the dancer who sings, but the spectators or special singers.

More picturesque and graceful than the Finnish are the Swedish,
Norwegian and Danish folk-dances. Grieg, Svendsen, Gade, Hartmann and
the modern Scandinavian composers have made successful use of the old
folk-themes for their individual orchestral compositions. Though simple
in step, the Scandinavian folk-dances are complicated in figure, lively
and gay in manner, and rich in pantomime. They seem to have a strong
predilection to square figures and sharp lines. The Swedish dancers are
fond of arabesques, minuet grace and dainty poses. The Norwegian dance
is more rugged and imaginary, the Danish and Swedish more refined and
delicate. While the Norwegian is a naturally gifted singer, the Swede
is a born dancer. There is a strong feeling in Sweden for reviving
their old _Skralat_, _Vafva Vadna_, and other old national dances.
The latter is a weaver dance and imitates the action of the loom. The
girl, representing the movements of the shuttle, flashes back and forth
through the lines of other performers, who are imitating the stretched
threads. It is a clever piece of folk-art showing the vivid and quick
temperament of the race. There are quite a few such symbolic country
dances in Sweden, of which the harvest dances take the first place.
The _Daldans_ and _Vingakersdans_ are pantomimic dances of humorous
character, both themes dealing with the social-sexual relations in
a rather satirical way. In the latter two women are endeavoring to
gain the affection of a man. The favored one seats herself a moment
on the man’s knee and finishes the number by waltzing with him, while
the other bites her nails with vexation. In Sweden, as in France, the
sexual elements play a conspicuous rôle in the folk-dance and render it
sweetly graceful, seductive and sensuous by turns.

The Danes, being a race of industry and agriculture from the earliest
times on, have followed the lead of Norway in ethnographic matters, but
of Paris and Vienna in artistic manners. While they have developed the
national art of the ballet to a high degree, their folk-dances have
impressed me more by their cosmopolitan and imitative nature than by
any original and racial traits they may have. There are certain plastic
traits, certain soft nuances in the Danish mimicry, that speak of
something racial, yet they melt in so much with the universal art that
it is hard to analyze the national elements. Whether the ‘Corkscrew’
is a Norwegian, Danish or Swedish folk-dance, we have been unable to
learn, but it is a charming piece of folk-art. In this the couples form
in two lines. The top couple join hands, go down the middle and up
again, and turn each other by the right arm once; then the gentleman
turns the next lady, the lady the next gentleman, then each other again
to the end, when the other couples kneel and clap their hands; and the
first couple, joining hands, dance up one line and down the other, the
lady inside. Then follows the corkscrew: all join hands outstretched
with their vis-à-vis, the leading couple thread their way in and out
of the other couples, the ladies backing, taking the lead, and then
the gentlemen. All hands are raised when they reach the bottom, and,
passing under the archway thus formed, they give place to the next
couple.

The Dutch had previously many characteristic and racial folk-dances, as
their great painters have handed down to us in their numerous works,
but they have mostly died out. A Dutch folk-dance, with the performers
dressed in long brocaded gowns and close-fitting caps of the same
material, the face framed with small roses edging the cap, makes a most
quaint and charming impression. The best known of the Dutch folk-dances
is the Egg Dance, which was given with eggs beneath the feet. Another
very effective dance, though slightly coarse in conception, is their
Sailor’s Dance. The latter is danced by a couple in wooden-shoes, man
and woman with their backs to each other and faces turned away. The
dance has some eight figures and only at the end of each figure the
dancers turn swiftly around to get a glimpse of each other, and turn
back in the original position. If well executed this is an exceedingly
humorous dance.

VIII

The Lithuanians had in olden times snake dances and dances somewhat
related to the legendary and mystic themes of the American Indians.
Even in the folk-dances of the modern Lithuanians there are elements to
be found that show relation to the ancient American tribes. An average
Lithuanian folk-dance, as known and danced to-day is simple but pretty,
and is either mixed with Byzantine or with Romanesque designs. But the
legendary ideas still prevail, even in the picturesque wedding dances.

