9 pool, she throws them into the basket. Humour is put into the artist’s mimicry of the poor woman’s efforts to avoid the dripping water, while carrying the weight of a basket of wet clothes balanced on her head. Embodying as it does both dream-sentiment and comedy, the little pantomime is a pretty vehicle for versatility.

A serious story is that of the Mohammedan woman who, against her father’s wishes, has married a Jew. The representation opens with the woman’s entrance to the room where her father lies dying. Her hair falls loose in token of mourning or penitence. She kneels beside the death-bed, and strips off her many jewels. Her vow to re-enter the fold of Islam she shows by drawing a strand of her hair across her mouth, suggesting the face-covering of the women of Mohammedan faith. The father offers his hand to be kissed. Grateful, she slowly rises, crosses the room, closes and bolts the door, in token of shutting out all but the paternal faith.

The dance of mourning for the dead is a fixed composition only to the extent of including certain accepted postures; their sequence is not prescribed. “Here he lies dead; Allah takes him. I am as a fallen tree; I am alone. He held me in his arms; we played together; and he was my protector.” In such manner runs the widow’s lament for her departed husband. Pulsing through all is the solemn beat of “darabukkeh” undertoning the wails of mourners.

The Bedoui of the desert celebrate marriage, peace-compacts, declarations of war and other happy occasions with a gun-dance, which is known as a Fantasia or Fantaisie. It in no way conforms to the fundamentals of Arabic dancing, and in fact it is a dance in name only. But it is joyous exceedingly. Approximately rhythmic rifle-firing is continuous from beginning to end. Performers both mounted and afoot leap and whirl in maniac confusion, shooting up, down and all around in merry abandon. Dust, howls and powder-smoke attack ears, eyes and throat in unison, and the only unhappy ones in the gay assemblage are those that Allah wills to have been shot, stepped on by horses, or both.

Tangier is the setting of an occasional savage celebration of religious fanaticism; and these celebrations, too, fall into a category of quasi-dancing. They are demonstrations of a sect styled the Hamadsha. To a deafening accompaniment of fifes and drums, a few leaders start a crude hopping dance in the market-place. The number of participants grows rapidly; excitement increases with the number, until, at a point of frenzy, the leaping fanatics begin hacking their heads with axes. The example is so contagious that small boys dash into the mêlée and snatch axes from the hands of men, to inflict the same castigation. Christian spectators frequently faint at the spectacle, but fascination holds them at their windows until they are overcome. During the four hours or more that the blood-spilling continues, as well as during a period before and after, the street is a dangerous place for the unbeliever.

Ostrander, the traveller, while in Constantinople, found himself unaccountably in the midst of a celebration differing in character from those of the Hamadsha of Tangier only in the respect of being held at night. The resemblance in all essentials indicates the existence of Mohammedan undercurrents completely unknown to the Western world.

Egypt, notwithstanding centuries of Arab domination, preserves—or re-creates—in her dancing the style shown in the carvings of the Pharaoh dynasties. In contrast to the softly curving Arab movements, the Egyptian’s definitely incline to straight lines. Gestures change their direction in angles, rather than curves. Poses of perfect symmetry are sought. Even when symmetry is absent, the serpentine, plastic character of Arab movement is pertinently avoided. The sentiment of architecture is cultivated; the head is not turned on the shoulders, nor the torse on the hips, except as such relaxation is required in the interest of pantomime. In movement and position the Egyptian seeks verticals, horizontals and right angles. To the beauty of the work the severely geometrical treatment adds an architectural quality almost startling in its surety and majesty.

Egyptian form “toes out” the artist’s feet, so that they are seen without perspective when the performer is facing the spectator.

Whether the dances of the Valley of the Nile established the conventions of early relief carvings, or whether, on the other hand, the carvings determined the character of the dances, is a question neither possible nor necessary to decide. Both arts certainly were the expression of rigid religious ceremonialism, and likely are twins. To-day the records in granite are the subject of conscious study on the part of dancers. In the past, too, they undoubtedly have been chart and compass to the sculpture of ephemeral flesh and blood, that unguided might have perished in any one of the thousands of generations of its existence.

In type of subject and motive the dances of Egypt resemble those of the Barbary States, as above described. Mourning, homage and incident are narrated in about the same vocabulary, the dissimilarity of technique being comparable to a dialectic difference of pronunciation of a language. On their commercial side the two are identical. In tourist-ridden cafés of Cairo and Port Said, as in those of Tangier and Algiers, girls dance what the tourist expects and wishes. In the Coptic town of Esneh, dwelling in the ruined temples, is a community of people known as Almées. They are literally a tribe of dancers, removed by a khedive in former times from Cairo on grounds of impropriety. Dancing as they do in the temples of five thousand years ago, they form a curious link with antiquity. Their work, however, is said to be shaped to the tourist demand.

Such dances, however, despite the insistence with which they are pushed upon the attention of tourists, are not of the kind with which the name of Egypt deserves to be associated. The mystic still dwells along the shores of the Nile; but its votaries do not commercialise it, nor is it a commodity that lends itself to sale and purchase, even were there a disposition so to degrade it. One of the dances illustrated by Zourna symbolises in terms as delicate as the most ethereal imaginings, the awakening of the soul.

