Sol Hurok: America's dance impresario

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1994 by Harlow Robinson

Even now, as the vivid, longtime reality of the Soviet-American confrontation fades with each passing day, Hurok's contribution not only to dance but to better understanding between two systems capable of blowing each other to nuclear bits remains unassailable and remarkable. By bringing Soviet artists to the West and American artists to the USSR from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, Hurok added an important measure of continuity and humanity to the fragile superpower relationship. Even at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the moment at which the world came closest to nuclear war, the Bolshoi Ballet was dancing across the United States under the "S. Hurok Presents" banner.

To those opposed to rapprochement with Moscow, however, such as the militant Jewish Defense League, Hurok's presentation of Soviet performers in the United States was a moral outrage. Beginning with picket lines and stinkbombs, the JDL's anti-Hurok campaign climaxed in the terrorist bombing of his offices in early 1972. Hurok was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, and one of his secretaries was killed.

Those who knew Hurok well agree that the incident undermined his seemingly indestructible constitution. He died two years later of a massive heart attack on the way to a meeting with David Rockefeller. They were planning to discuss possible financing for a new attraction he was developing with Rudolf Nureyev--"Nureyev and Friends."

On Friday, March 9, 1974, three days after Hurok's death, more than 2,600 people nearly filled Carnegie Hall for his funeral, the last glamorous performance of the impresario's life. Limousines pulled up to the stage door, unloading opera stars, ballerinas, musicians, conductors, and stage and film personalities eager to pay tribute to the man who had launched and shaped many of their careers.

In the twenty years that have passed since Hurok's death, no one has come forward to replace him. He was "The Last Impresario," the last large-scale individual practitioner of risk capitalism in the arts. The work he did has been largely taken over by nonprofit organizations operating out of huge performing arts complexes. Unlike them, Hurok never had a board of directors. Only occasionally (mostly in the days of the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe) did he seek backers for specific attractions. In the end, he took the financial risk himself and made his own decisions about whom to present and how to promote them.

Hurok was not an aesthete in the class of Serge Diaghilev or George Balanchine. Alexandra Danilova, who knew both Balanchine and Hurok well, told me that "Hurok always thought about selling tickets. Balanchine never did; he thought only about art. They had as little in common as champagne Veuve Cliquot and Coca-Cola."

In the great American democratic tradition which he so adored and celebrated, Hurok was a populist in the arts. He loved his audience and loved giving them what they wanted. One of his most beloved maxims was, "If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them."