unresponsive to the Latin charm of the Poulenc score." Her first three choreographies for Ballet Russe had been composed by Stravinsky (Renard, Mavra, Noces). Yet "Poulenc and Nijinska had taken to each other enormously..." During rehearsals, Poulenc remarked that "Nijinska is really a genius" and her choreography's "pas de deux is so beautiful that all the dancers insist on watching it. I am enchanted." Diaghilev concluded: Poulenc is enthusiastic about Bronya's (Nijinska's) choreography, and they get along excellently together. The choreography has delighted and astonished me. But then, this good woman, intemperate and antisocial as she is, does belong to the Nijinsky family.Shead (1989), p. 127 ("enormously" quote). The ballet's plot is unspecified. According to Poulenc, an atmosphere of "wantoness" prevails. Apropos of the ballet's ambiguity, Richard Buckle asks, "Have the three athletes who enter this whispering world of women just dropped in from the beach, or are they customers?...It is so delightful not to know." Les Biches was intended to be a modern "fête galante," and in some ways a commentary on Michel Fokine's ballet Les Sylphides. Nijinska took the role of the hostess of the house party. The hostess is "a lady no longer young, but very wealthy and elegant." Her guests are younger: twelve women in pink and three men dressed as athletes wearing ribbon-like sashes. Additional featured characters include La Garçonne, aka La dame en bleu, an androgynous figure sometimes described as a "page-boy"; and two women in gray dresses who appear to be a couple. The ballet has eight parts, each with a different dance music. The young guests flirt, appear to take no notice, or play dance games in a setting filled with social satire and ambiguous sexuality. The hostess, dressed in yellow, brandishes a cigarette holder as if posing for an advertisement. Balanchine comments that she seems driven to remain in motion, her hands, her desperate dance: she is unable to image herself alone and still. Nijinska "was 'powerful' and 'strange,' a dancer 'intoxicated with rhythm, ... racing against the most breathless 'prestos' of the orchestra." In this role of the yellow-clad hostess, Nijinska flew round the stage, performing amazing contortions of her body, beating her feet, sliding backwards and forwards, screwing her face into an abandoned attitude on the sofa. She danced as the mood took her and was brilliant.Baer (1986), p. 40. According to her daughter Irina, "Nijinska would drink a