Jean Cocteau Centenary Festival : Centenary Festival to Offer Ballet With Unresolved Ties to Cocteau

Jean Cocteau is best known as a film maker and playwright, but he also left his mark in the ballet world by creating scenarios for Diaghilev-era ballets such as Fokine’s “Le Dieu Bleu,” Massine’s “Parade” and Nijinska’s “Le Train Bleu.”

Strangely, the one dance work that is being offered as part of this month’s Cocteau Centenary Festival at UC Irvine is Nijinska’s “Les Biches,” for which Cocteau’s contributions are harder to pin down.

At first, Oakland Ballet’s plan was to revive Nijinska’s “Le Train Bleu” (1924), in which Cocteau’s direct involvement was well documented. But a dispute over who owned the ballet derailed the project. The public explanation now is that the reconstruction could not be finished in time.

Thus, this weekend at UCI, the company will present “Les Biches,” which has been in its repertory for 8 years.

“It is one of the few ballets that dealt with people of that time,” Oakland’s artistic director Ronn Guidi said recently. “It took a hard look at Parisian society and role-playing. There is a lot of humor and satire. But it (also) hints at lots of things and is all mysterious.

“It’s as if you go to a party, recognize that something is going on, but you can’t put your finger on it. Then it’s over and you still don’t know what was going on.”

As to the ballet’s connection with Cocteau, it is known that “Les Biches” was based on a play, “Le Gendarme Incompris” (“The Misunderstood Policeman”), by Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet, which composer Francis Poulenc brought to the attention of choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, sister of famed dancer-choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.

“Bronislava and Cocteau had a tenuous relationship . . . ,” Guidi said. “Cocteau was the kind of man you wanted to love and choke at the same time. Picasso had that kind of relationship with him. . . . (So) we don’t know how much involvement (Cocteau) actually had in creating the ballet. Unless we can get to some of the letters, which are in private collections, we’ll never know.”

The ballet’s title means “the does” (female deer), but more colloquially simply “girls,” “young ladies” or “the little darlings.” Some companies have preferred to call the work “The House Party” or “The Gazelles.”

Although the work was created in 1924, Guidi said he believes that the ballet “could be turned right around and be done in contemporary society. Take any corporate or social party today,” he said. “You’d find the same rituals and consciousness of role-playing. ‘Les Biches’ would live in different dress and time.”

The ballet consists of a house party at a Parisian “smart set,” and shows various permutations of flirtations between the guests, the hostess and a sexually ambiguous figure in blue.

What was scandalous in 1924, for those few who could puzzle out the plot, was the relationship between two girls in gray.

“If you look carefully, they are lovers,” Guidi said. “This was the great scandal. But a lot of people missed that. The ballet ends when the two women look at each other and recognize their relationship, then it goes into the finale.”

Nijinska created the role of the hostess for herself.

“The hostess is in yellow, the color of faded love,” Guidi said. “She’s been kind of through it all. In the ‘Rag Mazurka,’ she reduces the men to poodles, puppy dogs, if you will. They are so busy being masculine, she parodies the way they stand and relate to women, though it is stylized tremendously.”

Guidi said the role is “very taxing, with a lot of very

intricate batterie work.

“But the average person is not going to notice, unless they look very carefully. . . . They’re going to be watching the cigarette holder and the feather in her hair.”

Reconstructions of ballets from the past can be problematic, but Guidi said that there is “no conjecture” about the authenticity of any of the choreography the audience will see in “Les Biches.”

“Nijinska had revived the work for the Royal Ballet in 1964, and it was totally notated in the Benesh system at that time,” Guidi said. “That’s where our production comes from. The Benesh notator came over and set (it) for us.”

(Nijinska also revived “Les Noces” for the Royal in 1966, and it too was notated and later acquired by Oakland Ballet.)

The choreographer’s daughter, Irina Nijinska, also helped the Oakland forces.

“Irina had danced in both ballets much earlier,” Guidi said, “and she came and talked about the style and being there at the reconstruction.”

The Oakland Ballet’s participation in the Cocteau Festival is more the result of fortuitous timing than of special planning, according to Guidi.

“We were going to come down to Irvine anyway,” he said. “The company dances at UC Irvine about every 3 years. The suggestion was made from the (co-sponsoring) Severin Wunderman Foundation, could we include something from Cocteau?”

Oakland Ballet will dance Nijinska’s “Les Biches” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Fine Arts Village Theatre at UC Irvine. The performances are part of the Cocteau Centenary Festival. Friday’s program will also include excerpts from Massine’s “La Boutique Fantasque,” Balanchine’s “Hand of Fate” pas de deux and Fokine’s “Polovtsian Dances.” Saturday’s program will also include “La Boutique Fantasque” and two works by company artistic director Ronn Guidi, “Trois Gymnopedies” and “Gallops and Kisses.” Tickets: $12. Information: (714) 856-5589.