III
A highly praised dance of Karsavina and Nijinsky is Le Spectre de la Rose (with music arranged from the compositions of Weber), which takes place in a summer night in old aristocratic France. The music, though old-fashioned, is soft and tender. Karsavina represents a young sentimental girl who has just returned from the ball. She is thinking of her lover, while raising to her lips a red rose which he gave her at the ball. Going through a pantomimic scene of her sentimental dreams Karsavina depicts the romantic prelude of a young girl until Nijinsky, representing her visionary lover, leaps in. ‘The spirit of the garden and the song of the night have entered her bedroom, and the wind blows this rose-spirit to and fro. It is love in human shape: now he hovers above the sleeping figure, caressing: now he is dancing just in front of the window. And we dare not breathe lest by so doing the air is stirred to drive him back into the moving shapes outside. But he rises on the arms of the wind, he crouches beside the girl. She falls into his arms and the love dream of a ballroom is realized. The music of the night has entered the room, languid music like water which these two spill as they dance to and fro, until, our eyes being opened, we can see as well as hear music. The miracle is so brief that we scarcely realize it before it has gone. But they were chords and harmonies, these two spirit shapes floating on the implacable air: hands and feet, arms and legs, lips and eyes spilling and spelling each note of music. The hour has passed. Jealous dawn lays his fingers on the night.... The girl is in her chair again. The spirit of the rose hovers like love with trembling wings above her.’
A favorite ballet of the Diaghileff company is Cléopatre, arranged by Fokine to music by Arensky, Taneieff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Glinka, Glazounoff, and Moussorgsky. The chief characters of this ballet are Seraphime Astafieva, as Cleopatra, Sophie Feodorova, as Ta-Hor, Vera Fokina, as a Greek woman, and Nijinsky, as the favorite of Cleopatra. It has been declared the most popular of all Fokine’s ballets. It describes the well-known love drama of the great Egyptian queen. The first scene is laid on the shores of the Nile. There is just visible the arch of an ancient temple and its entrance with great figures of stone. The ground on which it stands is flanked by pillars which tower towards the sky. The waters of the river gleam between these pillars. The sun is sinking into the hot desert. The first character of the dance is Ta-Hor, a priestess; the second Amoun, a warrior, her beloved. She emerges through the dark curtain of the night and meets him in the silent precincts of the temple. Music quivers from hands and feet, lips and eyes. We feel an impending danger. The silence is broken with the sudden appearance of the High Priest. Cleopatra is coming. But Ta-Hor clings to the lips of Amoun. When the Queen appears the lovers shrink back into the shadows of the temple. She is a voluptuous beauty. We see her resting, her limbs tangled in a mass of color, her eyes fixed like serpent’s, staring into the hot night of the desert while she waits for what it will bring her. She is tired of the wealth the world has poured at her feet. There is but one thing that never tires her and is ever new. Her subtle limbs uncurl from the tangled colors, open like a rose at a breath of warm wind—to close again with a little shiver of ecstasy. Love is always new and beautiful. Of love she has never tired, only of lovers.
Cleopatra finally sees Amoun dancing, and falls madly in love with him. There are many passionate and dramatic scenes. ‘Like the sea-foam, her body is tempest-tossed. Her eyes burn into his soul. The music sings songs of the desert, invocations to the Nile, hymns to the god of love. Around the royal divan of Cleopatra we see a medley of men and women, twining and grouping themselves. The music sounds like a gentle breeze, full of love and enchantment, which longs yet fears to slake its thirst. We see Egyptian dancers moving slowly and quietly. String instruments are thrumming like nightingales. We see a whole company of men and women dancing in the torchlight. The sight of the costumes pours a spell of the Nile upon us. The stars of the desert and the passionate music of string instruments, the beautiful girls and the black virile bodies of the slaves, the waves of light and the distant wall of soldiers and priests, fill the air with something tragic and black. We get a glimpse of Cleopatra and Amoun, he standing beside her couch. The high priest of the temple holds between his hands the sacred cup filled with the poisonous wine that Amoun must drink. He takes the cup firmly and looks into her eyes, and smiling he drinks. She smiles, too. At this moment Amoun drops the cup to the ground. Death lays hands upon him. His agony is brief. Cleopatra stands waiting. When he falls his fingers clutch the air. A shiver shakes the Queen’s body. Cleopatra goes out from the night passing through the vast pillars of the temple into the dawn of the desert. After her comes Ta-Hor, looking for her lover. But she finds the dead body. We see her warm brown body shiver and shrink. She would tear out her heart. A soft wind comes whispering over the desert bringing with it the red of the rising sun. It is the end of a ghastly picture.’
