No doubt this is all very clever and ingenious, but it seems likewise to be a little futile. Even if essays of this sort come within the legitimate province of ballet, there is very little pleasure, and not a great deal of interest, to be obtained from so highly sophisticated a performance. I do not know whether the music of Debussy was written for the especial purpose of the ballet, or whether Nijinsky, as in “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune,” devised the ballet to an existing composition; in any case the music seems as little appropriate to the theme as the methods of the performers. Debussy indeed is hardly a composer from whom one expects _dance_ music, and his selection in connection with these attempted developments of the art of the ballet seems significant. [Illustration] The legitimacy--or, to put it more definitely, the feasibility--of these new attempts is open to challenge. The methods adopted by the “dancers” in “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune” have already been described. In “Jeux” the principle seems to be to resolve movement into a succession of arrested poses, and make an arbitrary selection of the latter for presentment. This is as if one were asked to admire some of the individual pictures which in series make up the film of a kinematograph. Granted that it is interesting and amusing to be shown how the film is constituted, it is nevertheless the animated whole which we really want to see. [Illustration] But an analogy can only be drawn between the kinematograph and the dancer if the latter’s art is regarded as standing in the same relation to the painter’s or sculptor’s as the kinematograph to the ordinary camera. This indeed seems to be the idea upon which Nijinsky has founded “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune” and “Jeux.” It was submitted in the immediately preceding pages that “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune” was based upon a fundamental misconception of the dancer’s art, and the same criticism is prompted by “Jeux.” Even if the premises be granted that to give movement to _poses plastiques_ is a sufficient end, the dancer’s art, like any other, should conceal art; should build up, not take to pieces. The human figure may be reducible to geometrical forms, but the cubist painter would be better employed in proceeding _from_ that principle, instead of _to_ it. “Jeux,” in brief, in intention, if not altogether in execution, is as clever as a parlour trick, and with a public which applauds cleverness above all things, it would be as popular as “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune,” if it were but equally obvious. But the cleverness is that of a monkey, and as misapplied. [Illustration] LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS. PICTURES OF PAGAN RUSSIA BY IGOR STRAVINSKY AND NICOLAS ROERICH. MUSIC BY IGOR STRAVINSKY. CHOREOGRAPHY BY NIJINSKY. SCENERY AND COSTUMES DESIGNED BY NICOLAS ROERICH.