LE CARNAVAL.
Pantomime-Ballet by Michel Fokine.
Music by Robert Schumann,
Orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Glazounov and Tcherepnin.
Scenery and Costumes Designed by Léon Bakst.
“LE CARNAVAL,” which has been built upon Schumann’s well-known music, is a ballet of the type which defies pedestrian description. If one may term “incident” so trifling an affair as, let us say, a butterfly’s flirtation with a flower, then “Le Carnaval” is full of incident. But it has no story, no dramatic development of a plot, to give a theme for narrative. The very characters bear relation to each other only as the personæ of a carnival.
The characters, indeed, are scarcely to be regarded as actual men and women. Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot and the rest who flit across the scene, are no mere impersonations of those traditional figures of fancy by gay revellers at a bal masqué, but themselves—living embodiments of different phases of irresponsible humanity. The spectator is conscious of an atmosphere of unreality, a sense almost of illusion. On the wings of fancy he is transported far from the realm of adamantine fact, and in a region of pure sentiment sees materialised the whole idea of Carnival.
It is to the appearance of unreality, perhaps, that the ballet owes its peculiar appeal and charm. Elsewhere some explanation has been attempted of the fascination which the puppet exercises on the human mind, and similar comments apply in the present case. For though the figures of “Le Carnaval” are not, as in “Pétrouchka,” poor dolls aping humanity, in essence they are puppets just as much—embodiments in miniature of various human traits at which we can afford to laugh without offended vanity. Watching “Le Carnaval,” indeed, we are verily in puppet-dom; so completely is a severance from matter-of-fact reality achieved.
This note of fantasy is maintained in chief by the exceeding deftness of the performers, and the sensitive lightness of their touch. But not a little is owed to the bold simplicity of Bakst’s décor. There is no scenery; merely an immense green curtain for background, and for furniture a couple of odd little striped sofas. The bareness of the stage, the great height of the curtain behind, have the effect of dwarfing the figures of the dancers; the elimination of all superfluous detail produces a needed concentration of attention on their movements. There being no dramatic action to unfold, sentiment rather than passion—and that of the most artificial kind—being the matter for portrayal, gesture and the dance are here submitted to the severest test as means of expression. Artificiality demands, in representation, the most deft and polished art—of course, of a strictly conventional and academic kind. That formal perfection the Russians achieve in “Le Carnaval”—a perfection so absolute that formality is forgotten, eclipsed in its own apotheosis. So nicely do the performers exploit, while never transgressing, the conventions by which the ballet is conditioned, that for once artifice seems natural, and sentiment as real as passion.