character he is representing. Their expression should be
strictly conformable to his subject. The eye especially should
speak. Thence it is that the Italian custom of dancing with
uncovered faces, cannot but be more advantageous than that of
dancing masked, as is commonly done in France; when the passions
can never be so well represented as by the changes of
expression, which the dancer should throw into his countenance.
And it is by these changes of countenance, as well as of
attitude and gesture, that the dancer can express the gradations
of the passions; whereas the painter is confined intirely to one
passion, that of the particular moment in which he will have
chosen to draw a character. For example, a painter, who means to
represent a country-maid, under the influence of the passion of
love, can only aim at expressing some particular degree of that
passion, suitable to the circumstances of the rest of his
picture, or to the situation in which he shall have placed her.
But a dancer may successively represent all the gradations of
love; such as surprize at first sight, admiration, timidity,
perplexity, agitation, languor, desire, ardor, eagerness,
impatience, tumultous transports, with all the external simptoms
of that passion. All these may be executed in the most lively
manner, in time and cadence, to a correspondent music or
simphany. And so of all the other passions, whether of fear,
revenge, joy, hatred, which have all their subdivisions
expressible, by the quick shift and succession of steps,
gestures, attitudes, and looks, respectively adapted to each
gradation.
A mask then cannot but hide a great part of the necessary
expression, or justness of action. It can only be favorable to
those who have contracted ill habits of grimacing or of
contortions of the face while they perform.
There are however some characters in which a mask is even
necessary: but then great care should be taken to model and fit
it as exactly as possible to the face, as well as to have it
perfectly natural to the character represented. The French are
particularly, and not without reason, curious in this point.
The female dancers have naturally a greater ease of expression
than the men. More pliable in their limbs, with more sensibility
in the delicacy of their frame; all their motions and actions
are more tenderly pathetic, more interesting than in our sex. We
are besides prepossessed in their favor, and less disposed to
remark or cavil at their faults. While on the other hand, that
so natural desire they have of pleasing, independently of their
profession, makes them studiously avoid any motion or gesture
that might be disagreeable, and consequently any contortion of
the face. They, instinctively then, one may say, make a point of
the most graceful expression.
A woman, who should only depend on the exertion of strength in
her legs or limbs, without attention to expression, would
possess but a very defective talent. Such an one might surprize
the public, by the masculine vigor of her springs; but should
she attempt to execute a dance, where tender expressions are
requisite, she would certainly fail of pleasing.
The female dancers have also an advantage over the men, in that
the petticoat can conceal many defects in their execution; even,
if the indulgence due to that amiable sex, did not only make
great allowances, but give to the least agreeable steps in them,
the power of obtaining applause.
At the Italian theatres at Rome, in the Carnaval, where the
female dancers are not suffered to perform the dances, and where
the parts of the women are perform'd by men in the dresses of
women, it appears plainly, how much the execution suffers by
this expedient. However well they may be disguised, there is an
inherent clumsiness in them, which it is impossible for them to
shake off, so as to represent with justness the sprightly graces
and delicacy of the female sex. The very idea of seeing men
effeminated by such a dress, invincibly disgusts. An effeminate
man appears even worse than a masculine woman.
But however the consulting a looking-glass gives to men, in
general, the air of fops or coxcombs; it is to those who would
make a figure in dancing a point of necessity. A glass is to
them, what reflexion is to a thinking person; it serves to make
them acquainted with their defects, and to correct them. To
practice then before it is even recommendable, that practice
will give the advantage of expertness, and expertness will give
the grace of ease, which is invaluable; nothing being such an
enemy to the graces as stiffness or affectation. This is a
general rule both for composition and performance.
Education has doubtless a great share in giving early to the
body a command of graceful positions, especially for the grand
and serious dances, which, as I have before observed, are the
principal grounds of the art. And once more, the great point is
not to stick at mediocrity; but to aim at an excellence in the
art, that may give at least the best chance for not being
confounded with the croud. If it is true, that, among the
talents, those which are calculated for pleasing, are not those
that are the least sure of encouragement; it is also equally
true, that for any dependence to be had on them, it is something
more than an ordinary degree of merit in them that is required.
In support of this admonition, I am here tempted to enliven this
essay with the narrative of an adventure in real life, that may
serve to break the too long a line of an attempt at instruction.
A celebrated female dancer in Italy, designing to perform at a
certain capital, wrote to her correspondent there to provide her
an apartment suitable to the genteel figure which she had always
made in life. On her arrival, her acquaintance seeing she had
brought nothing with her, but her own person and two servants,
asked her when she expected her baggage. She answered, with a
smile, "If you will come to-morrow morning and breakfast with
me, you, and whoever you will bring with you, shall see it, and
I promise you it is worth your while seeing, being a sort of
merchandize that is very much in fashion."