The Polish folk-dances, the _Polonaise_, _Mazurka_, _Krakoviak_, and
_Obertass_, contribute their quota of originality. The _Krakoviak_ is
a circular dance with singing interspersed; lively graceful poses,
soft delicate lines and gliding steps make it look like a refined
salon dance of mediæval nobility. The _Polonaise_ and _Mazurka_ have
spread as social dances in numerous variations throughout the world.
Chopin used the themes of many Polish folk-dances for his individual
compositions, as they are exceedingly sweet, romantic, and delicate in
their melodic structure. The _Obertass_ is a real gymnastic performance
with occasional polka-steps and wild turns. It is danced by a couple
with such velocity towards the end that the woman must hold strongly
to the shoulders of her partner in order to keep from reeling off
towards the spectators. Delicate, temperamental, with occasional
traits of melancholy and softly graceful line, the Polish folk-dances
are characteristic of the racial soul. In many respects the Poles
resemble the French in racial qualities. The debonair manners of the
French, their tendency toward romantic emotions, are to be noticed in
the Polish national dance. The qualities give it an air of seeming
refinement and make it a distinct social amusement, and nothing else.

The Bohemian, Ruthenian, Servian and Bulgarian folk-dances are each
typical of their race. A tendency of most of the Slavic folk-dances is
that the two sexes should mingle as little as possible. Men and women
join hands in certain figures, emphasizing the dramatic meaning of the
dance, otherwise they remain separated. They rarely dance in couples
as the other European races do. They make promenades, march or gallop;
they leap and bound in such a manner that the woman faces the man but
rarely touches him. The woman’s movements are distinctly feminine, the
man’s masculine. The Slav feels that the mixing of the sexes, or the
putting of woman on the same plane with man, is detrimental to the
æsthetic emotions, particularly to the romantic feelings.

The _Romaika_ and _Kolla_ are both picturesque circle dances of the
Southern Slavs. In the latter the man does not take the hand of the
woman next to him, but passes his arm under hers to clasp the hand of
her neighbor. The whole ring circles round in skipping step to the
accompaniments of melancholy songs. The women are adorned with glass
beads, huge gowns, artificial flowers and false jewelry of the most
fantastic colors. The men wear richly embroidered bright-colored shirts
and wide trousers. Sometimes a special woman dancer enters the ring and
executes a dramatic pantomime, reflecting somehow a local affair. On
other occasions man and woman go through a vivid pantomimic performance
in the circle, while the rest circle around them singing.

The Roumanians have a strange folk-dance called the _Hora_ which is
performed by the youth in languishing cadence to the long drawn notes
of the bagpipes. This consists of a prelude and a real dance. At first,
the dancers advance to the left five steps, stamping the ground and
stopping suddenly, after which they repeat the same motions for a few
times. Of this M. Lancelot writes: ‘Gradually the mandolins strike in
to enliven the solemn strain, and seem desirous to hurry it, emitting
two or three sonorous notes, but nothing moves the player of the
bagpipes; he perseveres in his indolent rhythm. At last a challenging
phrase is thrice repeated; the dancers accompany it by stamping thrice
on the ground, and looking back at the girls grouped behind them. The
latter hesitate; they look at each other, as if consulting together;
then they join hands and form a second circle round the first. Another
call, more imperious still, is sounded, they break from each other, and
mingle in the round of young men.

‘At this moment the old gypsy opens his keen little eyes, showing
his sharp white teeth in a sudden smile, shaking out a shower of
joyous, hurried notes over the band, he expresses by means of an
agitated harmony the tender thrill that must be passing through all
the clasped hands. The _Hora_ proper now begins. It lasts a long time,
but retains throughout the character of languor that characterized
its commencement. Its monotony is varied, however, by a pretty bit of
pantomime. After dancing round with arms extended, the men and their
partners turn and face each other in the middle of the circle they have
been describing. This circle they reduce by making a few steps forward;
then, when their shoulders are almost touching, they bend their heads
under their uplifted arms, and look into each other’s eyes. This figure
loses something of its effect from the frequency with which it is
repeated; and the cold placidity with which the dancers alternately
gaze at their right-hand and left-hand neighbors is disappointing, and
robs the pantomime of its classic aroma.’

