Around Moscow
MOSCOW. (Anatoly Korolyov, member of the...
celestial scenery, the costumes designed by Alexandre Benois, the baroque bacchanalia of Leon Bakst, the monumentalism of Nicholas Roerich, the refinement of Alexandre Golovine and, of course, the music by Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Glazunov and Mussorgsky.The critics, enraptured by the Russians, admitted with some embarrassment that French ballet, as it turned out, had become hopelessly out of date: "We don"t know how to dance," "That"s a nice kettle of fish," "Our theater is ridiculous," "There now - we"re in decline."
Conclusions were made about the decline of Europe from the triumph of the artists from St Petersburg.
Here, for example, is what critic Abel Bonnard wrote at the time: We no longer know what dance is. We are no longer savage enough for that. We are too cultured, too civilized, too threadbare. We have lost the habit of expressing our feelings with our entire body. We barely let them appear on our faces and shine through in our words...