THE FUTURE OF THE DANCE
“Men are so unimaginative! My husband has all sorts of appliances for
getting strong quick. He gets up in the morning and pulls at straps,
twirls objects and kicks furiously at nothing. Such antics you never
saw. Doubtless they have some underlying advantage or he wouldn’t
perform them, for he is a practical man. But they are so ridiculous. I
always think of Don Quixote fighting the windmill when I see him
threatening the air and striking absurd attitudes so seriously.”
It is an American woman who speaks, and she speaks as the mouthpiece of
a new idea--the attempt to recreate the lost rhythms of the human body
by the means of dance movements. Not the least important of the results
of the modern renaissance of dancing has been the rediscovery of the
grace of bodily movement by the modern man and woman. The sight of the
beauty of human motion on the stage has naturally suggested the idea of
the introduction of this beauty into daily life. The dancing of Isadora
Duncan, of Maud Allan, of Pavlova and Mordkin, has in fact awakened the
ancestral voices of the blood; the spectator can no longer remain
passive, but demands to be allowed to take his or her part in the cosmic
measure. The speaker continues: “Now, when I get up and feel headachy or
as if my body was stuffed with sawdust, I too have my exercise. But, oh,
the difference! I start the ‘Marche Militaire’ on my patient phonograph,
and the strains are so inspiring that I go through my paces so buoyantly
that my husband stops his seesawing to enjoy my dance. Now the
difference lies in this, that while I am unlimbering my muscles and
starting my blood gaily through my veins, my heart and my mind are also
uplifted with the rhythm of music and pose.”
She then describes how when the patient phonograph is giving forth
Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” she accompanies the music with a story
related in motion and gesture. “I first point to an imaginary tree, run
lightly to it, stretch up and pull down a bough, take it in my arms,
then gaily throw it aside. This I do three times in different corners of
the room. Suddenly I am attracted by the upspringing grass and trip
lightly over it lest I crush it. Then I see flowers on the grass, sit
down and gather an imaginary bouquet, then toss it over my head. This I
do three times, and perhaps you may think it easy to sit down with one
leg thrust forward and then break your pose gracefully in getting up. My
mood changes. I hear a bird singing and bend forward to listen with one
hand to my ear and my eye following its flight. Then I hear a bird in
another direction and follow it. Three times these movements are
repeated. The pose is now entirely different, the arms outspread as if
in flight. I am by this time fairly enchanted with the spring and give
myself up to the abandon of the moment, until my mood is exhausted and I
calm down with music into final repose.” At the conclusion of these
exercises she remarks: “At this moment I feel as if every part of my
body was enjoying an independent existence, but would, if I wished it,
take a subordinate position for the common good. That is exercise as it
should be.”
The husband, we may suppose, is now thoroughly out of humour with his
get-strong-quick methods. But where is his place in this new system by
which the flexibility of the body and the exhilaration of the mind are
sought in the movements of the dance? The dance, in any other sense than
that of a ball-room accomplishment, is generally regarded as unsuited to
the masculine character. How often has not one heard the remark that it
is unpleasing to see a man dancer. And a man himself would as a rule
rather be caught in the act of stealing than of dancing alone or with
his fellows. The prejudice is new. It is perhaps characteristic of an
artificial society for whose small conventions the liberal code of
nature is too broad. In all simple and virile societies men have
[Illustration: MIKAIL MORDKIN
IN _The Cymbal Dance_
_Photograph: Campbell Gray_]
been dancers--unless some cramping moral code imposed its arbitrary
prohibition--only in more decadent ages have they been content to be
passive spectators. The men who fought at Agincourt, the men who fell in
the Pass of Thermopylæ, were dancers. Greek manhood would not have been
what it was without the dance. The Greek youths danced as simply and
unconsciously as the Greek maidens, and they danced among themselves,
singly and in groups. Nietsche said a wise word to this generation when
he proclaimed his ideal: “Every man fit for warfare, every woman fit for
children, both fit for dancing with head and legs.”