The body’s initial lack of the spiritual spark is represented by the crossed hands, as bodies are carved on sepulchres. An imperceptible glide through a series of poses so subtly distinguished from one another that movement, from one moment to the next, is unseen, creates an atmosphere mysterious and almost chill in its twilight gloom. Gropingly the arms rise to the

position that symbolises prayer for the divine light—the hand below the chin emphasising the upturn of the face, the upper hand suggesting the flame. With awe the new intelligence gazes upon the world, open-eyed; then it must draw aside the veil of the future. Fulness of life is seen awaiting, which the dancer expresses by a gesture representing roundness, the accepted Oriental representation of completeness and richness. But wait! she will grow old, and with bent back will walk stumbling at the heels of a camel. But a defiance to age and the future! Now she is young; her body is straight and her limbs round. A defiant expression of the joy of life follows, yet undertoned withal with unforgettable sadness; movements of happiness, a face of tragedy.

The sombre majesty of the pictures, especially those of the search into the future; the reverence-compelling mystery of the somnambulistic movements—a hundred things about this dance raise it to the very uppermost plane of its kind of art. So far beyond mere skill are its movements, so completely alien to anything in Occidental knowledge, that to Occidental eyes they are as unearthly as they are imposing. Reason fails, chloroformed by beauty; the real becomes the unreal, the unreal the real. Imagination is released from the tentacles of fact and time. The future? It could be seen for the trouble of turning the head to look; but what profit foreknowledge either of cuts or caresses? Curiosity is for the very young. Better and wiser the lot of ignorance....

Hypnotism of a kind? Granted. Finely rendered, this dance represents the utmost development of the co-ordination of rhythm, sentiment, and appropriateness of movement. That combination in its turn is undoubtedly the essence of the Oriental magic that, since the world was young, has enabled men to dream dreams and see visions. Among the newer civilisations the emotional power of rhythm is as unknown as it is untried.

The Egyptian’s passion for decoration is served by the dance, no less ably than is his love of the metaphysical. In the homes of the rich there is said to be a form of decorative choreography, like a ballet in structure, that duplicates and animates a painted or sculptured frieze on the walls of the room. The dancers enter one at a time, taking their positions in turn under the figures of the frieze, copying each in pose as they come into place under it. The intervals between poses are of course enriched by carefully related movements, so that the line of dancers, advancing together from figure to figure, shall move as a harmonised unit. The scheme creates a manifold interest: the line of dancers represents an animated version of the frieze; though it is seen to move, its figures remain in a sense unchanged; yet to watch any one performer is to see her change constantly. The human line and the mural frieze collectively form a background for the work of a leading dancer, who flits from place and duplicates the poses of such figures as she may choose.

In another entertainment, descriptions tell of huge vases carried in and placed back of the dancing space, as though they were decorative adjuncts forgotten until the last moment. They are placed, and the servants retire, just before the first dancer opens the programme. A spectator unfamiliar with the diversion would notice that the vases were elaborately ornamented with carved figures. These one by one relax their archaic severity

of pose and very slowly come to life. Keeping the colour of the stone and without wholly losing its unbending character, each dances her allotted number and returns to her pose on the vase.

The foregoing is by no means a complete list of Egypt’s dances of decorative interest or occult significance. Dance representations of subjects of everyday interest are also popular; there is one that sketches a series of incidents connected with a hunt with a falcon. But, as stated in another place, the choreographic taste of Egypt has many points of similarity with that of the Arabs of all the southern coast of the Mediterranean. Egyptian technique is distinct, its interpretation of the abstract is marvellously developed, its union of the dance with architecture is its own. But its taste in pantomimes of light motive is already characterised without the addition of further examples.

Following Oriental dancing eastward toward India, its probable birthplace, it is found to preserve with approximate consistency certain general characteristics. The combined pantomimic and decorative use of the arms, subject to regional ideas as to what comprises decorative quality, runs through it all. The apparent freedom of chest, abdomen and hips from any restricting inter-relationships, is an attribute of it emphasised in some localities more than others; it decreases toward the north, generally speaking. The women of Turkey compare with those of the Barbary States in phenomenal flexibility and control of the abdominal muscle—resulting in capability for a species of contortion not at all agreeable when exaggerated.

A principle of all Oriental dancing is its frank acknowledgment of avoirdupois. It employs none of the devices by which lightness is achieved, choosing as its aim, rather, the representation of a plastic quality that exploits rather than denies the meatiness of flesh texture. The heel is not often raised high from the ground, and indeed the foot is often planted flat. A mannerism intensely characteristic of the Oriental use of the foot is a trick of quickly changing its direction after it is set on the floor but before the weight of the body is shifted to it; the twist may leave the heel stationary as a pivot, or the ball. The effect is as though the dancer were making a feint to deceive the spectator as to the direction of the next turn, and doubtless such contribution to interest is the intent. It at least adds intricacy, and directs attention to a pretty foot. Of the latter adornment, whether covered with little Turkish slipper with turned-up toe, or bare, possessors are impartially proud.

