31 JANUARY 1931, Page 3

Mme. Pavlova Every lover of the art of Pavlova is

sorrowful at the thought that he will never see her again ; yet he may be conscious of some consoling pride in having seen one of the greatest dancers of all time and in having recognized her to be such. When Pavlova came here in 1910 theatre-goers who had never been touched to surprise or enchantment by the technique of dancing— perhaps not even by the dancing of the exquisite Mlle. Genee—became aware that there was a new poetry of motion for them to see. They fell down before it and worshipped. Yet there was nothing intrinsically new in Pavlova's art. She had been trained in the strictest school of the Russian Ballet. She never broke with her orthodox learning, but somehow she embroidered upon it with grace, freedom, colour, fluidity, and thus seemed to be the exponent of a new form of expression. The spell-bound public was miraculously tricked into believing that classicism had been superseded by a new cult of naturalism.

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