America is seeking to discover a dance fit for men. It has found it in a
translation of the movements proper to athletics, in an expression in
dance form of all the masculine sports, a dance which women could not
perform if they tried. A spectator who has seen an exhibition of this
new method, which is clearly a revival of the old Greek method, has
recorded that “the postures were those of wrestlers or swimmers, or
runners or discus and javelin throwers, always preceded by the vigorous
dance steps. And none of it was in the least feminine. It was dancing,
but it was essentially masculine from start to finish. There was not a
suggestion of airy grace; there was more than a suggestion of strength
and rhythm and of iron muscles under excellent control.... Then,” he
continues, “I began to see the place of dancing in the world, its place
as a wholesome natural recreation and as a form of physical training,
more effective perhaps than any other, since a vigorous athletic dance
brings into play nearly every muscle in the body. I saw that a normal
enjoyment of dancing meant a healthy mind in a healthy body. There is no
more sane and natural form of exercise than the rhythmic buoyant
movements of the dance, performed with the vigour which men throw into
it.”
This form of dancing corresponds almost exactly with the Greek
_gumnāzo_, which was the simpler and more exclusively physical of the
two divisions of the dance, the groundwork for the _orchēsis_, the
intellectual and emotional expression of bodily movement. The former
provided the technique, which was to be mastered not for its own sake,
but as a means of furnishing the body with that eloquence by which it
could utter the moods of the spirit. Without this training in the dance,
the Greek men and women could never have acquired that exquisite
harmony, that easy grace of carriage, such as we see in ancient art. It
may even be said to have made Greek art possible, for as J. A. Symonds
remarked in his “Studies of the Greek Poets”: “The whole race lived out
its sculpture and painting, rehearsed, as it were, the great
masterpieces of Phidias and Polygnotus in physical exercise before it
learnt to express itself in marble and colour.”
The modern revival of the dance will not do the same for the art of our
own time until the dance becomes the common property of the people. For
the ordinary man and woman dancing provides the simplest, the most
natural, the most satisfying means of expression. Self-expression is a
faculty the loss of which the modern age is just beginning to be aware
of. An earlier age realised it in the arts of the folk--in folk-dance,
in folk-song, in folk-lore and in the popular pageants of the Church.
For its loss Puritanism is primarily responsible with its vulgar
shamefacedness; it was further weakened by the Industrial Revolution,
which broke up the old rhythms of social life; and it finally perished
when our artistic pleasures became specialised and we chose to become
passive, inexpressive spectators of professional artists rather than
attempt any artistic expression of our own. Whereas a former age lived
out its spirit in a popular music, a popular ballad literature and
national dances, the present generation prefers to listen to the
wheedling airs of the gramophone, to read a professional journalism and
to watch a paid dancer in the music-halls. The tendency everywhere is
for a passive enjoyment to usurp the place of an active participation
in the arts. But the desire for self-expression is instinctive
and irrepressible. In the dance it will find a means of
satisfaction--complete, elemental, and one which has the saving quality
of beauty.
By no means do I wish to imply that the dance of the theatre will ever
be merged in that of the people, still less that it is desirable that it
should. The dance of art demands the entire surrender of the artist’s
life. It is more than a pastime or a recreation. And as we demand that
it shall become more and more expressive, so the study of the dancer
must needs become more searching and minute. What new forms the dance is
going to take, what new spirit is going to inspire it, only the future
can show, but without pressing too far into the region of conjecture, it
is possible to suggest the probable direction of its development.
