The Dance: Its Place in Art and Life

smaller number to the upper; an ambitious crown to the whole is sometimes seen in the form of a peacock with spread wings. The structure is supported by a rod running down the bearer’s back, and fastened to him by belts. Its weight prohibits any movement to which the word “dancing” applies except as a convenience; but a series of slow and necessarily careful evolutions performed by the wearers of these displays is called a dance, nevertheless. Meantime the “fierce Perchten,” made up with masks as demoniac as possible, run about among the legs of the crowd and do their best to startle people. The spirit accompanying the celebration is levity, modified only by the sincere admiration considered due the serious decorations. They represent a great deal of work and considerable money.

In various parts of Savoy is performed on St. Roch’s Day what is called the Bacchu-ber. On a platform erected in front of a church, and decorated with garlands and fir-trees, a group of men dance with short swords; passing under bridges of swords, forming chains by grasping one another’s weapons, and so on. That its origin is pre-Christian seems a reasonable conjecture; but nothing specific is known about it.

Munich celebrates with dancing an episode connected with an epidemic of cholera: the guild of coopers decided that the care the people were taking against exposure was defeating its purpose, since it was keeping them indoors to the detriment of health. They therefore went out and enjoyed themselves as usual, for the sake of example. Others did the same, and the plague ceased. Periodically the brave coopers are honoured, therefore, by dances of large companies of people, who carry garlanded arches and execute triumphal figures.

The foregoing instances are no more than a specimen of the varieties of tradition that dancing may commemorate. Europe collectively doubtless will produce thousands of such dances, when the task of collecting them is entered upon with the necessary combination of leisure and zeal.

Bavaria’s Schuhplatteltanz is altogether delightful in itself, without aid from history or tradition to supplement its interest. It is full of a quaint Tyrolean grace mingled with happy and delicate grotesquery. Women it causes to spin as though they were some quaint species of combination doll and top; the atmosphere that surrounds a marvellous and pretty mechanical toy is preserved in a delicate unreality in the pantomime and in the treatment throughout.

It is accompanied by zithers, instruments which themselves sing of a world suspended somewhere in the air. In silvery, floating tones they play less a waltz than the dream of a waltz, in sounds as unmaterial as the illusive voice of an Æolian harp.

A little opening promenade; a few bars of the couple’s waltzing together—in steps infinitesimal, prim with conscious propriety. The man raises the girl’s hand and starts her spinning. She neither retards nor helps, being a little figure of no weight, moved solely by power from without itself. Her skirt stands out as straight and steady as though it were cardboard; her partner must lean far over now, not to touch it and spoil the spin. Now she is whirling perfectly; with a parting impulse to her arm, he releases her. On she turns, at a speed steady as clockwork, revolving, as a top will, slowly around a large circle.

Her partner follows, beating time in a way that bewilders eye and ear alike; for his hands pat shoes and leather breeches with a swiftness incredible and ecstatic. Of this perhaps sixteen bars when, as though his partner were beginning to “run down,” he starts blowing her along with vigorous puffs. Nevertheless, she is slowing down; the skirt is settling. He reaches over it, gets his hands on her waist. To the last the spinning illusion is preserved by an appearance of her rotary motion being stopped only by the pressure of the man’s hand as a brake.

The foregoing interpretation is suggested by the delicate work of Herr and Frau Nagel, and the company with which they are associated. It is a dance whose fancy easily could disappear under its mechanics, if performed without imagination.

Having caught his partner after her spin, waltzed again with her for a few bars, and lifted her up at arm’s length in sheer playfulness, the man joins arms with her in such fashion as to form almost a duplicate of the “mirror” figure of the Minuet. The courtliness of the cavalier in the Minuet is matched by adroitness on the part of the schuhplatteltanzer; he contrives to draw his partner’s head nearer and nearer to his, as they walk around in a lessening circle. Finally, when the circle of the promenade can become no smaller, and the faces have come close to the imaginary mirror framed by the arms, he suddenly but daintily kisses her lips.

