Nothing can well be written about the Russian Ballet without some mention of Pavlova. For though that great dancer has not been associated with the troupe to whose performances the foregoing pages have been devoted, it is largely to her art that London owes the revived interest in ballet which paved the way for these later spectacles.

Much has been written in adulation of Pavlova. Comparisons and metaphors have been well-nigh exhausted in enthusiastic attempts to convey a full appreciation of her dancing, and the result has sometimes been ridiculous. This is almost inevitable, however, for if Pavlova’s praises are to be sung at all, it must be in a word or else redundantly. Art so nearly perfect as hers permits of no analysis, and stultifies all efforts at exposition.

So it happens that with Pavlova one can but state a bare opinion, and leave her art to speak for itself. Mere description is impossible, since her method is subjective rather than objective. London has had no opportunity of seeing her take part in a concerted ballet, at least of that dramatic type in which the art of the performers is subservient to the action in which they are involved; and the individual dances in which she is chiefly seen are to be regarded not so much as occasions for impersonation as opportunities and means of self-expression. As already has been said of Nijinsky, the art of Pavlova is something more than merely imitative; it is creative, her genius acting upon, shaping, and impressing with the stamp of her own individuality the material selected.

There is a close analogy between her method and that of the composer of music. Saint-SaËns, for example, in “Le Cygne,” and Pavlova in the dance which she has devised for the accompaniment of that composition, have both taken the curved and undulating grace of the swan for motif. Adorning, amplifying, and elaborating this initial theme, the dancer has achieved a result which in its complex beauty, yet fundamental simplicity, is an exact parallel with the composer’s.

Doubtless a maÎtre de ballet might have phrases at command which would convey, to the initiate at least, the bare sequence of poses and movements, as one musician could recount to another the main features of a composition. In neither case, however, would the hearer glean more than the merest rudiments; with the dance as with music, direct contact alone is of avail. Even a literary artist would encounter limitations as severe as those which beset the painter, who can show (witness John Lavery’s “Le Mort du Cygne”) but a single moment of a single phase in a thing of prolonged and continuous beauty.

In such a performance as this, Pavlova touches great heights. She is less happy when she indulges in some of those “interpretations” of music which of late years have become so fashionable. How, indeed, can the dancer’s art be expected to interpret music which was never written for the dance? It is as idle as the similar attempt so often made by the painter. One work of art may provide inspiration for another, but we cannot consider them simultaneously since they will not be in the same plane. To watch the dance, or rather series of poses, by which Pavlova “interprets,” let us say, Rubinstein’s “La Nuit,” is to delight the eye with an exhibition of rare grace. But only a very assimilative and accommodating mind will imagine that the composer’s intention has been made any clearer to him thereby—and probably it will

imagine quite erroneously. The critical mind receives no convincing impression of unity.

In the case of “Le Cygne,” Pavlova is not interpreting Saint SaËns. Musician and dancer have taken the same theme for treatment in their different ways, and the welding of their separate efforts is the legitimate art of the ballet. It may be said, perhaps, that this is the manner in which the so-called interpretations, to which objection has been made, have been evolved. But this is to ignore the distinction between so definite a theme as the graceful movements of a swan, known and accepted by all men, and such an abstraction as Night, of which the conception must be arbitrary, and for that reason probably different from the one upon which the musician, nominally interpreted, has proceeded.

Pavlova is at her best (inevitably) when limited to the true functions of her art. As with Nijinsky, the dance is her proper medium of expression, though perhaps not so wholly. In some of her performances she displays a facile power of extrinsic gesture suggestive of qualities as mime which whet the desire to see her in dramatic ballet. The distribution of her favours betwixt Pierrot and Harlequin, her jealous partners when she dances, as Columbine, in Drigo’s “Pas de Trois,” is inspired by coquetry as frivolous and mirthful as the airy gaiety which her nimble feet express. In “L’Automne Bacchanale” there is a passion and a fervour which owe something to the actress’ art as well as to the dancer’s. It may seem idle to attempt a discrimination between two things so nearly identical, but seeing the view so commonly held in this country of dancing—that it consists merely of the rhythmic movement of the limbs according to certain arbitrary rules, the greatest of dancers being no more than the exponent of a perfect technique—it is perhaps worth while to lay stress upon the part which temperament must play.

Possibly “L’Automne Bacchanale” is not the best illustration to cite of the dancer’s conscious art; no one of the least susceptibility, it may be supposed, certainly not Pavlova, could fail to respond to Glazounov’s tempestuous music. Who has been spectator of that brilliant episode that did not feel his pulses quicken, and thrilling through his veins an echo, however faint, of the pÆan of youth and love and joy? Pavlova at all events, if not her compatriots, has been able to recapture something of the old Greek ardour.

But Pavlova’s sheer grace can never fail of appreciation. It would be an egregious philistine who could find her, even in most conventional and academic vein, other than a delight to the eye. Her superb mastery of technique, if nothing else, must command his admiration. But it is her distinction that she delights not merely the eye, but the intelligence; behind all that she does is the artist’s instinct of selection and co-ordination. Other dancers one has seen who moved prettily, took graceful poses, displayed a nice appreciation of rhythm—yet showed themselves no more than elegant dabblers, failing to achieve the unity which proceeds alone from a true artistic impulse. Pavlova does nothing meaningless. Her least step is full of intention, and an intention made convincingly apparent. It may be the lightest, airiest conceit—a butterfly’s capricious hovering, for example, so daintily suggested in “Les Papillons,” or the roguish mirth she reads into the well-known pizzicato passage of the “Sylvia” ballet music—but her art can make where a touch less sensitive would mar.

But in such a case as this it is idle to attempt description, and comparisons are equally futile. One must be content with a single word of highest praise, and say that Pavlova, like every true artist, is unique.