But Stravinsky has succeeded less well in his post-impressionistic Le Sacre du Printemps. This consists of two tableaux of ancient pagan Russia. The first scene is the adoration of the earth; the second, the adoration of the sun. The music is less spontaneous and less graphic than that in Stravinsky’s other ballets. But, all in all, Stravinsky remains the greatest drawing card and the greatest æsthetic factor in the art of the Russian ballet rebels.
A charming number in the repertoire of the Diaghileff company is Balakireff’s Thamar. Balakireff wrote this as a symphonic poem on an Oriental theme, but Bakst has manufactured out of it a ballet. The music is very beautiful and typically Russian. The story is a thrilling tale of Caucasian life, which takes place at an ancient castle built in a gorge of romantic mountains. But because it is an artificial construction, it is less interesting musically and choreographically than the Stravinsky ballets.
The Russian new ballet has attempted to perform Claude Debussy’s L’Après-Midi d’un Faun, and Richard Strauss’ La Légende de Joseph. In the latter ballet a new Russian dancer, Leonide Miassine, was introduced in the title rôle. Neither Miassine nor La Légende de Joseph proved great attractions. Magnificent as Strauss and Debussy are in their modern compositions otherwise, in ballet music they remain mediocrities. Their rhythm is so anæmic, their images so hazy and their episodes so disconnected that not even a Nijinsky or a Karsavina could put life into them.
In criticising the new Russian ballet of Diaghileff and Fokine, Prince Volkhonsky writes: ‘Their main defect is that they develop [the dance] independently from the music; they are a design by themselves—complicated, interesting, very often pleasing to the eye, yet independent of the music. And we have already seen when we spoke of the old codas that the most unpretentious figure, even when banal, becomes inspiring when it coincides with the musical movement, and, on the contrary, the most interesting “picturesque” figure loses meaning when it develops in discord with music. Look at some dance, definite, exact, that has crystallized itself within well-established limits; you may look at it even without music. But try to watch a pantomime without music. In the first place, it will be a design without color, quite an acceptable form; in the second it will be a body without skeleton—something unacceptable.’
The Russian new ballet is an interesting proof of the far-reaching effect that the naturalistic school of dancing indirectly exercised upon the development of the art of dancing. The efforts of the reform that Fokine is attempting to achieve are admirable and show the great possibilities that the revolutionists face in the immediate future. Their whole drawback has been in their conception of the form and music. Even Stravinsky has not been able to shake himself loose from the old pantomimic form. But sooner or later they will see the new point of view and acknowledge the mistake that every reformer is apt to make in his first step. The Russians have the technique, the music, the innate talent and the traditions for all future choreographic inspiration. The solution lies, to a great extent, in the coöperative work of their composers, writers, critics, painters, designers, teachers and dancers.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE EURHYTHMICS OF JACQUES-DALCROZE
Jacques-Dalcroze and his creed; essentials of the ‘Eurhythmic’ system—Body-rhythm; the plastic expression of musical ideas; merits and shortcomings of the Dalcroze system—Speculation on the value of Eurhythmics to the dance.
I
What apparently proves to be the elementary step in building up a new school of choreography—perhaps that which some of the younger dancers have chosen either by accident or by roundabout ways—are the Jacques-Dalcroze Rhythmic Gymnastics or ‘Eurhythmics’ on the order of the ancient Greeks. Thus far this style of dancing is merely in its preliminary form. Therefore it is now as difficult to draw any definite conclusion, as it was about 1905, when the Swiss composer Dalcroze, who had been since 1892 a professor of harmony at the Geneva Conservatoire, first launched the movement. However, the systematic work of instruction by Dalcroze began in 1910, when the brothers Wolf and Harald Dohrn invited him to come to Dresden, where, in the suburb of Hellerau, they built for him a College of Rhythmic Gymnastics. From this time on the inventor of the new method began a systematic training of young men and women.