IX

Of Oriental flavor are the Armenian folk-dances, which the writer saw
many years ago performed by Armenian students to the music of a queer
mandolin-like instrument and the rhythmic beats of the drum played
by the dancer with his fingers. This drum gives a register of six or
seven different tones and adds its peculiar effect to the whole. It
seems that most of the Armenian dances are executed by a single dancer,
either man or woman, in bent, erect, arched and twisted positions,
often standing on a single spot for minutes. Though languorous and
weird, they possess a grace of their own.

In no other country have the folk-dances reached such a variety of
forms, such a high degree of development and an individuality so
distinctly racial and rich in dramatic and imaginary poses, steps,
gestures and mimic expressions as in Russia. In the Russian dances
we can trace the elements of all the hundreds of ancient and modern
tribes and nationalities who have been molten in one homogeneous
mass of people, a world in itself. Here the Orient and Occident have
found a united form for their æsthetic expressions, with no relation
to those of the West-European nations. The Russian dances, like the
country itself, are a mixture of contrasts and extremes: melancholy
and yet gay, simple and even sweet; ghastly yet fascinating and
seductive; mysterious and yet open as the prairies of its own boundless
steppes; old and yet young. All these contrasts and contradictions
may be found reflected in the essentials of the Russian folk-dance.
Like the semi-Oriental style of architecture, now curved and gloomy,
then suddenly straight and dazzlingly brilliant, occasionally bizarre
and fantastic, but strongly inclined to the romantic and the mystic
forms, are the innumerable figures and steps of the Russian dances.
In Russia more than in any other country the sexual diversity in the
style of the steps, poses and mimic display is subjected to a most
careful consideration. The woman is neither equal nor inferior to the
man. She occupies her dignified position in the slightest move, by
remaining more subtle, tender and passively fascinating, while the
man’s rôle often is extravagantly masculine, sometimes even rough.
No Russian dance puts the two sexes on the same level æsthetically
and dramatically. The couple dance is an unknown, or at best a rather
crude, conception to a Russian.

Up to this time no one has yet made a thorough study of all the
Russian folk-dances, as each province and district has its particular
traditions and dances. The Volga region, having once been inhabited
by Bulgarian and Tartar tribes, has a more nomadic and adventurous
dance style than the dreamy peasants of Kostroma and Nijny Novgorod.
The dances of the Little Russians are more joyful and humorous than
those of more northern regions, but they are also less elaborate and
less dramatic. The dances of the provinces of Novgorod and Pskoff
possess an unusual tendency towards the legendary and towards free
forms of plastic expression, as if meaning to express tales of a golden
age in the past when they had a republican form of government and a
democratic evolution. The dances of the Caucasian and Crimean regions
are outspokenly romantic and epic, those of Siberia tragic and heroic.

Fundamentally, the Russian folk-dances can be divided into four
different groups: the ballad dances, or _Chorovody_; the romantic
dances of the _Kamarienskaya_ type; the dramatic dances of the
_Kasatchy_ type; the bacchanalian dances of the _Trepak_ type; and
the unlimited number of humorous, gay, amusing and entertaining
country dances--the so-called _Pliasovaya_--of purely local flavor.
Besides these there are the historic ballad dances, such as ‘Ivan the
Terrible’, ‘Ilia Murometz,’ and others. The Cossack dance, _Lesginka_,
the _Kaiterma_, the _Polowetsi_ dances, the _Vanka_, and others of this
kind, are dances of a rather local character, though they have spread
all over the country.

