Europe in Its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other

16. Dancing Up a Storm: Canadian Performance at the Nazi Olympic Games (1936) and the Notion of Cultural Translation

279 Chapter 16 Dancing Up a Storm: Canadian Performance at the Nazi Olympic Games (1936) and the Notion of Cultural Translation Alla Myzelev He (Boris Volkoff) is teaching us, stiff, starched, and inhibited as we are, that a gracious employment of the limbs is not necessarily synonymous with indecorous conduct. (“Ballets Scene” 1934) When Russian dancer Boris Volkoff (1900–1974) came to Toronto in 1929 to participate in the Uptown Theatre’s dance program, little did he know that the next time he saw Europe he would be representing Canada in the 1936 Nazi Olympic Games. That year, Germany decided to add a cultural component to the conventional Olympic repertoire of summer sports in the form of a dance competition. The Canadian Olympic Committee, chaired by Toronto businessman P.J. Mulqueen,1 decided to designate Volkoff and his ballet school in Toronto as the Canadian entrant.2 For the Olympic performance , Volkoff chose five dances, two of which were based on Canadian Native legends, and the other three derived from the European ballet tradition . All five dances included various cultural influences and styles, including Aboriginal dance and music, Russian choreography and interest in folk dances, and classical ballet choreography and music, which were blended together and offered to audiences in Germany and then in Canada. Olympic participation was also a key point in Volkoff’s Canadian career, and made him a national dance icon almost overnight. Volkoff brought to his performance and teaching in Canada the rich experience he had garnered while studying in Russia and touring Asia and North America. His main ideas, however, came from the Russian tradition of classical and folk-based ballet, which he implemented in Canada. Thus, he adapted his knowledge and love of both classical and folk dances to offer Chapter 16 280 performances that were both entertaining and enjoyable for Toronto audiences . He used his skills of adaptation of indigenous tales and stories from Russia and Europe to create two ballets that were based on Aboriginal Canadian legends. These productions, which have hardly been discussed by scholars, present an ideal case study of the creation of culturally hybrid performances .3 This article investigates two separate yet interdependent axes of translation. One is the adaptation of the Native dances for European audiences , and the second is Volkoff’s translation of the Russian tradition of folk dancing for the Canadian and then the European stage. Using the notion of translation as discussed by Gayatri Spivak (2000, 400) this research shows that participation in cultural adaptation is not unidirectional and linear but that the process is full of nuances, misunderstandings, and reversals. There are situations when the message is corrupted or lost while nuances that were not emphasized acquire unexpected significance. In the words of Lawrence Venuti, “a translation is never quite ‘faithful,’ always somewhat ‘free,’ it never establishes an identity, always a lack and a supplement, and it can never be a transparent representation, only an interpretive information that exposes multiple and divided meanings” (1992, 8). This case study demonstrates the impossibility of “straight representation” by analyzing the circumstances surrounding the Canadian performance in Germany. Volkoff: Translating Russian Tradition A recent immigrant from Russia, Volkoff had studied classical ballet in Moscow, and danced with the Youth Division of the Bolshoi Theatre. In 1924, he left Soviet Russia to perform first in Shanghai and then became master and first soloist of the Stavrinaky Ballet Russe Company, a small troupe consisting mainly of Russian and Eastern European dancers that had no relation to Diaghilev’s internationally renowned Ballets Russes. Volkoff travelled and performed extensively in Asia and the Far East as a solo artist and as part of various groups. By 1928, he had become one of the soloists in the Adolph Bolm Ballet Company in New York. When his American visa expired, he was forced to return to Europe, and from there he was smuggled to Canada by Bolm’s Canadian acquaintances. In Canada, Volkoff first danced and choreographed one-act ballets for the Uptown Theatre Company under the direction of Jack Arthur, which were “done with a little story which was quite clever and new to Toronto … quite different to anything that had been put on in Toronto before and definitely advanced.”4 Recognizing Volkoff’s abilities and teaching talent, Arthur appointed him director of the Jack Arthur School of Ballet and Dancing Up a Storm Alla Myzelev 281 Interpretive Dance, which opened...