The Master of the Russian Ballet. By Olga Racster. (Lc
Edo: : Hutchinson. 21s. net.) To many of us the origins of the Russian Ballet have seemed a little misty. In Madame Olga Racster's book, The Memoirs of Cay. Enrico Cecchetti, everything is made plain. Enrico Cecchetti trained all the dancers with whose work we in London are familiar—Madame Lopokova, Madame Pavlova, Madame Karsavina, Nijinsky, Massine, Woizikovsky. He is an Italian, and had made his name as a dancer long before he went to Russia, and the technique of the Russian ballet as we now have it is founded almost as much upon traditional Italian and French dancing as upon strictly Russian technique. Cecchetti, though brought up in the strictest traditional schOol, seems to have had on the whole a liberating influence, and the divisions into noble dancing, grotesque dancing or into miming; and strict choreography, were to him elements which could be blended into a complex whole. The book is unfortunately puffed out like Aesop's frog. Some mild story is constantly introduced with such a phrase as " A side-splitting incident that all who frequent the Coulisses of the Theatre Blank will remember till their last hour," &c., &c. But in spite of this fault it remains a delightful book to turn over.
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