Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/92

 Rh The miraculous automaton has often been used as a subject for drama, and long before the Russians came, Adeline Genée had captivated London with the doll-ballet of Coppélia. Such a theme must certainly be attractive to any dancer who has once mastered the free and graceful rhythms of natural life, inviting as it does to the control and exercise of a whole new range of attitude and movement. From the spectator's point of view there is also an amusing element of the bizarre in every such production, for it is almost as curious to watch a human being pretend to be a machine as it is to see a machine pretending to be human. So, at any rate, was the case in Coppélia. But in this ballet of Pétrouchka the