to Tschaikowsky.

How Far a Native Ballet?

TSCHAIKOWSKY 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 perfection of steps. There is a deadness about all Renaissance things, whether in architecture or dancing. What always surprises us about the Russian ballet is its life. This vitality came sweeping on to the stage with Russian maîtres de ballet such as Fokine, who used tradition, used the technical perfection of classical dancing, but would not be a slave to them; with Russian composers such as Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Glazounof, Liadoff, Arensky, Stravinsky and Tscherepnin, the conductor of the ballet; with Russian artists such as Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst; with Russian dancers such as Nijinsky. Is this ballet, then, distinguished from all other ballets by being a native ballet? When we see "Tamar" or "Scheherazade" or the dances from "Prince Igor" we may answer, "Yes." But what about "Les Sylphides," "Spectre de la Rose' ' or "Le Carnaval"? Are they typically Russian? I think they rather transport us into a country which has no nationality and no barriers, the kingdom of dreams. The Russian ballet has transformed itself in a little over a decade because its guiding minds have been more than national. The musicians, artists, dancers and ballet masters have depended more on invention than on reality. Many stories of widely different character have been drawn on for the new ballets, but all have been treated with an imagination which is neither the property of a nation nor the result of patriotism.

Personality—and Nijinsky

THE 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.

Original Size

When Anna Pavlova, whom I still regard as the best of the women Russian dancers, was torn from her original setting, many admirers of her exquisite art, in which all the essentials of the dance, noble gesture, beautiful line, lightness, elevation, that order of movement which we call rhythm, and perfect time, are to be found, congratulated themselves, "Now we shall get more of her." We got more—and less.

Nijinsky, in the years when Pavlova was still in the ballet, was allowed to have talent. Lately we have all begun to use the word "genius." Where does the difference between the things talent and genius lie if not in the huge personality of the genius?

They used to say of Henry Irving, who expressed himself in a multiplicity of parts, that he was always the same Irving. Certainly he was always faithful to himself whatever he assumed. This is a sign of the presence of genius, not of its absence. In one sense we always have the same Nijinsky, as Miss Pamela Colman Smith has very happily shown in her drawings of him. Yet in another sense we never have the same Nijinsky.

Nijinsky's Distinction

WE 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 was religious—the training of the body to the point of making it docile to the rhythm of the soul. There are many young men in the Russian ballet who dance excellently with their bodies, even if they cannot leap as high as Nijinsky, but what really separates him from them is the fact that he dances not only with his body, but with his soul. Unfortunately this expression is often used lightly to mean merely "with enthusiasm." But it can be used in a graver sense, and it is in that sense that I use it.

Original

Nijinsky Always a Dancer

SO 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 divijie and almost immaterial." I remember in this connection something that was said to me by Christopher St. John after "Les Sylphides": "This gives us a conception of what our glorified bodies after the Resurrection will be like, the same bodies, but spiritualized and agile!" I thought, "This is too much!" and laughed at an excess of enthusiasm! But the French writer and the English one were both expressing the same idea.

Whatever his role, the young Russian dancer projects an interior emotion which has in it all the force of spontaneity, but is at the same time conscious and considered. As an actress, that has always been my ideal of expression. But actors express emotions; it is generally their duty to realise, in fact, to recall a man. Nijinsky never recalls human experience, never suggests the passions of mankind. He is always the dancer. Now the miming of ordinary ballet-dancers has often in the past seemed to be more than a little ridiculous. Love and joy and pleasure, pain and hate and death—how could they be simulated by pirouettings, posings and posturings? Did I reject them as absurdly unconvincing because I did not understand the language of choreography? I think I was alienated because I had never heard the language spoken well. I am sure now that it can be infinitely expressive, but the better it is spoken by the dancer's body the less it will resemble the expression of mortals. I could never call Nijinsky a good actor. I can, and do, call him a great dancer.