The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-26

things-more than that, an inward shout of joy at their truthfulneSs is awakened in the beholder-by the art of Anna Pavlowa.
 The dancing of Mime. Pavlowa and the movements of which she, more than ony other single individual, has been the protagonist, has become so much q part of artistic life and has acquired so many disciples in the last fifteen years that we have forgotten the first thrill of her achievement. At it's base her technic and style are, those of the classic school. She was the greatest of the pupils of Marius PetifA. Nevertheless, a grande dame of the days when the old ballet was in flower, it would have gone hard with her in the period im- mediately to come. For she has been and survived-while constantly increas ing her popularity with the publics of Europe and America-two revolutions in the development of the dance which have taken place in as many turbulent decades.
 The first revolution was that led by Fokine and Diaghileff-a direct an-.
 
 q young girl had been taught. That revolution was gloriously consummated by the appearance Diaghileff's troupe for the first ever-memorable SaisOn Russe at the Chatelet theater in Paris in 1909, and by the wonders wrought by Fokine and his fellow-artists, among them Pavlowa and Nijinsky. It was signalized by the first performances of such chOreOgraphic masterpieces as "Scheherazade," Carnival" '"Thamar," md this form of ballet found in Pavlo- wa one of its most brilliant exemplars.
 These pallets, that fairly set the ar tistic world afire, were followed. some . half-dozen years later, by second revo- lution, more gradual and less violent than the first, and a revolution that led, with accompanying influences, to most lamentable decadence. There were in dications of it in Nijinsky's pantomimic representation of Debussy's "LApres- - midi dun Faune" and his version of, "TiH Eulenspiegel'' of 1916. This revo- lutiOn, or retrOgression, led logically t' the almost dancelcss balleS visible j. Paris last summer, in such spectacles . the pantomime that accompanied in futile and ineffective manner Stravii sky's "SNcre du printemps" and i'll oth .. CT fruitless experiments.
 Nothing is finer testimony to the in dependence and the classic yet synthe- tic character of PGvlowa's art than the fact that she saw and studied all these evolutions, took from each the things she deemed valuable for her own purposes and escaped completely their decudent tendencies. As q public dancer she has conserved the highest esthetic standards and the distinctive qualities of a beauty perculiarly per sonal and spiritual in its essence. Classicism, romanticism, studied grace, exotic fantasy, all these are in her gnmut She has embodied as TO one else cultures of many ages and of strange lands, so that even q nervous public, greedy of sensationalism and all that Pavlowa is not, has understood. She has brought closer together the art spirit not only of Russia and Europe, but of the Old and New Worlds. She will be greatly missed when she has de- parted, but her accomplishment is pres ent and will remain and bear results in many forms. In the history of art her position will be unique and as i'm mortal as that of an interpreter who cannot leave a written record behind can be, as of those who devoted all her life to things that uplift the spirit and make humanity creative and free.