have trouble with the scenery or the costumes, you can usually
disguise them and make them look entirely different by some sort of
trick lighting effect. I remember one time staging a production at the
Winter Garden. The management set a limit of $23 for each costume;
that's all they would allow. I had about sixty-four girls in that
ballet, and it was staged by Theodore Kosloff, who is now in Los
Angeles. He was formerly at the Empire Theatre in London, when I lived
in London. He couldn't speak a word of English at that time. He had to
sail for Europe before he finished staging this ballet, and he turned
the ballet over to me, with a friendly request that I personally
finish it for him, which I gladly did. He had explained what he wanted
in costumes, and the management finally ordered some costumes made at
the above price. I just wish you could have seen what came in. When
you are used to spending $150, $175, and as much as $1,500 on chorus
costumes alone you can imagine what we got for $23. When the girls put
them on I was obliged to put colored lights on them, red, blue, dark
amber, and I did finally manage to get a very beautiful effect, which
you can do if you find that your costumes are not up to the mark.
Experiment with your colors until you get the desired effect.
After we get through with our costumes and lights, we are ready to add
the orchestra. That is the last thing of all. I bring the orchestra in
for a reading rehearsal, with the composer and musical director, and
we correct whatever orchestra parts there may be wrong and smooth out
the music. We always have a special orchestra rehearsal without
scenery, without costumes, without the principals, without the lights,
without any stage hands being around, and we perfect the musical end
of the show with the orchestra and company prior to the dress
rehearsal.
Then we have the final full dress rehearsal, orchestra, stage hands,
costumes, lights, props, scenery, facial makeups, everything complete.
We make them up for the dress rehearsal thinking that they will
remember how to make up for the opening performance, but we always
find that they can't do it, and about half past four or five in the
afternoon of the opening performance we begin to make them up again.
Then we are all ready for the opening performance, and we drive them
through this at a terrific pace, not allowing anyone or anything to
_slow_ the performance up, which would be fatal.
* * * * *
When you sit in front and see a show going along prettily and
smoothly, you little think of the amount of brain work, foot work and
executive power and force that has been necessary behind the curtain
to make the performance what it is!
Does it pay?
Here is a recent newspaper clipping:
"The Kansas City Junior League Follies, recently produced for a week's
run at the Shubert Theatre, Kansas City, under the personal direction
of Mr. Ned Wayburn, resulted in a net profit to them of $13,844.00."
[Illustration: NW]
[Illustration: A PRIVATE LESSON WITH MUSIC, BEING SUPERVISED BY MR.
WAYBURN (AT WINDOW)]
PRIVATE INSTRUCTION
[Illustration]
Usually our beginner pupils at the studios enter themselves in a
class, of either one or another of the types of stage dancing that are
so popular, and proceed regularly along the lines of class
instruction.
Then, in nearly every class, there will be those who "eat up" the
work, who advance rapidly and get ahead of the others, because of
special capability or unusual capacity along the line they are
studying.
Others go along at a natural pace, developing at the average rate, and
in the end come out as well schooled as their speedier companions. For
them the regular routine of class instruction is sufficient and
effective. Their progress is safe and sane.
Still others lag. This condition is present in every walk of life, in
every school, profession, trade. Some always get behind, fail to grasp
the meaning of their teacher's talk, are deficient in initiative
ability and so may not interpret his steps in their own actions. I do
not like to think or say that any of our pupils are lazy or
indifferent; ours is no place for either laziness or indifference. But
whatever the reason, the fact persists, a certain small proportion of
nearly every class in our studios fails to advance as rapidly as their
sister mates are doing.
If this element will recognize its own shortcomings and is
sufficiently ambitious to desire to succeed, the remedy lies in the
direction of private instruction.
So, too, in the case of the fast learners, those who are really
getting ahead of the majority of their mates; they will profit
measurably by taking our private instruction.
We have special studios and special instructors for just this purpose.
Professionals come to us without solicitation, for new steps, new
tricks, or new touches to old dances, and a few private lessons here
sends them out with new stuff to please their public. The student who
has come to an impasse, who finds she is not progressing in class as
she wishes to, and the student who is very facile at her work and her
learning, and knows herself capable of going ahead more rapidly than
class routine permits--these are the two who will do well to consider
the taking of private lessons. The average pupil may well be content
with her class work if she is going along in good fashion, and for
her, private instruction is not so essential. She may wish it later on
as conditions change, but at present the ensemble instruction, with
its unison work and the gentle competitions of fellow-students doing
the same stunts, may be all that she requires.
Ask your instructor if he thinks you will best remain in class, or
take private lessons, or do both. And ask me. Both the teacher and I
will be perfectly frank with you and advise you for your own best
interest.
