Transcribing in full for the first time my interview with Muriel Stuart from 1981.
About her time spent dancing with Pavlova and her troupe–
Pavlova was “the first Russian that I have ever known who was interested in what was happening in dance. When we were in Germany, she took us to see Wigman’s school. I was present in this room which was completely orange, not much bigger than this, really. They were all dressed in black: covered from head to foot. And they danced without music. They danced to gongs, not any more musical than that, but he varied the tempo.
“We stayed there about an hour and a half. Pavlova was tremendously interested. Most of the English girls in the company with me thought it was the most horrible thing they had ever seen. They didn’t realize how great in a way this was, producing something entirely different that we had never seen before. And Pavlova said to one of the girls, a very good technician, but very stiff–she got her leg up here, she was the Lilac Fairy, but Pavlova never felt she had any sense of movement. ‘This is where you should come. . . . Unfortunately life is too short. It’s too late.'”