ORIENTAL AND SPANISH DANCING
It does not require a very minute observation to discover that peoples
are distinguished not only by their speech, but by their habitual
movements and attitudes. Every country has its special unspoken idiom of
gesture, which sometimes differs in different parts of the same country
as perceptibly as the spoken dialect. This characteristic gesture is the
foundation of every national dance, which does but elaborate and adorn
it.
The composers of the Russian ballets have achieved novel and interesting
effects by using this racial attitude as the basis for the scheme of
some of their dances. In _Cléopâtre_ they have adopted the attitude of
the ancient Egyptians, or rather those attitudes which are depicted on
the pottery and frescoes of the old Egyptian civilisation. Whether these
attitudes were ever really typical of the attitudes of the people is at
least questionable. It is quite as likely that they were an artistic
convention of the time, due to the naïve conceptions of the draughtsman.
But there can be no doubt that ancient Egypt had a characteristic
alphabet of gesture, as individual as that of ancient Greece, although
probably it has been exaggerated in the designs on the figured monuments
by the faultiness of the perspective. This circumstance, however, does
not render it any the less serviceable as an element of design in the
dance. In _Scheherazade_, again, Nijinsky’s dance is based upon the
abrupt, angular, almost apish movements of the negro.
With Italians gesticulation so inevitably accompanies speech that it is
not surprising that the ballet should have been originated and
perfected, at all events so far as its pantomime is concerned, in Italy.
Of course, as a people becomes more intellectual, and learns to express
all the nuances of thought by means of language alone, it relies less
upon the elucidation of gesture. Anglo-Saxons are naturally schooled in
reserve and seek to avoid any betrayal of the emotions by physical
expression. The national gesture nevertheless exists and finds its
embodiment in the national dance, the Morris. America can scarcely be
said to have any national dance, unless it be the cake walk, which is
plainly stamped with all the ungainliness of negro movement. But
American vaudeville artists--I am thinking of some who have danced this
year in London--seem almost unconsciously to have seized upon the
American gesture and realised it in their dances. Naturally they have
distorted it; they have given it the immoderate energy of American life,
the exaggeration of American wit, and the sensationalism of American
advertisement. Who knows but that they will end by giving America its
national dance!
The lines of bodily movement in the West are radically different from
those of the East. The quality of action in the West is energy and
abruptness; it tends to express itself in angles rather than in curves.
The gesture of the East moves with the lethargy, the subtlety,
interrupted by sudden bursts of violence, that are characteristic of the
Eastern temper. Nothing could be less suitable to the tranquillity and
torpor of the East than the swift and intricate dances of more bracing
climes. It may be affirmed as a rough generalisation that Western
dancing gives the greater importance to the feet, Eastern dancing to the
body. In many of the most characteristic Oriental dances, the body
revolves around its own axis, as it were, while the legs remain
stationary. Equally with the motions of the body, the Eastern dance has
made extraordinary use of the motions of the hands and arms. It has
found an invaluable auxiliary in the extreme refinement of the Eastern
woman’s hands, which always seem so infinitely more expressive than the
passive oval mask of her face. For me the eternal, the essential gesture
of the East is symbolised in the movement of a woman’s hand that I saw
through the iron grating of a koubba on the edge of the Sahara--for
where the Arab is, there is the East. The woman herself I did not see,
for she was
[Illustration: RUTH ST DENIS]
crouching upon the floor against the tomb. But her whole body could not
have expressed her character more revealingly than her hand, with its
fingers stained at the tips with henna to a bright orange colour and as
astonishingly slender as those of a Madonna in a primitive Italian
painting. I think I should scarcely be believed if I tried to tell how
much there was of resignation, how much of a refined voluptuousness, in
its delicate gesture.
