Karsavina

Last week, Thamar Karsavina, famed Russian dancer, premiere danseuse at the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), made her first appearance in the U. S. at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. On the same night, another Russian lady, at another theatre, was filling the Manhattan engagements of what is declared to be her farewell tour. Outside that other theatre was displayed an advertisement familiar to five continents, simply worded--the most arrogant advertisement in the world. It read in large letters ANNA PAVLOWA; in small ones, as if the epithet was too indisputable to require emphasis, "The Incomparable." Karsavina is the only woman who has ever been capable of challenging the justice of that epithet. How rash was her challenge? A large audience went to see. For them she danced. In chevelure of curled peruke, to a Mozart serenade, she swished her silken panniers, as did the belles of Bath, treading in the formal maze of a minuet, all the pride and fashion of the 18th Century caught in pattern of her narrow slippers. She danced a "Hurdy-Gurdy" dance like a marionette of ivory pulled on silver wires, to an imaginary music-box that slowly wound down and down. In gold boots and scarlet gown, she glided through an adagio with her big partner, Vladimiroff, to music by Glazunov. Again with Vladimiroff, she did her famed Caucasian Dances, a slinky lady then, wild and jimp with shiny eyes, while a little drum tapped like a drunken heartbeat. In a dance called the "Polka Vendredi," with the flavor of a dirty joke of the '70's, she became the sort of person that modern Chief Justices and aging college presidents were warned against in their salad days--a saucy, swaggering, heliotroped trollop. Young blades regarding her shivered slightly with a fear that all had not yet been told them; old bucks wiped away a tear and thought of the Bal Bullier. Critical opinion next morning proclaimed that "Madame Karsavina is a very beautiful woman who gives much pleasure" (The New York Times) ; that "Madame Karsavina is one of the best dancers actively extant" (The New York Herald-Tribune) ; that "Madame Karsavina is an artist of the first rank. She possesses technique, grace and eloquence of gesture and pose" (New York American). But no one suggested that the epithet that has adorned, in small black letters, so many billboards, should be one tittle altered--the epithet which inspires the most arrogant advertisement in the world.