Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/39

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
HIS CAREER

tendencies which were all of obvious and capital importance in the development of the art of the ballet. Now artistic impulses were coming to life all over Europe, and most of them had a definite relation with the art of the theatre in one or other of its numerous forms. The full history of these fresh developments, and of the resulting cleavage between the old ballet and the new, has yet to be written. Here we must be content to trace that cleavage in part to the influence of a new school of music which had risen to power within Russia itself, in part also to the more extraneous influences which came, via Moscow, from Prof. Reinhardt the German, and from Gordon Craig the Englishman. Nor must we forget the liberating force which sprang from the art of Isadora Duncan, whose heroic practice has done far more than any precept of philosophy

17