From the rapid and imperfect review of certain characteristic oriental
dances in the chapters immediately preceding--or rather from the studies
some of whose minor results those chapters embody--I make deduction of a
few significant facts, to which facts of contrary significance seem
exceptional. In the first place, it is to be noted that in countries
where woman is conspicuously degraded the dance is correspondingly
depraved. By "the dance," I mean, of course, those characteristic and
typical performances which have permanent place in the social life of
the people. Amongst all nations the dance exists in certain loose and
unrecognized forms, which are the outgrowth of the moment--creatures of
caprice, posing and pranking their brief and inglorious season, to be
superseded by some newer favorite, born of some newer accident or fancy.
A fair type of these ephemeral dances--the comets of the saltatory
system--in so far as they can have a type, is the now familiar _Can-Can_
of the Jardin Mabille--a dance the captivating naughtiness of which has
given it wide currency in our generation, the successors to whose aged
rakes and broken bawds it will fail to please and would probably make
unhappy. Dances of this character, neither national, universal, nor
enduring, have little value to the student of anything but anatomy and
lingerie. By study of a thousand, the product of as many years, it might
be possible to trace the thread upon which such beads are
strung--indeed, it is pretty obvious without research; but considered
singly they have nothing of profit to the investigator, who will do well
to contemplate without reflection or perform without question, as the
bent of his mind may be observant or experimental.
Dancing, then, is indelicate where the women are depraved, and to this
it must be added that the women are depraved where the men are indolent.
We need not trouble ourselves to consider too curiously as to cause and
effect. Whether in countries where man is too lazy to be manly, woman
practices deferential adjustment of her virtues to the loose exactions
of his tolerance, or whether for ladies of indifferent modesty their
lords will not make exertion--these are questions for the ethnologer. It
concerns our purpose only to note that the male who sits cross-legged on
a rug and permits his female to do the dancing for both gets a quality
distinctly inferior to that enjoyed by his more energetic brother,
willing himself to take a leg at the game. Doubtless the lazy fellow
prefers the loose gamboling of nude girls to the decent grace and
moderation of a better art, but this, I submit, is an error of taste
resulting from imperfect instruction.
And here we are confronted with the ever recurrent question. Is dancing
immoral? The reader who has done me the honor attentively to consider
the brief descriptions of certain dances, hereinbefore presented will,
it is believed, be now prepared to answer that some sorts of dancing
indubitably are--a bright and shining example of the type being the
exploit wherein women alone perform and men alone admire. But one of the
arguments by which it is sought to prove dancing immoral in
itself--namely that it provokes evil passions--we are now able to
analyze with the necessary discrimination, assigning to it its just
weight, and tracing its real bearing on the question. Dances like those
described (with, I hope a certain delicacy and reticence) are
undoubtedly disturbing to the spectator. They have in that circumstance
their _raison d'être_. As to that, then, there can be no two opinions.
But observe the male oriental voluptuary does not himself dance. Why?
Partly no doubt, because of his immortal indolence, but mainly, I
venture to think, because he wishes to enjoy his reprehensible emotion,
and this can not coexist with muscular activity If the reader--through
either immunity from improper emotion or unfamiliarity with muscular
activity--entertains a doubt of this, his family physician will be happy
to remove it. Nothing is more certain than that the dancing girls of
oriental countries themselves feel nothing of what they have the skill
to simulate, and the ballet dancer of our own stage is icily unconcerned
while kicking together the smouldering embers in the heart of the wigged
and corseted old beau below her, and playing the duse's delight with the
disobedient imagination of the he Prude posted in the nooks and shadows
thoughtfully provided for him. Stendahl frankly informs us, "I have had
much experience with the _danseuses_ of the ---- Theatre at Valence. I
am convinced that they are, for the most part, very chaste. It is
because their occupation is too fatiguing."