The oldest and most varied of Russian folk-dances are the _Chorovody_,
or the ballad dances, performed only to the singing voices of the
dancers themselves. This is a kind of ring dance like the old French
Round. In some dances the men reach their hands to the girls, in
others they touch each other with their elbows only, as the girls
keep their hands on their hips, while the men cross them on their
breast. The real dance is performed inside the ring, usually by a
girl, who sometimes has a man partner; this dance may be pantomimic,
humorous or full of wildest joy and agility. The writer has witnessed
some _Chorovody_ which were performed with such skill and finesse of
plastic pose and mimic art as to leave many ballet celebrities far in
the background. The Russian folk-dancer employs every inch of his body,
his hands, legs, toes, heels, hips, shoulders, head and the mimic art
so masterfully and correctly that you must often marvel his born talent
and lively interest in dancing. However, in all folk-dances the women
seem to play the leading rôle, the men merely supporting them with the
contrasted figures.

The _Chorovody_ were used by the mediæval _Boyars_ in a more refined
and poetic style for their social functions and the entertainment of
their guests. Later they were introduced to the court and finally they
were employed in the Russian ballets and operas. Ivan the Terrible
was fond of _Chorovody_ dances and often danced them himself, as did
also other Russian rulers. The aristocratic _Chorovody_, however, grew
more stately and artificial and lost their racial freshness. Catherine
the Great sent her chamberlains to every province to invite the best
folk-dancers to come to the court, which they did. All dances of
this type are picturesque, romantic, poetic and restrained in their
expression.

An entirely different dance is the _Kasatchy_, danced by a man and a
woman at the same time. This is more a man’s than a woman’s dance.
He selects his partner and proceeds to execute a series of seductive
motions around her, while she demurely hangs her head, refusing for a
while to be seduced by his allurements. At length she thaws and begins
to sway in harmony with his manly but graceful movement. Now they bend
and bow together, and swerve from side to side, the while performing
a multitude of gestures depicting timidity and embarrassment, till
finally from shy, half-tearful expression of love and flirting glances
they proceed with gay eyes expressive of the most burning devotion.
Now the dance waxes fierce and fast, in and out they circle, turn
and twist, ever now and then reverting to that crouching posture,
so commonly seen in the Russian folk-dances. Finally they meet in
close embrace and whirl with incredible rapidity round and round,
till thoroughly out of breath and dizzy from their effort, they sink
exhausted on a friendly bench.

The _Kamarienskaya_ is a bride’s dance, in which the girl symbolizes
all the imaginary bliss and happiness of her future married life.
In the first part, which consists of a soft _legato_, she dances
dreamily but dramatically, using conspicuously every muscle of her
body and her arms to express the imagined love motions that she will
perform in meeting her beloved. Thus the pantomime continues on to the
blissful moment of meeting, which she performs like a whirlwind, until,
unexpectedly stopping, she ends the dance with a slightly disappointed,
humorous expression.

Since our space is limited, the writer must refrain from more detailed
and further description of the previously mentioned types of the
Russian folk-dances. He need only repeat that they surpass by far
the folk-dances of all the rest of the world, in that they are so
much more racial, so rich in plastic lines, and so perfect in their
artistic appeal; it seems as if a remarkable genius had presided over
their invention and execution. They are masterfully original from the
beginning and continually furnish new ideals of choreographic beauty.
They draw their inspiration from some rich fountain unknown to the
Occidentals. They are too fresh, vigorous and alive to be perverse.

Thus having drawn kaleidoscopic sketches of the primitive racial
choreographic impulses of a number of the civilized and barbaric
races, we can come to the conclusion that in these alone are to be
found the sound and virile germs of lasting individual or highly
developed national art-dance. Ethnographic essentials are the next
stepping-stones to a more developed future cosmic choreography, and in
this the folk-dances give the most eloquent elementary lessons. As from
a mute conversation we learn from the ethnic dances in what manifold
forms one and the same beauty can manifest itself to the human mind.
The ethnic symbols are graphic and true to the spirit of the thing
expressed; for this reason a folk-dance, no matter how coarse, how
grotesque and how strange it seems, is yet sincere and intelligible to
the open-hearted observer. It always impresses one as something manly
and direct, sound and firm.