Eastern dances, performed by really skilled Eastern dancers, have not
yet been seen upon the European stage. Of course the Ouled-Nails and the
hired _almées_ of the Algerian cafés introduced the _danse du ventre_ to
Paris at the time of the first Exhibition. It would be easy to dismiss
this dance with contempt if one had not seen it danced with a certain
barbaric sincerity, far away from the atmosphere of cigarettes and
liqueurs of the cafés of Biskra and Tunis. After all, a dance is very
much like the Spanish inn of the olden days--you find in it principally
what you bring to it. And so acute an observer as Lady Duff Gordon found
in the _danse du ventre_ an intensity that gave it a kind of dignity. “I
could not call it voluptuous,” she says, “any more than Racine’s
_Phèdre_; it is Venus ‘tout entière à sa proie attachée,’ and to me it
seemed tragic. It is far more realistic than the fandango and far less
coquettish, because the thing represented is _au grand sérieux_, not
travestied, _gazé_, or played with.”
But the dancing of the East, or rather of India in particular, has found
a very skilled translator in a dancer of American origin, Miss Ruth St
Denis. I believe it is true that Miss St Denis has never actually been
in India, but she has mixed freely with Indians; she has studied their
art, their religions, their character, she has penetrated into the
spirit of the people as far as it is possible for a Westerner to do so.
She has, in fact, caught the gesture of the East. Her dancing has for
the most part a religious and symbolic character--for it should be
remembered that, besides the dances founded upon the passions, the East
has evolved a whole range of dances illustrative of philosophical ideas.
Buddhism has carried the symbolism of the body to an extraordinary
degree of refinement. The locking and unfolding of the feet, the
uplifting of the arms and the hands, even the very curves of the
fingers, have all their esoteric meaning. The system of symbolism has so
penetrated the actions of the dance that not infrequently the sequence
and shades of the dancer’s movements are unintelligible to an
uninstructed eye. Thus the slow dance movements which Hindus contemplate
with delight for hours, though they may appear drearily monotonous to
the European, are full of instruction to the initiated. The ritual of
the dance is almost as intimately connected with Buddhism as the simpler
ritual of the altar with Catholicism. The wealthier temples possess
trained bands of dancers, a sort of vestal virgins, known as Devadassis,
the slaves of the god. They have the happy and pious custom of dancing
twice daily before the images of the gods, once in propitiation of their
own sins, once in intercession for the sins of the world. It is the
posturing of the Devadassi, rather than the dancing of the more
voluptuous Bayadère, that Miss Ruth Denis has sought to reproduce.
In her physical qualities, Miss St Denis is well fitted to represent the
type of the East. While her beauty has much of the allure of sex, it has
also that childish character which seems peculiar to the women of the
East. Her figure is exquisitely slender and her arms are as supple, her
hands as refined, as those of a Hindu. The way was prepared for her to a
certain extent by the success which Miss Isadora Duncan had already
achieved, and when she gave a series of fashionable matinées in New York
in 1906, previous to her descent upon Europe, her recognition was
immediate.
When she appeared at the Scala Theatre in London in 1908, Miss Ruth St
Denis was accompanied by half-a-dozen natives, who supplied a note of
human colour to the pictures of the street, the palace and the temple,
which formed the background of her dances. In most of the scenes, the
mystic atmosphere was assisted by the subdued light, the odour of
incense and the native melodies embodied in the striking music of Herr
Walter Meyrowitz. Her performances took the form of brief acts,
illustrative of native life.
The Cobra Dance was, strictly speaking, not a dance at all, for it was
performed in sitting, crouching or kneeling postures. The dancer
appeared in the rôle of a snake-charmer, and throwing off
[Illustration: RUTH ST. DENIS
FROM A DESIGN BY PAUL REITH IN _Jugend_ (MUNICH)]
her mantle revealed her arms clasped over either shoulder, like two
coiling snakes. On the first and fourth fingers of each hand two
enormous emeralds gleamed like serpents’ eyes. The arms slowly unwound
and with a curiously sinuous motion began to writhe about her body. They
twined, coiled, fought and darted with lightning flashes in all
directions, simulating the movements of the reptile with astonishing
fidelity. It was a marvellous exercise in the flexibility of the arms.