At the desk in the main office you will learn what hours are available
for private lessons, and you will be assigned an hour, an instructor
and a private studio, if you and I decide that you will benefit by
this course.
EXPERIENCE
[Illustration]
If I hadn't had many years of stage experience myself, I'd not be
competent to instruct any one on the subject. I am not only a teacher
of dancing, I am also a dancer, and can do all the steps as well as
tell you how to do them. My experience as a stage dancer began in a
store basement in Chicago, where I tried to imitate the best dancers I
had seen at a Variety show. I put on wooden shoes and whistled my own
clogs and jigs for hours at a time, till I brought myself by main
strength, and no personal instruction, to a point where I could
exhibit my home-made steps to a professional dancer. That is a hard
way to get experience. You are more fortunate than you may realize in
having everything that you have to do to become a dancer all worked
out systematically for you, and told you and shown you by a simple
method which anyone can learn, with perfect music and everything else
that modern science can devise to aid you.
In the old days the beginner in dancing went direct to the stage door
and stated his or her desire to become a dancer. The applicant was
sometimes accorded a tryout. If he or she appeared awkward or was slow
to catch the tempo, or not physically developed to please the eye,
that was the end of it. There was no time to waste in helping to
overcome minor defects, no personal interest shown whatever. He or she
was dismissed summarily without any advice of a helpful nature.
If the candidate exhibited qualities that recommended her or him to
the producer, he or she was given a stage training in chorus work
following a tryout. The training was obtained in rehearsals, conducted
for weeks, without compensation. The instructor might become impatient
at any evidence of slowness of comprehension or execution; he might
resent tardiness, absence, or slight infringement of stringent rules,
and in such cases dismissal was the usual penalty.
The young lady or gentleman aspiring to become a stage dancer in that
day and age paid a considerable price for the experience, as you may
readily imagine.
Contrast then with now. You are acquiring this needed preliminary
experience to fit you for a stage career in our courses under
conditions that recommend them to ladies and gentlemen. There are no
subordinates in our courses. All are equal. There is discipline, of
course. You will find discipline on the stage when you advance that
far. But discipline won't hurt you, not our kind. We ask for silence,
attention, practice, and the conduct that ladies and gentlemen
naturally observe. If you are a lady of social prominence, studying
for the grace and beauty and health that our lessons impart, and not
intending to favor the stage with your presence, you are accorded the
same treatment that all others receive. This is a pure democracy if
ever there was one.
By the old way of obtaining training and stage experience a young lady
was kept for years in a subordinate place, and if she at last worked
her way up out of the chorus into solo dancing, it was by "main
strength," a vivid personality, aggressiveness and untiring effort.
Our first and primary instruction in the courses takes the place of
the years of disappointing hard work that formerly prevailed. You are
not held down. Your personality is encouraged and developed. You have
to do your part, of course; we are not going to make stars of you if
you don't help us do it. But the experience you must have is ready and
waiting, and is based on a knowledge of things theatrical, gleaned and
gathered through a series of years of personal experience exclusively
in that field.
So much for the easier preliminary experience.
Now you have passed the portals of our studio, fitted and trained, a
solo dancer, worthy of entertaining a public who waits to pay for the
pleasure of seeing you do your turn. On the way through the courses
you have had some small samples of what an audience is like. There
have been the visitors' days when your work was on exhibition, and a
Frolic before your fellow students in our own Demi-Tasse Theatre, or
perhaps some neighborhood or church entertainments near your home.
Those have all been good experience for you.
Now, as you enter upon a professional career, you must be content with
a moderate start. I know how far you have advanced and what you may
reasonably expect to do in your first, your starting engagement. Come
to me before you commit yourself to any manager's care, if you
possibly can arrange to do so.
In a small vaudeville act you may be able to command $40 to $50 a week
as a beginner doing a specialty. You may have a year of doing three or
four shows a day on "small-time," as it is called, which is splendid
experience for you. Then you may advance to bigger time, playing two
shows a day with bigger pay, and then, having improved yourself and
your act as you go along, you are in line for the still higher grade
theatres, where your work will get the eye of some production manager
who will offer you a really worthwhile engagement in a production, as
a Broadway show is called.
You cannot become a star in three or four months. It is only the
foolish ones who dream of such a possibility. It takes time and
experience to get on at a big time house like the Palace Theatre in
New York City, which is recognized as Broadway's best showroom for the
vaudeville artist. Look at the history of the stars you know. Evelyn
Law worked four years before she reached her present Broadway fame.
Ann Pennington has been working fifteen years, Fred and Adele Astaire
nearly fourteen years--and I can name all the stars on Broadway and
tell you exactly how long it took them to reach the pinnacle of their
present success. So expect for yourself a moderate position on the
start until experience has developed you and the public learned to
like you, and then your advancement should be rapid and easy.
