The Russian Ballet

THERE is no need to enlarge here upon the vogue which the Russian Ballet, or rather that company of dancers which has become familiar outside its own country under that title, has achieved in England, France, Germany, and America. Sufficient testimony to that is provided by the appearance of this book, which seeks to present a souvenir of the performances with which so many spectators have been delighted. It may be interesting, however, to sketch briefly the history of the ballet as a form of theatrical art, and suggest an explanation of the enthusiasm with which, after a long period of practical desuetude, at least in London, its revival by the Russians had been greeted.

The theatrical ballet is comparatively a modern institution, but its real origin is to be found in the customs of very early times. The antiquity of dancing as a means of expression is well known, of course, and concerted movements on the part of a number of dancers, which constitute the ballet in its simplest form, are recognised to have been a feature of religious ceremonial in the furthest historic eras. The evolutions of the Greek chorus occur at once to the mind, and there is evidence that among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Phœnicians, the formal dance was a part of religious ritual. Representations occur, on early vases and other relics, of dancers revolving round a central person or object, standing for the sun, and it may reasonably be surmised that some such ceremonial occurred among the most primitive pagan peoples.

Rites of this kind, indeed, form the theme of “Le Sacre du Printemps,” the most remarkable of the Russian dancers’ more recent performances, which may be regarded as a deliberate attempt at reversion to type. That provocative ballet is discussed elsewhere in the present volume, but it may be remarked in passing that M. Nijinsky, who is responsible for the “choreography” of it, has endeavoured to restore to that word something more of its original significance than its use in modern times, to describe the general planning and arrangement of a ballet, ordinarily confers.

Choreography or orchesography amongst the Egyptians and the Greeks was the art of committing a dance to writing just as a musical composition is registered and preserved by means of musical notation. M. Nijinsky considers that music and the dance being closely allied and parallel arts—the one the poetry of sound, the other the poetry of motion—a ballet should be as much the work of one creative mind as a piece of orchestral music. The principle he has embodied in “Le Sacre du Printemps” is that the dancers shall execute only those gestures and movements pre-ordained by the “choreographist,” and in the particular manner and sequence directed by the latter. The polyphony of orchestral music is to be paralleled by the polykinesis, if such a phrase may be coined, of the ballet.

Leaving this digression, one may ascribe the immediate parentage of the modern theatrical ballet to the Court Ballets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which in turn arose out of the mediæval mystery plays, pageants, and masques. Ballets were a favourite diversion of the French Court of the period, where they underwent a gradual refinement in style from the relative coarseness which at first distinguished them. The opera-ballet was the next stage of development; then, towards the end of the eighteenth century, singing was omitted, and the ballet attained a dignity of its own.

The founder of what may be termed the dramatic ballet, which is the form the Russians have developed so magnificently, was Noverre, a great celebrity of his day, who took London as well as Paris for his field. After the fashion of his time, Noverre went to the classics for his themes, and very banal, it would seem, were his efforts to interpret them in terms of the ballet. But though his ambition as a maître de ballet outran his perceptions as an artist, at least he initiated and firmly established a new form of art which was capable of being brought subsequently to a high degree of perfection.