Diaghileff was just then giving a new production of Le Sacre du Printemps at the Théatre des Champs- Elysées. / Nijinsky’s absence- he had been interned for some years – and the impossibility of remembering his overburdened, complicated, and confused choreography, gave us the idea of re-creating it in a more living form, and the work was entrusted to Léonide Massine. / The young ballet master accomplished his task with unquestionable talent. / He certainly put order and understanding into his dance compositions. There were even moments of great beauty in the group movements when the plastic expression was in perfect accord with the music, and, above all, in the sacrificial dance so brilliantly executed by Lydia Sokolova that it still lives in the memory of everyone who saw it. I must say, however, that, notwithstanding its striking qualities and the fact that the new production flowed out of the music and was not, as the first had been, imposed on it, Massine’s composition had in places something forced and artificial about it. / This defect frequently arises, as choreographers are fond of cutting up a rhythmic episode of the music into fragments, of working up each fragment separately, and then sticking the fragments together. By reason of this dissection, the choreographic line, which should coincide with that of the music, rarely does so, and the results are deplorable; the choreographer can never by such methods obtain a plastic rendering of the musical phrase. In putting together these small units (choreographical bars) he obtains, it is true, a total which agrees with the length of a given musical fragment, but he achieves nothing more, and the music is not adequately represented by a mere addition sum, but demands from choreography an organic equivalent of its own proportions. Moreover, this procedure on the part of the choreographer reacts unfavorably on the music itself, preventing the listener from recognizing the musical fragment choreographed. I speak from experience, because my music has frequently suffered from this deplorable method. << less