THE
GOLDEN AGE
OF THEATRE
(1880-1920)
Adeline Genée (1875-1955)
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(signed postcard, hand-tinted, Aristophot, 999, 1907) |
Adeline GenÉe (whose original name was Anita Jensen) was born in Århus, Denmark. At the age of three she began dancing lessons with her uncle who was a dance master at the Milanese school. When she was eight, she was adopted by her uncle and aunt who continued training her for the ballet. She made her dancing debut in Copenhagen and then performed in Germany, her classic style and precision soon attracting considerable attention. In 1897, she went to London for a six-week engagement but, after being appointed the prima ballerina at the Empire Theatre, London, she was to stay for ten years. At the time, ballet was all but ignored in Britain but, by introducing short dances into its variety programs, the theatre began to establish an audience for more elaborate works. Normally wearing a costume in the 1830s style, she captivated those who watched her with her artistry, grace and agility, becoming known 'The Dancer with the Twinkling Feet'. On May 14, 1906, with Adeline Genée as Swanhilda, the classical ballet Coppelia was presented at the Empire Theatre for the first time in Britain - twenty-six years after its opening at Theatre Imperial de l'Opera, Paris, on May 25, 1870 and nineteen years after it had been premiered in New York at the Metropolitan Opera House. In 1908, Adeline Genée went to the United States where she starred in the musical The Soul Kiss both in New York and on tour. Florenz Ziegfeld, who produced the show, advertised her as being 'the world's greatest dancer'. The show was an enormous success and, as she had done in England, she made thousands of people aware that dance was a true art form that could be both elevating and entertaining. During the following decade, she returned played five more American seasons, including appearing in two more musicals - The Silver Star in 1909 and The Bachelor Belles in 1910. At the height of her fame, Adeline Genée retired from the stage in 1916. She continued, however, to be actively involved in the continued development of English ballet. In 1920, she became the first president of the Association of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain which was later to become the Royal Academy of Dancing. It was a position that she was to hold until 1954. In 1931 the Adeline Genée Medal Awards were instituted in the United Kingdom in her honor and they remain one of the most important awards of excellence given to young dancers. In 1950, she was created Dame of the Order of the British Empire for her services to ballet. |
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Adeline Genée as
Coppelia |
Adeline Genée - |
Adeline Genée |
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Click photo for enlargement |
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Adeline Genée died in Esher, Surrey (GB) on April 23, 1970.
| This is part of an article on Adeline Genée's New York debut in The Soul Kiss. It was published in The Theatre Magazine, March 1908. |
The fickle, airy fancy of Broadway is like a butterfly on the wing - you never can tell just where or upon what it is going to alight. Yet there is always a dash of discrimination, an underlying sentiment of natural selection, in its choice of affinities; and when the gay old White Way goes wild over an attraction bearing the transcendental title of The Soul Kiss, you run no great risk in wagering that there is something uncommonly bewitching in the woman behind the kiss. Her name is Adeline Genée. She has been London's little Danish sweet heart for the past decade or so, and now she may be New York's as long as she will. Her dainty blond personality, when in repose, is of the type that suggests the apt though overworked comparison of 'Dresden china'. But when she dances and smiles and smiles through her dancing, in every ethereal poise and pirouette, then we must fly for similes to the breeze-born petals of the rose - to the thistle-down, and the sprites and sylphs of the sunbeam. ...But Genée, besides being a classical elève of the ballet school, is an accomplished pantomimiste, and an intelligent actress as well. Thus the scope of her expression is infinitely widened, both as to her individual joy in the dance and the interpretation of an idea or a rôle.
Talent like this really calls for a vehicle play, or at least one of Mr. Ziegfeld's 'musical entertainments', to carry
it along through an evening; and, as such, it is but fair to say that The Soul Kiss, in local parlance, is 'going
some'... But the danse de chasse, or hunting dance, at the finale, is the original creation which stands out surpassingly amongst all of Mlle. Genée's divertissements. A romantic forest glade in autumn is reproduced with all the wizardry of the scene-builder's craft. You can almost scent the red fox streaking by. The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill; the music of the pack responds - here they come, in full cry, a score or more of spotted hounds, the very real thing, dashing across the stage as if it were Nassau County, Long Island; the red-coats follow fast, and - ah! the fair Amazon, Genée, a modern Diana in English riding habit, booted and spurred, comes at a mad gallop! No, she is not mounted, but she might as well be - the illusion is all there, as she alternately checks her imaginary hunter and gives him the rein, takes a water jump and a fence ot two, and is in at the death - see! she has dismounted, and is triumphantly waving the brush. |
