Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/98

Rh dances of Isadora Duncan showed a truer feeling for just how much of the Grecian plastic manner could be rightly transferred from the flat to the round. But on a large scale it has been left for Nijinsky to imagine a classic scene which is equally vital in feeling and true to the tradition on which it is founded. I am quite aware that the actual process of change from one attitude to another has in this ballet been the subject of criticism. The Greek convention, it is said, was such as to suggest movement; and to make use of it in actual combination with movement is an artistic solecism. Better a series of static scenes or tableaux than this hybrid lapse from one static pose into another. Such argument, however, appears to be a little on the danger side of the pedantic, if only because the idea behind this ballet is