Germany is the home of the Waltz, of which it has evolved several varieties. The Rheinlander Waltz is perhaps the most popular. In one form or another it has spread through the Balkan countries; not, however, with any apparent detriment to the native dances, because of these dances’ natural crudeness. Servia, Montenegro and the neighbouring monarchies celebrate weddings and christenings and enliven picnics with a “round” called in Servian language the Kolo, that employs the simple old figures of the bridge of arms and the like, but which, as to step, is quite formless. Colour in the costumes goes far to provide spectacular interest to these exuberant frolics. The linen gowns of the women are embroidered in big—and good—designs of two distinct reds, scarlet and rose; emerald-green and a warm yellow-green; the most brilliant of yellows; wine-colour and blue. As is frequently found in a region that has kept a scheme of design through a sufficient number of generations to allow the formation of traditions based on long experiment, the seemingly impossible is accomplished by the peasant women of the Balkans: the colours whose enumeration on the same page would seem outrageous are, in practical application, brought into harmony. It is a question of proportionate size of spots of colour, and their juxtaposition. The results of using the same colours in new designs is to be seen in the expressions of sundry new schools of painting that refuse to acknowledge limitations.

Men’s sleeves and waistcoats are frequently embroidered in the same way as the jacket and sleeves of the women, as exemplified in the accompanying photographs of Madame Koritiç. Loose linen trousers, which are sometimes worn, may be likewise decorated. In the sunlight and in appropriate surroundings, a performance of the Kolo should be a sight to dispel trouble, whatever its deficiencies from the point of view of dancing.

Greece, too, diverts itself with rustic rounds, as formless as in other lands. Of the Hellas that gave the Occident its civilisation there remain some architectural ruins, to which latter-day inhabitants of the land may have given some care; and certain statues, preserved in the museums of other lands. For Hellenic ideals and Attic salt, search the hat-boy at the entrance to the restaurant. The Greek of to-day is a composite of Turk and Slav; his dances have neither the grace of the one nor the fire of the other. The discovery in Greece of survivors of ancient dances—which discovery is occasionally asserted—may have a basis in fact; but more likely its foundation is in a similarity between an ancient and a modern word. But enough of disappointments and of great things lost.

Hungary, Russia and Poland have a family of strictly national dances that not only take a position among the world’s best character dances; without departing from their true premise as expressions of racial temperament, some of them attain to the dignity of great romantic art, combined with optical beauty of the highest order. A Czardás in one of the Pavlowa programmes (season 1913-14) showed qualities of choreographic composition that were equalled, in that entertainment, only by the ballet arrangements of the most capable composers whose works were represented. The juxtaposition of ballet and character numbers, performed with the same skill and accompanied by the same orchestra, furnished an uncommonly good measure of the folk-dances’ actual merit.

The Czardás, the Mazurka and the Cossack Dance of Russia and the Obertass of Poland form a group that occupy in the dance the place that Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody” fills in music: they are the candid

revelation of the heart of a people simple, sympathetic, unrestrainedly romantic, violently impulsive. Each represents an exciting diversity of ammunition, fired in one rousing volley; an expression to which one may become accustomed, but which always remains unfamiliar, and which always produces an intoxicating shock. The abrupt changes of movement from slow to fast, from furious speed to a dead standstill; the recurrent crescendo from short, close movement to broad sweeps, open jeté turns, and the lowest of “dips”; the diverse effects gained by play of rhythm—such effects are indescribable in word or picture. Fortunately, however, characteristic poses are within the range of the snapshot; so also, to an extent, is the expression of human moods—if portrayed by rare pantomimic ability.

Possession of such ability, backed by the unfettered imagination of the Tartar and accompanied by superlative artistry, describes Miss Lydia Lopoukowa. To her great kindness this book is indebted for the accompanying photographs representing characteristic poses and moods of northern Slavonic dancing. Taken from the work of such an artist, the pictures represent an idealisation, or perfection, of their subjects. They show movements of the dances themselves, in their spirit, without the usual limitations imposed by physique. The clean-cut definition of pose; the co-ordination of pose and features in all the expressions of allurement, appeal, petulance, esctasy—these represent a standard at which the merely mortal dancer aims, but a conjunction of conditions that one may hope to see accomplished few times in the course of one life.

Yet, as noted before, the dances are so composed that, performed with a degree of skill not uncommon in their native land, they are rich and surprising. In steps, the Russian, Austrian and Polish group have most of their material in common: naturally, since they are united by ties of race. The salient point by which each dance is distinguished, in the eye of the spectator, is one big step.

The Czardás employs a long glided step that is all its own. The active foot is started well to the rear, and glided forward; the glide is accompanied by a very low plié of the supporting knee; as the active foot comes into advanced position, the dancer sharply straightens up, rises to the ball of the supporting foot, and continues the advancing foot forward and upward in a rapid kick. The masculine version drops the body lower, and kicks higher, than the feminine; but even the latter’s change of elevation remains fixed in the memory.

