Serge Lifar - Biography

Biography

Lifar was born in Kiev, Russian Empire. His year of birth is officially shown as 1904 (as on a 2004 Ukrainian stamp commemorating his centenary), but there is good reason to believe it occurred in 1905. Serge Lifar was not only a dancer but was also a choreographer, director, writer, theoretician about dancing, and collector. He was the pupil of Bronislava Nijinska in Kiev. In 1921 he left Soviet Union and was noticed by Serge Diaghilev, who sent him to Turin in order to improve his technique with Enrico Cecchetti. He made his debut at the Ballets Russes in 1923, where he quickly became a principal dancer. Lifar was considered the successor to Nijinsky in the Ballet Russes. He was cast opposite Tamara Karsavina in Nijinska’s Roméo et Juliette (1926) at the age of 21, Karsavina was twice his age. He originated leading roles in three Balanchine ballets for the Ballet Russes, including La Chatte (1927) with a score by French composer Henri Sauguet and based on an Aesop fable, which featured Lifar’s famous entrance in a ‘chariot’ formed by his male companions, Apollon Musagète (1928) with a score by Stravinsky depicting the birth of the Greek God, Apollo and his encounter with the three muses, Callipe, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore, and Le Fils prodigue (The Prodigal Son) (1929) with a score by Prokofiev, the last great ballet of the Diaghilev era. At the death of Diaghilev in 1929 he was invited by Jacques Rouché at the age of 24 to take over the directorship of the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1929 as it had fallen into decline in the late 19th century. He gave the company a new strength and purpose initiating the re-birth of ballet in France and began to create the first of many ballets for that company.

From 1930 on, Serge Lifar was immensely successful, essentially in his own ballet creations, notably with Les Créatures de Prométhée (1929), a personal version of Le Spectre de la rose (1931) and L'Après-midi d'un faune (1935), Icare (1935) with costumes and decor by Picasso, Istar (1941) or Suite en Blanc (1943), which he qualified as neoclassical, all created for the Paris Opera.

As ballet master of the Paris Opera from 1930 to 1944 and from 1947 to 1958, he devoted himself to the restoration of the technical level of the Paris Opera Ballet to return it to its place as one of the best companies in the world. During those three decades as director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, he lead the company through turbulent times during World War II and the German occupation of France. In 1977 the Paris Opéra Ballet devoted a full evening to his choreography.

He made an effort to revitalize dance and thought the basic principles of ballet and the five positions of the feet denied mobility for the dancer and invented sixth and seventh positions with the feet turned in not out like the first five positions. He brought the Paris Opéra Ballet to America and performed to full houses at the New York City Center. Audiences where enthusiastic and had great admiration for the company of dancers. He undoubtedly influenced Yvette Chauviré, Janine Charrat and Roland Petit.

In 1935 he published his confessio fidei titled Le manifesto du chorégraphe, proposing laws about the independence of choreography. Some of views include: “we cannot, should not, dance everything. Ballet must remain closely linked to dance itself: ballet cannot be the illustration of any other art. Ballet should not borrow its rhythmic shape from music. Ballet can freely exist without musical accompaniment. When a ballet is closely linked to its score, the rhythmic base must be dictated by the choreographer and not the composer. The choreographer must not be the slave of the painter/designer. A free and independent choreographic theatre must be created." He also wrote a biography of Diaghilev titled Serge Diaghilev, His Life, His Work, His Legend: An Intimate Biography published by Putnam, London, 1940.

He died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986, aged 81 and was buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery. Editions Sauret published his memoirs titled Les Mémoires d’Icare posthumously in 1993. The title references one of his greatest roles in the ballet Icare, “the story of the ballet is based on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus whose father Daedalus builds him a pair of artificial wings. Disobeying his father’s orders, Icarus flies too close to the sun, which melts the wax in his wings and causes him to plunge to his death.” After being forced to resign from the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1958, a famous photograph was taken of him leaving the Palais Garnier, looking somber and clasping the wings from the costume of Icarus that the character puts on in order to fly.