest or figuratively switch the only performer in this one-man show.

More original, and, to a certain extent, returning to the installation structures of "Uspuda" and "Parade", is the compositional device of the last ballet "The performance is canceled". Despite the overall avant-garde intent of this intermedia performance, its ballet component, unlike the cinematic one, is not perceived as so innovative. Organized in alternating exits of men and women, their dances separately and in joint interactions, the structure of the ballet is quite traditional at a superficial glance. Moreover, in the musical fabric of the performance, one can observe a certain semblance of leitmotifs, not burdened, however, with any sufficient transformation that could be associated with the development of the conditional "plot" of the performance and the presence of symphonization processes. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that certain thematic arches are formed by the holding of the "male" theme, which first declared itself in the overture, in the issue "Exit of a Man" (in magnification and in its original form) Act I, as well as in the number "The dancer puts a crown on the spectator's head" and the Finale – in the II. The "feminine" theme, which first sounded in "The Exit of a woman" in Act I, is repeated in "The Return of a Woman" (in magnification) and in the number "A woman sits down in her chair" in Act II (in its original form). The commonality of the genre and stylistic solution unites the numbers of each of the presented spheres: the elastic muscular rhythms of the gallop with saturated dynamics and fast tempo determine the collective "portrait" of male episodes, the waltz formula and restrained tempo of female, as well as some joint dances of men and women. Despite the noted suite patterns, the rather rapid pace of changing miniature ballet numbers based on contrast comparison rather than dynamic coupling, the thesis of the thematic material, which develops in the alternation of various motifs, rhythmic formulas and textured drawings, indicate the action of another formative factor - the installation.

Combinatoricity, which actively manifests itself in Eric Satie's ballets at the level of the spatial-temporal organization of the artistic whole, determines to no lesser extent the stylistic appearance of the works in which the author freely mixes "high" and "low" genres, signs of different epochs and styles, starting from medieval monody and ending with the diverse music of everyday life of the early 20th century. The heterogeneity of the musical language characteristic of the composer's work as a whole, as well as the tendency to simplify and refine it, proved to be extremely organic in the search for a new dance vocabulary in tune with modernity. Just as in other genres, Eric Satie's ballets show a connection with circus, music hall aesthetics, cabaret culture, as well as jazz, the interest in which in the avant-garde creative environment is associated, according to A. Zucker, "with the truly hurricane spread of jazz in America and then in Europe and "ojazirovannyh" dance genres of Latin American origin. Their new sound atmosphere, unusual for European ears, a fairly autonomous system of expressive means, a specific style of performance combined with considerable sensationalism that initially surrounded this music, radically transformed the entire structure of musical art" ^{[6, p. 122]}. This trend is reflected in the works of many academic composers, including M. Ravel, K. Debussy, D. Millau, I. Stravinsky and others, however, it was Eric Satie who became one of the first to introduce jazz into ballet performance. So, in the "Parade", the composer chooses ragtime as the musical characteristic of the American Baby, which, according to the plan, personified her feelings of homesickness. Quoting the popular song by I. Berling and T. Snyder "This mysterious reg", the composer retains the tonality and size of the original, as well as the basic rhythmic structures, however, he changes the location of the verse and chorus of the song, increases some constructions by adding bars with new thematic material, complicates the harmonic solution^[9]. In addition, following the desire of the ideologist of the "Parade" J. Cocteau to create a "realistic ballet", "more authentic than authenticity", Eric Satie does not limit himself to introducing only musical signs of everyday life into the ballet score – sound symbols of the civilization of the new century are intertwined into it, realized with the help of various objects: typewriters, horns, sirens (high-pitched and low), lottery wheels, revolvers, bottle phones, etc. All these "auditory deceptions" (J. Cocteau's term) contributed to the imitation of the noise of the urban environment and became one of the early manifestations of the so-called "concrete music".

