Pantomime-Ballet by Michel Fokine.

Music by Robert Schumann,

Orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Glazounov and Tcherepnin.

Scenery and Costumes Designed by LÉon Bakst.

“LE CARNAVAL,” which has been built upon Schumann’s well-known music, is a ballet of the type which defies pedestrian description. If one may term “incident” so trifling an affair as, let us say, a butterfly’s flirtation with a flower, then “Le Carnaval” is full of incident. But it has no story, no dramatic development of a plot, to give a theme for narrative. The very characters bear relation to each other only as the personÆ of a carnival.

The characters, indeed, are scarcely to be regarded as actual men and women. Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot and the rest who flit across the scene, are no mere impersonations of those traditional figures of fancy by gay revellers at a bal masquÉ, but themselves—living embodiments of different phases of irresponsible humanity. The spectator is conscious of an atmosphere of unreality, a sense almost of illusion. On the wings of fancy he is transported far from the realm of adamantine fact, and in a region of pure sentiment sees materialised the whole idea of Carnival.

It is to the appearance of unreality, perhaps, that the ballet owes its peculiar appeal and charm. Elsewhere some explanation has been attempted of the fascination which the puppet exercises on the human mind, and similar comments apply in the present case. For though the figures of “Le Carnaval” are not, as in “PÉtrouchka,” poor dolls aping humanity, in essence they are puppets just as much—embodiments in miniature of various human traits at which we can afford to laugh without offended vanity. Watching “Le Carnaval,” indeed, we are verily in puppet-dom; so completely is a severance from matter-of-fact reality achieved.

This note of fantasy is maintained in chief by the exceeding deftness of the performers, and the sensitive lightness of their touch. But not a little is owed to the bold simplicity of Bakst’s dÉcor. There is no scenery; merely an immense green curtain for background, and for furniture a couple of odd little striped sofas. The bareness of the stage, the great height of the curtain behind, have the effect of dwarfing the figures of the dancers; the elimination of all superfluous detail produces a needed concentration of attention on their movements. There being no dramatic action to unfold, sentiment rather than passion—and that of the most artificial kind—being the matter for portrayal, gesture and the dance are here submitted to the severest test as means of expression. Artificiality demands, in representation, the most deft and polished art—of course, of a strictly conventional and academic kind. That formal perfection the Russians achieve in “Le Carnaval”—a perfection so absolute that formality is forgotten, eclipsed in its own apotheosis. So nicely do the performers exploit, while never transgressing, the conventions by which the ballet is conditioned, that for once artifice seems natural, and sentiment as real as passion.

The costumes devised by Bakst are of the Victorian period—crinolines and peg-top trousers, of which the quaint prim style, so far removed from modern tendencies, exactly suits the dainty little puppets that flit magically across the stage. Pierrot, of course, appears as ever in voluminous white clothes, but Columbine and Harlequin, though instantly to be recognised, are dressed a little differently from the mode which the harlequinade, as it used commonly to be presented in this country, has stereotyped. But then, neither Columbine nor Harlequin in “Le Carnaval” are the stilted, meaningless creatures to which the base usage of the English so-called “pantomime” has degraded them. Their true characters are restored: they intrigue the eye as airy figments of irresponsible fancy—she the embodiment of freakish sentiment, he of freakish humour. Columbine is no longer a well-favoured wench attired in a scanty tu-tu, pirouetting with moderate skill upon her toes, but the incarnation of feminine mutability and charm: bespangled Harlequin has lost the silly wand with, which he was wont to slap about him indiscriminately, and has become Arlecchino, the spirit of unbridled mirth and mischief. The dance (in which general term one includes the supplementary art of pantomime) alone perhaps can express these conceptions of modern mythology, and the embodiment, the reality, which Karsavina and Nijinsky give to them is possible only through their perfection in that art. Than Nijinsky’s performance in “Le Carnaval,” no more complete exposition can be imagined of all that the dancer’s art comprises.

