MODERN DANCING AND DANCERS
[Illustration: CARMENCITA
AFTER A PAINTING BY JOHN S. SARGENT]
MODERN DANCING
AND DANCERS
BY
J. E. CRAWFORD FLITCH, M.A.
AUTHOR OF “MEDITERRANEAN MOODS”
[Illustration: colophon]
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND MANY
IN BLACK AND WHITE
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
MDCCCCXII
PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LTD.
BEAVERHALL ROAD, EDINBURGH
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
CHAPTER
I. THE ANCIENT AND MODERN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE DANCE 15
II. THE RISE OF THE BALLET 27
III. THE HEYDAY OF THE BALLET 39
IV. THE DECLINE OF THE BALLET 57
V. THE SKIRT DANCE 71
VI. THE SERPENTINE DANCE 81
VII. THE HIGH KICKERS 91
VIII. THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL DANCING 103
IX. THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN BALLET 123
X. THE REPERTORY OF THE RUSSIAN BALLET 137
XI. THE RUSSIAN DANCERS 153
XII. THE ENGLISH BALLET 173
XIII. ORIENTAL AND SPANISH DANCING 189
XIV. THE REVIVAL OF THE MORRIS DANCE 203
XV. THE FUTURE OF THE DANCE 215
INDEX 225
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
CARMENCITA, after a painting by John Sargent _Frontispiece_
DANSEUSES EN SCÈNE, from a painting by Degas _To face page_ 66
ISADORA DUNCAN “ “ 106
MAUD ALLAN, from a photograph “ “ 112
DANSE ORIENTALE, after a design by Léon Bakst “ “ 132
ANNA PAVLOVA, from a painting by John Lavery “ “ 160
ADELINE GENÉE, from a photograph “ “ 178
RUTH ST DENIS, in a Nautch Dance “ “ 192
IN BLACK AND WHITE
MARIE TAGLIONI, as _La Sylphide_ “ “ 42
CARLOTTA GRISI, in _The Peri_ “ “ 50
FANNY CERITO, in _Ondine_ “ “ 52
KATE VAUGHAN “ “ 72
KATE VAUGHAN, in Turkish costume “ “ 74
ALICE LETHBRIDGE “ “ 76
LETTY LIND, in a Skirt Dance “ “ 78
LETTY LIND “ “ 84
CONNIE GILCHRIST (The Gold Girl), from a painting by
Whistler “ “ 92
REGINA BADET, première danseuse of the Paris Opera “ “ 98
ISADORA DUNCAN “ “ 108
MAUD ALLAN, in _The Vision of Salomé_ “ “ 114
MAUD ALLAN, in Chopin’s Funeral March “ “ 118
THE RUSSIAN BALLET, an undress rehearsal “ “ 126
TROUHANOWA, in an Oriental ballet “ “ 130
WASLAW NIJINSKY, in _Le Pavillon d’Armide_ “ “ 138
LEONTIEV and LEPOUKHAVA, in _Le Carnaval_ “ “ 140
KARSAVINA and NIJINSKY, in _Le Spectre de la Rose_ “ “ 142
LES SYLPHIDES “ “ 144
SERAPHIMA ASTAFIEVA, as _Cleopatra_ “ “ 146
WASLAW NIJINSKY, in _Scheherazade_ “ “ 154
TAMAR KARSAVINA, in _Scheherazade_ “ “ 156
ANNA PAVLOVA “ “ 158
PAVLOVA and MORDKIN “ “ 162
PAVLOVA and MORDKIN, in Russian costume “ “ 164
MADEMOISELLE SCHMOLZ “ “ 166
MIKAIL MORDKIN, in _The Arrow Dance_ “ “ 168
LYDIA KYASHT “ “ 170
LYDIA KYASHT, in _Sylvia_ “ “ 174
ALEXANDRA BALASHOVA “ “ 176
ADELINE GENÉE “ “ 180
ADELINE GENÉE, in _A Dream of Butterflies and Roses_ “ “ 182
PHYLLIS BEDELLS, in _Sylvia_ “ “ 184
BEATRICE COLLIER and FRED FARREN, in _La Danse
des Apaches_ “ “ 186
RUTH ST DENIS “ “ 190
LEONORA, as a Spanish dancer “ “ 194
LA OTERO “ “ 196
LA GUERRERO “ “ 198
MORRIS DANCE: BEAN-SETTING “ “ 206
MIKAIL MORDKIN, in _The Cymbal Dance_ “ “ 216
INTRODUCTION
It is not unlikely that when the art historian of the future comes to
treat of the artistic activity of the first decade of the twentieth
century, he will remark as one of its most notable accomplishments a
renaissance of the art of the Dance.
