STAGE AND SCREEN
THE BALLET
A Wind from the West THE devotees of Ballet cannot complain that they are ill- supplied, at least in the matter of quantity. At the moment of writing there are two " Russian " companies in London, and one American, while solo dancers like Argentinita, a Spaniard who gives decorous and charming versions of her native dances, crop up here and there. The quality of all these activities is another matter. M. Rene- Blum's Ballet de Monte Carlo suffers this year from a dearth of talent at its head, and an excess of youth and inexperience in corps de ballet. Among the men M. Eglevsky, who has fined down physically and is dancing better than ever, alone achieves a high standard, and among the ladies it must be recorded, with as much gallantry as possible, that there is not one who is more than competent.
This company has presented three new ballets by M. Fokine and one arranged by M. Gue. Of the last it need only be said that it is dull and formless. M. Fokine's Les Elfes, to music by Mendelssohn, suffers from costumes that make the men look ridiculous, especially as the technique of some of them was so inadequate, and from colouring that suggests the shop- window display of a well-known firm of caterers. But it is, though a second-rate piece, the work of a first-rate choreo- grapher, and bears the stamp of his invention and sense of style. Aragonesa, to music by Glinka, is even less important. But if it was to be revived after more than twenty years, it deserved more careful preparation than had apparently been given to it. I did not see the third novelty, Les Elements.
The Philadelphia Company has brought a fresh and bracing breeze into the hot-house atmosphere of European Ballet. Their vitality and originality are all the more welcome and surprising, because American artistic efforts have so often in the past been merely bad imitations of the worst features in European art, and I confess that the title of " Directrice " adopted by the talented choreographer and premiere danseuse was not reassuring. However that turned out to be a harmless Americanism like "Mortician?' The Philadelphia Company has a genuine racial quality and in its own vein it is first-rate. There is no nonsense here about " high art," and the result is that it gives a far better entertainment than many of those who aspire to higher things.
These American dancers, who have been working together for only two years, have not yet acquired any high degree of proficiency in the classical style and, when they leave their native grotind, their deficiencies are all too evident. But even when they are derivative—from Les Sylphides in Moment Romantique or from Boutique Fantasque in The Fairy Doll— their ballets are redeemed by a genuine invention in the choreography. Miss Catherine Littlefield, who has arranged all their ballets, has an unusual grasp of complex movement, and the discipline of the company is so good that her elaborate patterns are always made clear to the spectator. This elabora- tion, of which the dance to Ravel's Bolero is a good example, gives her ballets an interest which is not exhausted by repetition.
But it is in the American ballets, Terminal and Barn Dance, that the company shows its full quality. Barn Dance is a real masterpiece, in which delightful and unsophisticated music and an immense vitality of movement are combined. Here is to be seen once more the masculine vigour that has too seldom been apparent in the recent productions of the " Russian " Ballet or even in our own. For a parallel we have to go back to the Prince Igor dances and the real Russian dances in Petrouchka. Miss Littlefield owes something to the Russians, something too to the Central European School, but she has transformed the pessimism of Herr boss into a youthful optimism which is in itself very welcome in an anxious world. There is an air of casualness in these ballets which is very delightful, and it is only on seeing them again that the spectator realises that this happy-go-lucky spirit is the outcome of a control that is absolute enough to know when to relax. Terminal is cruder in its burlesque, some of which is very funny, but it too has immense gusto and is accompanied by music that gives one hope that after all some- thing may be made of " hot " rhythm and jazzy tunes.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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