Do you know that as the result of my years of experience I originated
all the solo and ensemble dances taught in my courses? Because of the
same experience I conceive and create all of the novelties, settings,
costumes, ideas and theatrical effects that are used in all the
productions, professional and amateur, that I stage. There is no other
school that can duplicate our service, since there is no other
producing director of any standing in the theatrical world connected
with such an organization as mine.
You are invited to benefit by my experience in every way. It is a part
of your education here that you are not asked to pay for. I tender it
freely to all who become members of my family of pupils. Not only are
you dancing routines of my own constructing, and listening or reading
at times to my class room talks on subjects bearing oh stage-craft and
showmanship, but also you are earnestly invited to consult with me
about your personal ambitions and desires.
[Illustration: MARION DAVIES]
I have literally helped thousands of good girls and boys to make
millions of dollars for themselves, in the aggregate, and have brought
a lot of happy hours to many million people who have willingly paid
their good money to see my pupils in their perfect work on the stage.
Profit by my experience; let me help you with my knowledge. This will
make your experience easier for you, and the more quickly fit you for
the lofty position that a perfectly worthy ambition prompts you to
seek.
[Illustration: NW]
INSPIRATION
[Illustration]
When you present yourself as a pupil it is to be inferred that you are
already inspired with a desire to become a dancer of the first
quality. That is good and as it should be. Without inspiration no one
has ever accomplished anything worth while in any line of endeavor.
Stage dancing is never a matter of luck or breeding; it is the direct
result of hard work under competent instruction, with your being
inspired to bring forth the very best that is in you.
All of us here at the Ned Wayburn Studios are inspired with a desire
to create a career for you, if you desire one. Whether we succeed in
our endeavor or not depends upon you. We will do our part faithfully,
earnestly and joyfully, and furnish you such an opportunity as no
other generation of aspirants for stage honors and success ever
possessed. Our courses themselves, as well as our scientific method of
developing you, are really inspiring to the new student with the
primary inspiration of desiring a successful, honorable and profitable
career.
As you approach the studio building from Broadway you note that its
appearance is attractive. It is new, clean, impressive; and on the
large second and third floor main windows, and on the Broadway and
60th Street corner windows, you note the signs, the lettering that
stands out, to tell you that you have arrived at the haven of your
dreams and hopes.
You step off Broadway and enter the corridor of the studio building
through the main entrance on 60th Street, where elevators await you,
to convey you the single flight up to the second floor, and you step
directly into our main business office. Here is found further
inspiration, for stage dancing is here treated as a business and in a
business-like way, and our business office indicates that fact to the
newcomer at the very first glance.
The prospective pupil approaches the long counter. She is greeted by
Mrs. Wayburn, who acts as hostess, or chaperon, or it may be by some
other principal or employee, whose business it is to welcome and greet
the new arrivals who come to us daily. Your introduction of yourself
is followed naturally by your questions as to this or that which you
wish to know about our terms and methods, to confirm your own
understanding of the matter. These are answered fully and courteously.
Our greeters welcome your inquiries. Ask us just what you want to
know, and their response will be politely given. Anyone behind the
counter thoroughly understands dancing.
Are you from out of the city, and do you wish to be directed to a
suitable hotel, boarding house, studio apartment or private residence
for your domicile while here? We have a list of desirable and
investigated places to suit all purses and all needs, and are glad to
pass the information on to our students.
Your questions being answered to your satisfaction, you decide to
enroll. The booking secretary invites you behind the counter, where an
enrollment card and contract is made out and signed. This contract
stipulates the number of lessons you are to receive and the kind of
stage dancing you are to take. You take the work just as I have
personally laid it out in the courses. The matter of tuition is
arranged, and you, as one of us, are invited to accompany a guide to
the various classrooms, studios, offices and other departments of the
two large floors--and absorb inspiration for your future work from
what you observe in the way of modern facilities and actual
instruction being given to live classes.
There is nothing more inspiring to the new pupil than to see our
various dancing classes in action. In fact, a view of our classes in
progress of work is inspiring to anyone, professional or
non-professional. The girls do their class work with a vim and snap
that betokens their interest and their intention to make good. They
are a smiling happy lot of young ladies that it does one good to look
at. Especially is this true of the advanced classes; the beginners'
classes are busy learning the A, B, C's of dancing, and these
rudiments are absorbing. But to watch the beginners today, and then
see the same pupils a few weeks later as they advance in ease of
movement and in a completer understanding of their work, is most
inspiring of all--inspiring to you who see them and to the progressing
pupils themselves. If it were possible or practical to let the public
in to look at our classes at work, our present large quarters would
soon prove inadequate to give foot room to the great number of
inspired ladies who would wish to enroll here and join in the
gayeties. There is contagion in watching our best students at their
"play."
