Music
[DIAGIIILEFF BALLET : THE CAT.1
THE Southern Railway was responsible for a great disappoint- ment on the first night of the Diaghileff Ballet season at the Princes Theatre. A portion of the scenery for the new ballet, The ('at, did not conform to regulations, and therefore was not delivered. The work was produced on the second night, and I occupied the first five minutes speculating as to which part of the setting was the cause of the offence. I concluded that it was the curious device for the representation of Aphrodite. If it had been packed in a trunk, grave suspicion would have been aroused.
The production was received with great enthusiasm, the greater part of which was prompted by the excellent per- formances of Mile. Alice Nikitina and M. Serge Lifar. The extreme competence of Lifar's technique helped to turn the attention from the lack of unity in the conception, the story of which is Aesop's, the music Sauguet's, and the choreography Balanchin's. The setting is by Gabo and Persner.
Jean Cocteau once said—in his light way--that music is designed for a variety of functions : sometimes it serves as a tight-rope, sometimes as a race-horse, and sometimes as a chair. The music of this ballet is designed as a comfortable divan upon which the action can lie - prone whenever the invention flags a little. The purpose is well carried out, for- tunately so, since M. Balanchin was found to be groping about in the cal-dc-sac into which the Diaghileff Ballet ran a few years ago. The setting is a kind of Metropolis kitchen. Circles, segments, ellipses, and rectangles are arranged upon the stage with mysterious significance—made more mysterious by the use of talc and American leather. There is the finest
point of contact here with the story, seeing that it, too, develops the theme of the vicious circle. At the end the Young Man dies a beautifully horizontal death, and his friends perform certain rites over his body, bringing in a complete set of geometrical instruments, as who should say "We will bury him with the things he loved the hest."
BASIL MAINE.
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