LE CARNAVAL," the second of the dance poems which have inspired Miss Pamela Colman Smith, is equally romantic, but not in the pensive, twilight manner of "Les Sylphides," with its vague suggestion of mysterious grief. Everything in "Carnaval" is joyous and insouciant—except perhaps poor Bolm as Pierrot, the unhappy dupe of Nijinsky-Arlecchino's teasing pranks. Bakst's scene, with its plain blue curtains and two absurd uncomfortable Victorian sofas, prepares us for the Russian interpretation of Schumann's music, before the peg-top trousered and crinolined corps de ballet have made their appearance.
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Until I saw "Le Carnaval," although I had realized that the art of the Russians was not narrow or local, and that they could dance in several languages, I fear I had not credited them with humor. The true comic spirit (which makes us smile, not laugh in the manner so offensive to Mr. Bernard Shaw) rules this delicious episode, which is a setting of Schumann's music in the way that music can be a setting of words, completing their message and intensifying their significance.
For the first time I will use the word "acting" in connection with the Russian ballet. The comedy in "Le Carnaval" is of a very high order. The story is interpreted more through genuine pantomime than through dancing, which perhaps accounts for the popularity of this particular ballet with us English, who still understand the nature of good acting better than the nature of good dancing, although we are at the present time much attracted by dancing. A real note of freakish farce is in this "Carnaval." The dancing itself is freakish. It is the simplest, silliest thing! A bit of fun—yet to give us this bit of fun what serious work was needed! The grave young Nijinsky is transformed into a mischievous child!
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