Curiosity carried a number early to the rendezvous, where, after
an elegant breakfast, she got up, and danced before them in a
most surprizingly charming manner.
"These, said she, (pointing at her legs,) are all the baggage I
have left; the Alps have swallowed up all the rest." The truth
was, she had been really robbed of her baggage in her journey,
and the merchandize on which she now depended, was her talent at
dancing. Nor was she deceived, for her inimitable performance,
joined to the vivacity with which she bore her misfortunes, in
the spirit of the old Philosopher, who valued himself upon
carrying his all about him, made her many friends, whose
generous compassion soon enabled her to appear in her former
state.
As to the composition of dances, it is impossible for a
professor of this art, to make any figure without a competent
stock of original ideas, reducible into practice. A dance should
be a kind of regular dramatic poem to be executed by dancing, in
a manner so clear, as to give to the understanding of the
spectator no trouble in making out the meaning of the whole, or
of any part of it. All ambiguity being as great a fault of stile
in such compositions, as in writing. It is even harder to be
repaired; for a false expression in the motions, gestures, or
looks, may confuse and bewilder the spectator so as that he will
not easily recover the clue or thread of the fable intended to
be represented.
Clearness then is one of the principal points of merit which the
composer should have in view; if the effect, resulting from the
choice and disposition of the ground-work of his drama, does
honor to his inventiveness or taste; the justness, with which
every character is to be performed, is not less essential to the
success of his production, when carried into execution.
To be well assured of this, it cannot but be necessary that the
composer of the dance or ballet-master, should be himself a good
performer, or at least understand the grounds of his art.
He must also, in his composition, be pre-assured of all the
necessaries for their complete execution. Otherwise decorations
either deficient or not well adapted; an insufficient number of
performers, or their being bad ones; or, in short, the fault of
a manager, who, through a misplaced economy, would not allow the
requisite expences; all these, or any of these, might ruin the
composition, and the composer might, after taking all imaginable
pains to please, find his labor abortive, and himself condemned
for what he could not help. There is no exhibiting with success
any entertainment of this sort without having all the necessary
performers and accompaniments. It will be in a great measure
perfect or imperfect in proportion as they are supplied or
withheld.
A good ballet-master must especially have regard to both
poetical and picturesque invention; his aim being to unite both
those arts under one exhibition. The poetical part of the
composition being necessary to furnish a well-composed piece
that shall begin with a clear exposition, and proceed unfolding
itself to the conclusion, in situations well chosen, and well
expressed. The picturesque part is also highly essential for the
formation of the steps, attitudes, gestures, looks, grouping the
performers, and planning their evolutions; all for the greatest
and justest effect.
He should himself be thoroughly struck with his initial idea,
which will lead him to the second, and so on methodically until
the whole is concluded, without having recourse to a method
justly exploded by the best masters, that of choregraphy or
noting dances, which only serves to obstruct and infrigidate the
fire of composition. When he shall have finished his
composition, he may then coolly review it, and make what
disposition and arrangement of the parts shall appear the best
to him. Every interruption is to be avoided, in those moments,
when the imagination is at its highest pitch of inventing and
projecting. There are few artists who have not, at times,
experienced in themselves a more than ordinary disposition or
aptitude, for this operation of the mind; and it is these
critical moments, which may otherwise be irretrievable, they
ought particularly to improve, with as little diversion from
them as possible. They should pursue a thought, or a hint of a
thought, from its first crudity to its utmost maturity.
A man of true genius in any of the imitative arts, and there is
not one that has a juster claim to that title than the art of
dancing, sensible that nature is the varied and abundant spring
of all objects of imitation, considers her and all her effects
with a far different eye from those who have no intention of
availing themselves of the matter she furnishes for observation.
He will discover essential differences between objects, where a
superficial beholder sees nothing but sameness; and in his
imitation he will so well know how to render those differences
discernible, that in the composition of his dance, the most
trite subject will assume the air of novelty with the grace of
variety.
There is nothing disgusts so much as repetitions of the same
thing; and a composer of dances will avoid them as studiously as
painters do in their pieces, or writers tautology.
The public complains, with great reason, that dances are
frequently void of action, which is the fault of the performers
not giving themselves the trouble to study just ones: satisfied
with the more mechanical part of dancing, they never think of
connecting the part of the actor with it, which however is
indispensably necessary to give to their performance, spirit,
and animation.
