The Daily Valdemar No. 37: April 18

Valdemar Andersen, full-page for the satirical magazine Klods-Hans, May 31, 1908.

Today's moment of calm is about grappling with poetry not understood.

Anna Pavlova visited Copenhagen in 1908 along with 26 dancers of the Mariinsky Theatre. The critique painted a harsh picture of this "large tropical bird like a flamingo", describing the plasticity of her long arms and tall legs forming willowing curves. The critics were well versed in ballet, only Copenhagen is the home of the Bournonville ballet tradition, which is the diametrical opposition to that of the Russians. The Bournonville tradition is dainty filigree, where the Russians will expose the grandeur and height of every jump.

The visit was a call from modernity with excellence of speed and technique and the shattering of an aesthetic, although the illusion could be kept up a little while yet, while Valdemar Andersen portrayed Anna Pavlova to those, who had not been there in person to see what the tattle was all about. 

For that reason she is breaking with the Vitruvian Man reaching beyond all borders. Yet... while her arms are too long for the picture plane she is nowhere near being an overgrown bird. Her hands breaking with the frame take the eye directly along the line of her arm extending into her long neck with her head the farthest from us. She sees to that all focus stays on her with the deep shadowing of her eyes of modernity with which Valdemar points to that this indeed is a the woman of the world.