class="c3" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Original

The Dance Poems

IT 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 Miss Pamela Colman Smith has given what some may think a disproportionate amount of space to her studies of "Les Sylphides," "Le Carnaval," and "Le Spectre de la Rose." I think she was, perhaps unconsciously, more strongly attracted by these three dance poems (for dance poems they should be called rather than ballets) because of their greater wealth in the immaterial.

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Les Sylphides

SOME 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 Paderewski or a Pachmann, we had our mental dreams; we saw things, but not with our eyes. When the curtain rose on "Les Sylphides" we were asked to make our imagination abdicate its rights, to put away the films of that little individual cinematograph which we had made with closed eyes. The demand may have seemed impertinent to those who love the interior visions given by musical sounds better than the most beautiful spectacle that the theatre has ever presented. But "Les Sylphides" had not progressed far before we ceased to Les Sylphides be worried by the antagonism between dreams and stage pictures. The grace of those immaterial white figures, Victorian just so far as Chopin is Victorian, became one with the grace of the music.

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Perhaps the rhythm of the music has never been better perceived than through these well-ordered movements designed by Fokine. The appearance of Nijinsky as a kind of dream Alfred de Musset in a romantic fair wig, and dressed in black and white, among the impalpable Sylphides was both inexplicable and inevitable. When he danced he seemed almost to play Chopin with his feet, so perfect was his time. His steps seemed to be the symmetry of the music—in fact its rhythm, for the rhythm of music is symmetry in motion. And when he merely walked about with outstretched arm, he recalled Ruskin's allusion to man "in erect and thoughtful motion," to "the great human noblesse of walking on feet."

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But it is time we cried "place aux dames!" Miss Pamela Colman Smith has well transfixed the bounding motion of Nijinska (sister to the "centre piece of the mosaic") in the Mazurka; and the names of Karsavina, Schollar, Will and Kovalewska excite happy memories of this romance of style.

Le Carnaval

LE 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 Schumann's music, before the peg-top trousered and crinolined corps de ballet have made their appearance.

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Until I saw "Le Carnaval," although I had realized that the art of the Russians was not narrow or local, and that they could dance in several languages, I fear I had not credited them with humor. The true comic spirit (which makes us smile, not laugh in the manner so offensive to Mr. Bernard Shaw) rules this delicious episode, which is a setting of Schumann's music in the way that music can be a setting of words, completing their message and intensifying their significance.

For the first time I will use the word "acting" in connection with the Russian ballet. The comedy in "Le Carnaval" is of a very high order. The story is interpreted more through genuine pantomime than through dancing, which perhaps accounts for the popularity of this particular ballet with us English, who still understand the nature of good acting better than the nature of good dancing, although we are at the present time much attracted by dancing. A real note of freakish farce is in this "Carnaval." The dancing itself is freakish. It is the simplest, silliest thing! A bit of fun—yet to give us this bit of fun what serious work was needed! The grave young Nijinsky is transformed into a mischievous child!

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The Corps de Ballet

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."

Original Size

They were not there just to wear their 1860 costumes well and to form themselves into mechanical groups. The entire corps vibrated with life, did their full share in the dancing and miming. They