A dance without meaning is a very insipid botch. The subject of
the composition should always be strictly connected to the
dances, so as that they should be in equal correspondence to one
another. And, where a dance is expletively introduced in the
intervals of the acts, the subject of it should have, at least,
some affinity to the piece. A long custom has made the want of
this attention pass unnoticed. It is surely an absurd and an
unnatural patchwork, between the acts of a deep tragedy, to
bring on, abruptly by way of diversion, a comic dance. By this
contrast both entertainments are hurt; the abruptness of the
transition is intolerable to the audience; and the thread,
especially of the tragic fable, is unpleasingly broken. The
spectators cannot bear to be so suddenly tossed from the serious
to the mirthful, and from the mirthful to the serious. In short,
such an heterogeneous adulteration has all the absurdity
reproached to the motley mixture in tragi-comedy, without any
thing of that connection which is preserved in that kind of
justly exploded dramatic composition. How easy too to avoid this
defect, by adapting the subjects of the dances to the different
exigences of the different dramas, whether serious, comic, or
farcical!
One great source of this disorder, is probably the managers
considering dances in nothing better than in the light of merely
a mechanical execution for the amusement of the eye, and
incapable of speaking to the mind. And in this mistake they are
certainly justifiable by the great degeneracy of this art, from
the pitch of perfection to which it was antiently carried, and
to which the encouragement of the public could not fail to
restore it. The managers would then see their interest too
clearly in consulting the greater pleasure of the public, not to
afford to this art, the requisite cultivation and means of
improvement.
The composer, who must even have something of the poet in him;
the musician, the painter, the mechanic, are essentially
necessary to the contribution of their respective arts, towards
the harmony and perfection of composition, in a fine dramatic
dance; even the dresses are no inconsiderable part of the
entertainment. The _costume_, or in a more general term,
propriety, should have the direction of them. It is not
magnificence, that is the great point, but their being well
assorted to character and circumstances. The French are
notoriously faulty in over-dressing their characters, and in
making them fine and showy, where their simplicity would be
their greatest ornament. I do not mean a simplicity that should
have any thing mean, low or indifferent in it; but, for example,
in rural characters, the simplicity of nature, if I may use the
expression, in her holy-day-cloaths.
As to the decorations and machines especially, I know of no
place where there is less excuse for their being deficient in
them than in London, where they are too manifestly, to bear any
suspicion of flattery in the attributing it to them, executed to
a perfection that is not known in any other part of Europe. The
quickness with which the shifts and deceptions in the pantomime
entertainments are performed here, have been attempted in many
other parts; but the persons there employed, not having the same
skill and depth in mechanics as the artists here, cannot come up
to them in this point. And it is in this point precisely that a
composer of dances may be furnished with great assistence in the
effects from the theatrical illusion. And in an entertainment,
where by an established tacit agreement between the audience and
performers, there is such a latitude of introducing superhuman
personages, either of the heathen deities, or of fairy-hood,
inchanters, and the like, those transformations and deceptions
of the sight are even in the order of natural consequences, from
the pre-supposed and allowed power of such characters to operate
them. At the same time the rules of probability must even there
be observed. Nor is it amiss to be very sparing and reserved in
the composition of those dances, grounded on the introduction of
purely imaginary beings, such as the allegorical impersonation
of the moral Beings, whether the Virtues or the Vices. Unless
the invention is very interesting indeed, the characters
distinctly marked, and the application very just and obvious;
their effect is rarely answerable to expectation, especially on
the audiences of this country. The taste here for those airy
ideal characters is not very high, and perhaps not the worse for
not being so.
Among the many losses which this art has sustained, one surely,
not the least regrettable, even for our theatres, was that of
the dances in armour, practised by the Greeks, which they used
by way of diversion and of _exercise_ for invigorating their
bodies. Sometimes they had only bucklers and javelins in their
hands: but, on certain occasions they performed in panoply, or
complete suits of armour. Strengthened by their daily and
various manly exercises, they were enabled to execute these
dances, with a surprising exactness and dexterity. The martial
simphony that accompanied them, was performed by a numerous band
of music; for the clash of their arms being so loud, would else
have drowned the tune or airs of the musicians. It is impossible
to imagine a more sublime, splendid and picturesque sight than
what these dances afforded, in the brilliancy of their arms, and
the variety of their evolutions; while the delight they took in
it, inspired them with as much martial fire, as if they had been
actually going to meet the enemy. And indeed this diversion was
so much of the nature of the military exercise, that none could
be admitted who were not thoroughly expert in all martial
training. In time of peace, this kind of dance was considered as
even necessary to keep up that suppleness and athletic
disposition of body, to bear action and fatigue, essential to
the military profession. If the practice had been neglected, but
for a few days, they observed a numbness insensibly diffuse
itself over the whole body. They were persuaded then that the
best way of preserving their health, and fitness for action, and
consequently to qualify them for the most heroic enterprizes,
was to keep up this kind of exercise, in the form of diversion.
These martial dances, have, in some operas of Italy, been
attempted to be imitated, with some degree of success: but as
the performers had not been trained up to such an exercise, like
the Greeks, it was not to be expected that the representation
should have the same perfection, or color of life.