In spite of the renewed vigour which the Russians have given to the
ballet, it is difficult to believe that the strict, academic school of
ballet-dancing has still a long term of life before it. Indeed the
Russians--I am speaking exclusively of the Diaghilew company--have
renewed the ballet by revolutionising it. Not only have they utterly
transformed its spirit, but they have introduced a new manner and
gesture. In _Cléopâtre_ and _Scheherazade_ how little remains of the
strict technique of the classic ballet! The ballet is turning away from
Milan and looking towards Greece and the East. Anna Pavlova has pointed
out the way by which the academic style can find salvation. Her dancing
is transitional. From the ballet technique it derives its precision and
firmness of outline, but to these are added a fluency, a multitudinous
play of the nuances of light and shade, a capacity for expressing an
intense personal life. The fatal defect of the academic style is that it
is impersonal. It is the geometry of the dance. If the personality of
the dancer succeeds in disengaging itself, it is not so much expressed
in the movements of the dance as violently imposed upon them. How
drearily impersonal it can be, we are realising afresh now that the
success of the Russian ballet has let loose a flood of indifferent
ballet-dancers upon the stage. It permits a high degree of technical
accomplishment divorced from the slightest emotional significance. It is
the dance _par excellence_ for the uneducated and unintelligent
dancer--and it is she who must be banished from the stage. It justifies
the gentle sarcasm of Pius IX. who, when asked for his consent to the
presentation of a diadem to Fanny Elssler at Rome, assented, but
remarked that in his priestly simplicity he had always believed that
crowns were designed for the head and not for the legs. The famous
Austrian dancer scarcely merited the reproach, for she above all other
dancers danced with the head and the heart; but in general it is a just
indictment of the ballet technique that it has disproportionately
emphasised the importance of the legs and the feet. In the period of the
decline of the ballet, the dancers of Paris and Milan in particular were
little more than automata agitated by a pair of muscular legs, which
worked with the precision and monotony of clockwork. The modern dance
demands expression in every line of the body.
It is certain that the dance of the future will tend towards the fuller
expression of personality. We shall not be content to watch dances that
are merely dexterous, but only those that reveal a fresh and living
emotion. It will follow that the dance must become infinitely more
subtle, the body more responsive to the spirit, and the spirit more
attentive to the delicate rhythms of life. It follows also that the day
of the empty-headed, empty-hearted dancer, the simpering miss of the
pink shoes and fixed smile, will be over. We will listen for what the
artist has to say to us, and if she remains inarticulate, if she is
unable to utter a syllable of poetry or of passion or of wit, we will
politely ask her to trouble us no more.
In the future the content of the dance will be immeasurably enlarged. We
shall learn that, like the ancient Greek dance, “it deals with every
subject, grave and gay, religious and profane, decorous and indecorous;
nothing in nature is too high or too low to be outside its scope; it
embraces the whole scale of human passions.” When it is grown to its
full stature, the dance will probably combine with drama to create a new
language for the imagination. _Sumurûn_, the production of Professor Max
Reinhardt, is a type of a new art-form, neither ballet nor pantomime in
the accepted sense of the words, of which the future is bound to see a
further development. Its medium is gesture, but it is a gesture which,
unlike the gesture of the old pantomime, is never merely a transcript of
words. The twilight procession of figures to the palace of the Sheikh,
moving with the rhythm of a frieze against the blank white wall, was no
less than an event in the evolution of the dance-drama, pregnant with
suggestive ideas. It presented movements and gestures utterly
untranslatable into words, into painting or sculpture--untranslatable
even, I think, into music. They were movements which had been caught up
out of life itself, and fused by the imagination into pure symbols of
beauty and delight, of pride and passion and wit.
The dance, I believe, is still only in its infancy. Is it rash to
imagine that the evolution of dancing will be the special achievement of
art in this century, as the evolution of music was in the last? There is
a whole world of gesture waiting for the dance to take possession of.
The rediscovery of the gesture of the ancient world is perhaps the least
important part of the undertaking. There lies a broad field for
exploration in the innumerable racial and national gestures, each with
its separate beauty, and its separate expressiveness. And beyond this
stretches the yet more inexhaustible domain of nature, its multitudinous
minor rhythms, each various and distinguishable, merging into a grand
rhythm of the whole, the eternal rhythm of life itself. Fragments of
attitude, phrases of motion, are scattered prodigally up and down the
world, awaiting the seeing eye and the understanding mind that can pluck
these happy accidents, store them in the memory, and at the proper time
build up out of them a new pattern of the dance. When the choregrapher
of genius arrives, he will think in gestures, as the musician thinks in
sound, and the painter in mass and colour. And when he has realised the
lavish abundance of his material, he will pour into it like a molten
flood all that there is in the brimming life of our day to fire, to
madden, to delight and to rive the heart.
