Of the other ballets which complete the repertory of the Diaghilew company, and which have not yet been seen in London—of Petrouchka, a Russian burlesque taken from an old folk-story, Harlequin in love with the clown’s wife; of Sadko, a strange submarine drama; of Narcisse, an idyll which seeks to recapture the sylvan mood of ancient Greece—I will not attempt to give any description. Enough has been said to show that the revolutionary composers, with the co-operation of Nijinsky, Karsavina and a corps de ballet, every member of which is a tried artist, have given a new significance to the ballet, have indeed given a new art-form to the stage.
CHAPTER XI
THE RUSSIAN DANCERS
COULD the Diaghilew ballet exist without Waslaw Nijinsky—this marvellous youth who is already a supreme master of the technique of dancing, who cannot make a gesture that has not a graceful or a witty significance, who has confounded Newton and demonstrated that the law of gravity is a figment of the scientists?
Nijinsky has danced ever since he was an infant. Both his mother and father were in the ballet at the Imperial theatre in Warsaw, where he sometimes danced with them. His first appearance was as a little Chinese with a pigtail, when he was yet only six years old. The serious study of his art began in 1898, when he entered the Imperial Ballet School at St Petersburg. He passed his final examinations in 1907, and danced at the Imperial theatres for a year and a half before he visited other countries. In 1909 he danced in the Russian Ballet at the Théâtre du Châtelet at Paris, and in the following year at the Opera. Subsequently he has appeared with the Diaghilew company in Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Monte Carlo and London. At Paris he caught typhoid, and when he was convalescent went to Venice, where he danced with Isadora Duncan. It is the place he loves best of all. Already, at the age of only twenty-one, he has received the enthusiastic applause of the most brilliant and exacting audiences of Europe; critics have minutely discussed and lavishly eulogised his dancing; artists have studied and reproduced his gestures; he has been the darling of society in half-a-dozen capitals—and yet the miracle is that he is untouched by conceit. He remains a modest, ingenuous youth, tireless in application, teachable, seeking continually to bring his art to a more precise perfection.
In February 1911 the world of the theatre was astounded to hear that Nijinsky had been asked to withdraw from the Imperial Opera at St Petersburg. Various ungrounded stories have been afloat as to the cause of the rupture, but the truth is that it was merely an incident, perhaps an inevitable one, in the antagonism between the traditional and revolutionary schools of the ballet. For a moment the older school triumphed, and Nijinsky left Russia to undertake the enterprise of the conquest of Europe.
The pretext which the officials seized upon to rid themselves of the young revolutionary was a detail of costume. Madame Kschesinskaya, the fixed star in the Imperial firmament, wished Nijinsky to appear with her in one of the ballets of the stereotyped Italian school. He, on the other hand, preferred to take the part of Loys in Giselle, the ballet by Gautier and d’Adam in which Grisi won her greatest triumph. He carried the day, and the ballet was produced at considerable expense. His costume, a maillot of yellow silk, was designed by Benois. He had some doubts as to whether it would be acceptable to the authorities, and therefore obtained special permission from the “commandant general” of the Imperial ballets to wear it. At the last moment one of the directors objected to the costume, and ordered Nijinsky to change it. The dancer expostulated, and as there was not sufficient time to replace it with another, the director did not insist. The evening on which he appeared for the first and last time in Giselle at the St Petersburg Opera, the Imperial box was full. The dancer was received by the whole house with the greatest enthusiasm. The Dowager Empress and the Grand Dukes were warm in their applause, and at the conclusion of the performance the Empress told one of the directors that she had never seen its equal. The next day, however, on the pretext that the maillot was objectionable, Nijinsky received notice that his services were no longer required. The repentance of the management came speedily, but the dancer declined their request that he should return. What influenced him probably not a little in his determination to leave was the fact that,
WASLAW NIJINSKY