Mordkin has shown that grace is not only consistent with true virility in dancing, but is indispensable to it. In their folk-dances the top-booted Russian dancers give a fine display of masculine vigour, but it is always upon the edge of the grotesque. The beauty of a man’s strength is hidden rather than revealed by these spasms of violence; it is best seen in those lines, suggestive of sleeping force, which give to Mordkin’s poses the heroic quality of Greek sculpture. His dancing is distinguished by its reserve. It always leaves something to the imagination. His gestures in the “Arrow Dance” derive no little of their effectiveness from what they suggest, but leave unsaid. It is the warrior not at war but at play, and like the gambolling of young tigers affects us by the passion that it only hints at. His dancing has a constant tendency to forsake motion for repose. In his entrechats and pirouettes I seemed to note a certain reluctance, as though they were a concession demanded by popular taste, or a lingering tradition of the ballet technique. Yet when motion is required, Mordkin can give it, and of the freest, most buoyant, most swinging quality. The reckless swing of the galloping entry in the _Automne Bacchanale_ was magnificent. That was a dance of dances! The riot of wine, the sap of youth, the tumult of love, the sudden liberation of vigorous limbs, were all expressed in a rush of movement that was somehow curiously restrained, as the foaming progress of a wave is restrained, never tempted by excess of ecstasy into breaking the steady sweep of its own rhythm. [Illustration: MIKAIL MORDKIN IN _The Arrow Dance_ _Photograph: Foulsham & Banfield, Ltd._] A comparison of the art of Mordkin and Nijinsky would be almost irrelevant. Their style differs just in the same degree as their physique. If Nijinsky is the winged Mercury of the dance, Mordkin is the Apollo. Nijinsky’s is the dancing of motion, Mordkin’s of repose; the temper of the one is volatile, of the other equable and restrained; wit, gaiety, elegance, ebullience of youthful spirits, are the characteristics of the younger dancer; dignity, power, and a slumbering passion, of the elder. The hint of Puck-like fancy is entirely absent in Mordkin’s performances; his dramatic qualities are less elastic than Nijinsky’s, his personality less various, more rigidly settled in a definite mould.