Then it will be the turn of the other arts to look wonderingly upon this
figure of the Dance, no longer straying timidly into their company, but
coming upon divine feet, with an assured mien and a mature grace, and
each will borrow something from her ancient and untiring ecstasy.
INDEX
A
Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse, 29
Adam, Adolphe, 51
_Aida_, 130
Albert, 34
Alexis, Tsar, 124
Alhambra Theatre, 62, 64, 170, 176
Allan, Maud, 110-118
Anne, Empress of Russia, 124
Apache Dance, 183
_Arabesques, Les_, 182
_Arc-en-ciel_, 86
Areja, Francisco, 124
Arensky, 128
_Arrow Dance_, 168
Astafieva, Seraphima, 146, 158
_Automne Bacchanale, L’_, 164, 168
B
_Babil and Bijou_, 61
Bakst, Léon, 132, 133, 134, 140, 145, 146
Balashova, Alexandra, 170, 176
Bathyllus, 46
Bauer, Henri, 36
_Bayadères, Les_, 40, 42
Bedells, Phyllis, 176, 182
Beerbohm, Mr Max, 18, 174
Beethoven, 111
Benois, M., 130, 138, 142, 154
Bensusan, Mr S. L., 65
Bergholz, 124
Berlioz, 59, 142
Bernhardt, Sarah, 110
Bertrand, 62
Blasis, Carlo, 127, 161
_Blue Danube_, 162
Borodin, 128, 142
Botticelli, 111, 113
Brahms, 166
Buddhism, 191
Burne-Jones, 73
_Butterflies_, 147
C
Cachucha, 49
Camargo, Mlle de, 30, 32
Cancan, 92, 95, 96
Candelon, 61
_Caprice_, 82
Carmenciat, La, 195, 196
_Carnaval, Le_, 133, 137, 139-141
_Carnaval de Venise, Le_, 40
_Casse-Noisette_, 128
Castor and Pollux, 29
Catherine the Second, 124
Cavallazzi, Madame, 67, 183
Cecchetti, M., 155
Cerali, 62
Cerito, Fanny, 52-54, 57
Chahut, 76
Chopin, 112, 115, 118, 144, 157, 162, 163, 166
Chorley, Mr, 42, 46
Cigale, La, 94
_Cléopâtre_, 133, 137, 145-148, 189
Clog Dance, 71
Collier, Beatrice, 183
Collins, Lottie, 78, 96-98
Conquest, Mrs, 73
_Coppélia_, 159, 177, 182
Coppi, Carlo, 62
_Corsair, Le_, 61
Coulon, 39
_Cygne, Le_, 162
D
_Dame de Pique_, 127
_Dance Dream_, 176
Danse du ventre, 191
D’Auban, John, 72, 73
_Day in Paris, A_, 183
Dearly, Max, 183
Delibes, 162, 177
De Quincey, 118
Devadassis, 192
Dewinne, 62
_Diablo Cojuelo, El_, 47, 51
Diaghilew, Serge de, 130, 139
Didelot, 40, 125
Diez, Rosita, 46
Dore, Madame, 61
_Dream of Butterflies and Roses, A_, 180
_Dryad, The_, 177, 180
Duncan, Isadora, 105-110, 153, 161, 194
E
Edward VII., 111
Edwards, Sutherland, 123
Égout, Grille d’, 92-94
Ellis, Mr Havelock, 196
Elssler, Fanny, 42-51, 52, 72, 91, 219
Empire Theatre, 62, 64, 169, 182
_Eoline_, 177
Espérance Club, 208
_Eugène Onegin_, 128
_Excelsior_, 61, 64
F
Fandango, 191, 195
Farren, Fred, 183
_Faust_, 49
_Faust up to Date_, 78
_Fernand Cortes_, 40
_Fille de Danube, La_, 42
Flamenco dancing, 196
_Flore et Zéphire_, 40
