Hindu Legend in One Act by Jean Cocteau and de Madrazo.

Music by Reynaldo Hahn.

Scenes and Dances by Michel Fokine.

Scenery and Costumes Designed by LÉon Bakst.

IT has been previously remarked, in comment on “Narcisse,” that for all their sense of fitness, the Russians sometimes exhibit a curious inability to recognise the limitations of the stage, and in considering “Le Dieu Bleu,” the charge must be repeated. They are at fault usually when they have to present the supernatural. The criticism applies not so much to their impersonations of supernatural characters—the sense of unreality is finely suggested by Nijinsky as the phantom rose, for example, while nothing could be better than the bizarre characterisation of the half-human puppets in “Petrouchka”—as to their representation of the supernatural circumstances by which such characters must generally be attended. It may seem ungenerous, perhaps, to carp at what are, after all, mere matters of detail, but lapses from an harmonious ensemble become glaring when judged by the high artistic standard which disciplines the greater number of the ballets.

One is tempted to think that here and there the Russians have essayed a task, not perhaps exceeding their powers of conception and intention, but beyond the capacity of their medium of expression. “Le Dieu Bleu” is a fair example of such an attempted flight. It does not fail, but neither does it entirely succeed; and an explanation of the compromise may be found in the synopsis of the ballet printed in the programme. There is no need to quote this interesting passage of description; for the present purpose it is enough to remark that the first thing arising in the reader’s mind is a puzzled query: How are they going to do it? The answer is simply that they do not! The mingling of fabulous or mythical with the real or human is a dilemma upon the horns of which many a stage producer has found himself impaled, and the Russians do not escape the inevitable fate. Their realistic method of treatment consorts ill with the supernatural element in the action of the ballet; and if this is to be expected, and is deemed negligible for the sake of the individual beauties of the performance, it is nevertheless regrettable that, however faintly, a jarring note should be struck. There are features in this ballet which one could spare not less gladly than the miraculous flower in “Narcisse.”

Certainly “Le Dieu Bleu” has many beauties. It shows us, in a multiplicity of radiant dresses massed against a background of daring colour and design, a rich vein in the decorative art of LÉon Bakst. It shows us Karsavina in a part that gives full play to the fierce and passionate quality in her miming. But chiefly it is an excuse for the preciosity of Nijinsky. There is something more than the mere accomplished dancer in that remarkable personality. Others there may be (though one doubts it) as graceful, as agile, as versed in all the nuances of the dancer’s art; but over and above his technical perfections Nijinsky possesses a selective intelligence. His is not a merely imitative instinct; he draws inspiration from sources of his own seeking, and that to which he gives bodily expression is the product of his own original genius working under the afflatus.

In “Le Dieu Bleu,” of which the scene is laid in mythical India, Nijinsky has gone for inspiration to Hindu art, with the manifest intention of exhibiting by his impersonation of the title rÔle, of embodying in himself, the essential principles which underlie the conventions of that ancient phase of artistic expression. The imaginative thought, the sympathetic understanding, which he has brought to his purpose must be judged by the result, of which the subtlety of conception and the precision of execution are beyond comment.

The action of the ballet takes place in a rock-girt shrine—a mosaic-patterned platform shut in by high cliffs of tawny orange hue, from excrescences of which, in lazy festoons, hang monstrous serpents. In the middle, at the back, is a pool in which the sacred lotus is supposed to float; a giant tortoise, with gaudily painted carapace, leans over its rim in act of drinking. Massive gates to the left bar the entrance to the shrine which a deep fissure in the cliffs makes possible: a cleft through which the deep blue of the Indian sky is visible.

