Sixty-four dancers of the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe are on the high seas at this moment, heading for these shores. Recently they completed a successful twenty-week run in London. They are scheduled to make their American debut at the St. James Theatre on December 22. The person responsible for the appearance of the Monte Carlo Ballet is Sol Hurok who, according to the N. Y. Times, “has done more for the cause of music than the invention of the phonograph.”
This now bald-headed Russian-Jewish impresario came to this country twenty-seven years ago. He became affiliated with the Labor Lyceum in Brooklyn. Later he contrived the idea of Sunday night concerts at the Hippodrome and in Ocean Grove. His success encouraged him to go out after bigger game. Among the artists who appeared under his management are:
Anna Pavlowa, Chaliapin, Richard Strauss, Isadora Duncan, Schumann-Heink, Zimbalist, Alma Gluck, Loie Fuller, Isa Kremer, and the Habima Theatre. In recent years, he imported dancers and dance-productions at precisely the moment of changes in trend. He presented Mary Wigman to this country at the height of post-war delusion, Vicente Escudero, the Spanish gypsy dancer, at the moment insolence and bravura on the stage were considered chic. Last year, he brought Uday Shan-Kar, the Hindu dancer, sensing a need for escape into Oriental repose.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.