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Title: The Russian Ballet

Author: Ellen Terry

Illustrator: Pamela Colman Smith

Release Date: April 1, 2014 [EBook #45299]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUSSIAN BALLET

***

Produced by David Widger from page images generously

provided by the Internet Archive

THE RUSSIAN BALLET

By Ellen Terry

Withdrawings By Pamela Colman Smith

1913

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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

THE RUSSIAN BALLET

Introductory

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
they had ballets of their own. They have a standard by which
they can measure the visitors from St. Petersburg. But
English audiences, like children presented with a new toy,
first shyly wondered at the novelty of the agile strangers,
and then fell into transports of enthusiasm.

Uncritical enthusiasm toward art and artists is an amiable

attitude of the English once they have been gained over.
And this enthusiasm has a way of persisting. "The English public
may be slow," said a musician who had taken a long
time to win their suffrages, "but they are damnably faithful!"
If the fashion in Russian ballet should age elsewhere
I feel sure it will not in England, the last country
to adopt it. So these notes by an enthusiast have a good
chance of being seasonable for many years. Yes, I claim
to be an enthusiast, although, perhaps, the fact that
I am not an English enthusiast but one who is half Irish
and half Scotch makes me more canny than some of
my fellow-admirers. I have never opened my mouth and
swallowed the new ballet and all its works without thinking.
These are, all the same, impressions rather than
criticisms. And the impressions are not intended as an explanation
of Miss Pamela Colman Smith's pictures any more than her
pictures are intended to be an explanation of my
impressions. Her pictures surely speak for themselves. And like
the clerk, I need only cry "Amen" to her eloquent
drawings.

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Dancing In General

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 movements formed the first metres of true
poetry.
Why do we speak of "feet" if not because the feet of
the body used to mark the rhythm of inspired utterance?

Religious Dancing

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.

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In Christian churches the choir was originally designed as a

place in which the chanting of hymns and canticles might
be conveniently accompanied by rhythmic movements. On
feast days the honor of leading the dance was reserved for
the bishop. This is why he was known in those days by
the name, of praesul, the is, he who dances first.
A bishop as premier danseur! We can hardly
believe it now, yet why should we not, seeing that the
movements of priest and server at mass have the
nature of a solemn dance? And there are places
in France and Spain where liturgical dances still exist. The
most notable is the dance executed before the altar at
Seville in Holy Week. I am afraid that the one that
used to take place in the choir of Saint Leonard's
at Limoges, where, at the end of each psalm, the
people sang instead of the Gloria Patri, "San Marceau,
pray for us and we will dance for you," is now extinct.

The Russian Revival

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 been the nation
which Europe still views as barbarously ingenuous in
matters of art which has reformed the ballet on such
refined and spiritual lines.

I dislike the word "reformed," however. Reformations are

 generally tiresome.

Transformations are far better! Saint Francis transformed, Luther

reformed; and the Russians are with Saint Francis
rather than with Luther! To appreciate the change which has come
over the Russian Ballet we ought to know a little
about its constitution. It is and has always been
subsidized by the state. The Russian government supports
schools of ballet, where from the age of eight children
are given a long and arduous training in the science
of dancing, and from which they are drafted into the
imperial ballets at St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw.
A dancer's first appearance is generally made at the age of
sixteen, and at thirty-six his or her career is over.
The dancers are then retired on a pension amounting
to about one hundred and fifty pounds a year. It is
not my intention to give details of this training. They are
written in many books by experts. But I should like
to say at this point that one of the leading
characteristics of the Russian system is the attention
given to male dancing.

Male Dancers

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, rise high in the air, descend slowly
and with such art that when he touches the ground he
can use it again for a still higher flight.

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The presence of men in the ballet has an effect beyond

the pleasure afforded by the virile agility of their steps.