CHAPTER XI

THE CELEBRATED SOCIAL DANCES OF THE PAST

  The _Pavane_ and the _Courante_; the _Allemande_ and the
  _Sarabande_; the _Minuet_ and the _Gavotte_; the _Rigaudon_ and
  other dances.

Since we have devoted a chapter to the folk-dances, it will be fitting
to describe a few of the most noted dances of the nobility in order
to complete our comparative treatment of such a vast subject, so
little systematized and so much ignored. While the general tone of
all the folk-dances is masculine, that of all the social dances seems
predominantly effeminate, rather soft and delicate. Their exceedingly
graceful plastic lines, shaded movements, soft forms and subtilized
gestures speak of gilded ball-rooms, silk and perfume, affected manners
and the artificial air of a Rococo style. It seems as if a woman’s mind
had worked out their embroidered figures and timid steps. They belonged
to no particular nation, but to the rich class of all the world. The
same _Allemande_ that was danced by the French nobility was copied at
the castles of the German barons, English lords, Italian and Russian
counts.

The oldest and most ceremonial of the Middle Ages’ social dances was
the _Pavane_, the celebrated peacock dance, in which kings and princes,
lords and ladies took part, the men wearing gorgeous uniforms, the
ladies flowery trains. It was distinguished by rhythmic grace, and
by slow and stately measure. The dancers attempted to enshroud their
very souls in majestic dignity, gracefully rounding their arms, while
crossing and recrossing, keeping their heads away from each other. One
big step and two small ones accompanied one bar of the music, which was
sung by a chorus of hidden singers. Beginning side by side, hand in
hand, with a curtsey and bow, the couple started with a _pas marché_
down the floor, making four steps, the cavalier taking the lady’s left
hand. After making a turn with four steps, they danced backward with
four steps. He took her right hand and turned with four steps. Thus
it went on in four different movements. The _Pavane_ was a dance for
cortèges and processions, and the lady’s trains were spread out like
the tail of a peacock.

The next most conspicuous nobility dance was the _Courante_, which
was practised for nearly three centuries at the European castles and
courts. It was a great favorite of Louis XIV, and no one else danced
it so well as he. It was danced at the court of Charles II and Queen
Elizabeth was fond of it. The ladies danced it in short soft velvet
skirt; bodice with basques and lace berthes. It had three movements
and started usually with a deep curtsey, a springing step forward and
back, both arms raised and each dancer turning outward. These movements
occupied four double bars of the music. Handel and Bach wrote many
_Courantes_, but they were too elaborate and quick, therefore they were
used only by professional dancers.

Bach and Handel have also written numerous _Chaconnes_, which were
dances in slow triple time, of a stately character, light and graceful.
In the _Chaconne_ two or three people could participate. This dance was
said to be of Spanish origin, though the Italians claim that one of
their blind musicians composed it in the sixteenth century. Cervantes
writes in ‘Don Quixote’ that it was a mulatto dance for negroes and
negresses, imported by the French. It is composed of a springing and
walking step on the toes, at the end of which the heels must be so
placed that the body is firm. The rhythm is slow and well marked. The
dance has seven different movements. The fourth and sixth movements are
in Mazurka steps, the fifth in skating steps and the last in bourrée
step. In the third movement the lady turns under her partner’s arm.

A celebrated dance of more than four centuries was the _Allemande_, in
which the head and arm movements played the foremost rôle. It had five
movements, danced by any number of couples, placing themselves behind
each other. The _Allemande_ step is three _pas marchés_ and the front
foot raised. The lady stands in front of the gentleman and he holds her
left hand with his left and her right with his right hand. For four
bars they go forward and pose, repeat this four times and turn. The
second movement has four steps around, after which the gentleman turns
the lady with arms over head, and the lady turns the gentleman. The
third movement is a polka step backward and forward and turned. In the
fourth the lady takes four steps in front of the gentleman and turns.
In the last they take four steps across the room, turn and pose; two
steps back and pose, and repeat.