Mystery of movement in certain parts is a further characteristic distinguishing the Oriental work from anything to be found in the Occident, with the exception of certain tricks of the Spanish Gipsy—tricks which, after all, furnish no exception, since they are Moorish absolutely. The Oriental covers little space in her work. A space large enough to kneel on would admit all that her art requires. She has no leaps to make, nor open leg-movements. Much of the time she has both feet on the floor, is active chiefly in arms and body. Much more of the time her feet are engaged in steps hardly noticeable.

The foregoing observations on Oriental work apply more particularly to the low latitudes than to lands farther removed from the equator. China and Japan have a choreography like that of the Southern regions in some respects; but their custom of bundling the dancer

up in clothes is the cause also of differences so pronounced that they had best be considered as of a different category. Purely as a convenience, therefore, let it be understood that Japanese and Chinese dancing shall be referred to by those names; and that the word Oriental shall be understood to signify the dances of the sinuous-body type, to which pertain those of the Arabs of North Africa and elsewhere, the Persians, Turks and some others.

To the dancing of men, where any is done, generalities as to the style of Oriental dancing fail to fit in many cases. Exceptions are not numerous, however; because, if for no other reason, far the greater part of Oriental dancing is done by women. Of the few exceptions some are dances of religion, others of war.

An intoxicating Sword Dance is practiced in Turkey. Like almost everything else that is danced (or sung or acted) its merit of course depends in great degree on the quality of its interpretation. Well done, this Turkish Sword Dance shows itself a composition of rare individuality and a fine, wild beauty; for good measure, it is a sword combat of a reality that threatens the spectator with heart failure. The two combatants advance and retreat, accenting the music with clashes of sword on shield; the interest is that of a barbarously beautiful dance as long as they continue to face each other. Notwithstanding rapidity, the chances are against a mishap. But when of a sudden both launch themselves on a series of lightning rond de jambe pirouettes, the scimitars sweeping around fast enough to cut a man in two if he should fail to parry, the affair becomes a sporting event, and that of a kind to harrow the nerves.

Turkey also is the place, or one of the places, where

Whirling Dervishes are educated for their curious calling. Mr. H. C. Ostrander is authority for the statement that an apprenticeship of a thousand days is considered a necessary preparation for proper performance of this apparently simple act of devotion. Since nothing whatever is attempted in step beyond that which the ballet-dancers call “Italian turns,” it must be supposed that the art of the Whirling Dervish has qualities that do not appear on the surface. It is taught in monasteries scattered through the mountainous regions.

The Caucasus, that land less known than fabled, has dances of a fame as persistent as it is vague. Its map is dotted with names immortalised in the Arabian Nights. It is the setting of Scheherazade and Sumurun; a region whose inhabitants declare their intention never to become Occidentalised, and whom no power is likely to push in any direction. Being under the Czar’s dominion, most of its few visitors are Russians; they alone among Occidentals possess any definite knowledge of its choreography. Princess Chirinski-Chichmatoff, at present making it an object of special study, writes the following in reply to an inquiry from the authors:

“Lezginkà, the Oriental Dance of the Caucasus, was born in the mountains of a beautiful country whose nature is wild and grandiose; among a people courageous and energetic, who have preserved much of the savagery and temperament of the Oriental races.

“The men of these people ... have the custom of never parting from the poniard. They pass the greater part of their time horseback, always prepared to meet an enemy and to defend the happiness and honour of the family. To this day they retain the custom of answering for every spilling of blood with a revenge; each victim has his victim. There still exists the custom of abducting the fiancée from the paternal house and carrying her away to one’s own. The women have all the timidity of beings who live under the strongest of despotism. They have preserved all the softness and grace of daughters of the Orient, with body accustomed to careful attention and not to any physical work; who seek only to rest, to look at themselves, and to enjoy the gifts by which they are favoured by nature and usage. Under this exterior the woman keeps covered many passions which sleep until the first moment of provocation, when they break forth like the eruption of a volcano—surrounding her with fire that sweeps with it any imprudent one that happens to be near. Passion is the principal theme in the life of an Oriental woman, and that sentiment she can vary like a virtuoso....

“You see her quiet, beautiful, relaxed, in the calm of a great fatigue, with softness enveloping face and movements. Suddenly one detects an unusual sound, a look cast, a movement—she is fired, she becomes fierce and wild like all the Nature around her. You see before you a tigress, beautiful, live and strong, ready to spring on the prey, playing and attracting, making mischief and exhausting herself at the same time. After which her movements become few, slow, tired and melancholy.”

“Thus is Oriental dancing built on contrasts; sentiments and moods change unexpectedly. Gentle, relaxed and melancholy, of a sudden it is brusque, animated, fiery. It has much coquetry, passion, and often tragedy.”

In India dancing is sharply divided into the classes of sacred and profane. In the latter division are to be

found dances of ceremony, pantomimic representations of wide variety, and eccentricities that almost trespass on the domain of sleight-of-hand. The best known is a Dance of Eggs. The performer, as she starts whirling, takes eggs one by one from a basket that she carries, and sets them into slip-nooses at the several ends of cords that hang from her belt. Centrifugal motion pulls each cord taut as soon as it receives the weight of an egg. Finally all the cords, numbering from a dozen to twenty, are extended, each bearing its insecurely fastened egg. The dance is completed by collecting the eggs and returning them unbroken to the basket.