That this renaissance is an accomplished fact, is a matter of common
knowledge. Within a relatively short period there have appeared several
great dancers, who must necessarily have been preparing themselves for a
considerable time previously to their appearance, yet as it were in
secret, without cognisance of one another, with a common aim, but
without a common plan. Contemporaries in time, they have been as far
removed in space as the East is from the West. In all movements which
touch the spirit, this circumstance of the simultaneous but independent
manifestation of a common impulse is at once the most general and the
most unaccountable. The still small voice whispers into space and those
of a delicate hearing hear and respond. We content ourselves by
repeating the explanation, which is no explanation, that the movement is
“in the air.”
It follows, therefore, that he who sets out to relate adequately the
story of the Dance in recent years should have qualified himself by
being present at many different points, almost at one and the same time,
ready to take account of its various exhibitions. Criticism of the Dance
makes severer demands, at any rate physically, than criticism of
literature. Dancers, even the most peripatetic, do not circulate with
the same freedom as philosophers and novelists. Mahomet must always go
to the mountain. It is true that all the roads of modern art lead to
Paris, and some are continued as far as London. But the critic, even if
he lies in wait at either of these centres, cannot always count on
catching the bird of passage on the wing. To the quality of ubiquity I
make no claim. And I may as well confess now as never that I saw Russia
only when it came to Covent Garden. For the omission in this book,
therefore, of a description of the performances of certain dancers, I
have no better excuse to offer than the fact that I have never seen
them. Silence in many cases must be taken to mean not my ignoring of
their art, but my ignorance of it. I think I may claim, however, that
the names that are omitted will be found to be famous rather on account
of some personal quality in the dancer than on account of her influence
on the development of the Dance.
There are other peculiar difficulties which beset the critic of the
Dance. I do not refer to the difficulty of passing judgment upon a
fugitive art that leaves nothing behind it but an echo of applause, for
with the dancers of the past I have little concern. There is the
difficulty of discriminating between the executant and the composer--a
difficulty greater in dancing than in music, since the dancer is more
than an executant of the art, she is herself the medium of it. In the
popular eye she has in fact always quite eclipsed the choregrapher.
Criticism is in doubt as to the measure of her share in the creation of
the design--an uncertainty that cannot be resolved by any reference to a
score. Further, it is in continual danger of being misled by the glamour
of personal qualities--physical beauty, for example--which are strictly
extraneous to the art. (Taglioni, it should be remembered, was probably
the plainest as well as the greatest of dancers.) In no art, therefore,
is personal prejudice established so readily or on grounds of such
doubtful artistic validity.
The Dance enjoys no immunity from the clash of schools. Indeed,
partisanship is the more bitter as principles of criticism are less
determined. The respective upholders of the school of the ballet and of
the natural or classical style of dancing are barely on speaking terms.
To the advocates of the old school the new classical dancer is little
better than a freak performer; to the austere classicist the
ballet-dancer is but a smiling automaton, and both agree in refusing to
recognise the skirt-dancer as a dancer at all.
To the exponents of conflicting styles I have endeavoured to do justice.
If I have failed, it is of no great moment, since criticism of the Dance
is still so inchoate that the opinion of the expert--and the
responsibilities of his office I unhesitatingly refuse--has little more
authority, except on questions of pure technique, than that of an
expression of personal preference. I care little if the reader tears to
tatters any hazardous conclusions upon which I have ventured. Such
denials I expect. Almost I welcome them. But I care much if by anything
that I have said the reader is provoked to formulate a serious criticism
of his own and to refer his judgment to the abiding principles of art.
CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENT AND MODERN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE DANCE
In latter, if not in former times, Dancing has commonly been regarded as
the little sister of the Arts.
Gracious, wayward, beguiling, it has been indulged as the amusement of a
trifling hour. It has ranked high among the amenities of life, but low
in the hierarchy of the sincere ministers of beauty. The liberal arts
have looked askance at its intrusion into their company. Dignity,
seriousness of intention, fitness to express grave emotion, power to
touch the heights and depths of the spirit have been denied to it. It
has suffered the disdain which is the habitual attitude of grown men
towards whatever appears to them to savour of the capricious and the
childish. Charm, of course, has been granted it--the butterfly charm of
triviality.
It has been discussed earnestly only to be condemned. Little mercy has
the moralist ever shown to the art of the dance, but he has at least
done it this much justice--he has taken it seriously. To the puritan of
all times all the arts have been more or less suspect, but with regard
to dancing he has never had any doubts at all. He has damned it with
bell, book and candle. Indeed the logic of his own argument has left him
no alternative. For dancing is the life of the senses burning with its
most flamelike intensity. The appeal of all the arts is by their very
nature sensuous, but in none is this appeal so direct and compelling as
in the dance.
Happily the warping and misconceived morality of former generations is a
thing of the past. The old opposition of sense to spirit is discredited
as a false antithesis. It has been displaced by the more handsome creed
that “all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than
flesh helps soul.” Beauty is a refiner’s fire, and the beauty that
enters in through the doorway of the senses cannot soil but only cleanse
the spirit.
Nowadays the dance has less to fear from the hostility of the moralist
than from the indifference of the artist. And perhaps the difficulty of
restoring it to its ancient and rightful rank becomes thereby greater.
It is easier to convince an angry opponent than the man who smiles
indulgently at everything you have to say and then drops quietly off to
sleep.
It is a true if unfortunate fact that the majority of people, at all
events so far as the Anglo-Saxon race is concerned, not only do not
appreciate the full beauty and meaning of dancing but show little or no
desire ever to understand it. When they do not despise it as puerile, or
actively resent it as immoral, they merely tolerate its performance as
constituting the inevitable dull portion of a pantomime or the
superfluous item in a music-hall programme. That dancing should ever
have entered deeply into the religious and artistic life of nations is
utterly inconceivable to them. To become proficient in the art for the
sake of money or even for the love of admiration does not seem to them
altogether unreasonable; but to dance as the world danced long ago, for
the love of God--well, that falls into the portion of unintelligible
ideas. Dancing has altogether ceased to play, indeed it never has
played, a rôle of any importance in their lives. It means nothing more
than paying occasionally to see the performance of some seven nights’
wonder at a prominent music-hall, or, more usually, gyrating languidly
on a beeswaxed floor to waltz time or bounding along kangaroo-like to
the swinging melody of a popular two-step.
It is not the purpose of this book to present even an outline of the
history of dancing, but in pleading for the “high seriousness” of the
Dance as art it is desirable to consider for a moment the place which it
once held in the ancient world--for this place, if I read the signs of
the times aright, it is about to hold again.
The root of dancing is one with the root of all the arts,
namely--ecstasy. Scorned as it has been by the sister arts of Music,
Painting and Sculpture, it can boast a longer lineage than theirs, for
the dance is more spontaneous than they. All the arts must needs be
founded in emotion, but the moment of passion is usually long past
before the labour of creation begins. The emotion is “recollected in
tranquillity.” But the raw material, if one may call it so, of the dance
is the human body, and all human emotion expresses itself most
spontaneously in bodily gesture. With children and simple peoples who
have never learnt that it is incorrect to display their emotions,
feeling is immediately translated into action. For a child words are
never enough to express the heart’s delight--as may be seen at any
street corner when music is in the wind. The whole body becomes a lively
instrument for joy to play upon. Joy for joy’s sake only, however, is
not yet art. “A child dancing for its own delight,” says Ruskin, “a lamb
leaping or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are
not artists. An artist is a person who has submitted to a law which it
was painful to obey, that he may bestow a delight which it is gracious
to bestow.” It is only when the emotion becomes self-conscious and seeks
to communicate itself, that it evokes the help of formal rhythm--and
where there is rhythm there is the alpha, if not the omega, of art.
