THE Russians pride themselves on not having a "star system." Every dancer has a chance of distinction. A good idea, but personality will out, and genius cannot be effaced. "I am only the centre-piece of a great mosaic," said Nijinsky once, but in his case it is a very big "only." Certainly the perfection of the ensemble, the well-ordered movements and groups of Fokine, assist this wonderful young god of the dance.

When Anna Pavlova, whom I still regard as the best of the women Russian dancers, was torn from her original setting, many admirers of her exquisite art, in which all the essentials of the dance, noble gesture, beautiful line, lightness, elevation, that order of movement which we call rhythm, and perfect time, are to be found, congratulated themselves, "Now we shall get more of her." We got more—and less.

Nijinsky, in the years when Pavlova was still in the ballet, was allowed to have talent. Lately we have all begun to use the word "genius." Where does the difference between the things talent and genius lie if not in the huge personality of the genius?

They used to say of Henry Irving, who expressed himself in a multiplicity of parts, that he was always the same Irving. Certainly he was always faithful to himself whatever he assumed. This is a sign of the presence of genius, not of its absence. In one sense we always have the same Nijinsky, as Miss Pamela Colman Smith has very happily shown in her drawings of him. Yet in another sense we never have the same Nijinsky.