|SO free and yet so disciplined!" said someone of Nijinsky's dancing.
It was a very good criticism. But I like even better these words from
a French appreciation by M. Charles Mèryel: "We should not begin by
praising him for his prodigious physical ability for leaving the ground.
Let us think first of his power of evoking, through the means of a human
body in movement, a sort of beautiful dream, of his power of subjugating
his material appearance so that he becomes a _visitation divine_ and
almost immaterial." I remember in this connection something that was
said to me by Christopher St. John after "Les Sylphides": "This gives us
a conception of what our glorified bodies after the Resurrection will be
like, the same bodies, but spiritualized and agile!" I thought, "This is
too much!" and laughed at an excess of enthusiasm! But the French writer
and the English one were both expressing the same idea.
[Illustration: 8036]
Whatever his role, the young Russian dancer projects an interior emotion
which has in it all the force of spontaneity, but is at the same time
conscious and considered. As an actress, that has always been my ideal
of expression. But actors express emotions; it is generally their duty
to _realise_, in fact, to recall a man. Nijinsky never recalls human
experience, never suggests the passions of mankind. He is always the
dancer. Now the miming of ordinary ballet-dancers has often in the past
seemed to be more than a little ridiculous. Love and joy and pleasure,
pain and hate and death--how could they be simulated by pirouettings,
posings and posturings? Did I reject them as absurdly unconvincing
because I did not understand the language of choreography? I think I was
alienated because I had never heard the language spoken well. I am sure
now that it can be infinitely expressive, but the better it is spoken by
the dancer's body the less it will resemble the expression of mortals. I
could never call Nijinsky a good actor. I can, and do, call him a great
dancer.
[Illustration: 0040]