This deep ecstasy out of which the dance springs, as a fountain from a
well, is not necessarily joy. Often it is the ecstasy of love--for the
dance, as Lucian said, is as old as love, the oldest of the gods. It may
be the ecstasy of worship or the ecstasy of grief. From the nature of
the emotion out of which it springs the dance takes its
character--voluptuous, solemn, bacchic, mournful, as the case may be.
Whenever the passions of primitive peoples were deeply moved, they
evolved a dance to express them. In the mystic ritual dance they found
some expression for that divine unrest, when the winds in the great
forests or the serenity of the multitudinous stars strangely stirred the
heart to a sense of the nearness of the spiritual order; when the
triumphing warriors returned after driving back the onslaught of a
hostile tribe, the sudden sense of relief from the fear of extermination
could not but find vent in the dance of victory; around the bier of the
chief, in sorrow, fear, and uncertainty, they dance the dances of death;
in joy when they stored up for another year the kindly fruits of the
earth they danced the harvest and vintage dances; and always and
everywhere was danced the eternal pantomime of love.
In a passage which is none the less illuminating if its truth is perhaps
imaginative rather than historical, Mr Max Beerbohm aptly illustrates
the spontaneity of the dance and its development out of the ecstasy of
some happy moment. “Some Thessalian vintner, say, suddenly danced for
sheer joy that the earth was so bounteous; and his fellow-vintners,
sharing his joy, danced with him; and ere the breath was spent they
remembered who it was that had given them such cause for merry-making,
and they caught leaves from the vine and twined them in their hair, and
from the fig-tree and the fir-tree they snatched branches, and waved
them this way and that, as they danced, in honour of him who was lord of
these trees and of this wondrous vine. Thereafter this dance of joy
became a custom, ever to be observed at certain periods of the year. It
took on, beneath its joyousness, a formal solemnity, it was danced
slowly around an altar of stone whereon wood and salt were
burning--burning with little flames that were pale in the sunlight.
Formal hymns were chanted around this altar. And some youth, clad in
leopard’s skin and wreathed with ivy, masqueraded as the god himself,
and spoke words appropriate to that august character.”
It was doubtless owing to its close connection with religion that the
dance in ancient times was invested with so great dignity. It was a
ceremonial before it became an amusement. Thus it is in its sacred
character that we meet with the earliest instances of it. It had its
place in the solemn rites of the Hebrew and the Egyptian. The Egyptian
dances were full of esoteric meaning. The mystical circle of dancers
round the altar interpreted the revolutions of the celestial bodies, the
music of the spheres. It is significant that the name given to the
dancing-women was _Awalim_, the wise or learned ones. Their dancing
appears to have been no less elaborately technical than it was symbolic.
From the painted records that have come down to us, it would appear that
they were not unfamiliar with many of the movements of the modern
ballet. There is little doubt that the Egyptian spectator of three or
four thousand years ago delighted in the same pirouette as may be seen
on the stage of St Petersburg and Milan to-day.
If Egypt was the seed-ground of the arts, it was in Greece that they
flowered. As we should naturally expect, it was there that the art of
rhythmic gesture achieved its most perfect expression. Thoroughly to
appreciate the curious poses of the ancient dances of India and Egypt it
would be necessary to understand the exact spiritual meaning of which
those attitudes and gestures were but the symbol. But the dances of
Greece, by their supreme beauty of movement and their power of rendering
all the gamut of human emotion, are of universal appeal. There the dance
escaped from its tutelage to religion and was made free of the kingdom
of art. It had its part in that imperishable achievement of Greece--the
revelation of the full glory and beauty of the “human form divine.” In
its turn it nourished the other arts. Greek sculpture drew no little of
its inspiration from the dance, and its admirable gestures, thus caught
in the fugitive moment and eternalised in stone, have enriched the
world’s heritage of beauty for all time.
