Il Faut Souffrir .

fully or so' simply expressed as in this entrancing auto- biography. The very name of its author evokes brilliant, ever-changing but unforgettable pictures of that most vivid of all dramatic entertainments—the Russian Ballet.

Yet it is the story of a childhood and of a girlhood as austere as that of any millionaire who scraped an unremittingly industrious way to fortune from a slum.

Karsavina was quite a little girl when her father, himself a retired dancer and mime of the Imperial Ballet, began her training. He played the fiddle and endlessly drank tea : she had to work away, with an occasional swish from his bow, until sweat trickled down her face. She might not steal a sip of tea, however hot and thirsty, because it might affect her breathing, nor sit down immediately after the lesson because " a sudden relaxation of muscles after a great strain weakens the knees."

But the little girl was happy. She took it all, as later she took a visit to the dentist, without flinching, since a ballerina should have beautiful teeth. She was to be a dancer : that was all that mattered. And, right to the end of her book, the almost sacred art of the dance comes first.

The long apprenticeship as a pupil at the Imperial Ballet school she served gladly, and writes of it enchantingly. A strange fragrance of youth pervades these chapters : pupils in instep-long dresses with tight bodices, starched lawn fichus, black aprons, white stockings and black pumps pass and repass. On bath night, outwardly sedate, they leave their long hair hanging on their shoulders to dry. But there is a flash of mischief, and sometimes romps which have to be punished, and Karsavina does cart-wheels. There are summer holidays, one full of mad pranks with Lydia Kyasht. A younger child has the face of an " earnest chernb " ; it is Lopokova, who, later, is so much impressed on arriving in Paris that she faints at the station.

The pupils were as sequestered as nuns. Only now and

then they took part in a matinee at one of the Imperial theatres, or some especial celebration performance. Kaisayina was a cupid at an open-air performance of Peleus given in honour of the German Emperor :

" On a tiny islet out on the lake a high rock has been built up, with a cave of Vulcan in the centre. . . . Thetis surrounded by nymphs was seen gliding over the water. This beautiful illusion had been effected by a simple device—a raft with a mirror surface."

Such contrasts—unremitting work and the intense excite- ment of actual performance—go through the book.

Schooling is over. She is seventeen now, receiving six pounds a month as " coryphie " in the Imperial Ballet

Company itself. For part of her trousseau she goes with her mother to a second-hand shop in the Jewish market, and is delighted with a dark blue suit. " To me it looked quite new : there was the name of Redfern on the label."

And already-this child is one of a group of solo dancers, with Pavlova and Trefilova.

But work had, in a sense, only started. There are always rehearsals, classes under new masters, convalescence from a severe illness spent in Milan taking lessons :

" The class was forcible, not a second of rest allowed during the whole bar practice. . . . It was hard at the beginning. I had been used to milder practice, and during my first lesson I fainted."

Back in St. Petersburg she gets her first big part. Contrast again : the rising ballerina goes home on foot unless it rains, and when she goes on a summer tour, carries her borrowed or home-made stage costumes wrapped in an old shawl, since she had no trunks.

The rest is history, which the book brightens with a thousand intimate sketches. Soon there comes Paris, the bursting of " the Russians " on Western Europe, and the infinite miracles of Diaghileff, Bakst, .Stravinsky, Nijinski and " la Karsavina." The stories of Nijinski are peculiarly affecting. As a boy he leapt much higher than the other pupils. In Paris, they asked him, amazed, if in those incredible, floating

leaps of his it was difficult to stay in the air : .

" He did not understand at first, and then very obligingly : No ! not difficult. You have just to go up and then pause a little up there.' " The rest is heart-breaking. She tells the experience of 1928 when Nijinski, to whom for long then life had been a blank, was taken to see Petrouchka, in which he himself had once so gloriously danced : " Striving to bring a spark of lucidity to his darkened brain, they told him over and over again who he was, and repeated his name to him."

Diaghileff thought that to see the familiar dance, to hear the music, might awaken the sleeping mind. Nijinski was very obedient and good, and sat quietly in his box. All that happened was that when Lifar appeared, he asked who it was. On being told that it was the principal dancer, he asked : " Can he jump ? "

Theatre Street is more than a life story of an unusual sort, most unaffectedly related. It also gives a lucid survey of the development of the ballet from the older, to us unnaturally formal mode, through the dazzling and dramatically " great period " from Firebird to The Cat. Now and then it lets us for a moment into the laborious and secret technique of a dancer—as where it describes a lesson in pantomime ; and all through it offers brilliant and economically etched pictures, of which perhaps the best gives an almost cinemato- graphic impression of St. Petersburg in 1916-1918. The closing description of Madame Karsavina's escape from Russia, with her husband and little son, reads like a breathless romance. From any point of view, Theatre Street is worth reading, but lovers of the ballet will appreciate it and its

many illustrations peculiarly. IRIS BARRY.