We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing to be superior to
their pantomime. Yet he failed to appreciate the true cause of this
superiority, and he was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the
_burattini_ in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us how the principal
dancer suddenly appears, "knocks her wooden knees together, and jerking
her head about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as artificial as
we could see in the best trained of her fleshly rivals." But this
artificial smile must have been fixed and permanent on the features of
this diminutive dancer--or else the Roman-American essayist merely
imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly ease, after describing
air-circles with her toes far higher than her head and poising herself
in impossible positions, she bounds or rather flies forward with
superhuman lightness, performs feats of choreography to awaken envy in
Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, and, poising on her pointed toe
that disdains to touch the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on
nothing at all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward,
she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive your applause."
This description is unsympathetic, and it induces the surmise that the
operator of the _burattini_ at the performance described was not a
master of his art and did not know how to profit by the possibilities of
that art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why the suspended
puppet is superbly qualified to excel in ballet-dancing; that phrase is
the one which credits the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A
skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and movement and grace,
is able to imitate easily and exquisitely the most difficult feats of
the human dancer. If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended
figure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating ethereality
surpassing that attainable by any living performer. Now, this floating
ethereality is precisely the quality which gives us most pleasure when
we are spectators at the performance of a really fine ballet. It is the
supreme art of the great dancer to soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn
the stage and to abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion
possible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved it is but
fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within the control of the
manipulator of the puppet-dancers. He can make them execute feats of
levitation, achievable only by the most marvelously gifted and by the
most arduously trained of human dancers.
[Illustration: Puppets in Burma]
[Illustration: The puppet play of Master Peter (Italian)]
Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid swinging his tiny
figures aimlessly thru the air. He must limit the feats that he permits
them to accomplish to those which can be actually accomplished by human
beings, altho he can do easily what the human beings can achieve only
with more or less obvious effort, and he can impart a volatile
elasticity a little beyond the power of any human being however favored
by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a season, the sensation of the
hour, it was produced by Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a
delightful spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the felicity
of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of grossness there might be in
the play itself, or in the Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by
the single fact that all the performers were puppets. So dexterous was
the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled the wires and
strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she circled around
the stage in most bewitching fashion, and so precise and accurate was
the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive spectator could not
but feel that here at last the play of doubtful propriety had found its
only fit stage and its only proper performer. The memory of that
exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who possess it. A thing of
beauty it was; and it abides in remembrance as a joy forever. It
revealed the art of the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself
was eternally justified by that one performance of the highest technical
skill and of the utmost delicacy of taste.
If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art, almost inexecutable
by the human toes and the human legs of living dancers, are capable of
reproduction by puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the wires
and strings whereby the little figures are suspended, so also are the
dexterous feats of the juggler. One of the specialties of the sole
surviving puppet-show of this sort in the Champs-Elysees is the
performance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in turn a number
of glittering balls. The delicate balancing of the tight-rope walker,
with her frequent pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising
summersets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet can defy
the rivalry of any living executant, however skilful in the art. At the
circus we feel that the tightrope dancer might fall, whereas at the
puppet-show we know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible.
In Holden's marionette program the miniature mimicry of humanity was
carried to the utmost edge of the possible; and no item on his bill of
fare was more delectable than the series of scenes in which the
traditional Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the traditional
Policeman, and in which they joined forces in belaboring an inoffensive
donkey. As the unfortunate quadruped was also a puppet, there was no
painful strain on our sympathy.