Fokine, M., 130, 138, 139, 140, 144, 162, 194
Folette, 94
Folies-Bergère, 83
Frederick the Great, 33
Fuller, Loie, 81-88
G
Gaiety Quartet, 74
Gaiety Theatre, 73, 96
Gardel, 29
Garrick, David, 27
Gautier, Théophile, 48, 50, 142
Gellert, 62
Geltzer, Catrina, 170, 176
Genée, Adeline, 67, 170, 176-182
Gillet, 70
_Giselle_, 42, 51, 52, 182
Giuri, 62
Glazounov, 128, 139, 144, 165
Glinka, 166
Glu, La, 94
Gluck, 89
Goethe, 81
Gordon, Lady Duff, 191
Goulue, La, 92-93
Grahn, Lucille, 52-54
Grey, Sylvia, 76
Grieg, 115, 117
Grisi, Carlotta, 50-54, 57
Guerrero, 195, 198, 199
H
Hamilton, Lady, 81
Handel, 32, 118
Harris, Sir Augustus, 65
Haydn, 44
Headlam, Rev. Stewart, 62, 64
Heine, 51
Henri IV., 28
Hervé, 62
_High Jinks_, 177, 180
Hollingshead, John, 73
I
Image, Prof. Selwyn, 147
J
Jacobi, 62
_Jack Sheppard_, 82
Jackson, Mr Holbrook, 164, 210
Joachim, 111
Jota, 195
K
Karsavina, Tamar, 130, 143, 158-159, 170
Kemp, William, 205-206
Knipper-Rabeneck, 119
Kschesinskaya, 154, 170
Kyasht, Lydia, 169-170
L
Lablache, 40
Landé, 124
Lanner, Katti, 62, 67, 183
Legnano, 62
Lethbridge, Alice, 76
Liadov, 139
Lind, Jenny, 54, 60
Lind, Letty, 75, 76
_Little Don Caesar de Bazan_, 74
Locke, 8, 32
Lola, 46
Louis XIII., 28
Louis XIV., 28, 29, 33
Louis-Philippe, 45
Lucian, 17
Lulli, 29
Lutz, Meyer, 78
M
MacIlwaine, Mr H. C., 208
Magdeleine, Mlle, 117
Magnin, Prof., 117
Malibran, 40, 51, 59
Marenco, 61
Marianski Theatre, 125, 129, 130, 159
_Mars et Vénus_, 40
“Marseillaise, The,” 118
Mazarin, 28
Medici, Catherine de, 28
Mendelssohn, 112
Ménestrier, 28
Meyrowitz, Walter, 192
_Milliner Duchess_, 177
Mistinguette, 183
Mogador, Céleste, 92, 93
_Monte Cristo_, 177
Montmartre, 76, 79
Mordkin, Mikail, 156, 160, 165, 167-169
Morny, Duc de, 43
Moscheles, 139, 140
Mozart, 88
N
Napoleon, 33, 48
_Narcisse_, 150
Nautch Dance, 193
Neal, Miss Mary, 208, 209, 210
Nelidova, Lydia, 62
Nietsche 219
Nijinsky, Waslaw, 128, 130, 134, 138, 143, 148, 153-157
Noblet, 34
Noverre, Jean-Georges, 30, 31, 159
O
Omar Khayyám, 90
_Ombre, L’_, 42
Otero, 195, 199
Ouled-Nails, 191
P
Palace Girls, 98
Palladino, 62
_Papillons, Danse des_, 162, 164
_Pas de Quatre_, 52-54, 57, 78
Patte-en-l’air, Nini., 92, 94
_Pavillon d’Armide, Le_, 128, 138-139
Pavlova, Anna, 113, 159-166, 170, 219
_Peer Gynt_, 115, 117
Perrot, 41, 49, 50, 53
Pertoldi, 62
Peter the Great, 124
_Petits Riens, Les_, 88
_Petrouchka_, 150
Phèdre, 125, 191
Pius IX., 49, 219
Plato, 19
Plaskaweska, 166
_Pointes_, 49
_Polovtsiennes, Danses_, 141
Pomaré, Clare, 92
Ponpon, Rose, 92
Preobrajenskaya, 125, 158, 190
_Prince Igor_, 61, 128, 137, 141
Prinster, Catherine, 48
_Pygmalion and Galatea_, 32