In the Obertass, the man goes into the low stooping position, in connection with executing a very individual rond de jambe. At the moment, he is face to face with his partner, his hands on the sides of her waist, her hands on his shoulders; after a swift step-turn in the usual direction, he takes a long step backward (she forward), and, keeping his right leg extended before him, stoops until he is squatting on his left heel; the right leg, held straight, is swept rapidly around to the rear; meanwhile the couple continues to turn. The man’s momentum turns him until he faces in the same direction with his partner. He springs up on her right side, and goes with her into a short, fast polka-step. During the turn, the woman keeps hold of the man to prevent centrifugal force from flinging him into space.

In the Mazurka (not the ballroom version) the same

step, modified as to elevation, is performed by both man and woman, alternately, during certain passages.

The Szolo, a Hungarian dance introduced into America by Mr. and Mrs. Hartmann, gives the woman a unique turn in the air. The woman standing at her partner’s right, the two join their crossed hands above her head, she reaching up, he downward. She is turned by being swung through the air—in a horizontal position—finishing on her partner’s left side. The arms, of course, have “unwound” from their first position, and re-crossed in its converse position. This movement, masterfully executed, is one of the devices by which the dance contradicts gravity. Ill done, of course, it would be as painful for spectator as performer.

But these dances are not often ill done—at least by the people to whom they belong. We are credibly informed that the problems of involved steps and tricky tempo, exacting requirements of agility and expression, are met with a laugh; that, while great virtuosity is naturally rare, real elegance of execution is the rule. Which leads back, of course, to national choreographic traditions and ideals. The artistic level they occupy in Russia (and presumably Hungary and Poland) is indicated in a few lines of a letter to the authors from Princess Chirinski-Chichmatoff, of Moscow. Apart from its value as quite the finest statement of the meaning of character dancing that is to be found in the literature of choreography, the paragraph has the interest of showing one of the reasons why the folk-dancing of northeastern Europe is good:

In every dance the principal things are the harmony (1) of movements with the rhythm of the music, (2) of movements with the subject that the music represents, and (3) of the sentiments with the pantomime, to give a certain impression; and finally this, that it should be a dance which has exclusively the national character, with the movements natural [familiers] to a certain people and to a certain epoch. In the dance the artist ought to show all the richness of his soul; ought to instil into his movements all of that which the sculptor puts into his marble; while above the idea and the mood ought to be felt the beauty and freedom of movements and lines.

Quite a difference between that and some other national ideas of character dancing!

Describing her national dance (i. e., the Cossack Dance and its derivatives) she writes:

“The Russian dance is composed in two parts, Adagio and Allegro. In each part we see the traits most natural to the people, and which were formed in historic times, under other conditions.

“1. Adagio: length, freedom, tranquillity of movement with much dignity and grace, and with a little softness and simplicity; all relating to the traits that were formed during the period when all Russian women passed the whole time in their térémas (house of Russian style), retired from the world, working and singing, thinking melancholy thoughts about life but never seeing it in reality, never leaving the house nor being seen except on the rare occasion of visits.

“2. Allegro: expresses, with the gay and popular songs, the vivacity, the carelessness, the humour and the pleasantry that were born in a people still a little barbarous and simple, whose sadness and gaiety were somewhat naïve. All the traits natural to the Russian people are portrayed in their national dance and in the simple music created from the most popular and beloved songs.”

Within the form so sketched there is room for a wide variety of interpretation. The peasant expresses the motives of happiness and vivacity in movements that translate the joy of an almost wild man. An advance while maintaining a low squatting position, the spring for each step coming from a leg bent double, is a grotesquery trying to the strength of the toughest thighs. Still more difficult and as grotesque is a movement of squatting on one heel, and rapidly tracing circles with the extended leg held straight, as though it were the arm of a compass. The feminine version of the movements is less violent; but the Allegro portion of the woman’s work is nevertheless tremendously animated in the rustic version of this dance.

As the court of seventeenth-century France took the dances of the peasant and modified them into adornments of ceremonious occasions, so polite society has done in Russia. The Court Dance is the result. Refinement has not robbed it of the national qualities described by Princess Chirinski; her own performance of it demonstrates, in almost spiritual terms, the “dignity and grace,” the “little softness and simplicity,” the “sadness and gaiety” that she puts into words. Through her performance, too, runs an undercurrent of the indefinable—a hint of latent mystery that is not European. It is a quality not infrequently sensed in the work of artists of Tartar blood; it is a trace of the Orient.