The Dance of the Spirit of Incense was set in a scene representing the
women’s quarter of an Indian house. The dancer entered bearing aloft a
bowl of smoking incense. With solemn, hierophantic gestures she kindled
the two censers that were placed on either side of the stage, and, as
the smoke curled upwards, she danced gravely and slowly, all the motions
of her body subtly responding to the rhythm of the wreathing smoke and
flowing so imperceptibly one into another that they seemed less a
sequence of separate movements than a single continuous thrill passing
from the feet to the finger-tips.
But it was in the Nautch and the Temple Dances that Miss St Denis really
established her claim to rank as a dancer of the first order. Clad in a
dress of vivid green spangled with gold, her wrists and ankles encased
in chattering silver bands, surrounded by the swirling curves of a gauze
veil, the dancer passed from the first slow languorous movements into a
vertiginous whirl of passionate delirium. Alluring in every gesture, for
once she threw asceticism to the winds, and yet she succeeded in
maintaining throughout that difficult distinction between the voluptuous
and the lascivious. The mystic Dance of the Five Senses was a more
artificial performance and only in one passage kindled into the passion
of the Nautch. As the goddess Radha, she is dimly seen seated
cross-legged behind the fretted doors of her shrine. The priests of the
temple beat gongs before the idol and lay their offerings at her feet.
Then the doors open, and Radha descends from her pedestal to suffer the
temptation of the five senses. The fascination of each sense, suggested
by a concrete object, is shown forth in the series of dances. Jewels
represent the desire of the sight, of the hearing the music of bells,
of the smell the scent of flowers, of the taste wine, and the sense of
touch is fired by a kiss. Her dancing was inspired by that intensity of
sensuous delight which is refined to its furthest limit probably only in
the women of the East. She rightly chose to illustrate the delicacy of
the perceptions not by abandon but by restraint. The dance of touch, in
which every bend of the arms and of the body described the yearning for
the unattainable, was more freely imaginative in treatment. And in the
dance of taste there was one triumphant passage, when, having drained
the wine-cup to the dregs, she burst into a dionysiac nautch, which
raged ever more wildly until she fell prostrate under the maddening
influence of the god of wine. Then by the expression of limbs and
features showing that the gratification of the senses leads to remorse
and despair, and that only in renunciation can the soul realise the
attainment of peace, she returns to her shrine and the doors close upon
the seated image, resigned and motionless. So she affirmed in choice and
explicit gesture the creed of the Buddha.
The art of Miss St Denis is not free from adventitious elements. It is
too much concerned with the expression of ideas to give itself up wholly
to the creation of beauty. It is symbolic, but not in the large,
suggestive way in which Isadora Duncan’s dancing is symbolic; the
symbolism is somewhat limited, artificial and literal. Her dancing,
moreover, with some exceptions, tends to be static, an affair of
postures and poses, and in some cases these postures are more learned
than beautiful. Miss Denis is an imitative rather than a creative
artist--that is to say, she attempts to interpret the East with both
fidelity to the letter and the spirit, rather than to use its gestures
freely, with the bold grasp of an artist, as elements of design. Her
treatment of the East is in direct opposition to that of the creators of
_Scheherazade_, who have been reckless of accuracy of detail, who have
sought only for the materials to build up a gorgeous pattern, and have
passed every concrete fact through the fire of a transforming artistic
imagination. If, as has been said, the art of the future lies in a West
that is conscious of the East, the recognition of the East will be in
the manner of Monsieur Fokine rather than in that of Miss St Denis.
Nevertheless, Miss Ruth
[Illustration: LEONORA
AS A SPANISH DANCER
_Photograph: Dover Street Studios, Ltd._]
St Denis duly ranks as one of the most cultured dancers of the time,
and, in her special sphere, certainly the most learned. Her dancing is
penetrated with the finest spirit of Indian art in much the same way in
which Isadora Duncan’s is imbued with the art of Greece. She has
explored a new tract of the vast country which Miss Duncan opened up,
and by interpreting the art of the East she has perceptibly broadened
the scope of dancing in the West.
