Artistic & Production Credits - San Francisco Ballet

Fokine/Page 2
others. The Fokines danced at galas, charities and toured movie houses. Later Vitale Fokine
would call these “wasted years” for his father. In 1936 New York Times dance critic John Martin
echoed this sentiment in describing Fokine’s activities in the United States, “It is as if Beethoven
were giving piano lessons instead of composing.”
By the mid 1930’s, due to lack of funding and his age, Fokine had given up the idea of founding a
ballet school. During this time, he returned to Europe and created seven new ballets. A few years
later he encountered Nazism. While rehearsing in Berlin, the theater manager told him to end
the rehearsal because it was Hitler’s birthday. Fokine refused. He also rejected an invitation to
meet Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief.
On January 23, 1942 Fokine’s last ballet The Russian Soldier premiered at the Boston Opera
House. That summer he went to Mexico City to stage Helen of Troy and injured his leg, causing
him to return to New York. He was hospitalized and died on August 22, 1942. As a memorial to
Fokine, seventeen ballet companies around the world performed one of his eighty-one ballets,
Les Sylphides, simultaneously.
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