Another diversion is the Cobra Dance popularised in America by Miss Ruth St. Denis—assisted by numerous imitators. One hand is held in a shape to suggest the form of a cobra’s head, and huge jewels add a striking resemblance to the creature’s eyes. The performer of the cobra representation sits cross-legged. The hand suggesting the snake’s head glides over the body, with frequent sudden pauses to reconnoitre; the arm following it—in the case of Miss St. Denis so amazingly supple and so skilfully made to seem jointless that it suggests the snake’s body almost to reality—takes the appropriate sinuous movements around shoulders and neck. The free hand completes that which at times is almost an illusion by stroking and semi-guiding the head. Miss St. Denis herself watches the hand with just the alertness and caution to convey an impression of latent danger of which she, the snake charmer, is not afraid, but which she must anticipate with keen attention. Withal she never for an instant slips from her high key of grace, rhythm and style.

It is to Miss St. Denis that America and western

Europe owe the greater part of their impressions of the dancing of the Far East. She has given the subject years of study; with the object, far more comprehensive than an imitation or reproduction of specific dances, of interpreting the Oriental spirit. To this end Miss St. Denis uses the structural facts of the various dances as a basis for an embodiment of their character in such form that it shall be comprehensible to Western eyes and among Western surroundings. The loss inseparable from the adaptation of such a creation to the conventions of the stage, she compensates—perhaps more than compensates—by a concerted use of lights, colour and music, co-operating to produce a sense of dreamy wonder, and to unite in the expression of a certain significance.

Her Nautch Dance, with its whirling fountain of golden tissue, she sets in the palace of a rajah, where it serves a social purpose similar to that of the Dance of Greeting already described. The Spirit of Incense is an interpretation of the contemplative spirit that accompanies Buddhistic thought and worship. The Temple—with which Miss St. Denis remains an inseparable part, in the mind of every one who has seen it—throws the spectator into an attitude of something like awe at the rise of the curtain, so perfectly considered is an indefinable relationship of magnificence and semi-gloom in the setting. An idol occupies a shrine in the centre of the stage. After a stately ritual executed by priests, the idol (Radha) descends and performs a Dance of the Five Senses, glorifying physical enjoyment. Interwoven with increasing manifestations of pleasure in the senses is a counter-expression of increasing despair. The opposed sentiments reach their climaxes simultaneously. Radha resumes her shrine, and the attitude of endless contemplation, in token that peace of spirit lies only in denial of sensual claims.

The technical character with which Miss St. Denis invests the Indian representations is, first, the elimination of any movement that might detract from a feeling of continuity. Every action proceeds in waves; a ripple slowly undulates down the body, and even seems to continue on its way into the earth; like a wave running the length of a cord, a ripple glides from body through the extended arms and fingers, to go on indefinitely through the air. Rapid movements are employed only enough to meet the demands of variety. Long gesture, long line, deliberate action and even colour quality are held in an indescribable rapport with the insistent tempo with which the whole is bound together; there is no escape from acceptance of the resultant multiple rhythm; it is inevitable. A simple, rapid movement, therefore, introduced with due consideration of all the parts of the complex, magic mechanism, has the dramatic power literally to startle.

The success of the composition as a whole, in its purpose of conveying an impression of the very essence of an aspect of India, is asserted most emphatically by those to whom that mysterious land is best known. To regard the production as an exposition of Indian dancing would be quite beside the point. The dances, though wholly consistent with their originals in point of character, are only a part of a whole. Nor do they pretend to exploit the complete range of Indian choreography; Miss St. Denis herself would be the first to disclaim any such intention. As she explains her work, she uses the dancing of a people as a basis on which to

compose a translation of that people’s point of view and habit of thought.

To exactly the same process Bizet subjected the music of Spain to produce the score of Carmen; Le Sage to construct Gil Blas. Than the latter there is nothing in Spain that could more quickly acquaint a foreigner with certain aspects of “Españolism.”

A link with antiquity is furnished by multitudinous carvings of dancers on Hindu and Buddhistic temples in India and Java. The temple in Java, some of whose sculpture is here reproduced, was recently rediscovered after several centuries of burial in a jungle. It is known to be at least eight hundred years old. A comparison between the style of the dancers there represented, that of the little Javanese present-day dancer shown in a photograph, and that which is indicated in line drawings (from photographs of temples in India) hints at indefinite age back of Oriental dancing as we know it, as to style, technique and spirit. The photographs, including those from which the line drawings were made, are from the collection of Mr. H. C. Ostrander.

With variations, the India type of movement and pantomime, with the practice of striking a significant pose at regular intervals, continues eastward as far as the Hawaiian Islands. The Hula-Hula of the graceful Hawaiians has been well exemplified recently in an interpolation in The Bird of Paradise. Essentially, the Hula-Hula is a dance of coquetry; its thematic position, which recurs like a refrain, is that shown in one of the accompanying drawings.

Any effort to trace the path of Oriental dancing farther east than the Hawaiian Islands leads to the shoals of unsubstantial speculation. Aztec ruins are said (on authority not vouched for) to bear carvings that show the early existence of the India type of dancing in Mexico. There are said to be traces of India influences in the dancing of Mexican Indians of to-day. But the interest of such fact—even if it is a fact—is more closely related to ethnology than choreography; because it is pretty certain that any trace of India dancing that may exist will be an almost unrecognisable corruption. The study of dances on grounds of oddity, ethnological curiosity or legendary association leads away from the study of dancing for its own sake, and that of its inherent beauty. It is in the endeavour to keep within the lines of reasonably pure choreography that this book has been restrained from digressions into the quasi-dancing of American Indians, African negroes, various South Sea Islanders and many other interesting folk.