Round the sacred precinct is seated, immobile and patient, a throng of worshippers. There are shortly to be enacted over a young neophyte the rites of initiation into the priesthood, and with the opening bars of the music there enters a long procession of priests, attendants and others who are to take part in the ceremony. There are men bearing sacrificial fruits aloft in baskets, others bringing jugs and bowls and salvers for the lustral water, which is presently poured out by the high priest before the lotus pool. Then enters a bevy of girls whose sequence of postures, performed with deliberate care, constitute a ceremony of obeisance to the tutelary spirit of the place. The high priest in turn performs a rite of adoration, his tall figure the centre of a group of strangely posing girls. To these groups are added yet others—girls who lead forward kids for the sacrifice, more priests, and a great number of worshippers who crowd in through the opened gates and stand watchful upon the fringe of the glowing, many-coloured assemblage that is grouped about the lotus pool and awaits the high priest’s bidding.

The sacrificial fire is lit, the neophyte is conducted to his place. While the initiation rites proceed a dance is performed by three girls carrying on their arms peacocks, whose gorgeous trains of eyed feathers sweep gracefully from the shoulders of the swiftly moving bearers to the ground. They are followed by another group of girls, whose dancing and posturing ends with a general prostration of bodies as the neophyte, now robed in the garments of his new vocation, is paraded before the circle of approving onlookers.

As he thus submits himself to public scrutiny, the novice offers to all and sundry a bowl, to the contents of which those help themselves who list. The young man walks with abstracted gaze, composing his mind to receive that ecstasy which befits the high solemnity of the occasion. All, save one, regard him with silent indifference. That one is a girl, whose suppressed excitement betrays her to a warning movement as the neophyte approaches. As he reaches the spot where she is seated she leans quickly forward and looks him eagerly in the face. Entreaty is expressed in every line of her figure.

The young man meets that passionate look, and halts abashed. Memories which he thought to have put behind him for ever surge rebelliously into his mind. He hesitates; but with an effort masters his emotion, and hastily returns to his appointed place before the high priest. The incident, occupying but a moment, has passed unnoticed by those around, and as the girl sinks back in an agony of frustrated hope, a number of half-demented devotees resume the rites with a wild dance of frenzied lamentation. As this orgy of self-intoxication swells to a climax, the sacrificial kids are made ready for slaughter. The final moment of dedication is at hand.

Once more the neophyte, led this time by the high priest in person, is paraded before the seated watchers: once more he is obliged to pass the girl who embodies all that life has held for him in the past, before ambition and the lust of sacerdotal power turned him from love and joy. She alone might have the key, perchance, to unlock the door he has so resolutely shut. She has the key, and with a courage born of desperate abandon to love and passion she dares to use it. She breaks from her place, and fiercely casts herself at her whilom lover’s feet. She grovels in abasement, she implores—then, snatching a hope from the indecision which she sees written on his face, she cajoles.

The priests, angry and scandalised at this sacrilegious irruption, seize her and carry her off. But she eludes them, and ere the

neophyte has time to steel himself, she is again before him dancing with an allurement, a provocative abandon meant for him alone, which shakes his resolution to its depths. A second time the priests seize her; a second time with desperate cunning she evades their grasp and returns to her passionate attack. The young man is torn with fierce emotions; an unequal battle rages in him, love and life contending with his pride and sense of duty. And as he gazes on the beseeching figure before him, ambition, lust of power, and all his new resolves slip unregarded from him. Everything that life holds seems centred in the swaying figure of the girl before him, fount of all the hot-blooded memories which now sweep unresisted over him. With sudden determination he tears the priestly vestments from his shoulders, and with glad capitulation yields himself to the triumphant embrace of his mistress.

Together they dash for freedom. But their passage is barred, priests and fakirs wrench them apart, and the young man is carried off into durance. The crowd disperses silently, and the agonised girl finds herself confronted by the high priest and two of his attendants. A third brings manacles and these are fastened upon the prisoner’s wrists. Then, in obedience to the high priest’s directions, the door of a cavern in the side of one rocky cliff is unlocked, and the janitors depart. The girl is left alone, and in the dreadful silence which ensues she collapses in terror before the lotus pool.