CHAPTER IX

ORIENTAL DANCING

Geometry is the educated Arab’s plaything; from long practice he can project its figures upon the wall of imagination, free of the need of pencil. Owing to this practice, perhaps, his thoughts express themselves in the form of images. His literature is crowded with them, vivid sketches thrown before the mind’s eye; each a

symbol more eloquent than description, a metaphor more compelling than logic.

As astronomy was born of the search for meanings in the stars, so the search for mystic functions among the figures of geometry evolved a school of decoration that drowns the eye in pleasure, baffles the mind to explain. From square and compass spring the best of the interlaced ornament of the palace of Alhambra—the ornament that raises material things to a plane almost exempt from material limitations. And not the designer alone gleaned from the geomancer’s play with line. Experiments profitless to the magician yielded of their magic to the architect, to the end that he was able to make of a gateway a song of thanksgiving, of a square tower a hymn of aspiration—and these, if it suited him, by the magic of proportion alone, without the aid of any adornment whatever.

Such a race, if it could have painted and drawn, would have produced artists superlative in more than one direction. Clear observation and the wit to discern significances would have made satirists and commentators of the most subtle kind. In picture, the Arab metaphor would have been better expressed, even, than in words, which often seem a weak translation of a graphic symbol in the Arab story-teller’s mind. As to decoration, it seems inevitable that with knowledge of the figure and freedom to use it, the Moors that adorned Alhambra’s inner walls could have painted such designs as are not even dreamed of; for their designing—so far as its field extended—was to Occidental designing in general as evolved musical composition is to arrangement by guess-work.

All these things the Arab must have done as a painter. Yet despite the injunction depriving him of life as material for picture and sculpture, and indeed because of it, he has evolved an art in which painting and sculpture unite to express the human emotions through the medium of the human form. That art, of course, is dancing. He has dignified it with his accumulated knowledge of decoration, imbued it with the mystic symbolism of his speculative mind. In light mood it narrates the passing occurrence or the amusing anecdote. And not the least of the wonders of the Arab dancing is the emphasis it places upon the beauty of womankind. Instead of movement, as in most European dancing, its essential interest is in a series of pictures, charged with significance and rich in harmony of line. The eye has time to dwell upon a posture, to revel in the sensuous grace into which it casts body and limb. To complete the task of sculptural composition, the Arabic dancer studies to a rare completeness the art of eliminating the many natural crudities of position that prevent arms, legs and body from showing to the utmost advantage their physical perfection. Though the material body does not—in the work of a genuine artist—distract attention from sculptural nobility of pose, neither is physical attractiveness lost sight of in the beauties of the abstract.

That the treasure-house of Arabian choreography never has been really opened to Occidental eyes is probably due, as much as to anything else, to the Arab’s inability to contribute any explanation to a thing which, by his way of thinking, explains itself. He has seen no dancing except that of his own race. To him Arabian dancing is not Arabian; it is just dancing. In his eyes the mimetic symbols are as descriptive as spoken

words. Except he could see them with Occidental eyes, he would see nothing about them to explain.

Europe has seen the Arabic work, and enjoyed it for its ocular beauty. Gérome, Constant, Bargue and others have painted its sinuous elegance with admirable results. But no insight into its motives has become general, nor has any key to its meaning heretofore been printed, so far as can be ascertained, in any European language.

America still further than Europe has been excluded from satisfactory acquaintance with the Oriental, because it has been so rarely presented here except in a manner to defame it. At the World’s Fair in Chicago, where we saw it first, its sinuous body-movement caused a shock. Along that line opportunist managers saw profit. Sex—an institution whose existence is frankly admitted by every civilisation except our own—was, under managerial inspiration, insisted upon to the exclusion of every other motive of the dance; and insisted upon in such a manner as to make it repulsive. Ruth St. Denis has gone far in removing the resulting stigma from the art of India and Egypt. That the prejudice is not going to persist in the face of a national common-sense and love of beauty is further indicated in the reception met by the work of Fatma a couple of seasons ago in The Garden of Allah; a Moroccan woman, doing work unreservedly typical of her country, always received with delight by the audience, and never regarded from the wrong point of view.

The mission of calling Western attention to that which lies below the surface of Arabic dancing, however, appears to have remained for Zourna, the Tunisian. To her it is possible, by virtue of a point of view resulting from a dual education, Mohammedan and European.

