SCIENCE AND DANCING
THERE is at the present day in this country a real and most happy
revival of interest in the great art of dancing as exhibited on the
stage. We owe this to the creative ability of the musical composers
and directors of the Russian Imperial Ballet, as well as to the
highly-trained and gifted Russian artists who have visited this
country, and especially to the poetical genius of Madame Anna Pavlova.
Though dancing may seem, on first thought, a subject remote from
science, yet, like all other human developments, it is a matter for
scientific investigation, and one upon which science can throw much
light. What is the origin and essential nature of "dancing"? Do animals
dance? What is its early history in mankind? What is its relation not
merely historically, but from the point of view of psychology--the
study of the mind--to other arts? What is its real "value" and possible
achievement?
To dance is to trip with measured steps, and, whilst primarily
referring to human movement, the word is secondarily applied to
rapid rhythmic movements even of inanimate objects. Rhythm is what
distinguishes dancing from ordinary movement of progression or from
simple gesture or mere antics. Dancing on the part of man or animal
implies a sense of rhythm. Though not common amongst animals, it is
exhibited by many birds, by spiders, and by some crustaceans! Rhythm is
an essential feature of the sequence of sounds which we call "music."
The singing of birds is related to their perception of and pleasure
in rhythm, and it is not, therefore, surprising that they should also
dance. It is, however, curious that the birds which "dance" are not
the "singing birds," and that there are many birds which neither sing
nor dance. The dancing of birds is usually part of the "display" of
the males for the purpose of attracting the females at the breeding
season. It is well known in some African cranes, as well as in rails
and other similar birds, and may be witnessed at the Zoological Gardens
in London. Other birds "strut" rather than dance, whilst displaying
their plumage, as, for instance, the turkey and pheasant tribe and
the bustards. Parrots and cockatoos will often make a rhythmical
up-and-down movement of the neck in time to music, but usually the
"dance" is the accompaniment of definite emotion. The male spider of
some species courts the female by making dancing movements and posing
itself in a very curious way, so as to display a spot of bright colour
on the head to her observation. The same kind of movement and action
has been observed in marine shrimp-like creatures. Some spiders are
excited and made to dance by the vibrating note of a tuning-fork set
going near them. I once had the chance to observe a male octopus in
the aquarium at Naples, who was displaying himself to the female,
changing colour rapidly from one shade to another, and rolling his
long sucker-bearing arms in the form of spirals. Probably one should
not consider this as a "dance," since no rhythmic interruption or
succession of movements was observable.
It is established that in mankind, as well as many animals, when in a
state of emotion, movement and gesture, as well as the vocal utterance,
take on a rhythmic character, that is to say, become a dance and a
song. The emotion is not necessarily that of amorous passion; in
mankind it is frequently of a warlike or religious character, and is
worked up by the sympathy, imitativeness, and desire for unison in
expression which is common in troops or large gatherings of animals of
social habits. Man presents a more advanced development in variety,
sensitiveness, and abandonment to social or combined action and
expression than do other animals, and this is equally true of the more
civilized and of the more barbarous races. Apparently in obedience to
the same tendencies as those which convert simple forms of movement
into a rhythmic dance, the speech of man, under conditions of emotion,
assumes a rhythmic form, so that dancing bears the same relation to
the ordinary movements of locomotion and gesture which verse does to
ordinary speech, or, again, which song bears to mere exclamations
and cries, indicative of feeling. Dancing is the universal and most
primitive expression of that sense of rhythm which is a widely
distributed attribute of the nervous system in animals generally. In
primitive men it is a simple but often very violent demonstration of
strong emotion, such as social joy, religious exaltation, martial
ardour, or amatory passion. The voice and the facial muscles, as
well as those of the limbs and body, are affected, and the dancers
derive an intense pleasure from the excitement, which so far from
exhausting them leads them on to more and more violent rhythmic or
undulatory action. In its purest form this ecstatic condition is seen
in the spinning dervishes. It was developed into the mad and dangerous
festivals of the worshippers of Bacchus and other deities in ancient
Greece. It has been seen in mediaeval Europe as the dancing mania and
tarantism. The liability to this and similar forms of "mania" lurks
beneath the surface among populations which are nevertheless staid
and phlegmatic in their usual behaviour. The Romans in ancient times
recognized its unhealthy character, and though fond of ceremonial
dances and theatrical shows, and even of the performances of dancing
girls from Greece and the East, disapproved of dancing on the part of
a Roman citizen. Cicero says, "As a rule no one, who is not drunk,
dances--unless he is, temporarily, out of his mind."