Dancing has an immense importance in religious worship of most of the many denominations of India. Priestesses are trained to it; corps de ballet into which they are organised are maintained in the temples under a system like that of ancient Egypt. Their rites are unknown—or practically so—to those outside of their own faith. In other cults the rites are performed, in part, by laymen. The latter ceremonies include a not-to-be-described orgy periodically celebrated in certain Hindu temples, by women, with the motives of propitiating Vishnu.

China has a school of rhythmic pantomime, the movement of which hardly justifies its consideration as a branch of real dancing—so far as known to the authors. An annual religious spectacle is to be noted: in it are employed animals’ heads, recalling the Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians.

Japan, by means of sundry additions to the older Chinese school of mimetic posturing, has converted it into an organism to which the name of dancing is quite appropriate, and which constitutes by far the greater portion of her national choreography.

It appears that the dances of occasional merry-makers, priestesses, and the much-misunderstood Geishas have a common characteristic of slow, even movement, small steps, and a highly abstract pantomime. Of a style distinct from these are certain dances of men, including a stirring dance of warriors; in which group is seen vigourous action, a good proportion of open movement, and genuine steps. The accepted classification of the Japanese, as Nô, or sacred dancing, and profane, doubtless has its merits; but the division previously indicated, distinguishing between dances of posture and those of movement, which is the one established by the eye, is at least convenient.

With choral posture and gesture the Japanese celebrate auspicious conditions of nature or happy events in the family. The coming of spring; the cherry blossoms; the season of fishing with cormorants; flowers in general; rice-harvest—in honour of a thousand occurrences may be imagined groups of gaily coloured kimonos enveloping little figures, softly and rhythmically swaying over the green, from each kimono protruding a fan or a bouquet held in a cloth-enshrouded hand. In the tea-house the Geisha (who is a skilled professional entertainer, no more and no less) pantomimes, in delicate symbol, the falling of the petals of flowers, the hearing of distant music—any motive is suitable, apparently, so long as it is pretty, dainty, fanciful. Movement conforms to the same manner of thinking; much of it barely disturbs the silken folds of the kimono. A thousand meanings are hidden in little turns and twists of the fan; but, when explained, the connection of act and meaning is often so tenuous that it seems less mysterious, or suggestive, than merely vague. Nevertheless, taking it on its own premise as a demonstration of Japanese-doll prettiness, which is not concerned with any but the lightest emotions, this type of dancing is pleasing. Its virtue is its gossamer frailty.

The dances of war fall into a distinct class. Some of the drawings of Hokkai represent them: combats between swordsmen, or between a swordsman and a spearman. The dances themselves are charged with a vigourous spirit and executed with big, noble movement of flourished weapons. The poses follow the indefinable angularity which, through the very consistency of its use, is an agreeable element in the more virile school of Japanese drawing; and the spicy effect of sharpness so produced combines to admiration with the crab-like design of old Japanese armour.

Other men’s dances, equally vigourous, are recorded in drawings. But any exact study of these or any other dances of Japan is almost hopelessly handicapped by a scarcity of individuals who possess the desirable combination of definite knowledge and personal reliability.

The Japanese theatrical dancing, so called, leads into a labyrinth of pantomime both subtle and involved, and movement so slight that a troop of dancers can continue in action four consecutive hours, without relays. That is almost too much for real dancing, under existing

human limitations of heart and muscle. The ballet dancer is entitled to a rest after a solo of four minutes; to the ballet, therefore, it would be well to return, for the certainty that the discussion is safe again on the solid ground of reality.

CHAPTER X

THE BALLET IN ITS DARK AGE

In trying to find something that would suit the new and unsettled state of the public taste, managers apparently tried any concoction that could be devised by stage, paint-bridge, property room or box-office. Montmartre dance-halls evolved the Can-can; half of Paris caught its fever; England, and thence America, were engulfed in the lingerie of high kickers. Not dancers, just high kickers.

“One, two, three, KICK!” was their vocabulary—or is, for they are not all dead yet.

In England several managers at various times offered good productions, with casts of capable artists. Of such productions the most fortunate made small profits; the majority lost whatever money was put into them. Managers said the public did not want good work—a deduction apparently justifiable. They devised the elaborate scenic production—Aladdin’s-cave sort of thing, with millions of jewels the size of roc’s eggs, delirious with yards and furlongs of red, yellow and green foil-paper, acres of chrome-yellow, and “magic transformation scenes”; with one hundred people on the stage, one hundred, obviously making two hundred legs, every one of which was considered thrilling and dangerous in those days. Of all those legs displayed in all their amplitude, usually not one pair could dance a step; but they did not need to dance.

That was the form of art called the extravaganza. It was a naughty thing to patronise. Its inanities, without its “stupendous” cost of production, survive in the present-day burlesque.