The shrine is bathed in moonlight, when at length the prostrate girl rouses herself from the torpor of despair. Her wits returning, she seeks a way of escape. She tries the gates, but they are fastened close and withstand her frenzied shaking. Vainly she looks for other outlet: the high walls are insurmountable. But suddenly she espies the low doorway in the rock. She hesitates for a moment: it scarce looks to open on an avenue of escape. But at least it offers a chance, and on a quick impulse she rolls the obstacle aside.

A black cavernous hole is revealed, into which the girl peers anxiously. For the moment nothing can be descried in the murky gloom, but even as she summons courage to venture within, a hideous affrighting apparition looms out of the darkness before her face. She shrinks back, startled: fear giving place to sheer nightmare horror as a foul and bestial monster crawls slowly forth from the noisome den. The creature is followed by others, which with dreadful deliberateness emerge from the lair their unsuspecting victim has thus incautiously opened. There are some that drag their black and scaly lengths laboriously, like obese lizards, along the pavement of the shrine, others with gross heads and grinning masks that present a dreadful travesty of human beings in their red, ungainly forms, in the horrid leaps and bounds of squat and ugly legs by which they move.

The girl has fled in panic to the gates across the fissure in the rocks. She clings to them in an agony of fright. But leaping clumsily in pursuit, the crimson monsters seize her in their filthy paws, and bear her bodily away. She slips from their grasp and darts across the shrine, only to find herself surrounded by her captors’ crawling allies. The latter do not offer to seize her, but they eye her with a devilish intentness, and at every step she takes display a paralysing nimbleness, for all the seeming inertness of their flabby bodies, in intercepting her movements and keeping her surrounded by their watchful visages.

In a last paroxysm of fright the girl falls prostrate before the lotus pool. The monsters range themselves around, motionless, but vigilant and intent. But as their victim, bethinking herself of prayer, pours forth a passionate entreaty to the deities of the place, they stir uneasily and presently retire, writhing, a distance of some paces. A brilliant blue light irradiates the pool, the lotus flower that floats within it opens, and slowly there rise into view the god and goddess, tutelary spirits of the shrine. The goddess is enthroned; the god, with reedy pipe in hand, sits with legs and upraised arms bent angularly—a painted Hindu sculpture come to life.

Stepping from the lotus, the Blue God raises and supports the amazed and awe-struck girl. Then, as confidence returns, he gently seats her beside the pool, and before the uneasy monsters begins a solemn dance. Dance it must be called, though it is rather a series of postures—postures which, executed in the flesh, vivify for the onlooker all that he has ever seen in Hindu art purporting to represent the human figure. It becomes apparent that there is a beauty in the harmonious adjustment of angles not previously realised, or even, perhaps, suspected.

One by one the monsters are subdued, despite a feeble effort at evasion, by the power of their intended victim’s divine protector. The goddess then, descending from her throne, shows by her dancing postures, while the god plays upon his pipe, that the female form is not less capable than the male of angular beauty of form. The girl, now reassured, gazes entranced upon her deliverers, receiving with humble gratitude the blessing bestowed upon her by the goddess, as the latter presently resumes her throne.

Scarcely has the god also reseated himself, when the priests and worshippers re-enter the shrine, expectant of finding executed the prisoner’s hideous doom. Stupefied by the dazzling vision which greets them, all fall prostrate in humble obeisance, the girl alone, assured of the divine favour, daring to remain standing. The goddess signifies the protection which she extends, and as the young man for whom the girl’s love has dared so much is brought in, she bids the two embrace without fear. With love and life restored to her, the girl finds outlet for her brimming happiness in a joyous dance, and gladly the reunited pair exchange their vows before the goddess’ throne.

Her mission ended, the goddess sinks slowly from view into the depths of the lotus pool. But the Blue God, ere she vanishes, steps into the midst of the awe-stricken throng. A fragment of the orange cliff rolls noiselessly aside and reveals a broad flight of golden steps reaching into the blue infinity of the heavens. With slow, deliberate steps the god ascends the mystic flight. Momentarily he pauses, and thus is seen, as the curtain descends, above the bowed forms of the prostrate multitude, playing upon his pipe.