Impressive as Cléopatre is in its scenic and pantomimic vigor and tragic atmosphere, yet it is hardly a ballet in the modern sense. There is no unity of music, this being altogether a patch-work. It may sound exceedingly pretty and appropriate occasionally to the accompaniment of the mute drama, yet it is by no means dance music. This is an example of the patchy ballet music that the Diaghileff company is continually trying to employ. Musically less patchy is Le Pavillon d’Armide, with music by Tcherepnin and setting by Benois. But the theme is old-fashioned and over-perfumed. The story takes place in mediæval France at the castle of a certain Marquis, a magician. It is night. Winds blow, rain pours down and thunder rolls. A nobleman is to meet his sweetheart near the Marquis’ castle and takes refuge from the bad weather. The Marquis places his Pavillon d’Armide at his disposal. In the pavilion he sees an old Gobelin tapestry representing the beautiful Armide, beneath it, a great clock supported by Love and Time. The nobleman goes to sleep and at midnight sees the figures of Love and Time step down from the clock. Armide becomes alive. The nobleman falls in love with her and Armide embraces him. This is the beginning of an animated dance. It is a fantastic scene, the old Marquis taking part in the feast. Finally Time triumphs over Love and they return to their places. It is an interesting short phantasy, a poem in pantomime.
A ballet which has created the greatest comment and discussion in its dramatic and scenic beauty is the Scheherezade, with music by Rimsky-Korsakoff. This is a symphonic suite of which Bakst and Fokine have manufactured a kind of pantomime-ballet. Though the music is magnificent as an orchestra piece by itself, yet it is a perversion to employ it to accompany a queer pantomimic drama. Rimsky-Korsakoff had no idea of a Zobeide played by Karsavina, of her negro lover, danced by Nijinsky, of Schariar, the Grand Eunuch, and of the Odalisque, who are the characters of the ballet. This again is a patch-work and not a dance in its real sense. If it is a dance, it is such that only one artist or at most two could depict. According to the scenario writers it draws the story of a Sultan’s harem from ‘The Arabian Nights.’ All the harem beauties are dancing with their lovers and slaves. Among them we find the pretty Sultana. The Sultan enters and suspects that Zobeida has betrayed him. He finds her lover. We see death and passion. It is picturesque, but the dance is only an incidental affair. Scheherezade without Karsavina’s vivid mimicry and youthful beauty, and Nijinsky’s agility, would be nothing. In the words of a Russian critic, ‘Nijinsky makes us understand that a gesture is, as Blake said of a tear, an intellectual thing. His gestures, by which I do not mean the technical steps, are different in manner and in spirit from those of the traditional Italian school. With the conventional gestures of the academies, which mimic such attitudes as men are supposed naturally to adopt when they perform certain actions or experience certain emotions, he will have nothing to do. Nijinsky’s gestures mimic nothing. They are not the result of a double translation of idea into words, and words into dumb show. They are the mood itself. His limbs possess a faculty of speech. Wit is expressed in his Arlequin dance as lucidly as in an epigram. His genius consists in a singular pliancy of the body to the spirit.’[C]
[C] S. Hudekoff: ‘History of Dancing’ (in Russian).
If Karsavina had not joined the choreographic revolutionists her dramatic talent would have had little or no opportunity to express itself, for the exponents of the old classic ballets are strictly opposed to display of natural gestures and acting. While she now exhibits a talent equal to Pavlova’s, in the old ballet she would be only half of what she is. Although her excellent dramatic sense is displayed in Le Spectre de la Rose, Scheherezade and in several of Stravinsky’s ballets, still we have not had a chance yet to become enthusiastic over any of her abstract dances. This view we notice also expressed by many French and English critics. ‘Of her performances at Covent Garden, all were marked by such rare technique and instructed grace that it is difficult to put any one before another; but certainly she never surpassed her achievement in Le Spectre de la Rose. Her dancing caught the very spirit of a maiden’s revery, and nothing could have been more finely imagined than those transitions from languor into quick rushes of darting movement, which illustrate the abrupt and irrational episodes of a troubled dream. She was the very embodiment of faint desire. We felt, as it were, a breath of perfume, and were troubled in spite of ourselves. Moreover, the long partnership between the two performers seemed to have resulted in a very special and intimate harmony. For the most part they simply floated about the stage as though borne upon a common current of emotion. There was a marriage, not only between their bodily movements, but between their spirits, such as I have never noted in the union of any other dancers.’
Like the ballet Prince Igor, music by Borodine, scenario by Fokine, Le Carneval, music from Schumann, Liadoff, Glazounoff, Tcherepnine and various other sources, are nothing but dances from an opera, dances taken here and there. Neither is there any unity of theme or style in these trimmed-up panoramas. The Polovetsi dances of Borodine’s opera Prince Igor are magnificent examples of savage Tartar art. The music is the very image of the hot and restless Mongolian temperament, the very breath of battle lust, the exaltation of victory. Fokine has taken a scene from the second act of the opera and patched a story together with some characters of the opera. The dance in the opera itself is wonderful. But in the ballet form, as arranged by Fokine, it is a mediocrity.