In the morbid conditions of Montmartre there came into favour a species of acrobats whose aim was to produce the illusion that their legs and spines were out of joint, if not broken. Although of an ugliness demoniac, their work was called dancing. “Wiry Sal” in England and “Ruth the Twister” in America were the illuminating pseudonyms associated with the specialty. Perhaps a specimen of the kind might still be unearthed in a dime museum.

Enter Lottie Collins, she of “ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.” To high kicking and contortion, and the Skirt Dance vogue of the moment, she added action so violent that it seemed a menace to life itself. The combination of attractions was irresistible; Europe and America made her rich. Her master-stroke was bending back until her body was horizontal, and violently straightening up to emphasise the “boom” of her song. For no less than a dancer she was a singer! The two talents were employed together. And hordes of little plagiarists of her act, as of every other “hit,” brought delight to the many and despair to the few.

Lottie Collinsism left no territory to be explored in its direction. So an eager world turned to the inanity of sweetness.

The dear little girl had been discovered. Evil among days! Preferably she was dimpled. She wore a blond wig with curls falling artlessly over her shoulders. Her eyebrows were painted in a smoothly curved arch extending around on to the sides of her face, and her eyes were shaded with the luxuriant lashes begot of heavy “beading”; they, too, were carried out an indefinite distance to the sides. She dressed as a child of twelve, with a sash that conveyed the idea of being dressed for Sunday-school; imagination always supplied a cent gripped in her fist. She wore “cunning” little low-heeled shoes, with straps. It was not amiss that she have some sort of sunbonnet, of lace, slipped carelessly off her flaxen head and hanging down her back. Rouge, with a bloom of rice powder, gave her a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion. Grease paint widened and shortened her lips, curved them into an infantile cupid’s bow. And from that cupid’s bow emerged, in piercing calliope tones, inflectionless recitals of her devotion to her dear old mother. At the end of each stanza she had a little dance—usually a slow polka-step, one, two, three and kick! (An irreproachably discreet little kick, to the side.) Repeat four times each side, and on to the next stanza—which instead of “mother” and “other,” will avail itself of the felicitous rhyme of “roam” and “home,” or “heart” and “part.”

Lest the enumeration of the foregoing horrors should be criticised as out of place in a discussion of dancing, be it recorded at this point that the said horrors went under the name of dancing within easy remembrance of people now living, that there are still people living who call them dancing, and—for artistic sins of the world as yet unexpiated—they still influence the dancing situation in these United States.

The Black Crook is a name that stands for superlatives. It was the most lavish spectacle America ever had seen. It made such a “hit” as rarely has been duplicated since. Its dancing features, which were of the first order, made more of an impression than had any dancing in this country since Ellsler’s tour, in 1840, ’41 and ’42. Its origin was in part due to the sometimes favourable factor of accident.

“In consequence of the destruction by fire of the Academy of Music, this city,” writes J. Allston Brown in his History of the New York Stage, “Jarrett and Palmer, who were to have produced La Biche au Bois there, had on their hands a number of artists brought from Europe. They made an arrangement with William Wheatley to utilise the ballet troupe, the chief scenic effects, of which they had models, and the transformation scene.” From those beginnings grew The Black Crook. With Marie Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli, Betty Rigl and Rose Delval as principal dancers, it opened at Niblo’s Garden in September, 1866. The run closed in January, 1868, after 475 performances. A return to Niblo’s in December, 1870, yielded 122 performances. December of the following year added 57 to the score. A revival in August, 1872, brought into the company the Kiralfy family, dancers, among whom were the brothers destined to fame as managers and producers. This 1872 revival ran twelve weeks. In 1874, Kiralfy Brothers appear as lessees of the Grand Opera House. They initiated their term with The Black Crook, with Bonfanti as première.

Of American appreciation of good dancing pantomime, during that period, at least, there is no question. It must be borne in mind that the New York performances above mentioned represent only a fraction of the production’s total business. The tours that largely occupied the intervals met the same success. The box-office measure of public enthusiasm is incomplete, moreover, without mention of Humpty Dumpty, also a spectacular pantomime with good dancing. Of its first run (in New York, and largely coinciding with the first run of The Black Crook in point of time) the gross receipts were $1,406,000. It was commensurately profitable as a “road” attraction. Pertinent to the quality of its dancing, we have a few words of its manager, Clifton W. Tayleure, as quoted by Brown: “ ... principal dancers were not easily to be found. A quarrel between Vestvalli and Sangalli enabled me to secure the latter. Betty and Emily Rigl, who had previously seceded from Niblo’s, were also secured.”

Notwithstanding desertions, The Black Crook maintained its high standards. Its ballet has never since been equalled in America, according to Mme. Bonfanti, in the classic style of work.

For its managers, at least, dancing had earned fortunes. To the Kiralfys it was evident, too, that the kind of dancing America wanted was good dancing. To produce their Excelsior in 1882 they brought from Paris Sr. Ettore Coppini, now ballet-master of the Metropolitan Opera; and George Saracco, now ballet-master of the Brussels Opera, as a leading dancer. Nor did Jarrett and Palmer modify their faith in quality. Their White Fawn, with an excellent ballet, was little less successful than The Black Crook.

