Hoffman’s Russian Dancers (1911) [Fig. 1.22] and Bacchanale Russe (1912) [Fig. 1.24] seek to
capture the movement, spirit, and exuberance of Pavlova’s “Autumn Bacchanale.” Although she
based these works on Pavlova and Mordkin’s performance, Hoffman did not attempt to recreate
the dancers’ features. Instead, she focused on a problem that would occupy her for several decades:
how to portray movement in a static medium. Hoffman wrote in her autobiography: “…I believed I
could catch something and I was burning to try and wanted to show Pavlova and Mordkin running
together; I wanted to show that new kind of freedom in the dance.”
29 To tackle this problem she
hired models to recreate the dancer’s poses, and she enrolled in anatomy classes and made a
number of anatomical drawings of limbs in dance positions.30 Hoffman wrote of her work to her
sister Helen: “I have never had such a difficult problem—it’s awful—I pray I may never be seized
with the desire to fit two flying creatures together in wax again. If you could see the antics that go
on trying to get my two models to take the pose together!”