In the Greek view, the dance was properly accompanied by music and
song--song being the speech of music and dance the gesture of song. The
three formed together a single imitative art, the aim of which was to
present a definite emotion or idea. The story is told of Sostratus
refusing to dance the dance of “Liberty” before the conqueror of his
native town. “It would not be fitting for me,” he said, “to dance the
‘liberty’ which my native town has lost.” The Greeks never regarded
dancing as a mere frivolous entertainment. From its power of affecting
the emotions, and with them the character, they attributed to it a grave
importance. In constructing his ideal republic, Plato went so far as to
advocate its regulation by the State. The action of the State, let it be
observed, was not to be a mere prohibition of degrading performances; it
was actively to foster and prescribe the best dances with a view to
elevating and perfecting the character of the citizens. Nothing could be
stranger to a modern mind than this attitude of the ancient world to the
dance; yet if it be true--and none I think will care to deny it--that
dancing determines the emotions and that the emotions of a people
determine its character, what could be more reasonable?
It is difficult to realise now to what an extent the whole life of the
ancient world was coloured by the dance. It occupied as great a part as
music, literature and the drama occupy in the life of to-day--perhaps a
greater, for whereas in Western Europe there are many who care for none
of these things, in Egypt, in Greece and in Rome, the dance touched the
life of all classes and at every point. No ceremony of importance was
conducted without dancing. It had its place in the rites of religion, at
weddings and funerals, at private feasts and at public triumphs, in
military exercises and in the theatre. It gave the theme to sculpture
and painting. It went hand in hand with music. Indeed when we think of
the ancient world we almost perforce think of it dancing. In the dance
is summed up all the grace and gaiety of that old pagan life which was
once lived on the sunlit shores of the Mediterranean, and which we are
now wistfully and painfully beginning to attempt to recapture.
It is not a little strange that the dance should have fallen from its
high estate as the handmaid of religion and hierarch of beauty to be the
doubtful amusement of the café and the music-hall. In some measure
undoubtedly its decline was due to the growing licentiousness in which
it became involved. Homer dignified it with the epithet
“irreproachable,” but in Cicero’s time it had already become so
degenerate that he could say, “No sane man dances unless he is mad.”
Sallust was even more emphatic when he told a lady of his acquaintance
that she danced with too much skill to be virtuous. The Catholic Church
at first not only tolerated but actually incorporated the dance in
Christian worship, and survivals of the ancient ritual dance exist in
the churches of Spain to this day. But as the character of the dances
became more equivocal they were condemned. Little by little the dance
fell into disrepute.
But the moralist mistakes when he supposes that the dance stands in a
different category from the other arts by reason of a special taint.
Like all the other arts it reflects the morals of the time. Among
peoples of simple faith and primitive virtue, the dance has always been
marked by a certain strict and hieratic quality. It was so among the
austere Romans of the early republic, and among the Christians of the
first centuries. When manners decay, the dance becomes decadent also. It
is not the dissoluteness of the dance that poisons the morals of the
age; it is the corruption of the age that poisons the dance. The sensual
character of so many eastern dances is the effect and not the cause of
the sensuality of the race. If the dance suffers from any general
relaxation of morality more swiftly and more disastrously than any of
the other arts, it is because it expresses the emotions with such
fidelity and emphasis. It is the most subtle and the most accurate index
of the character of a people.
The dancing that is seen on the stage of to-day, however, is never
reprehensible, and seldom even vulgar, and the fact that in former ages
of looser living the dance became contaminated does not adequately
explain the disesteem with which it appears, until recently, to have
been regarded. The true reason seems to lie in the popular belief, not
that dancing is less incorruptible, but that it is less serious than the
other arts.
This fallacy--for such I take it to be--is doubtless due in part to the
fact that when we speak of dancing we inevitably associate it with the
ball-room. The word carries with it a train of images and recollections
connected with the languorous cadence of waltz music, the perfume of
conservatories, shady corners, champagne and ices, and the premature
arrival of dawn. We can scarcely avoid thinking of it as merely the
amusement of our lighter hours. But between the dancing of the ball-room
and the dancing of art there is about as little connection as between
the snow-man that children make on a winter’s afternoon and the
sculpture of the Parthenon. The one is an amusement, more or less
graceful as the case may be, the other is an inspiration and a science.