Although the mad performances of bacchanalians and dervishes are
recognized as unhealthy, civilized peoples in Europe since the
fifteenth century have developed and practised dancing as an art
in two directions--first, as a popular amusement in which definite
combinations of graceful movements are performed for the sake of the
pleasure which the exercise affords to the dancer and to the spectator,
and secondly, as carefully trained movements which are meant by the
dancer vividly to represent the actions and passions of other people,
and are exhibited by specially skilled performers on a stage. The first
kind is what we call "country dances," "popular dances," also "Court
and ball-room dances," and has been commended by the philosopher Locke
and other writers as a valuable training for both mind and body, and by
physicians as a health-giving exercise. The second is "the ballet."
In the dances of savages and primitive peoples, some kind of music is
always found associated with dancing, the one helping and developing
the other; they are descendants of one parentage. Very commonly, too,
some kind of "acting"--the representation of a hunt, a fight, or a love
adventure--is an important feature of such dancing. Modern popular and
Court dances are intimately connected with and dependent on special
music, the rhythm and variation of time and strength in which is, as it
were, illustrated by the dancing, and serves to guide it and to keep
the dancers in unison. The signification behind all such modern dancing
is courtship--the addresses of the man to the woman, and her elusive
reception or rejection of them. In the Cathedral of Seville, however,
you may still see, at the festival of the Corpus Christi, a religious
dance, a dance of worship and adoration, performed by acolytes in front
of the high altar. In the early days of the Church such ritual dancing,
by both old and young, was a regular thing, as it was in the still
earlier religious ceremonies of the ancient Romans and in the time of
King David.
The development of dancing as a fine art has only been rendered
possible by the establishment, under the patronage of various European
princes, of great exhibitions of dancing, called "ballets," and the
creation of a profession of dancers, who, like professional actors
and musicians, devote their lives to the study of their art and the
training necessary for efficiency in its practice. In this, its highest
development, dancing, whilst maintaining its dominance, is entirely
dependent on the aid of music, and becomes blended with the art of
the actor and pantomimist. As in "opera" the effect of the musical
art is enhanced by the meaning of the words sung, by the acting of
the performers, and by the accessories of scenery and costume, so in
the ballet do all these factors, except the human voice, contribute
to the artistic result. The latest development of the ballet is, in
fact, "grand opera," without a voice, without words. Gesture, facial
expression, and movement of the limbs, marvellous for its grace and
directness of appeal, take the place of words. In fact, dance, the
appeal to the eye, takes the place of verse, the appeal to the ear. And
it is a fact, unexpected and astonishing to those new to it, that the
same quality of "poetic imagination" which distinguishes "word-poems"
from mere doggerel or commonplace verse, can also inspire the great
dancer and give to a wordless dance the unmistakable value of poetical
art, distinguishing it from purely acrobatic or barbaric capering. It
is a fact that poetic imagination may be conveyed in one kind of art
as in another, and that dancing, though greatly limited in its range
of detailed expression, yet is closely similar in its forms to music,
verse, and to glyptic and pictorial art, of all of which it is the
parent and forerunner. Its primitive character is no less remarkable
than the readiness with which it exerts its charm and develops new
importance at the present day.
Regarded as a fine art, and not merely as a pastime, dancing has
frequently great beauty in its simple quality of the rhythmic movement
of decorative form and colour. The dances depicted on Greek vases had
this character, and so, with varying degree of merit, have the ballets
common during the last fifty years in London and other great centres.
But before this period the makers of ballets (a word originally
signifying to dance, to sing, to rejoice, and representing three modern
words--ballet, ball, and ballad) did not aim at a mere exhibition of
living rhythmic decoration, but at the production of a theatrical
performance in which a story is told only by gesture and dancing
accompanied by music. The real modern founder and exponent of the
ballet as thus understood was Noverre, a Frenchman (called by Garrick
"the Shakespeare of the dance"), who died in 1810. He brought to a
high degree of perfection the art of presenting a story by pantomime,
and he never allowed dancing which was not the direct expression of a
particular attitude of mind. His professed effort was to introduce the
steps and poses of ancient Greek dancing shown in sculpture and painted
pottery--as _the_ model for stage dancing. And he succeeded. The great
dancers of the past who are known to us by tradition--Vestris, Camargo
in the eighteenth, and Cerito, Grisi, and Taglioni in the earlier
half of the nineteenth century--were not merely perfectly trained as
dancers, but were actors, and possessed poetic imagination. Women did
not appear in the ballet until the time of Louis XIV, and Mlle. Camargo
was the first to wear the conventional short stiff ballet skirt.
