Carina as a Cossack, 1915
Carina ("Sylphide") 1917
with
Jean Börlin,
Royal Opera, Stockholm,1918
Carina Ari 1921
Fokine was an inspiring teacher
Ballet training at the Royal Opera was rigorous. Dancers became proficient in a rather stiff, classical 19th century style. The management did not have much understanding of choreography. Instead, dancers were treated as walk-ons by the opera directors. It was not until after the Second World War that dancers could devote themselves solely to the art of dancing itself.
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One person who opened
up new roads at an early stage was the ingenious Michel Fokine, a regenerator
of ballet, whom the Opera had judiciously brought to Stockholm for guest
performances in 1913 and 1914.
The Swedish dancers found it enormously stimulating to learn from and
interpret this great choreographer. However, two seasons after his short
visit, the Opera ballet began once again to grow despondent.
The thought of a future without full artistic expression was
unbearable to Carina. She had only recently succeeded in establishing
herself as a soloist at the Opera, winning praise from Fokine himself,
when she cast herself out into an uncertain future by giving in her notice.
This was in 1918. Fokine had fled from the Russian Revolution and had
opened a private school near Copenhagen. Carina persuaded a banker (who
was not particularly interested in danseuses) to give her the extraordinary
sum of 5,000 Swedish kronor, enabling her to take private lessons from
Fokine. The first ballet scholarship in Sweden, she called it. “It was
my capital for life – what I learned from the master Fokine – both his
new dramatic style of movement, and how to think as a choreographer."
Mauritz Stiller
and "Erotikon"
Nevertheless, she was without a job when she returned to Stockholm. She
gave lessons in ballroom dancing (a common, fairly well-paid occupation,
even among classical dancers). At a dinner with the parents of one of
her pupils, she met Mauritz Stiller, the film director who discovered
Greta Garbo. And that is what happened. Stiller was unaware of the chance he was taking,
and Carina understood exactly what was required. The choreography is straightforward,
she adhered to Fokine’s eastern style. Carina herself dances sensually
in the leading role, in the manner characteristic of the exaggerated style
of silent film. Carina’s ballet in Stiller’s film Erotikon
(1920) is perhaps the only part of the film that is still worth seeing
today Carina continued to be a roving dancer without a permanent job. Then
came the big leap forward! Out into the world!
At the time, he was working on a film in which the leading characters
in one scene were in a box at the Opera. They needed something to watch,
and it was causing problems. This was before the sound movie, and to show
silent singers with gaping mouths, accompanied only by the usual cinema
piano, might have had an unintentionally comic effect. Ballet was a much
better choice. Stiller consulted the lady on his right. Luckily, she was
free and could dance in his film. “But who will do the choreography?”
he asked. “I can do that too,” Carina assured him boldly. “I have a diploma
from Fokine to prove that I’m a talented choreographer”.