The fame of such works is food for parasites; creatures incapable of discerning the quality of successful works, and upon whom the goodness of the successful dancing had made no impression. Black Crook and White Fawn companies overran the country like a flood of counterfeit money—one part fine, ninety-nine parts base. Plausible advertising protected the deception, but only for a time. It was not long before lovers of good dancing began to realise that they were being defrauded.

In a similar contingency, the supporting public of a baseball club loses no time in applying to that club’s manager whatever pressure may be necessary as a means to correcting shortcomings, as far as within him lies. The source of their ability to do this is twofold: they can analyse the game, and they have a vocabulary in which to express themselves. Baseball had not so many enthusiasts in those days as dancing had. But the appreciators of dancing lacked analytical knowledge of the art, and the language in which to discuss it. Promoters of counterfeits were not taken to task, therefore, as would have been to their own good. Instead, the names of Black Crook, White Fawn, dancing and pantomime became synonyms for theatrical imposition, and America laid aside interest in them and all their appurtenances.

Of all the consequences of the above incidents, perhaps the most unfortunate was a generally accepted managerial deduction that America does not like dancing after all. Though the Russian ballet has shaken that belief, the belief is not dead yet.

There is a saying that no man is indispensable; that, after his removal, there is always another to take his place. The saying is not true.

Pantomime—not dancing to be sure, but so closely related to it that the prosperity of either usually means that of both—at one time had the alliance of Augustin Daly. He believed in it as a great art, and contemplated increasingly ambitious productions. To those closely associated with him he declared himself willing to lose money on it for three years, and more if necessary; he was confident that eventually it would attain to great popularity in this country. But after producing L’Enfant Prodigue and Pygmalion and Galatea, death stepped in and took away from the stage one of the best influences it ever had, and from dancing a possible friendship of the kind it sorely needed.

In the eighties there was in Chicago a child who had considerable fame as a temperance lecturer. Her name was Loie Fuller. She was moved to take dancing lessons; but (according to biographers) gave them up after a few lessons, on account of difficulty. After a certain amount of voice culture, she qualified as an actress with a singing part. During an engagement in this capacity she received, from a friend in India, a present of a long scarf of extremely thin silk. While playing with it, delighting in its power to float in the air almost like a vapour, Miss Fuller received the idea that was to bring her before the world, the Serpentine Dance. The dance was there in its essence, needing only arrangement and polish, and surety of keeping a great volume of cloth afloat without entanglement. Steps were of no consequence, nor quality of movement in arms or body. The cloth was the thing, and Miss Fuller lost no time on non-essentials.

The success of the Serpentine was not one of those victories gained after long experimenting for a perfect expression, patiently educating the public, and years of disappointments. It was instantaneous and complete; a few weeks sufficed to make Loie Fuller a national figure. A period of tremendous popularity followed, popularity amounting to a fashion. And still another impulse was to come, second only in importance to the use of the gauze itself.

In Paris Miss Fuller had a sketch in which she, a solitary figure, stood on a height at dawn, silhouetted against the sky. The rising sun was arranged to illuminate, one after another, the prominences in the landscape falling away into the distance. The figure, on being touched by the rays, represented its awakening by the fluttering, raising and full play of its hundred yards or so of drapery.

It happened that an audience mistook the intent of the effect, and greeted it as a dance of fire. The upward rush of the cloth, obviously, had suggested flame. “La Loïe” lost not a moment in seeing the possibilities, nor an hour in setting to work on their development. Stage electric lighting was new; so new that it acknowledged no limitations. Electricians were enthusiastic over new problems, because new problems were being solved by new and sometimes sensational inventions. To lighting Miss Fuller turned to make the effect of the fire dance unmistakable and startling. With the result that the colours and movement of flame were almost counterfeited. Variously coloured glasses lent their tints to the rays of spot lights; set into discs made to revolve in front of the lamp, they simulated the upward rush that helps make flame exciting. As a precaution against theft of ideas, the essential parts of the electric arrangements are said to have been trusted exclusively to Miss Fuller’s brothers.

La Danse de Feu, consistently prepared as such, created an enthusiasm in Paris probably equal to the “hit” of the Serpentine in America. Indeed Miss Fuller was practically adopted into the French nation, where she was affectionately and widely known as “La Loïe.” French is the language in which she wrote her memoirs. (Mes Mémoires, Loie Fuller.)

Her work, always startling, never failed of being agreeable also. By a loose application of the word it was justified in being called dancing. Strictly speaking it was not, from the point of view of step, movement or posture. Interest in steps the work frankly disclaimed by its own terms; an easy movement from place to place, with reference always to the drapery, was all that was undertaken in the department of foot-work. The arms were equally subordinated to the drapery; their movements, as interpretation or decoration, meant nothing. The performer held in each hand a short pole as aid to manipulation of the cloth, in which her arms were buried most of the time. They committed no awkwardness, nor did they contribute to the effect except as they furnished motive power. As to the drapery, any idea of making it a vehicle of controlled lines would obviously have been out of the question. Colour without form was the result; and form, when all is said and done, is the essence not only of dancing, but of any art that would attempt to convey a message to the senses as well as pleasure to the eye.