However, not only in this ballet, with its essentially "anti-academic" concept, Eric Satie variously implements the uncomplicated lexemes of the urban musical environment. The final cancan and quotes from his own cafe-style songs written in the 1900s "decorated" the score of the "Eccentric Beauty", popular song and dance melodies of his time - "The performance is canceled": "Music for "Rel?che"?, – the author himself wrote – I portrayed people "on edge". Using popular themes for this purpose. These topics are very challenging. Special, even. The faint-hearted and other moralists will reproach me for using these topics" ^{[7, pp. 537-539]}. Even in the play "The Adventures of Mercury" with its classicizing bucolic motifs in the plot, the composer operates with antinomic stage traditions, creating a peculiar effect of mutual repulsion. As Eric Satie himself writes, in this ballet his goal "was to make music an integral part, so to speak, of the actions and gestures of people who move in this simple exercise. Similar poses can be seen at any fair. The spectacle is associated with a music hall, without stylization or any relation to artistry" ^{[8, p. 232]}.

Summarizing the observations made, it should be noted that each of the composer's ballet experiments to a greater or lesser extent testifies to the composer's innovative approach to solving this genre. As a result of the paradoxical and sometimes mutually repellent combination of images, meanings, plots, structures, principles, genre and stylistic "codes" of academic and everyday, traditional and innovative, elite and mass in the work of Eric Satie, like many of his contemporaries, a new look of ballet performance was formed, due to the specifics of the aesthetic quest of this historical period.

^[1] The central motives of the first action are the demonstration of Uspud's crimes against the faith (the execution of Christians, the trampling of their relics, the worship of an idol), the subsequent punishment (symbolized by a thunderclap that smashed the idol), the appearance of the Christian church in the image of a woman of heavenly beauty with a dagger thrust into her chest, and the reaction of Uspud, who pelted her stones that turn into fireballs. Act II concentrates on the plot motives of Uspud's reflections on Christianity and paganism, the transformation of his idols into animals and trees, a terrible picture of the collapse of his world and a pagan judgment seat, which is replaced by Christ accompanied by angels and cherubs. Act III reflects the baptism of the Assumption, the procession of saints and martyrs, the martyrdom of the Assumption (see the translation of the libretto in the Appendix).

^[2] Thus, researcher N. Argamakova writes that for the first time the idea of creating a ballet on a similar theme came to S. Diaghilev in 1914 and resulted in the unfulfilled idea of the play "Liturgy" with choreography by L. Myasin and costumes by N. Goncharova ^{[9, p. 16]}.

^[3] Some researchers, and in particular R. Orledge, believe that both the numbers and letters that make up the intricate names of saints and martyrs represent an encrypted system ^[10].

^[4] For more information on the implementation of pastoral traditions in French ballet of the early twentieth century, see O. Gagarina's dissertation ^[11].

^[5] I action: Night. Apollo and Venus make love, and Mercury surrounds them with zodiac signs. Mercury is jealous of Apollo, kills him by cutting his thread of life, and then revives him; Act II: The Three Graces perform a dance, then take off the pearls to swim. Mercury steals the pearls and escapes, pursued by Cerberus; Act III: During the Bacchus festival, Mercury invents the alphabet. On the orders of Pluto, he takes measures to have Chaos kidnap Proserpine. In the finale, she is taken away on a chariot.

^[6] To date, the film "Intermission", which has the status of a cinematic museum exhibit and emancipated from the ballet "The Performance is canceled", has been studied in sufficient detail both from the point of view of the video sequence and the musical series, considered the first soundtrack in the history of cinema ^{[12;13; 14;15;16]}.

^[7] The ballet suite is arranged as follows: I action – Projection. A curtain. The exit of a woman. / A woman stops in the middle of the stage and examines the decor. / Music between a Woman's exit and her "Dance without Music": she sits, smokes a cigarette and listens to a piece. / Female dance without music. / Exit of the man. / Revolving door dance (man and woman). / Waltz. / Pause. / Exit of men. / Male dance. / A Woman's Dance. / Finale; Act II – The music of the return. / The Return Of Men. / The Return of the Woman. / Men undress (A woman gets dressed). / Dance of a Man and a Woman. / The men return to their seats and find their overcoats. Dancing on a wheelbarrow (A woman and a dancer). / Dance with a crown (A woman alone). / The dancer places the crown on the viewer's head. / The woman sits down in her chair. / The final little dance (imitation of the song).

^[8] The structure of the ballet is as follows: introductory "Chorale" / "Red Curtain Prelude" / "Chinese Magician" / "American Baby" [Steamboat ragtime] "American Baby" (continued) / "Acrobats" / "Finale" / "Continuation of the red Curtain prelude".

^[9] For more information about this, see the article by E. Mikhailova ^[17].