IN this ballet, in the style of the French ballets of the reign of Louis XIV., there is less distinction, I think, than in the others from which Miss Pamela Colman Smith has derived her pictures. The costumes and scenery are "designed by Benois," but any one with a knowledge of the theatre and a Racinet at hand could have done the same sort of thing. And yet as I write this I know I should make the reservation of that "life" which the Russians know how to breathe into everything. What I mean is that Benois gives us no new creation. Karsavina's bird-like grace in her eighteenth-century guise is captivating (oh, that this talented little dancer had more music in her, and did not dance always a fraction off the beat!), and Nijinsky as a wholly unnecessary slave in white satin gives a wonderful exhibition of dancing in the style of the original Ballon who danced at the opera in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, and gave his name to the kind of classical dancing which consists in elevation.

Original