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. 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? [Illustration: 8034] 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. [Illustration: 0036] Nijinsky Always a Dancer