Imitators affected Miss Fuller very little. So closely were her means guarded—it is said that no one of her designers and sewing-women knew more than a part of the construction of her draperies—that attempts to reproduce her work were generally laborious compromises with failure. But the musical comedy stage underwent an inundation of illuminated dry-goods. With the mechanical problem simplified by the distribution of the hundred yards of drapery among forty people, there followed a sea of cavorting rainbows and prisms that lacked even a semi-careful selection of colours.

The World’s Fair in Chicago brought to America a variety of dancers, most of them good. The novelty element was the work of the Orient. The Oriental point of view differs from that of England and America; it accepts as natural the existence of sex. In all its expressions, whether literary, sculptural, pictorial, or choreographic, the subject of sex is neither avoided nor emphasised. It takes its place among the actuating dramatic motives exactly as it has done in the expressions of all civilisations of all times, except those of our Anglo-Saxon civilisation since about 1620, in which it is evaded, and of certain decadent civilisations, where it is an obsession.

The World’s Fair crowd was so amazed by the Oriental disregard of Puritan tradition that it could see nothing in dances of India and North Africa except obscenity. Instead of trying to acquaint the public with the wealth of poetic symbolism of the dances, and their unlimited scope of meaning, every manager on the Midway at once adopted the motto of the majority of his profession: “Give the public what it wants.” That at least is the inference from conditions. Before the fair was a month old there was hardly an Oriental dancing attraction on the grounds that did not claim, in the sly-dog language of naughty suggestion, to surpass all competitors in lewdness. And it verily seemed as though most of them were justified in their claims.

They all made money. And they created against Oriental dancing a prejudice just beginning to melt now at the end of twenty years; the majority of the public is still convinced that no Oriental dancing is anything but a pretext for offensiveness. For any physical quality truly is offensive the moment it is unduly insisted upon. And with few exceptions the managers of the unhappy Arabs dancing in this country have inspired their charges to exaggerate one quality to the almost complete exclusion of every other one.

The ghastly reaction of such a state of affairs is on dancing in general. In this present year, 1913, one of the most prominent and successful managers in America said: “There are two ways to succeed with dancers. If they have a sensational acrobatic novelty that never has been seen before, that will make money. Otherwise you’ve got to take their clothes off, if you want anybody to look at ’em. Duncan? St. Denis? What does the American public care about art? They have succeeded because they took their clothes off.”

It sounds unreal, it is so demonstrably silly. But it was what that manager said. In his profession there are several who hold contrary beliefs; but the one quoted is of the opinion common among the present custodians of the dancing art in America. In their offices is determined what character of dancing shall occupy the stage; to their beliefs the lover of good dancing must give heed.

Any refutation of the above cynicism as affecting Miss Duncan and Miss St. Denis is superfluous. Their work has at all times been charged with a big, romantic or mystic meaning. Imitators, basing their activities on the manager’s creed above quoted, have furnished an illuminating experiment to determine exactly what interest the public finds in the work of the two artists named. Invariable failure has accompanied their approximate nudity, despite the fact that many of them are pretty in face and figure.

Great dancers have come, been seen, but—until the coming of the Russians—have achieved few victories of lasting value. Genée is an exception; to delight in her work is to be added a real influence in favour of real art. Carmencita, Otero and Rosario Guerrero, all great artists of expression conveyed through the medium of the dances of Spain, have had good seasons in this country. Even though their influence on taste did not seem far-reaching, it must be believed that they helped prepare the way for great things that were to come.

But the real force of the coming change, the change that was to take its place among the important revolutions in the history of all art was quietly preparing itself in an American village.

CHAPTER XI

THE ROMANTIC REVOLUTION

Beauty in all its natural manifestations is her religion. Waves and clouds and running water, the nude body and its natural movements are the tokens by which it is revealed to her. Its high priests, by her creed, were the Greeks of old. And, conversely, all other priests are false. In the soul afire with a cause there is no room for adjustment of points of view; such adjustments bear the form of compromise. That which is not right is wrong—not even partly right, but hopelessly, damnably wrong. A state of mind exactly as it should be in a person with an idea, and exactly as it must be if he is going to carry the idea to fruition.

Miss Duncan is not in attunement with the ballet, and never was. She is a worshipper of nature; not as translated into abstract terms, but as nature is, as revealed in the waves and clouds and running water. If she were a leader in a logical controversy instead of one of taste, it would be in order to question how she tolerates modern music, instead of insisting on a reversion to the music of the winds in the trees; for certainly the piano is no less a man-made convention than the dancer’s position sur la pointe, and orchestration is far from the sounds of nature. But the controversy is not an affair of logic, and it follows that any question prompted by logical considerations becomes illogical, automatically. The point at issue is that Miss Duncan, complete disciple of beauty, is a complete opponent of beauty expressed otherwise than in the way revealed to her. Again, lest this analysis bear any resemblance to criticism, let it be affirmed that her attitude is exactly as it should be in relation to her destiny.

At an early age she was fascinated by the representations of dancing to be found on Greek ceramics, and in Tanagra and other figures. A work of art means many things to many people. What Miss Duncan saw in the early representations was a direct and perfect expression of nature. Among other elements, she noted in them a full acknowledgment of the law of gravity, which is an obviously natural quality. Now, Miss Duncan’s essay The Dance shows in her mind not the first stirrings of a question as to whether gravity may not be an unfortunate mortal limitation. On the contrary, it is natural, therefore right. Therefore the ballet, in