In the dancing of a mixed company at an evening party there is as little
relation to art as there would be in an exhibition of pictures by a
group of beginners, who had not yet mastered the elementary rules of
drawing. If the performers derive any pleasure out of their respective
exhibitions, there is an end of the whole matter and an excuse for it.
It is perhaps because everybody is more or less an amateur dancer that
dancing has been lightly assumed to be a facile accomplishment which can
easily be acquired after a few lessons, and a little practice. No
misconception could be further from the truth. Probably there is no art
that necessitates more prolonged and painful study. The dancer must be
“caught young,” if she is to excel. She must spend the whole of her
youth in unremitting toil. She will be confronted with a bewilderingly
elaborate technique. A steel resolution and a kind of passion for her
calling must be hers, if she is not to flinch from the severity even of
an elementary training.
Yet if dancing demanded nothing more than physical effort and mental
application, it could not claim the seriousness of art. The dexterous
execution of a number of intricate steps has no more value than that of
any other _tour de force_. Soulless dancing has as little power to move
the spectator as the feats of a clever acrobat. There can be no great
dancing without emotion. Unless the dancer has the capacity for unusual
emotion, and is also gifted with the power of emotional expression,
which is the beginning and end of all great dancing, the performance
never rises to anything more inspiring than a dreary and unpleasing
display of mechanical accomplishment. If the dancer has nothing in her
to express, she dances in vain. Great dancing demands deep sensibility
and a subtle responsiveness to the strong rhythms of life, together with
the power of translating these emotions into beauty of bodily movement.
Dancing can be taught just as much and just as little as any other art.
The great dancer is born.
But probably the seriousness of great art has been denied to dancing
because of a common misapprehension as to what that seriousness consists
in. It is almost always assumed that the seriousness of art depends upon
its subject-matter. Serious art, it is supposed, must have a “message.”
It must be concerned with actual problems, social or religious. It must
in some way be oppressed with the burden of contemporary life. But an
art which has nothing to say, no conundrums to ask, no solutions to
offer--what claim can that have upon our serious attention?
It is forgotten that it is not the subject that makes art serious or
trivial, but the mood. There are problem pictures over which the public
wrinkles its brows that are frivolous as a picture post-card from the
point of view of art. And there are pictures of the bric-à-brac of a
room, or a table spread for a meal, that are as grave as tragedy. It all
depends upon the quality of the emotion that has gone to the making of
them. The dance expresses the most serious thing in life--that is,
ecstasy. All dull things are trivial. Art which has only the interest of
contemporary problems is ephemeral, for when the problem is solved, the
interest vanishes. The dance is the expression of the moods, and the
moods are eternal. It has its source in passion, and where there is
passion there is life at its utmost and seriousness at its highest.
In the present revival and development of the dance there is something
at once significant and hopeful. It is not perhaps too conjectural to
discern in it the hint of a reaction against one of the least agreeable
tendencies in much of present-day art. It would seem that the arts are
tending to become more and more enmeshed in contemporary affairs. They
are exchanging the artistic conscience for a social conscience. When we
ask for beauty they give us advice. Our serious novels are blue-books.
Their writers appear to have no other interest than exposing the weak
places of the social order. Drama has long since abandoned itself almost
entirely to a painstaking study of marriage and divorce, and the problem
picture we have always with us. Art has taken for its task the solution
of the query, What’s wrong with the world? It is furiously justifying
its existence by hurrying to the rescue of the politician and the social
reformer.
Into this vexed and anxious company of the arts the Dance strays a
little timidly, bringing with it the serenity and grace of a less
troubled age. It cannot produce the passport of discontent, without
which it seems doubtful whether it is entitled to be admitted. It can
contribute neither message nor criticism. It seeks not to reform us but
only to please. It recalls us to the joy of life which the other arts
had almost persuaded us to forget. It has but a single purpose--to
quicken our pulses with beauty and to renew our life with its own
untiring ecstasy.