When three such remarkable talents as those of MM. Stravinsky, Roerich and Nijinsky form an alliance, something unusual may be confidently expected as the result. The most eager anticipations can hardly have been disappointed, on that score, by “Le Sacre du Printemps,” of which the music is by the first named, the _décor_ by the second, and the choreography by the third. One imagines the three collaborators--one had almost said conspirators--assembling in council. Perhaps they find themselves, in their several ways, prompted by a common impulse: perhaps they merely itch to apply their cleverness to something new. Whichever way it is, a happy notion strikes them. “Let’s be primitive!” They talk it over, make plans and agree. They will be primitive--starkly primitive. Stravinsky proceeds, with his practised sleight of hand in the manipulation of an orchestra, to invent music which shall defy all accepted canons, and thus presumably be eloquent of a time when “music,” in any conventional sense, was not; Roerich picks all the primary colours out of his paint-box and sets to work to devise a _mise-en-scène_ so crude that it must represent the furthest possible degree of unsophistication; while Nijinsky, fresh from his meditations on a primitive phase of art, hails with enthusiasm this new opportunity to apply the principles of expression by gesture and movement which he believes himself to have divined. The result is a sort of “post-impressionism” on the stage. Expression, it has been said, not beauty, is the aim of the modern school of painters who, for convenience’ sake, have been dubbed “post-impressionists”; and this being also the avowed purpose of Nijinsky and his colleagues, the ballet might not unreasonably be expected to show some kinship with the products of that recent art “movement.” Certainly it is ugly--at the least, unpleasing to the normal modern eye: whether, by compensation, it is expressive, is obviously one of those matters of individual taste about which dispute is idle. “Le Sacre du Printemps” consists of two tableaux, which are ostensibly representative of pagan Russia, but might equally serve as pictures of primitive civilisation anywhere--or nowhere! The theme is suitably simple. The season of spring is at hand, and mankind is occupied with worship of the two great forces apprehended by the primitive mind--the Earth and the Sun.