The composition of the music, and the suiting the airs to the
intended execution of a dance, is a point of which it is scarce
needful to insist on the importance, from its being so obvious
and so well known. Nothing can produce a more disagreeable
discordance than a performer's dancing out of time. And here it
may be observed, how much lies upon a dancer, in his being at
once obliged to adapt his motions exactly to the music and to
the character: which forms a double incumbence, neither point of
which he can neglect, without falling into unpardonable errors.
Where dances are well composed, they may give a picture, to the
life, of the manners and genius of each nation and each age, in
conformity to the subject respectively chosen. But then the
truth of the _costume_, and of natural and historical
representation must be strictly preserved. Objects must be
neither exagerated beyond probability, nor diminished so as not
to please or affect. A real genius will not be affraid of
striking out of the common paths, and, sensible that
inventiveness is a merit, he will create new theatrical
subjects, or produce varied combinations of old ones. And where
the decorations, or requisite accompaniments are not supplied as
he could wish, he must endeavour to make the most of what he can
get, towards the exhibition of his production; if not with all
the advantage of which it is susceptible, at least with all
those he can procure for it. Where the best cannot be obtained,
he must be content with the least bad. But especially a composer
of dances should never lose sight of his duty in preserving to
his art its power of competition, as well as its affinity with
the other imitative arts, in the expression of nature; all the
passions and sentiments being manifestly to be marked by motion,
gestures, and attitudes, to the time of a correspondent and well
adapted music. While all this aided and set off, by the
accompaniments of proper decorations of painting, and, where
necessary, of machinery, makes that, a well composed dance, may
very justly be deemed a small poem, thrown into the most lively
action imaginable; into an action so expressive as not to need
the aid of words, for conveying its meaning; but to make the
want of them rather a pleasure than matter of regret; from its
exercising, without fatiguing, the mind of the spectator, to
which it can never be but an agreeable entertainment, to have
something left for its own making out, always provided that
there be no perplexing difficulty or ambiguity. Nothing of which
is impossible to an artist who has the talent of making a right
choice among the most pleasing objects of nature; of
sufficiently feeling what he aims at expressing; of knowing how
far it is allowable for his art, to proceed towards the
embellishing nature, and where it should stop to avoid its
becoming an impertinence; and especially of agreeably disposing
his subject, in the most neat and intelligible manner that can
be desired.
Some
THOUGHTS
On the UTILITY of
LEARNING TO DANCE,
And Especially upon the
MINUET.
Was I, in quality of a dancing-master, to offer even the
strongest reasons of inducement to learn this art, they could
not but justly lose much, if not all, of their weight, from my
supposed interest in the offering them; besides the partiality
every artist has for his art.
It would however exceed the bounds prescribed to modesty itself,
were I to neglect availing myself of the authority of others,
who were not only far from being professors of this art, but who
hold the highest rank in the public opinion for solidity of
understanding, and purity of morals, and who yet did not disdain
to give their opinion in favor of an art only imagined
frivolous, for want of considering it in a just and inlarged
view.
After this introduction, I need not be ashamed of quoting Mr.
Locke, in his judicious treatise of education.
"Nothing (says he) appears to me to give children so much
becoming confidence and behaviour, and so to raise them to
the conversation of those above their age, as dancing.
I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are
capable of learning it; for though this consists only in
outward gracefulness of motion, yet, I know not how, it
gives children manly thoughts and carriage more than any
thing."
In another place, he says,
"Dancing being that which gives graceful motions to all our
lives, and above all things, manliness, and a becoming
confidence to young children, I think it cannot be learned
too early, after they are once capable of it. But you must
be sure to have a good master, that knows and can teach what
is graceful and becoming, and what gives a freedom and
easiness to all the motions of the body. One that teaches
not this, is worse than none at all; natural awkwardness
being much better than apish affected postures: and I think
it much more passable, to put off the hat, and make a leg
like an honest country-gentleman, than like an ill-fashioned
dancing-master. For as for the jigging, and the figures of
dance, I count that little or nothing better than as it
tends to perfect graceful carriage."
The Chevalier De Ramsay, author of Cyrus's travels, in his plan
of education for a young Prince, has (page 14.) the following
passage to this purpose.
"To the study of poetry, should be joined that of the three
arts of imitation. The antients represented the passions, by
gests, colors and sounds. Xenophon tells us of some
wonderful effects of the Grecian dances, and how they moved
and expressed the passions. We have now lost the perfection
of that art; all that remains, is only what is necessary to
give a handsome action and airs to a young gentleman. This
ought not to be neglected, because upon the external figure
and appearance, depends often the regard we have to the
internal qualities of the mind. A graceful behaviour, in the
house of Lords or Commons, commands the attention of a whole
assembly."