A dance of pretty music and more original design was the _Sarabande_
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was danced as a solo
by a man or a woman, although later it was danced by couples. It had a
slow and stately step and consisted of four different figures. In the
first figure the dancer raised the right foot and took a step forward,
turned to the right and posed, and repeated to the left and the right.
The second figure was a _pas bourrée_ to the left and the right, with
some turning in between. The third figure consisted of an accentuated
hip movement, _coupé_, a pose with head movement, and a repetition to
the opposite direction. The last figure consisted of springing on the
left foot, stretching the right leg to the back, and bowing. This was
carried on in several repetitions. The most effective _Sarabande_ music
was composed by Lully. For this the ladies wore a picturesque dress of
cloth of gold, the sleeves and tunic in the form of gigantic oak leaves
of red and gold, tipped with sequins; red shoes and stockings.

Probably the most celebrated and widespread of old social dances was
the _Minuet_, which demanded much repose and dignity on the part of
the dancers. It was performed by men and women, but was given also by
ladies only. It began with a deep reverence on the part of the lady
and a bow on the part of the man, the dancers turning towards each
other at right angles to the audience, the lady with her left hand
holding her dress, the elbow prettily rounded. They advanced, the lady
turning around and assuming the position in which they started. This
was repeated, and the dance ended with a bow and a curtsey. Then the
lady held her dress in both hands, her head being turned over her right
shoulder, while her partner’s head was turned to the left. A favorite
step was that of lifting the foot high, rising on the toes, and then
taking three little steps on tip-toes to the next bar. The _Minuet_
requires much grace and deliberation, with every movement thought out
and studied. The main rule is that in passing each other the partners
should make a deep curtsey and bow. The fingers of the hand should be
moderately open, the arms curved and graceful. The women often carried
a feather fan. Louis XV was a virtuoso in the _Minuet_. The English
kings used to take lessons in the dance. It is the one dance that
England has looked on kindly. It created a perfect sensation in France
and was in vogue until the Revolution swept it away. Many celebrated
composers have written fine _Minuet_ music, Lully’s being probably the
best. It had nine different movements. The ladies wore for the minuet
a satin petticoat, bordered with a deep flounce. The bodice had a
pleating round _à la veille_, which was carried down to the open front
of the skirt, on either side of the bodice, and round the back, which
left a plain pointed front with a rosette in the centre of the neck.
The sleeves were elbow length, the hair powdered and worn very high, a
ribbon tied across the back from which rose three large bows of white
plumes, the shoes pointed.

A dance as distinguished as the minuet was the _Gavotte_, performed
by couples in joyous, sparkling little steps. Its foundation was
three steps and an _assemblé_ in quadruple time, commencing on the
fourth beat of the bar. It starts in a line or a circle, one couple
separating themselves from the rest. It has six figures. The first
figure consists of four gavottes forward, four gavottes round, four
back, four around again, the dancers hand in hand, the figures always
accompanied by graceful head movements, the partners turning towards
each other or apart. The following three movements are nearly the same,
with slight variations. The fifth consists of four skating steps and
gavotting around the partner. The sixth figure consists of gavotting
forward three times, pirouetting back, raising the foot up to the heel,
and advancing four times. In the _Gavotte_ the partners generally
kissed each other, as they did in so many other dances. In later days
the cavalier presented a flower in the course of the figure instead.
The _Gavotte_ was a favorite dance of Louis XV, Marie Antoinette and
Napoleon. Lully, Gluck and Grétry composed pretty gavottes, and it was
frequently performed on the stage by Gardel and Vestris.

