CONTENTS THE RUSSIAN BALLET Introductory Dancing In General Religious Dancing The Russian Revival Male Dancers Sur les Pointes How Far a Native Ballet? Personality—and Nijinsky Nijinsky's Distinction Nijinsky Always a Dancer The Dance Poems Les Sylphides Le Carnaval The Corps de Ballet Le Spectre de la Rose A Paradox Tamar Prince Igor Pavillon d' Armide Narcisse...

T HE Russian ballet, at least that section of it which M. de Diaghiliev, patron and grand seigneur rather than agent, has taken all over Europe during the last few years, and more recently to America, is now more than a darling of its own nation, a naturally ballet-loving nation. It has become an international possession. In England the Russian dancers have perhaps been acclaimed with more whole-hearted fervor than elsewhere, because before their coming the land was barren. In France and Italy t

W HAT is dancing? The Russians have done much to show us that it is something more than sauterie , although they can sauter , or leap, with the best. As an actress I salute dancers with the reverence of a man for his ancestors. The dancer is certainly the parent of my own art, but he has other children. All arts, of which the special attribute is movement, descend from the dancer. The Greek word "chorus" means dance, and the Greek choruses were originally dances. It can be proved that dancing mo

I T seems strange that the Dance should have almost everywhere degenerated into something base and trivial, while its children, Music and Poetry, in spite of lapses, should have preserved their dignity and beauty. It seems even more strange when we remember that dancing had a religious origin. Among the Jews, as among other peoples, dancing was constantly associated with the ceremonies of faith. In Christian churches the choir was originally designed as a place in which the chanting of hymns and

A LL who regard dancing seriously, and there is nothing which should be regarded more seriously than an art that is to give pleasure, must be glad that they have lived in a century which has witnessed a very fine and sincere endeavor to restore the dance to some of its primal nobility. There is much in the results of this endeavor to criticize, there are a few things to deplore, but in any refusal to recognize the magnitude of what has been accomplished, there is probably some pique that it has

H AD the male dancers ever been excluded from the Imperial ballet its fate would have been very different. The men are trained on the "ballon" system, not on that which is known as the "parterre," and it is "ballon" dancing which is one of the most beautiful features of the Russian ballet. After we have watched interminable exercises ingeniously performed "sur les pointes," with what relief have we seen Nijinsky, perhaps the greatest "ballon" dancer who has ever existed, bound on to the stage, r

I FRANKLY confess that I have a dislike to ordinary dancing on the toes. It may be because in my youth it had degenerated into something so stilted, distorted and unrhythmical that it conflicted with all my ideas of beauty. And when the Russians give some of their older ballets, such as "Giselle," which bears the mark of Italian influence—it was, I think, arranged by an Italian maître de ballet —I feel that all the improvements that the Russians have made in this so-called "classical" dancing ca

T SCHAIKOWSKY was patriotic; he wrote music for the Imperial Theatre ballets, and was the first man of any position in Russia to protest against the importation of Italian dancers and Italian methods. Undoubtedly he gave good counsel in advising a return to the French style of classical dancing, the style which was at its best under Louis XIV. But if the Russians had been content to stop at an imitation of ballet as it was under the "Grand Monarque" they would still be giving us only a dead perf

T HE Russians pride themselves on not having a "star system." Every dancer has a chance of distinction. A good idea, but personality will out, and genius cannot be effaced. "I am only the centre-piece of a great mosaic," said Nijinsky once, but in his case it is a very big "only." Certainly the perfection of the ensemble , the well-ordered movements and groups of Fokine, assist this wonderful young god of the dance. When Anna Pavlova, whom I still regard as the best of the women Russian dancers,

W E must not belittle him by merely admiring him for his miraculously agile leaps and jumps. As I said at the start, dancing is not only sauterie . There was probably no sauterie at all in the dancing of the ancients. I am told that Nijinsky was much affected by the dancing of Isadora Duncan when, some years ago, she appeared in St. Petersburg, and I can well believe it, for there was manifested in her at her best what was probably the supreme object of religious dancing—-and all ancient dancing

S O free and yet so disciplined!" said someone of Nijinsky's dancing. It was a very good * criticism. But I like even better these words from a French appreciation by M. Charles Mèryel: "We should not begin by praising him for his prodigious physical ability for leaving the ground. Let us think first of his power of evoking, through the means of a human body in movement, a sort of beautiful dream, of his power of subjugating his material appearance so that he becomes a visitation divine and almo