Three times have separate couples—fantastic, irresponsible figures—flitted lightly across the stage in arch retreat and gay pursuit, when the curtains at the back are parted and Pierrot’s white face protrudes. Dismally he glances left and right. No one is near, and with every motion of his dejected figure eloquent of suffering, he advances from his hiding-place. A few paces taken, he pauses, the victim not only of misery, but of indecision. Poor

Pierrot, “temperament “ personified, in everything it is all or nothing with him. Just now he finds himself deceived—and his abandonment to grief reaches the utmost limits of despair. He has no longer zest for anything in the world—and his vacillation is equally intense. Why should he go forward—or backward—to left or right? Why stand up—why sit down? Why do anything, be anything? So he stands there, the picture of indetermination, his baggy clothes hanging anyhow about him, his very limbs so loosely jointed that they seem to be without definite control.

Sprightly and agile, extremity of contrast to nerveless, flabby Pierrot, there enters Harlequin. Mischief, all spry and self-contained, is ignorant of pity, and Folly becomes an instant butt for mockery and ridicule. Poor witless Pierrot, defenceless against the shafts of raillery, takes a few wild steps in blundering flight. But even that impulse fails him and he collapses in an inert heap upon the floor. And as he lies there, a huddled heap of misery, there passes before his dismal gaze all the mirth and gaiety in which he cannot pluck up heart, for all his longing, to join. He sees the sentimental pairs go by in elegant procession, each swain intent upon his mistress, and never a look, demure or bold, from bright eyes in his direction: he is witness of the pleasant melancholy of lovelorn youth, seeking and in ecstasy finding the object of its tender passion. He is present unobserved at a declaration of love, and it is this which spurs him at length to a spasmodic effort. For as the amorous pair, the declaration made and enchantingly accepted, trip gaily from the scene, Pierrot, with sudden zeal for emulation, dashes madly after them.

It is but a fitful flash of energy, however, and hardly has another sentimental passage ended betwixt a gallant and his fair, when Pierrot, disconsolate, returns. But even as he slouches mournfully in, he encounters Papillon, whose fluttering butterfly grace fills him with instant rapture. Gloom is banished on the instant: the fickle Pierrot is in a transport of delight. Clumsily he pursues her, hat in hand, seeking like a loutish boy to capture her. But her fluttering steps elude him; she leads him here and there in a dizzy maze and is gone, out of reach, at the very moment when the foolish oaf flings his hat down and thinks to have imprisoned her. With grotesque excess of cunning he lifts the hat’s brim, an eager paw ready to pounce upon the pretty captive. But nothing is there! The idiotic leer fades from his face, his whole figure sags as the momentary zest dies out, and plunged once more in the depths of despondency, he drifts aimlessly away.

The gay and sentimental revelry goes on. Columbine appears, with Harlequin dancing attendance. Hardly have they come upon the scene when they encounter Pantalon—an odd little figure of fun with yellow coat, green gloves, and a preposterous stripe down the length of his trouser. Concealing her roguish escort behind her petticoat, Columbine makes an easy victim of the senile Pantalon, only to hold him up to ridicule when he plunges into fervent protestations. Heartlessly she mocks her unfortunate dupe as, whirled off his feet by the agile Harlequin, he is made to beat an ignominious retreat.

There follows not only an enchanting pas de deux by Columbine and Harlequin, but some delicious pantomime between the two. Harlequin makes as if to lay his heart at Columbine’s feet (he verily seems to pluck it from his bosom and place it before her): she receives the tribute with becoming favour, and retiring to one of the sofas in the background, continues the flirtation. Whilst the pair are still seated, there trip on to the stage some score of couples, and amongst them Pierrot, once more animated, and again seeking vainly to capture Papillon. His new attempt is no more successful than his first, and in the dance to which all abandon themselves he alone is partnerless.

In some degree inspired out of his melancholy, however, Pierrot capers awkwardly amongst the rest, till Harlequin and Columbine spy a chance for further mischief. They join him in the dance, one on either side, and seizing an opportunity when Pantalon, as undeterred by his first rebuff as a moth whose wings are only singed, is hovering near, they throw the two into collision, deftly envelop them with Pierrot’s long sleeves, and secure the grotesque partnership with a hasty knot. As the curtain descends the two victims of their gay malice are seen stumbling in each other’s clutch amidst the mockery of the dancing throng.