Zourna is the daughter of an Arab father and a French mother, who lived in Tunis. In childhood she was taught the Arab girl’s accomplishments, dancing included; but an occasional visit to France enabled her at all times to see her African way of living somewhat as it would appear to the European. In the natural course of events she married; destined, however, to a short time of enjoyment of the dreamy dancing of the sheltered harem. The death of her husband and loss of fortune drove her to dance in cafés. That genus of work she had time to learn well before Fate again intervened. A chain of circumstances brought her an opportunity to study ballet in the French Academy. It was not her medium of expression, but it gave her a clear measure of the difference between the Oriental and Occidental philosophies of the dance.

Of formulated dances the Arab has few, and those no more set than are the words of our stories: the point must not be missed, but we may choose our own vocabulary. In terms of the dance, the Arab entertainer tells stories; in the case of known and popular stories she follows the accepted narrative, but improvises the movements and poses that express it, exactly as though they were spoken words instead of pantomime. Somewhat less freedom necessarily obtains in the narration of dance-poems than in the recital of trifling incident; but within the necessary limits, originality is prized. In the mimetic vocabulary are certain phrases that are depended upon to convey their definite meanings. New word-equivalents, however, are always in order, if they

can stand the searching test of eyes educated in beauty and minds trained to exact thinking.

Nearly unlimited as it is in scope, delightful as it unfailingly is to those who know it, Arabic dancing suits occasions of a variety of which the dances of Europe never dreamed. In the café it diverts and sometimes demoralises. In his house the master watches the dancing of his slaves, dreaming under the narcotic spell of rhythm. On those rare occasions when the demands of diplomacy or business compel him to bring a guest into his house, the dancing of slaves is depended upon to entertain. His wives dance before him to please his eye, and to cajole him into conformity with their desires.

Even the news of the day is danced, since the doctrines of Mohammed depress the printing of almost everything except the Koran. Reports of current events reach the male population in the market and the café. At home men talk little of outside affairs, and women do not get out except to visit others of their kind, as isolated from the world as themselves. But they get all the news that is likely to interest them, none the less; at least the happenings in the world of Mohammedanism.

As venders of information of passing events, there are women that wander in pairs from city to city, from harem to harem, like bards of the early North. As women they are admitted to women’s apartments. There, while one rhythmically pantomimes deeds of war to the cloistered ones that never saw a soldier, or graphically imitates the punishment of a malefactor in the market-place, her companion chants, with falsetto whines, a descriptive and rhythmic accompaniment. Thus is the harem protected against the risk of narrowness.

In the daily life of the harem, dancing is one of the favoured pastimes. Women dance to amuse themselves and to entertain one another. In the dance, as in music and embroidery, there is endless interest, and a spirit of emulation usually friendly.

One of the comparatively formalised mimetic expressions is the Dance of Greeting, the function of which is to honour a guest when occasion brings him into the house. Let it be imagined that coffee and cigarettes have been served to two grave gentlemen; that one has expressed bewilderment at the magnificence of the establishment, and his opinion that too great honour has been done him in permitting him to enter it; that the host has duly made reply that his grandchildren will tell with pride of the day when this poor house was so far honoured that such a one set his foot within it. After which a sherbet, more coffee and cigarettes. When the time seems propitious, the host suggests to the guest that if in his great kindness he will look at her, he—the host—would like permission to order a slave to try to entertain with a dance.

The musicians, squatting against the wall, begin the wailing of the flute, the hypnotic throb of “darabukkeh.” She who is designated to dance the Greeting enters holding before her a long scarf that half conceals her; the expression on her face is surprise, as though honour had fallen to her beyond her merits or expectation. Upon reaching her place she extends her arms forward, then slowly moves them, and with them the scarf, to one side, until she is revealed. When a nod confirms the command to dance, she quickly drops the scarf to the

floor, advances to a place before the guest and near him, and honours him with a slave’s salutation. Then arising she proceeds to her silent greeting.

“You are implanted in your house,” says a movement [see photographs]. “Here is food, here may you sleep well. When you go forth, go you East, West, North, South [indicating quarter-circles by pointing the toe], yet you are here. May Allah’s blessings descend upon you. May the breezes blow upon you, may the rain refresh you, may abundance be showered upon you; yet may you remember that here you are in your house, and that here is your slave.”

That is the lifeless skeleton of the story, without grace, or the animation of movement, or the embellishment of expression. To try to force words into an equivalent of the semi-ritualistic splendour of the dance would be attempting to build a Moorish palace of dry grains of sand.

