Massine's Return

Extract

As far back as I am willing to admit that I remember, Leonide Massine, dancer, choreographer, innovator, has been the question-mark of the Ballet Russe. I find that already in 1936 I was writing in “Footnotes to the Ballet”:

“Massine is a stylist unrivalled by any dancer of his time…he has a faculty for getting the very best out of his partners, so that when he is dancing in a ballet the whole work becomes suddenly a live, important thing…something of the quality of the great stylist that is Massine the Dancer lies like a patina upon the surface of the roles he has created for himself, so that though other dancers inflect and modify them, the role remains the clue of the ballet.…If Massine had not been so fine a technician himself it is questionable whether his works would have borne so clearly the imprint of his personality. The present writer is of the opinion that as his powers as a dancer decline, the inventiveness of his choreography will decline also.”