"Convention" has a great weight in such matters. But it seems to be
undeniable that the conventional ballet-skirt conceals the beautiful
movement of the leg on the hip joint, a disadvantage from which
the male dancer does not suffer. Skirts are, in fact, out of place
in really fine dancing. Flowing light drapery, or better still the
Circassian jacket and full gauzy trousers fastened at the ankles, are
the only possible dress for a really great _danseuse_.
The dramatic ballet or _ballet d'action_ lasted until the end of the
fifties in London, and then ceased almost suddenly to occupy the
leading position which it once held at the Opera House. In London, as
in Paris and Vienna, it was transformed into a mere spectacular display
of costume and meaningless rhythmic drill. The dramatic ballet ceased
to exist. The great tradition of fine stage-dancing and ballet-drama
was, however, preserved in Russia. It is not easy to explain, but the
fact is that two peoples so far apart as the Russians and the Spaniards
are more devoted to dancing than any other European nationalities.
Successive Tsars have spent large sums in maintaining colleges in St.
Petersburg and in Moscow, where boys and girls are lodged and carefully
educated whilst they are trained from the age of ten years in the art
of stage-dancing. The greatest musical composers have been encouraged
to write "ballets," and the ablest designers and "producers" have been
secured by large salaries. Something like £80,000 a year is spent by
the Tsar on the maintenance and development of this beautiful art,
which is dead elsewhere, but seems to fit the genius of the Russian
people. A new respect for Russia, a profound admiration for the Russian
artists, has been the result of the revelation of the Russian ballet by
the recent visits of its members to this country.
During the last thirty years of its period of nurture and development
in Russia the ballet has developed in two directions. Neither of these
are popular and successful in Russia, where the old traditional and
established ballet of the early nineteenth century--what may be called
"academic" dancing--is alone in demand. What we call "the Russian
ballet" is dramatic in nature, and includes such wonderful combinations
of music, scenery, costume, and perfect artistic expression by dancing
and gesture as we have seen in Scheherazade, Cleopatra, Prince Igorre,
Tamar, and Petrouschka. It promises in its latest development to
supplant the musical drama known as "opera," in which the human voice
is used. But the most striking development is that in which dancing
appears as the exponent of lyrical poetry. It is to the teaching of
Isadora Duncan that the Russian dancers admit their indebtedness for
this new departure. When undertaken by untrained dancers and amateurs
(even by the innovator herself) the attempt to interpret lyrical
subjects showed some ingenuity in conception, but failed to command
general appreciation, as the efforts of a painter or an actor, who has
not acquired command of the material of his art, also fail. But when
Anna Pavlova brought her lifelong training as a dancer and her poetic
imagination to the interpretation of masterpieces of music inspired by
such subjects as "Night," "The Dying Rose," "The Wounded Swan," and
the moonlight mystery of "Les Sylphides," a new and most poignant form
of emotional expression became apparent. A single figure moving over
the stage with expressive steps and gestures of the arms, with lips
and eyes guided and controlled by consummate art, blended itself with
and interpreted to the spectator the poetic thought of a great musical
composer and a great writer. This new development of the dancer's art
may remain with us. But it requires the presence of one who combines
the rare gifts possessed by Madame Pavlova--perfect technique and
poetic sympathy.
Many people derive a definite part of the pleasure given to them by
an orchestral concert from the contemplation of the movements of the
instrumentalists and the directive interpreting gestures of a great
"conductor." Others would prefer the orchestra and its leader to be
unseen; they find special delight in hearing great music surge and
float from no visible source through the dimly-lit aisles of a vast
cathedral. They do not desire their eyes to be called in aid of music
unless the appeal to vision is complete and worthy of the theme. It
is, I think, undeniable that Dr. Richter and my friend Sir Henry Wood,
whose expressive backs and persuasive hands are so dear to concert
audiences, are a kind of dwindled ballet dancers, connected by the
drum-major of the military band and the dancing "choragus" with the
primeval phase of the arts when music and dancing were inseparable.