Dancing, beauty and games

For many years I have been a most ardent admirer of Miss Isadora Duncan, and there is no doubt that in the revival of classical barefooted dancing she stands out with great brilliancy. All praise is due to her as a creator of this school of dancing, and those amongst us who seek to follow in her footsteps do so, I fear, but feebly. I think I am right in saying that all the sincere classical dancers wish to forward this school, not merely from the point of view of making money on the stage, but from the educational value they feel it ought to hold in the upbringing of all children of both sexes. And that this value is very great has been proved as much as such a young movement can be proved by Miss Duncan, M. Jacque Dalcroze, and others. Though, of course, the eurhythmics of Jacque Dalcroze is a system of training entirely different in method from that of any one else.

One of the greatest advantages that classical dancing holds over the toe-dancing school is that it is possible to become proficient in it by giving a short time daily to its practice, instead of the many hours and years of arduous work that a toe-dancer has to go through before becoming a finished exponent of the art. One is an accomplishment that we all ought to be able to enjoy, the other is only possible for the woman who means to make it a profession, and give the best years of her life to it. Though to become a good classical dancer it is not only necessary to take a child and instruct it in the art of moving gracefully if the rest of its education does not assist in the teaching. From earliest infancy it must be taught to observe, to concentrate, to realise the beautiful in line and colour, and to have the ugly and repulsive kept away from it, encouraged to copy beautiful poses and eventually express to music in movement what that music says to it. The educational value of classical dancing is that its expression has to come from within. A toe-dancer is very often merely a brilliant machine. Her dance is often composed for her by her professors, and her well-trained muscles merely respond like a perfect machine to their commands. It therefore follows that the educational value in such dances is practically nil, apart from the dancers having had to learn muscle-control, patience, and endurance, which of course is of use. A child trained to classical dancing in the right way will, by the time it reaches full growth, dance, I feel sure, as we were all meant to dance, every muscle in control and the mind enveloped in the glory of expressing beauty by perfect rhythmical movements. Having worked on the stage as a classical dancer for a short time I was a good deal saddened by the adverse criticisms I heard on all sides, about the bare-footed school of dancing: general sameness and general dullness were the two most severe. My own dancing being criticised I did not mind. I was merely a beginner, and beginners nearly always have to suffer. I asked many and various people as to the reasons of these criticisms and always got the same answer: ‘Very pretty, yes, but when it is seen once, that is sufficient. Interesting, I dare say, to painters and sculptors who know when a pose is pure and a faithful copy of the antique, but the general public don’t, and all the poses and dances look much alike.’

At that time I used to get angry, and salved my wounded feelings by putting these people down as narrow-minded and inartistic, but at the bottom of my heart I felt that they had some right on their side. I went several times to see classical dancing which was supposed to be good, and tried fairly with an open mind to criticise it. After a good deal of sincere study and thought on the subject I came to the conclusion that to a great extent these criticisms were right. What was lacking I was sure was the absence of any real joyousness and life in the dancing. The dancers did their best, but with the exception of Miss Duncan’s work, which carries a splendid joyousness in it, the dancing was curiously dead and heavy. The poses were good, the arms and body graceful and trained, but the legs and feet of most of them were totally untrained, the muscles soft and flabby, thus causing every movement to be devoid of life. In fact, an exact antithesis to the toe-dancer, who very often has wonderfully trained legs and a great rigidity of arms and body. The Russian dancers have to a great extent got away from this very ugly style.

Many contend that the ancient Greek dancers, whom the present-day classical dancers try to copy, did not train their legs for dancing, but merely used them as supports for the body and arms, to which all the graceful movements were confined. Personally, I feel sure that the Greeks if they trained their bodies and arms for the dance did not neglect the legs and feet, as they were known to insist most strongly in their physical education on perfect muscular development throughout the body.

Then came to me the problem which I have attempted to solve during the last three years. Is it possible to combine Greek poses, graceful body movements, and plastic light movements of the legs, so that the whole may be welded and work smoothly together. In fact, to try and resemble the Russian dancers in their lightness and charm, but avoiding the tortuous and unnatural movements and positions favoured by the toe-dancer. I felt sure that a great deal of the lightness of the toe-dancer’s work could be brought with great advantage into the classical dancer’s, and still lose none of the simplicity and purity which is the barefooted dancer’s ideal, rather in fact add to it, as it is quite unnatural to have heavy, uncontrolled muscles. This can be proved by watching the dancing of savages, whose movements may be grotesque, but every muscle is under control, and each movement sure. The answer to all this by many would be that it is only necessary to remove the tights, shoes, and ballet-skirt from any of the leading toe-dancers, replace them by a Greek drapery, and you will have a perfect classical dancer: for many of the Russians have shown that they have studied a certain amount of this work as far as poses go in some of their ballets—‘Narcissus,’ for instance. But there are several insuperable objections to this, one of the foremost being that an experienced toe-dancer’s bare foot is nearly always a thing of horror to look at. Secondly, a toe-dancer gets all her positions with her foot pointed as stiffly as possible, and her foot when not on the ground is never otherwise than pointed. A bare foot pointed, even a well-shaped bare foot, is an extremely ugly thing. A toe-dancer’s foot has at all times to be rigid. She gets her muscular control from the rigid foot upwards, and it would be an unheard-of fault for a toe-dancer to allow her foot to become limp at any moment while dancing. Again, a classical dancer must have her bare feet limp exactly like her hands: the greatest difficulty I found was to keep the feet limp and get the muscular control in the legs, also not to let the feet look dead. All dancers have to conquer this difficulty in their hands when learning to dance. A limp hand and a dead-looking hand are two very different things. I have worked hard for three years at what I think I am justified in calling a new form of bare-foot dancing. I make no pretence of having perfected it, but I hope it is a step in the right direction towards dancing that shall be perfect in pose and expression, and that will help the human mind and body to retain its birthright of beauty.