In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody;
and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre,
under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall,
the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Class,--these
Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty was the dancer
throughout.The entire undertaking developed through the generous
coöperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody. The writer is
exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned for making place
for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality. Can it go on in the
absence of its initiators?
Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair
as a "rhythmic picnic". Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre
said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.
Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.
In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins,
the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.
In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance,
the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions
of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was
developed. Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out
her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance,
The King of Yellow Butterflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo,
page 140). In the last, "'I am your slave,' said the Jinn" was repeated
four times at the end of each stanza.
The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten,
by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes'
Dance, while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C.
Macdougall of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano
the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote
down his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm
the idea that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little
exaggerated, they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be
but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument.
The author of this book is now against instrumental music
in this type of work. It blurs the English.
Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author
toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing
nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away
with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be
carried to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical
composition. The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms
of English speech, and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the
precedents of professional dancing.
Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word, faster
than musical feeling. The repetitions in the Poem Games are to keep
the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace. The repetitions may
be varied according to the necessities of the individual dancer.
Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music in developing the
same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville, the verse, music, and
dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements can be easily
combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements.
Miss Dougherty is particularly illustrative in her pantomime,
but there were many verses she looked over and rejected because
they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent.
Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting,
who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be
most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the
meaning that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting
only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one
try Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.
Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning
are absolutely one.
With no dancing evolutions, the author of this book
has chanted John Brown and King Solomon for the last two years
for many audiences. It took but a minute to teach the people the
responses. As a rule they had no advance notice they were going to sing.
The versifier sang the parts of the King and Queen in turn,
and found each audience perfectly willing to be the oxen, the
sweethearts, the swans, the sons, the shepherds, etc.
A year ago the writer had the honor of chanting for the Florence
Fleming Noyes school of dancers. In one short evening they made the
first section of the Congo into an incantation, the King Solomon into
an extraordinarily graceful series of tableaus, and the Potatoes'
Dance into a veritable whirlwind. Later came the more elaborately
prepared Chicago experiment.
In the King of Yellow Butterflies and the Potatoes' Dance Miss
Dougherty occupied the entire eye of the audience and interpreted,
while the versifier chanted the poems as a semi-invisible orchestra,
by the side of the curtain. For Aladdin and for King Solomon
Miss Dougherty and the writer divided the stage between them,
but the author was little more than the orchestra. The main intention
was carried out, which was to combine the work of the dancer
with the words of the production and the responses of the audience.
The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager. The Poem Game
idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs, its
further development to be on their own initiative. Informal parties
might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters. The whole
might be worked out in the spirit in which children play King William
was King James' Son, London Bridge, or As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.
And the author of this book would certainly welcome the tragic dance,
if Miss Dougherty will gather a company about her and go forward, using
any acceptable poems, new or old. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon is
perhaps the most literal and rhythmic example of the idea we have in
English, though it may not be available when tried out.
The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers, who would go a
longer way with the Poem Game idea, is to shake off the Isadora Duncan
and the Russian precedents for a while, and abolish the orchestra and
piano, replacing all these with the natural meaning and cadences of
English speech. The work would come closer to acting, than dancing is
now conceived.