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It does away with the necessity for those feminine travesties of

men, known in our pantomimes as "principal boys," who
introduce an element into ballet which at its best makes
a disturbing demand on our capacity for illusion, and
at its worst is a little degrading. What has made the Male
Dancers word "ballet" a sort of synonym for vice if
it is not the idea that it provides an opportunity for
women to attract admirers—not so much on account of their
 dancing as for the sake of their physical charm?
I think that a mixed ballet has the effect of
concentrating attention on the art of the dance rather than
on the seductiveness of the dancers. And the free and
noble plastic of the male dancers in the Russian ballet has
influenced the plastic of the women, making it far
less sexual and far more beautiful.

Sur les Pointes

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 cannot
uproot my prejudice, although they can, and do, modify
it. The Russian ballerinas accomplish the feat of being
fluent on their toes. They do not hammer out steps—it is
a false notion of rhythm that there is a hammer-stroke
on every strong beat—but take a collection of steps,
as a singer takes a collection of notes, and calmly
and gracefully phrase them, in the manner of a bird
beating the air with its wings, rather than that of a
blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Still I doubt
whether the Russians would have conquered Europe had they
come to us merely as revivers of classical dancing before
it became mechanical and ugly. They owe this revival to
a great extent to Tschaikowsky.

How Far a Native Ballet?

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
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

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.

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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

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 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.

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Nijinsky Always a Dancer

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 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.

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The Dance Poems

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 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

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 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 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

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 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."

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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 never appeared to be waiting for an
opportunity for distinction; they were content to distinguish
themselves.

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Le Spectre de la Rose

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 her of the evening's innocent pleasure, she falls
asleep. She dreams that the rose comes to life and invites
her to dance with it. She dances in her dream. (Does
she see the rose, I wonder, or is it invisible to
her while visible to us?) She knows a joy in which there is
no fatigue, a love in which there is no threat to her
virginity. The phantom rose disappears. She wakes. The real
rose is at her feet where the dream rose had lain for
a moment. She picks it up and kisses it again, poor
little faded and finite sign of a fresh infinite thing
which has shown itself for a moment and passed out
of earth's tiny room.

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A Paradox

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.

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How this music pulsates! Its deep expectant breathing increases

one's sensation that we are all dreaming—dancers and audience too.
Tamar Karsavina, who in other roles shows a
nervous force, a tragic power, a strange and
luring grace which account even better than her dancing
for her triumphant prominence, is so gentle, so modest, so
suppliant in the "Spectre de la Rose,"

that she becomes the incarnation of snow-white youth, dreaming

of a heavenly lover. And Nijinsky becomes the spirit of
that dream. I feel sorry for that young girl, who perhaps
will wake next day in that queer Bakst bedroom, and think of the
partner who gave her the rose, not of the Rose
itself, who came to her as virginal as the thought which
summoned him. I don't like the idea of the remembrance
of an ordinary flirtation at a ball walking in at the
door of that room, out of whose window the mystical figure
of the Rose flew forth into the night, which was, I am sure,
day to him!

T HE Russian dancers may reasonably pride themselves on their

versatility. In their seven-leagued ballet shoes they travel
all over the world, and beyond. They bound easily from
ancient Greece to a Caucasian camp, from the East of
a thousand-and-one nights to a legendary country invented
for their playground. It really requires astonishing mental
activity to follow them with pleasure from "Le Spectre de
la Rose" to "Scheherazade." A symphonic poem of Richard
Strauss after a plain-song hymn, or Wagner after Mozart, could
not be a greater shock to

the system. Everything in "Scheherazade" suggests violence and

horror.

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Bakst's palace was built for dreadful deeds; no one, I

am sure, could ever feel safe in it. Its color makes
it vibrate on its foundations, if indeed it has any
foundations. There are bad dreams as well as good ones, and
the dream quality, on which I have insisted, so far, as
the special beauty of these Russian ballets and mimed
 poems, is present in "Scheherazade." The strange thing
is that this nightmare, in which sensuality and cruelty are
the only emotions evoked, has a paradoxical vein of
delicacy running through it. There is something almost
childlike in the wiles by which the Sultan's wives,
when their lord's back is turned, induce the Master
Eunuch to liberate the slaves for their pleasure. The
infantile joyousness with which the dark-skinned youths rush
from their silver and gold cages on their loves and
on their impending doom has an element of pity. The
whirligig dance which follows expresses exactly the happiness,
which is short, sharp and sudden, but over which destiny
hangs, and for which there is no mercy. And all the time
in this riot of color, this orgy of animation, we never
lose sight of the negro who is the chosen of the Sultan's
favorite, the negro who half an hour ago in another world
was the phantom Rose! His arms, which but now were waving
invisible garlands in the serene air, are ready to coil
round their prey in a serpentine embrace.

