|THE Russians pride themselves on not having a "star system." Every
dancer has a chance of distinction. A good idea, but personality will
out, and genius cannot be effaced. "I am only the centre-piece of a
great mosaic," said Nijinsky once, but in his case it is a very big
"only." Certainly the perfection of the _ensemble_, the well-ordered
movements and groups of Fokine, assist this wonderful young god of the
dance. When Anna Pavlova, whom I still regard as the best of the women
Russian dancers, was torn from her original setting, many admirers
of her exquisite art, in which all the essentials of the dance, noble
gesture, beautiful line, lightness, elevation, that order of movement
which we call rhythm, and perfect time, are to be found, congratulated
themselves, "Now we shall get more of her." We got more--and less.
Nijinsky, in the years when Pavlova was still in the ballet, was allowed
to have talent. Lately we have all begun to use the word "genius." Where
does the difference between the things talent and genius lie if not in
the huge personality of the genius?
[Illustration: 8034]
They used to say of Henry Irving, who expressed himself in a
multiplicity of parts, that he was always the same Irving. Certainly he
was always faithful to himself whatever he assumed. This is a sign of
the presence of genius, not of its absence. In one sense we always have
the same Nijinsky, as Miss Pamela Colman Smith has very happily shown
in her drawings of him. Yet in another sense we never have the same
Nijinsky.