In Occidental entertainment, when a performer has gained the sanctuary of the platform, he is practically immune from interruption until his “number” is finished—unless exception be made of “amateur night” in vaudeville houses, where offenders are forcibly removed with a hook, or suddenly enveloped in darkness. With that probably unique exception, however, the audience confronted by an indifferent performer can only summon patience. The Orient offers no such security, to the dancer at least. At the first sign of failure to interest, a signal, perhaps no more noticeable than the raise of an eyelid, commands the dancer to cease. Not later, but instantly.

To interrupt a dance of movement without regard to its argument would be worse than interrupting a story. It would not only undo the preceding work; it would be very likely to arrest the artist in a transitional position, in itself weak. At all events, such an interruption would painfully mar an entertainment programme. But the Arabian dance is not a dance of movement; it is a dance of pictures, to which movement is wholly subordinate. Each bar of the music accompanies a picture complete in itself. Within the measure of each bar the dancer has time for the movements leading from one picture to the next, and to hold the picture for the instant necessary to give emphasis. At whatever moment she may be stopped, therefore, she is within less than a second of a pose so balanced and sculptural that it appears as a natural termination of the dance. The Oriental’s general indifference to the forces of accumulation and climax are consistent with such a capricious ending. In his dance, each phrase is complete in itself; it may be likened to one of those serial stories in our magazines, in which each instalment of the story is self-sufficient.

To the Occidental unused to Oriental art, the absence of crescendo and climax, and the substituted iteration carried on endlessly, is uninteresting. Nevertheless, a few days of life among Oriental conditions suffice to throw many a scoffer into attunement with the Oriental art idea. Which is to soothe, not to stimulate. Moorish ornament is an indefinitely repeated series of marvellously designed units, each complete in itself, yet inextricably interwoven with its neighbours. In music the beats continue unchanging through bar after bar, phrase after phrase. The rhythmic repetition of the tile-designs on the wall, the decorative repetition of the beats of music, produce a spell of dreamy visioning comparable only to the effect of some potent but harmless narcotic.

To the foregoing generality exception must again be made of the dancing in cafés. While it conforms to the structure of a picture-complete-in-each-bar, its treatment is more or less at variance with the idea of soothing. But the symbolism is likely to lack nothing of picturesqueness. The Handkerchief Dance is characteristic of the type.

Of the two handkerchiefs used in this dance one represents the girl herself, the other her soon-to-be-selected lover. She first takes a corner of each handkerchief into her teeth, warming them into life. She lays them parallel on the floor and indifferently dances around and between them, to state her power to cross the line and return free from entanglements of lover’s claims. Into the waistband of her trousers she tucks opposite corners of both handkerchiefs so that they hang as panniers: the hands pushed through show the panniers empty; she would receive gifts. To show, too, that she can give, a flourishing gesture releases a corner of each, to spill the imagined contents. Interest progresses until as a climax she kisses one of the fluttering cloths, slowly passes it downward over heart and body, and throws it in a wad to the elected one. The token is his passport to her; and its return at any later time is announcement that she no longer interests him.

One dance the Arabs have that is not associated with the idea of symbolism, but is rather a vehicle for the display of technical skill for skill’s own sake. It is the Flour Dance. On the floor a design is drawn in an even layer of flour—a favourite figure is the square imposed on a circle, familiar in Saracenic ornament. The dancer’s first journey over the figure establishes a series of footprints; a successful performance consists in planting the feet in the same tracks during subsequent rounds. Difficulties can be added by crossings of the feet, turns and other involutions, and multiplied by increasing speed. This dance was mentioned in connection with the ancient Greek Dance of the Spilled Meal, of which it may reasonably be supposed to be either a direct descendant or a surviving ancestor.

There are a number of little dances popular in light entertainment. In one, a woman in the act of eavesdropping is startled by a lizard dropping on her back. Her efforts to get rid of it attract her husband from his [imagined] conversation on the other side of the curtain. She must now explain why she was standing at the curtain, and above all she must appear calm. The comedy opportunity lies in her efforts not to squirm away from the [imagined] lizard.

Another of these one-character sketches tells of the lazy washerwoman. She enters steadying on her head an imaginary basket of linen. Arriving at the edge of the stream she puts down the basket, kneels, and indolently begins mauling and scrubbing the garments over the half-submerged rocks. (And she turns the movements into poetry!) But her attention wanders from uncongenial work. Whose hasn’t? one sympathetically asks oneself as one watches. She looks up the stream, and down; her eye sees beauties, and her mind finds subjects to wonder about. She falls a-dreaming, and then asleep—still kneeling.

When she wakens, the other women have finished their work and gone, and it is late. Not stopping to wring out the clothes that she hurriedly collects from the