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The lips which gave the innocent kiss of naïve youth

are now twisted in the spasms of desire. Nijinsky in
"Scheherazade" is not the incarnation of evil, but its
spirit.... His ghastly pallor is terrible.

Really he seems to turn white under his black skin.

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Tamar

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 appear in England, makes a
magnificent entrance. Miss Pamela Colman Smith's drawing gives
a very vivid impression of the effect produced by the
first appearance on the scene of the Lover and his
companions. Here is a very good example of the amazing
 influence that the color and shape of mere garments can
have on the imagination. Those silent, black-coated, black-
hatted men, their faces muffled in concealing scarfs, seem to
have come from far, from very far. I feel that their horses
below are in a sweat, that they have been riding
furiously at the summons of a force which their fresh and
ardent youth could not resist!

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Poor frenzied man! What is his secret? Why has he come here
to see love through a veil of blood—blood which is his own?

Prince Igor

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 Igor" dances ought never to
have been given without their accompanying songs. It has
been the custom lately to leave out the singing, one
of those omissions that matter.

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NOTE: An omission of mine that matters is that I have

recalled "Prince Igor" without mentioning the name of Sophia

Féodorova, who holds her own in astounding feats of agility,

as in fiery spirit with the adolescents in whose evolutions

she participates. The girl is a wonder at this man's work!

Pavillon d' Armide

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 that Benois gives us no new creation. Karsavina's
bird-like grace in her eighteenth-century guise is
captivating (oh, that this talented little dancer had more music
in her, and did not dance always a fraction off the
beat!), and Nijinsky as a wholly unnecessary slave in
white satin gives a wonderful exhibition of dancing in the style
of the original Ballon who danced at the opera in
Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, and gave his
name to the kind of classical dancing which consists in
elevation.

0068m

Original

NOTE: Bolm as the lover looks very like one of Louis XIV.'s

sons, and mimes perfectly. I like the "pas de trois" (the

music of this ballet by Tscherepnin is fascinating), but I

liked it better when it was originally given at the Coliseum

as an extract, and danced by Kosloff, Karsavina and

Baldina.

Our spirited, bounding Nijinska has not got the eighteenth-

century style. Oh, I must not forget those dear Bouffons!

Their little dance alone makes "Pavilion d'Armide" worth

while.

Narcisse

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
he has succeeded in doing, in "L'Après-midi de un
Faune,"

what Bakst failed to do in "Narcisse. ' ' When,

at the end of the ballet, that colossal stage narcissus was
jerked up from the stage pool, and the limelight was turned
on it, I regretfully saw in that light a limitation in
the Russian art. They could not interpret the tranquil
repose, the immanent beauty of Greek ideas.

0070m

Original

The whole treatment of the exquisite story of the youth who fell
in love with his own beauty, and was drowned seeking
to come near its reflection, was heavy-handed, even a
little barbarous and ugly. And all the grave movements
imprisoned in stone and marble by the sculptors of ancient
Greece, all the joyous silhouettes on Greek vases,
seemed to remain remote, and secure from the conquest
of the devouring Russian, restlessly seeking material for
his ballets in all nations and all times. I had
a sudden seizure of distrust; it was as though
the disdain of the Greek had sapped the foundations of my
belief in the justness of the praises lavished on
the new dance; but then memories of gestures, colors, bounding
movements, freedom of expression given by perfection of
technique, came crowding pell-mell into my mind. The frown
on a cold marble forehead could not extinguish my joy in
the flame of life which burns so ardently in the work of
the Russian ballet.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Russian Ballet,

by Ellen Terry

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Document Outline

THE RUSSIAN BALLET

Withdrawings By Pamela Colman Smith

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