The _Rigaudon_, which enjoyed a great popularity at all the European
castles and courts till the French Revolution, was rather intricate. In
it each figure occupied eight bars and both dancers started together
without taking hands. The dance consisted of seven figures, the first
being a sliding step and four running steps, turning, posing and
repeating with the opposite foot. The second consisted of turning to
left and right alternately four times, and sliding backwards. The third
figure was danced diagonally to the right with running steps, turning,
posing and repeating. The fourth figure was a graceful hopping and
turning, repeating, running diagonally to the right and turning with
the arms out straight. The fifth was in two half turns, one turn and
repetition. The sixth was three steps left with arms over the head,
hopping around, turning to left and right, posing with right hand down
and the left hand above the head. The seventh consisted of balancing
four times on the left foot and four times on the right and posing.
Like the music of so many other old social dances, that of the Rigaudon
was of extremely gracious cadences, with sentimental pathos and sweet,
gay melodic turns. Music combined with dancing carried gladness and joy
into the soft-shaded ball-rooms, bringing smiles and laughter to the
lips of the picturesque gatherings.

Somewhat resembling the Minuet, but with quicker steps, was the
celebrated French _Passepied_, with which most of the balls began,
all the guests dancing around hand in hand. It originated many other
old-time social dances with song. It opened with the dancers joining
hands and facing each other, then setting to each other with the
_pas de Basque_, bringing the first left shoulder forward and then
the right, and changing their places with a waltz step. The partners
cross hands, placing the arms round each other’s neck and making the
pirouette with eight pony steps, pawing the ground and then turning.
The dance consists of ten figures, each of which demands some dramatic
talent.

Other celebrated old dances were the _Galliard_, consisting of five
figures, that require some pirouettes, _pas de bourrées_, _coupés_,
_dessous_ and springing. Similar to this was the _Tourdion_, which
was more of a _glissade_ movement. The _Canaries_ was a queer old
dance, very popular in England and Germany. It had seven figures and
started with a _pas jeté_, by throwing the right foot over the left,
and the left over the right. In the last movement the partners held
hands vis-à-vis, turning each other without separating hands, posing
vis-à-vis one bar and repeating four bars. History tells us how in
former times queens and princesses often fell in love with graceful
male dancers as did their husbands with the pretty women dancers. Queen
Elizabeth fell in love with young Hatton, an insignificant London
lawyer, whom she first met at a ball dancing the _Galliard_. Sir Perro
used to say that Hatton danced into the court by the _Galliard_. It is
said that the favors which the virgin monarch extended to the young
lawyer excited the jealousy of the whole court, especially that of the
Earl of Leicester, who, thinking to depreciate the accomplishment of
his rival, offered to introduce to Her Majesty a professional dancer
whose performances were considered far more wonderful than those of
Hatton. To this the royal lady exclaimed: ‘Pish! I will not see your
man; it is his trade!’

A languishing eye and a smiling mouth were considered indispensable
accessories to a fashionable society dance. Like the prevailing style
of dress and manners, the dances were too delicate and artificial to
last. The high-heeled shoes, the elaborately piled-up structures of
powdered hair and ornament, and the dresses with long trains were by no
means favorable to virility and sincerity. Like all effeminate art, the
nobility dances of the past lacked spontaneity and inspiration.

[Illustration: The Ball

_After a painting by Auguste de Saint-Aubin_]

CHAPTER XII

THE CLASSIC BALLET OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

  Aims and tendencies of the nineteenth century--Maria
  Taglioni--Fanny Elssler--Carlotta Grisi and Fanny Cerito; decadence
  of the classic ballet.

The end of the Napoleonic wars marks the beginning of a new era of
European art, particularly of the ballet. To this period belong the
great ballet masters, Taglioni, Bournoville, Didelot, and the greatest
of all, Marius Petipa; the great ballet composers, Meyerbeer, Rossini,
Adam, Delibes, Nuitter, Dubois, Hartmann, Gade, Tschaikowsky, and
Rimsky-Korsakoff; the celebrated _ballerinas_, Taglioni, Grisi,
Elssler, Genée, Teleshova, Novitzkaya, Liadova, Muravieva, Bogdanova,
Sokolova and Kshesinskaya. It seems as if the evolution of the art of
dancing is always stopped by political disturbances; during the middle
of the past century, which was marked by revolutionary movements, in
which even Wagner participated, we notice a sudden indifference to
dancing ideals on the part of the public. The history of evolution
seems to proceed in certain cosmic waves of public sentiment and
ideals. They grow, reach their climax and die.