Probably those who are trying to revive the Classical Dance would
succeed in getting closer to its spirit if they were to add to their
study of the figures on ancient vases and frescoes an observation of the
living Spanish dance of to-day. The gesture of a people has a more
ancient and unchanging history than its speech, and it is unquestionable
that much of the gesture of the ancient world has been preserved among
the Spanish people, who still retain something of the inner spirit as
well as of the outward circumstances of the ancient civilisation. Many
of the poses found in the Greek figurines are essentially those of
Spanish women; the play of the arms and hands, the sideward movement,
the extreme backward extension of the head and body, are movements
common both to the Greek and the Spanish dance. The castanet, which is
invariably associated with Spanish dancing, was also used in Greece. The
dancing that persists in Spain is almost certainly of a kind that was
once common all round the shores of the Mediterranean. It has of course
been modified by an Oriental influence, but it possessed its special
characteristics long before the coming of the Moors. In the early days
of the Roman Empire the dancers of Cadiz created a furore in Rome
comparable to that which the Russians have aroused in the Paris and
London of to-day.
Spanish dancing has been made familiar to French and English audiences
by several dancers of repute, of whom the best known are Carmencita,
Otero, Guerrero and Tortajada. There are some kinds of dancing, however,
which are untranslatable into the terms of the art of other countries.
The Spanish dance is intensely national. The snapping of the castanets,
the short and insolent skirt, the exciting rhythm of the music, do not
alone suffice for the performance of the _jota_ or the _fandango_, as
some foreign artists would appear to suppose; nor even when the dancer
has caught the trick of the swaying of the hips, the lightning of the
eyes, the arched back and provocative gestures, has she caught the
spirit of the dance. She must first transform herself into a Spaniard.
The Spanish dance depends almost wholly on personality; and not on the
personality of the dancer alone, for it is one of those dances which
seem to require an indefinable “rapport” between the dancer and the
spectator. Mr Havelock Ellis has drawn attention to this feature in an
interesting passage in “The Soul of Spain.” One of the characteristics
of Spanish dancing, he says, “lies in its accompaniments, and
particularly in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators
are themselves performers. In flamenco dancing, among an audience of the
people, every one takes a part by rhythmic clapping and stamping, and by
the occasional prolonged ‘olés’ and other cries by which the dancer is
encouraged or applauded. Thus the dance is not the spectacle for the
amusement of a languid and passive public, as with us. It is rather the
visible embodiment of an emotion in which every spectator himself takes
an active and helpful part; it is, as it were, a vision evoked by the
spectators themselves and upborne on the continuous waves of rhythmical
sound which they generate. Thus it is that at the end of a dance an
absolute silence often falls, with no sound of applause: the relation of
performer and public has ceased to exist. So personal is this dancing
that it may be said that an intimate association with the spectators is
necessary for its full manifestation. The finest Spanish dancing is at
once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent or
unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be transplanted
but remains local.”
The success of La Carmencita was primarily due to this free play of
personality which the Spanish dance permits. Mr John Sargent’s picture,
by which she will always be known to posterity, admirably displays the
bold carriage, the somewhat defiant attitude, the suggestion of
suppressed fire, which are characteristic of her type. As a dancer pure
and simple, she was surpassed by many who never attained her wide
reputation. She had gone through
[Illustration: LA OTERO
_Photograph: W. & D. Downey_]
no inexorable training. She never pretended to any brilliancy of
execution that was beyond her powers. Her manner was simple and
unaffected. Without making any very strenuous efforts she glided through
a few simple movements that showed off to perfection her supple and
well-proportioned figure. She achieved fame less by the technique of her
dancing than by her character, her allure, the distinction of her
intriguing and exotic personality.
La Tortajada is a figure well known both in London and in America. Her
style is not representative of the purest type of Spanish dancing, as it
is apt to be infected with the atmosphere of the music-hall. Her
personality, moreover, is far less interesting than that of La
Carmencita. She was born in Granada, and her aim is to bring the warmth
and colour of the sun of meridional Spain into her dancing--to dance, in
fact, as she expressed it, “la danse ensoleillée.”
