Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/116

NIJINSKY new, soon transpired to be the culmination of a long development which linked together in one long process the most seemingly extravagant novelties with the beginnings of modern ballet in the eighteenth century. I have already tried to suggest the main steps in this development up to the time of M. Fokine's supremacy as producer to the Diaghilew ballet. It remains to chronicle the sudden side-track which the ballet has taken since then as exemplified in the three new ballets for which Nijinsky is directly responsible: L'Après-Midi d'un Faune, Jeux, and Le Sacre du Printemps.

Consider the repertoire of the Russian Ballet as it existed previously to the first production of Faune in the autumn of 1912. Roughly, the ballets then in performance might be divided into three groups—the epic, the atmospheric, and 80