wading through photographs… a hundred and…I’m still counting!

This is not for the feint hearted. No research project is, really. I’ve never come across a scholar who hasn’t got grit, determination and sheer perseverance. Then again, I am old-fashioned (in the nicest sense) and I place Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis (1985) on such a high pedestal (for many reasons; some not relevant outside the context of teaching students the principles of ‘good research’).

Approximately hundred photographs started the process…And then some of the dancers in these photographs (or their daughters) began to send me theirs. The material snow-balled. It’s taken me two years to work out the material (although I admit to having breaks, including birthing a baby boy, organising conferences in New York and Sydney, and brainstorming a new anthology on contemporary ballet).

Back in 2014, Tanya Bayona, custodian of the Poutiatine legacy, granted me access to Poutiatine’s photographs (as well as other memorabilia). A year later I went back to Malta. During the warm days June/July 2015, I waded through, photographing all these photographs. Identifying, cross-checking, re-checking, finding errors in the matching up of photos to programmes. The piecing together of the puzzle has kept me busy for a few years now. But when digital copies of the last programme (Manoel Theatre, 1961) came through via email, the majority of the visual narrative came together.

Now the writing up stage begins…

In the meantime, I’m flitting between Henry Frendo’s Europe and Empire (2012), thinking about how ballet can/can’t decolonialise a colonial past and culture, and also make a quick phonecall to one of Poutiatine’s dancers from the 1949 concert. It’s a little crazy…but in the manner of how the book project all started, its the gathering of the data that isn’t for the feint hearted!

The Poutiatine Project: Where it all began..

Unlike a millennial, I’m starting a blog in the middle to late stage of this research project. After being away from Malta for over 17years, I find myself writing/editing a book on a ballet pioneer in Malta during its heyday as a British colony and until its independence from the Crown.

I am currently on maternity leave. I add this because, being away from my academic job in dance studies, has given me time to reflect on the material I have collected since 2014. A couple of years ago, I interviewed my former ballet teacher at the University of Malta’s first performing arts conference. I was interested in making voices heard, but also learning about women’s dancing lives. So I interviewed Daphne Lungaro-Mifsud. I was thrilled to have another voice come to the forefront: Tanya Bayona‘s wealth of knowledge on the legacy of Princess Natalie Poutiatine complemented the overall theme of the panel. That was March 2014. The start of the Poutiatine Project, as it became affectionally known over the course of the ensuing months and years.

Over the last few years, I have been most generously granted access to Tanya’s collection of Poutiatine’s memorabilia and collection of artefacts from the turn of the 20th Century right through the final photographs from the 1980s. The boxes were a treasure trove, though in my mind, that was part of the archive. I was convinced that other “material” was out there…where I didn’t know. The photographs were starting points. Being a small island, Malta was easy to navigate. Word of mouth: you should speak to so-and-so. Quite remarkably, I met with several of the young women in the photographs, who took classes with Poutiatine from the late 1940s through to the 1980s. Their stories began to shape a narrative, one that was hidden from many for several decades. Their generosity of spirit and love for their beloved teacher resonated unanimously. Many welcomed me into their homes. I am indebted to their honesty, energy and passion for dance. What remarkable women! They are all vital to understanding Poutatine’s story. Yet, Tanya’s vivacious spirit and our shared understanding that Poutiatine’s legacy must be preserved* was instrumental throughout the process. She is a true collaborator.

I am also grateful for the support shown by the National Library of Malta and the National Archive of Malta.

The Poutiatine Project (2014-2019). The end date for this project marks the centenary of Poutiatine’s first arrival in Malta as a fifteen year-old girl. Much of the story unfolds in the 1920s through to the mid-1960s. I know that the process of preparing this initial book manuscript has prompted me to think about other areas. The Art of Ballet. As a scholar invested in the field of ballet, I find the handwritten class notes and music manuscripts utterly mesmerising. I can’t wait for the next chapter to begin.

*Preservation is one of the facets of researching and writing dance histories. However, this particular set of histories opens up to another dimension of writing ballet (or dance) histories beyond their ‘past’. They are performance histories. They need to be ‘lived’. In the present.

 

Book Launch (March 2020)

On Monday 09^th March, a new book on twentieth century ballet histories was launched at the iconic eighteenth century theatre, the Manoel Theatre in Valletta. Princess Poutatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta, the first book on ballet histories in Malta, focuses on the tireless efforts of Princess Nathalie Poutiatine (1904-1984) and her significant legacy in dance on the Island of Malta. This new book, published by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti in collaboration with Midsea Publishers, brings together the scholarship of Dr Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel, Head of Research at the Faculty of Education (Royal Academy of Dance) in London. The book explores the connections between the philosophies of ballet, in the studio and on the stage, together with the inspiration and aspiration of the iconic Ballets Russes, Anna Pavlova and Lubov Egorova. It chronicles Poutiatine’s significant work between 1930 and 1978, along with the political and cultural histories associated with the colonial, independent-seeking and republican eras of Malta.  Opening speeches by Tanya Bayona MQR, Daphne Palmer-Morewood, and commentaries by Professor Henry Frendo and Professor Yosanne Vella from the University of Malta, marked the importance of this key moment in Maltese cultural histories.

On reviewing the book, Professor Emerita Lynn Garafola (Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 1998) wrote: “Thanks to Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel’s Princess Poutiatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta, we meet one of the emigration’s lesser-known figures, a woman who transformed the art she could not practice into a quietly heroic calling.” Professor Janice Ross (Like a bomb going off: Leonid Yacobsen, 2015) wrote: “Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel’s major achievement in Princess Nathalie Poutiatine and the art of Ballet in Malta, is her capacity to bring attention to these underpinnings essential to the bursts of individual voice and cultural identity in ballet. She has excavated a lost history and, in the process, has produced a timely reminder of the life of privilege of many who studied ballet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Russia, reminding us how it endured as a part of their identities in exile as well.”

Photo: Lisa Attard, courtesy of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

Photo: Lisa Attard, courtesy of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

Photo: Lisa Attard, courtesy of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

Photo: Lisa Attard, courtesy of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

Princess Poutiatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta can be purchased from Midsea Publishers, and other bookstores in Malta.

 

Photos: Lisa Attard, courtesy of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

The Polka Mazurka and as months go by…

The Polka Mazurka…I haven’t thought about this musical form in almost 18 years  since my undergraduate days on the BA(Hons) Art and Teaching of Ballet at the Royal Academy of Dance. I found a useful exemplar on YouTube (yes, it does come in handy!).

This Poutiatine Project has taken me into forgotten, rediscovered and new areas, always surprising me at every corner. Just the other day, I was browsing through Jane Pritchard’s Anna Pavlova (2012), and realised that the last unmarked/untitled photograph from the Poutiatine memorabilia is most likely to be ‘Columbine’ from The Nutcracker, performed at the Royal Opera House (Valletta) in 1930. Every turn, new discoveries, serendipitous connections.

Back to the Polka Mazurka. Our pianist Anthony decided to match up one of the centre practice exercises with a ‘polka mazurka’. Somehow it was a good match. Nevertheless, I am mindful that this choice was part of ‘our’ decision-making process, governed by notes from Poutiatine’s 1953 class for advanced students. There is an element of creativity, desire to bring this class to life, amidst the issues of time, interpretation and margin for ‘error’. At each step of the reconstruction process, I re-read Poutiatine’s notes, written in the now-familiar handwriting.

If I were a time-traveller, I’d go back to ask so many questions on musical choices, pedagogical emphasis, … and would she have considered the ‘Polka Mazurka’?