Pylades, 46
Q
_Quack M.D._, 82
Quadrille, 75
Quinalt, 29
R
Racine, 125, 191
Radetzki, 49
Rameau, 29
Rayon d’Or, 94
Reichstadt, Duc de, 45
Reinhardt, Prof. Max, 220
Remy, Marcel, 111
Reynolds, Mr Rothay, 126, 129
Richardson, Lady Constance Stuart, 119
Richelieu, 28
_Rienzi_, 60
Rimsky-Korsakov, 128, 133, 139, 148
Rodin, 117
Roehrich, 141
Romanticism, 47, 91
Rosai, 138
Rossi, Adelina, 62
Rubinstein, Ida, 146, 158
Ruskin, 17
Russell, Countess, 77
S
_Sadko_, 150
Saint-Saëns, 162
Sallé, 32
_Salomé, Vision of_, 113-115
Sallust, 20
Sargent, Mr John, 196
_Scheherazade_, 128, 133, 137, 148-149, 156, 158, 189, 194
Schmolz, 139
Schumann, 159
Scott, Mr Clement, 97
_Seasons, The_, 64
Sharp, Mr Cecil, 204, 207, 208
Shaw, Mr G. Bernard, 77
_Sleeping Beauty_, 128, 132
Soubrette, La, 94
“Soul of Spain, The,” 196
Southey, 167
_Spectator, The_, 61
_Spectre de la Rose, Le_, 142, 156, 158
St Denis, Ruth, 191-195
Strauss, 163
Sullivan, 62
_Sumurûn_, 220
_Swans, The_, 64
_Sylphide, La_, 40, 42, 46, 48, 51
_Sylphides, Les_, 137, 144
_Sylvia_, 182
Symonds, J. A., 218
T
Taft, Mr, 197
Taglioni, Marie, 39-48, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 182
Tango, 198
_Tannhaüser_, 60
“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” 96
Tchaikovsky, 127, 128, 132
Tcherepnin, 130, 139
_Tell, Guillaume_, 42
Tiller Girls, 98, 99
Tiller, Mr John, 98, 103
Titterton, Mr W. R., 109, 115
Tortajada, 195, 197-199
Tyler, Mr Royall, 199
V
Valse Chaloupée, La, 183
Van Buren, 48
Vaughan, Kate, 73-75, 76, 78
Véron, 44, 45
_Vestale, La_, 40
Vestris, Auguste-Armand, 33, 159
Vestris, Gætano, 29, 33
Victoria, Queen, 52
_Vineland_, 177
Voisins, Count Gilbert de, 43
Voltaire, 32, 33
W
Wagner, 59, 60, 61
Washington, 48
Weber, 142
Weber, Louise, 92
Wenzel, 62
Wiesenthal, 119
Y
_Yolande_, 64
Z
_Zéphire et Flore_, 40
_Zingaro_, 51
Zola, 165
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The use of the word “classical” to denote that class of dancing
which claims kinship with Greek art is somewhat confusing. Before the
recent revival, “classical” was the term applied to the traditional
style of the ballet as distinguished from skirt-dancing, step-dancing
and the various eccentric styles. To avoid confusion I have in general
used the word “academic” instead of “classical” when speaking of the
older school of the ballet.
[2] The late Sutherland Edwards proved himself a singularly accurate
prophet when in 1881 he wrote: “We shall probably have to go as far as
St Petersburg to discover a _première danseuse_ worthy in some manner
to be compared with those of twenty and twenty-five years ago.”