The night ‘incomparable’ Pavlova wafted into town

CAPE Town – its balletomanes, at any rate – doubtless felt quite heady at the end of December 1925 when none other than the “incomparable” Anna Pavlova appeared on the local stage.

Such was the effect of the appearance of the renowned performer at the Opera House, who “wafted on to the stage like a wisp of thistledown in the wind”.

She was, an Argus critic wrote, “the dancer out of a Degas canvas”. Here is that report. December 30, 1925, Pavlova still the incomparable – dancing that held Cape Town in a spell

Now that Pavlova and her corps de ballet have displayed something of the real art of expressionism in music, we are likely to see a revolution in the art of dancing in South Africa. Within three minutes of the curtain going up on Pavlova’s first appearance, a shattering blow had been dealt to those terrible toe-pointing exercises which in this country are still regarded as an art.

The Opera House was crowded with a thoroughly enthusiastic and wonderfully appreciative audience. There came the great moment when Pavlova was wafted on to the stage like a wisp of thistledown in the wind. Yet in that wisp of thistledown was inherent the whole art and expression of dancing.

Pavlova’s delicacy, her superb grace, the exquisite manner in which she seems positively to float into the air, claims for her the true mean- ing of that much-abused word – incomparable. To glimpse the white foam of her ballet skirts out of which dart two legs and feet which would enrapture a sculptor is to realise that Pavlova is still the great dancer that the world has acclaimed for years.

Pavlova is a true cosmopolitan. Russian she may be, but her dancing was French – the French style which sweated Delibes and other composers into such prolific scoring. Pavlova represents that school of Russians who have flirted with French art and expression for so long.

It is only lately that Russian artists, writers and dancers have dared to be thoroughly Russian. Karsavina, Lopokova and other members of the Diaghilev ballet have emphasised their own virile national style of dancing.

Pavlova clings to the French style, its grace, its pose and, above all, its delicious artificialities. She is the dancer out of a Degas canvas.