I T has been said that the Russian ballet makes a vivid and brutal appeal to the senses, and certainly there is some truth in this as regards the ballets of which the artist Bakst is the guiding spirit. The old saying that you cannot see the wood for the trees may be borrowed to express a criticism. You cannot see color for the colors in some Bakst ballets. Yet even Bakst sometimes helps to aid that impression of a visitation divine which Nijinsky in his own person produces. You will see that Mi

S OME of the Russian ballets take a material story and treat it in terms of the dance. But what story is there in "Les Sylphides"? Even the programme, seldom at a loss for a synopsis, has never tried to tell us what it is all about. We hear preludes and waltzes, nocturnes and mazurkas by Chopin, and hear them orchestrated audaciously, but for the most part successfully, by distinguished Russian composers. We remember that when we heard these lovely Chopin pieces on the piano, interpreted by a Pa

L E CARNAVAL," the second of the dance poems which have inspired Miss Pamela Colman Smith, is equally romantic, but not in the pensive, twilight manner of "Les Sylphides," with its vague suggestion of mysterious grief. Everything in "Carnaval" is joyous and insouciant —except perhaps poor Bolm as Pierrot, the unhappy dupe of Nijinsky-Arlecchino's teasing pranks. Bakst's scene, with its plain blue curtains and two absurd uncomfortable Victorian sofas, prepares us for the Russian interpretation of

I NOTICED in "Carnaval" the individual work done by each individual of the corps de ballet , yet always done in such a way as to contribute to the harmonious effect of the whole. The Pierrot (Bolm), the Harlequin (Nijinsky), the Columbine (Karsavina), played the leading parts incomparably, but that was not surprising. It was far more surprising to see in every member of the ballet the talent of a "star." They were not there just to wear their 1860 costumes well and to form themselves into mechan

W HAT would a dramatist make of Gauthier's little idyl of the vision of the Rose? What would an actor and actress make of it if it could be dramatized? I am afraid to answer these questions. Fortunately they need not be answered, as no dramatist now will be fool enough to rush in where dancers have trodden on such light feet. ("The beautiful is light. All divine things run on light feet.") A young girl returns from a ball. She sinks into a chair and, kissing the rose in her hand, which reminds h

I T is one of those paradoxes, of which the Russian ballet is rich in examples, that the music of this fragile little poem should be Weber's "Invitation à la Valse," robustly orchestrated by Berlioz. I can imagine how sickly and pale specially written music might have been! The healthy, strong melody, the sound, marked rhythm help to create that sense of the impossible which is the abiding impression of the phantom of the rose. How this music pulsates! Its deep expectant breathing increases one'

T AMAR" is another pleasant little ballet of barbarity, in which Karsavina, as one of those avid, fatal heroines, in the interpretation of whose serpentine passions she is always fine, lures lovers to her high tower, and, in the manner of the Chinese Empress, makes death the penalty of an hour of her love. The execution is summary, the unfortunate lover being hurled out of the window by muscular members of Tamar's suite. In "Tamar" Adolph Bolm, who was I think the first Russian male dancer to ap

A T the head of the Polovtsien warriors in the dances from Borodin's opera "Prince Igor," Bolm has to dance as well as to mime, and very splendidly and fiercely he dances with his bow. This "Prince Igor" ballet lasts only a few minutes, but in those minutes are crowded enough energy, excitement, lightning swift successions of different movements, true healthy barbarity (not the barbarity of decadence), and splendid music to take away all words, all thoughts, but "wonderful"! But those "Prince Ig

I N this ballet, in the style of the French ballets of the reign of Louis XIV., there is less distinction, I think, than in the others from which Miss Pamela Colman Smith has derived her pictures. The costumes and scenery are "designed by Benois," but any one with a knowledge of the theatre and a Racinet at hand could have done the same sort of thing. And yet as I write this I know I should make the reservation of that "life" which the Russians know how to breathe into everything. What I mean is

T HE last drawing in this book is of Nijinsky as Narcisse, and if Narcisse had been a pas seul by Nijinsky I am sure that there would have been more to praise in it. For once, the mosaic was all wrong, and so the centre piece could not be all right. I have read enthusiastic accounts of "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune," which Nijinsky himself arranged, making Debussy's music the vehicle for a display of Greek poses, and from Nijinsky's personal performance in "Narcisse" I believe it to be possible that