prove harmful to the pure spirit of Russian dancing. And, after all, in any ballet the dance is the thing, so that an influence which tends to obliterate its essential importance is naturally to be deplored. Nevertheless, for a time, the pantomimic tendency seemed to offer the only possible path of progress, and that a new outlet was found for the ballet on legitimately choreographic lines, must be laid very largely to the credit of Nijinsky.
Let us, though, guard against the mistaken belief that the new idea came bubbling out of Nijinsky's mind entirely unrelated to what was being thought and done by his contemporaries. This new phase of ballet-dancing, for all its power to shock or amuse a certain section of the public, here and in Paris, is no isolated venture standing by itself and destined to solitary success or lonely failure. Rather
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