Danse Orientale
AFTER A DESIGN BY LÉON BAKST
theatre is towards a plastic ideal, and the action of a piece, sometimes full of invention, is weak and ineffective if it has not been conceived according to an artistic vision; just as an exaggerated ‘literary’ picture repels a true connoisseur. So give place to the painter in the theatre—and a leading place. It is the painter who should now (taking the place of the erudite director) create everything, know everything, foresee everything and organise everything. It is the painter who must be master of the situation, understand its finesse and decide the style of the piece. To his plastic judgment and taste must be subordinated the thousand details which compass the imposing ensemble of a fine work of the theatre.”
How thoroughly M. Bakst’s personality enters into the least details of the scene is evident in the two ballets which he has staged most brilliantly—Cléopâtre and Scheherazade. He introduces the “leitmotiv” into the scene and uses it as effectively as the musician. Rimsky-Korsakov’s overture in Scheherazade does not more vividly suggest the sultry, sensual, Oriental atmosphere with its lurking brutalities than do the voluptuous lines and sinister colours of the artist. The feeling is continued in the costumes, which are not only fitly adjusted to the languorous movements of the dancers but also serve to carry out the colour-scheme of the scene. Each dress is a note of colour, chosen as carefully as an artist forms his tone upon the palette, and placed in its proper relation to the whole.
But the keynote of M. Bakst’s art is simplicity and severity. “The painter of the future demands a severe style,” he says, “because the excess of detail has become intolerable to him.” Realism he abhors no less than pedantry of detail. He seeks to suggest the mood and not to photograph the event. His most gorgeous effects are obtained by an economy of material, which in comparison with one of the modern successful, over-propertied Shakespearian productions might seem positively parsimonious. And what he can achieve when he limits himself to the minimum of material may be seen in Le Carnaval, in which the two roguish sofas are probably the most eloquent and expressive properties ever placed upon the stage. Simplicity, suggestion, style—these are the qualities of M. Bakst’s work in the theatre, and, above all, that all-embracing rhythm which, uniting with the rhythm of the music and the dance, helps to create one unity of colour, sound and movement.
Perhaps this is not the place to speak of the wide-reaching effect of the revolutionary ballet upon the general world of art. The colour and design of Leon Bakst’s scenes, the provocative gestures of Nijinsky’s dancing, the strange and startling patterns of the dancers, have suggested to artists a new source of inspiration, which in Paris at all events has already not been without its influence on their work. The ballet is in the van of the artistic movement of the day, and the dance, through the ballet, has attained a position which it has never held since the days of ancient Greece—being once more received into its proper and inseverable fellowship with music and the plastic arts.