Our new pupil is escorted also into my private office, there to be
welcomed by me personally. A large and richly furnished room is this,
its walls decorated with photographs of stage stars of universal fame
who have been developed by me, and incidentally helped up the ladder
of fame. Here is inspiration on every hand.
In her progress through the two floors of the studios our newcomer is
absorbing inspiration continually. To enumerate some of the features
that make an impression on her receptive mind as she proceeds from
room to room:
There is the Call Board in the main office. Now in the theatre the
Call Board is an established institution, placed handily to the stage
door and inspected daily by all members of the company for such
information as the management wishes to impart. Our Call Board serves
a similar purpose, and we encourage its daily perusal by all the
students. We post thereon press notices that our graduates send us of
their own success as reported in the newspapers; also notices of my
own producing activities in many cities; the date of the next makeup
classes; information of every nature that concerns the studio or its
clientele.
There is the Grand Ball Room, the most complete room for its purpose
that was ever constructed; its floors clear-maple, its walls
full-length mammoth mirrors; its windows large, its ventilation
perfect and easily regulated; its double rows of practice bars; its
clocks regulated and wound electrically by the Western Union Telegraph
Co. every hour, striking to announce the opening and closing of the
class instruction.
In this Grand Ball Room, the large Ballet studio, the various
classroom and private instruction and rehearsal studios, the
gymnasium, and especially in the Demi-Tasse Theatre, which is a
corporate part of our studios,--in all these there is accumulated a
fund of inspiration that suffices to start the new student with a
hopeful and expectant spirit of future accomplishment that is a prime
essential to her success.
On the day in which instruction is to start, the pupil returns to the
studio and is assigned to a dressing room. Here she finds expert maid
service, the maids being on continuous duty during all instruction
periods. She is accommodated with a locker, if one is required, with
her individual key. She is introduced to the row of modern shower
baths, and finds accompanying them every form of up-to-date sanitary
appliances and fixtures. She is now "at home," a full-fledged member
of the "happy family," and her education in her chosen art is about to
commence.
She takes her seat in her first classroom. She finds herself
surrounded by a number of other young ladies who, like her, have come
here imbued with the laudable ambition to advance their interests in
health, beauty, accomplishment of grace, and to fit themselves for an
independent and lucrative career, not one of whom is any more advanced
than she is. Her inspiration is furthered by this contact with those
who are to become her fellow classmates. She takes note of the heavy
felt floor-pads beneath her feet, the practice bars along the wall,
etc., and is thus assured that every care is being taken here for her
security from harm as well as for her comfort and advancement.
Her instructor, she finds, is a professional dancer of wide stage
experience, who knows every one of the actual steps he is teaching,
for he executes them before her, aiding her eyes by a living example,
while he at the same time informs her understanding by telling her
what each step and motion is and why it is done. His every word and
action is inspirational. She feels now that she is on the highroad to
success.
Presently, I enter the room and proceed to organize the class for
service, following which I address them on matters concerned with
their courses, seeking to instill into each prospective star an
ambition to reach out for perfection. And from this hour the
inspiration is enhanced with each new day's progress.
As I often say, in one of my class talks, "Inspiration plus
perspiration equals one good dancer."
[Illustration: CHARLOTTE GREENWOOD]
ATMOSPHERE
Atmosphere is something that one feels but cannot see. Atmosphere on
the stage is created by means of stage settings, costumes, electrical
lighting effects, music, orchestration, and certain stage decorations
as properties, all combined into one complete whole.
[Illustration]
Every attitude of the body that one assumes in front of an audience on
the stage creates a certain dramatic atmosphere. Every gesture, every
expression of the face, every move of the body aids to create
atmosphere. Characteristic attitudes of the body, characteristic
walks, characteristic dancing also creates atmosphere. In order that a
solo and an ensemble dance may get over with an audience it must have
atmosphere. This atmosphere must be figured out in a scientific way.
It requires unusual creative faculties to produce anything original or
atmospheric in the way of a solo or ensemble dance for the stage
today. No novice without experience can properly create perfect
atmosphere, for it requires a thorough knowledge of stage-craft and
showmanship, as well as of stage dancing and the technique of the
stage, to create an atmosphere in which a solo or ensemble dance, or a
song number will live. Without atmosphere the dance becomes all
perspiration and no sense. There must be a definite idea behind a
dance or underneath it. Everything must be done to embellish the theme
or general idea. No idea must be overproduced; just enough must be
done in the way of creating atmosphere for a dance to allow it to get
over properly. In other words, it must be fully realized and produced
properly, in a skillful, artistic way.