“America,” she says in a naïve account of her career, “has fêted me and
showered dollars on me by the handful. Millionaires in particular have
given me a great ‘réclame,’ among them Pierpont Morgan, Astor and
Vanderbilt. The latter gave me a thousand dollars to dance one Christmas
Day. Another American, Mr Taft, the future President, made a bet that I
was taller than another woman well known to the public. He was at the
pains of coming himself to measure me, and having won the five thousand
dollars, he at once purchased a magnificent piece of jewellery with them
which he offered to me. If the millionaires fêted me, so also did the
poorest citizens of the Republic, the humble Sioux, who are still to be
found in some of the wilder regions. While making a motor tour in the
district of the immense pine forests for the benefit of my health, I
fell in with some of these fine fellows and the idea suddenly occurred
to me that I would dance specially for them. My husband and I improvised
a stage and thereupon I danced my most voluptuous flamenca, which at
first terrified but soon afterwards delighted them. I was royally
rewarded, for the chief made me a present of some gold dust and a purse
fashioned out of serpent’s skin.... But the most curious spectators that
I have known were three thousand Zulus whom I came across when motoring
back from Johannesburg. Unlike the Sioux, they did not look on at my
dance in silent admiration. No sooner had I begun to dance than the
Zulus commenced to caper about all round me. Nothing could have been
more picturesque, and at the same time more ludicrous, than the sight of
a white woman in a mantilla appearing as mistress of the revels in a
negro orgy!”
Guerrero is perhaps a more impassioned dancer than La Tortajada, but she
has strayed even further from the purity of the Spanish dance. At the
Marigny Theatre in Paris, she has this summer been dancing a new and
startling dance called the Tango. It is a curious mixture of composure
and frenzy, and at first acquaintance seems full of complications. Her
rendering of it is said to take away the breath of the English and
American tourists who fill the popular music-hall among the chestnuts of
the Champs Elysée.
But the performances of these exponents of Spanish dancing only serve to
show how swiftly it degenerates as soon as it leaves its native
atmosphere. Even in the peninsula itself the dance seems to lose its
essential character when it is performed in one of those palatial
cosmopolitan music-halls, by the erection of which Spain is endeavouring
to convince the world of its ability to keep abreast of the march of
progress. To see the real classic dancing of an elder Spain, it is
necessary to search among the shabby streets of the poorer quarters of
Seville or Barcelona. There you may perchance discover some stifling,
exuberant little café or theatre of the people, in which, if fortune
favours you, you may find a dancer of talent, even of genius. I remember
such an one in a little café chantant in Barcelona, no bigger and
scarcely less unfurnished than a railway station waiting-room. The
dancer appeared to be on the most intimate terms with the occupants of
the stalls, and could at request lampoon the particular foibles of each
habitué in _copletas_ that were barbed with the cruellest Iberian irony.
But her dancing had a brilliance, a fire, an abandon, and even a
technical excellence, which I have never seen equalled in the displays
of those artists whose names are known throughout Europe. It was at
once
[Illustration: LA GUERRERO
_Photograph: W. & D. Downey_]
expressive of the individuality of the dancer and of the race. It was as
easy and as eloquent as Spanish speech. It was in fact the dancer’s
manner of conversing with the spectator, and it had all the daring, the
wit, the provocativeness and at times the real poetry of her couplets.
It is little wonder that all the essential fire of the Spanish dance is
quenched when it is performed upon the foreign stage. The atmosphere of
Andalusia cannot be created in London or New York even by dancers of
greater genius than Otero, Guerrero and Tortajada; and it should not be
forgotten that Mr Royall Tyler, whose word upon the inner life of Spain
must be taken as final, has remarked that “neither of those three ladies
dances well enough to earn her living by the art in Spain. Their dances
are intended for exportation into foreign countries where they are more
appreciated.”