In 1939, the year that Sonia Gaskell came to Amsterdam, there was no ballet tradition in the Netherlands. There were no good schools for dancers or subsidised ballet companies, and there were no professional prospects for dancers at all. With unbridled energy, Sonia Gaskell changed all this.
the nederlands ballet
She succeeded in training dancers who were capable of dancing both the classical and the modern repertoire. She also gave opportunities to young choreographers. She opened a ballet school, founded various ballet companies and was the driving force behind many new developments. In 1954, she became the artistic director of the first subsidised national ballet company, the Nederlands Ballet, which became the Dutch National Ballet in 1961.
By the mid-fifties, she had already introduced ballets from the period of the legendary Ballets Russes, with her company the Nederlands Ballet [the forerunner of the Dutch National Ballet, based in The Hague], including Petrouchka and The Firebird, by Michel Fokine [1880 - 1942] and Les Présages, by Léonide Massine [1895 - 1979].
dutch national ballet
With Dutch National Ballet, she continued this line of neoclassical works.
Early on, Gaskell recognised George Balanchine [1904 - 1983] as an important ballet innovator. In the sixties, there were already ten ballets by this Russian-American choreographer in the Dutch National Ballet’s repertoire. This was before his work became generally acknowledged in the rest of Europe in the mid-seventies.
With dancers like Olga de Haas and choreographers like Rudi van Dantzig, Sonia Gaskell succeeded in gaining international recognition for the company. When she left her position as artistic director of Dutch National Ballet in 1969, it was one of the leading companies in the world.
In 1965, the Dutch National Ballet was the first classical ballet company to put on The Green Table, by Kurt Jooss, one of the most prominent representatives of Expressionism in German modern dance. Gaskell also introduced the Netherlands to the modern dance style of Martha Graham. She invited Pearl Lang, one of Graham’s most influential students, to come and stage the work Shirah with the Dutch National Ballet. Right from the beginning, Gaskell was concerned with stimulating young choreographic talent. Under her leadership, Rudi van Dantzig made his first works, creating Romeo and Juliet in 1967; the first full-length Dutch ballet and a new milestone for the young company. In 1969, Van Dantzig [1933] succeeded Gaskell as artistic director.
'mevrouw'
Sonia Gaskell was an expressive woman with a strong character, and besides friends and followers, she also had many enemies and opponents. Nevertheless, both friend and foe agreed on the fact that Gaskell became the driving force behind the emancipation of dance in the Netherlands. Her inexhaustible energy and fighting spirit were greatly appreciated and often proved infectious.
Without her, the Dutch dance world would have been very different. She had a difficult life with many peregrinations, and she built everything up from scratch. This made her into a remarkable woman who made high demands on herself and on others, which regularly kindled blazing rows. In the fifties, she even became the centre of the ‘ballet war’. She denied herself a lot, and sometimes everything, for the sake of dance.
She had striking looks and was always impeccably dressed. Her dancers never addressed her by her first name, but always as ‘madame’ or ‘mevrouw’. Although she took decisions about large sums of money in her work, she was extremely frugal in her personal life.
biography
Born in Lithuania of Russian Jewish parents, Sonia Gaskell learned from an early age that you have to fight for your existence. She had a happy childhood with her four sisters in a prosperous, intellectual environment, but in the outside world anti-Semitism was to be felt everywhere. The Russian Revolution in 1917 did not bring about the hoped-for change. On the contrary, intellectuals – and especially those who were Jewish – were the target of discrimination and violence. After the October Revolution, Sonia became a fervent Socialist and Zionist. With a group of kindred spirits, she undertook a risky attempt at escaping to Palestine, where she worked in a kibbutz for two years and met her first husband, Abraham Solomon Goldenson. Her life in the kibbutz was hard and physically demanding, as she worked mainly on draining marshland infested with malaria.
When her husband decided to continue his mathematics studies in Paris, Sonia leapt at the chance to go with him. There, she became fascinated by dance. In order to earn money, she performed in nightclubs and cabarets. She also took ballet lessons with great teachers such as Lubov Egorova, a former dancer with the Mariinksy Ballet, and Léo Staats, ballet master with the Paris Opera. She was accepted into the circle of artists and choreographers associated with the Ballets Russes. She worked extremely hard, divorced her husband, maybe demanded too much of herself, became ill and realised during the year she spent in a sanatorium that her strength lay in teaching dancers rather than in dancing herself.
amsterdam
Following her recovery, she started up a ballet studio on the Champs-Elysées. She gradually made a name for herself and found great satisfaction in her work. When she fell in love with the Dutchman Philipp Heinrich Bauchhenss, she eventually decided rather hesitantly to exchange Paris for Amsterdam. There, she started up her own dance studio, survived World War II and gained increasing notoriety.
Gaskell gave lessons at Zomerdijkstraat 26. In the Netherlands, she taught in the traditional French-Russian style in which she was trained herself, all under her own motto: ‘Developing creativity in a person – that is the highest goal we can set ourselves’. Her working method was hard and her style of leadership authoritarian. She demanded of her dancers the same total submission to dance she displayed herself. She set great store by a fighting spirit, and her expressiveness and strong character provoked conflicting reactions.
Sonia Gaskell was essential to the significance of the art of dance in the Netherlands. It started with the opening of her own ballet school at Zomerdijkstraat in Amsterdam and was followed by the foundation of various ballet companies. She was the driving force behind many new developments, which sometimes came about as a reaction to her own ideas and behaviour. In 1954, she became the artistic director of the first subsidised national ballet company, the Nederlands Ballet, which became the Dutch National Ballet in 1961.
With dancers like Olga de Haas and choreographers like Rudi van Dantzig, Sonia Gaskell succeeded in gaining international recognition for the company. When she left her position as artistic director of Dutch National Ballet in 1969, it was one of the leading companies in the world.
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