Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/117

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THE NEW PHASE

the dramatic. In groups 1 and 2 we had ballets like Le Pavilion d'Armide, Le Carnaval, Les Sylphides, Le Spectre de la Rose; in group 3, ballets like Scheherazade, Cléopatre, and Thamar, all of which showed a definite trend towards dramatic emphasis as well as a preoccupation with that sort of agonised sensuality which one associates with the German and somewhat hectic imagination of Prof. Reinhardt. Some of M. Fokine's finest creations were the result of this influence, yet it was soon clear that in the long run dramatic intensity could only be maintained at the expense of a weakening in the choreographic interest; and such weakening in fact was very noticeable in Thamar, and still more so in the later ballet of Le Dieu Bleu. There were people, in fact, who began to be suspicious of further development on these lines, fearing that it would

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