The foundation that the French Academy, particularly Noverre, Vestris
and Gardel, had laid for the ballet, developed during the nineteenth
century into a solid and essential stage art. We find the beginning
of a rivalry among the various schools, of which those of Paris,
Milan, Vienna, Stockholm, Copenhagen and St. Petersburg stand in the
first rank. Like music and drama, the ballet strives either towards
the classic or romantic. The most conspicuous ballets of this period
are _La Sylphide_ by Léo Delibes, _Corsaire_ by Adam, _Sakuntala_ by
Gautier, _La Source_ by Delibes, _La Farandole_ by Dubois, _Sylvia_
by Delibes, _Gretna Green_ by Nuitter, _Excelsior_ and _Sieba_ by
Manxotti, _Flore et Zephire_ by Didelot, _La Esmeralda_ by Perrot
and Pugni, _Iphigenia in Aulis_ by Gluck, _Laurette_ by Galcotti,
_Ghiselle_ by Gautier and Adam, _Abdallah_ by Bournoville and Paulli,
_Arkona_ by Hartmann, _Swan Lake_, _Sleeping Beauty_ and _The Snow
Maiden_ by Tschaikowsky, _Baba Yaga_ by Balakireff, _Scheherezade_ by
Rimsky-Korsakoff, etc.

The main tendency of the nineteenth century ballet is to get rid of the
mechanical contrivances, the monstrous etiquette and majestic solemnity
and, like music, give it more coherence and better harmony with the
plot. Between 1820 and 1850 it became an inseparable accompaniment
to the opera to such an extent that the occupants of the gilded
boxes preferred the thrill of the dancing to the music. The ballet
represented at that time more than a stage filled with masses of
elegant _coryphées_ and a magnificent spectacle. The public interest
began to centre in a few great dancers whose names were as familiar to
the audiences as those of the prima donnas. The first phenomenon of
this kind was the cult of Taglioni that spread with miraculous rapidity
throughout the Occidental world.

Maria Taglioni was born at Stockholm in 1804 of an Italian father and
Swedish mother and made her début in Vienna in 1822, in the ballet
_Reception d’une jeune Nymphe à la Court de Terpsichore_, written by
her father, M. Taglioni, who was a ballet master in the Swedish Royal
Opera. Inspired by the ideas of Noverre, M. Taglioni laid a solid
foundation for his daughter’s training in dancing. Though she was
successful in her début in Vienna, the father did not think that she
was sufficiently ripe for public appearances in a larger style, so he
continued to instruct the girl himself and secured for her education
other celebrities of the time. Even when she appeared five years later
in _Le Sicilien_, in Paris, she did not arouse any enthusiasm. It was
only in _Les Bayaderes_ and, above all, in _La Sylphide_, that her art
attained the utmost limits of spirituality and she was hailed as one of
the most ethereal appearances that the European stage had ever seen.

Taglioni appeared in Paris in _La Vestale_, _Mars et Venus_, _Le
Carnaval de Venise_, and many other ballets, which marked the beginning
of her career. A French critic of that time writes: ‘Her talent, so
instinct with simple grace and modesty, her lightness, the suppleness
of her attitudes, at once voluptuous and refined, made a sensation at
once. She revealed a new form of dancing, a virginal and diaphanous
art, instinct with an originality all her own, in which the old
traditions and time-honored rules of choreography were merged. After
an appearance of a few days only on our boards, this charming mirage
vanished to shine in great triumph at Munich and Stuttgart. But she
came back, and an enthusiastic reception awaited her. And in the midst
of these brilliant successes, taking the hearts of the people by storm,
admitted to the intimate friendship of the Queen of Wurtemberg, she
remained sweet, simple and reserved.’

Besides her choreographic training, Taglioni was a highly educated girl
in every other respect, and was of the most charming personality and
manners. The people, and even her many rivals, loved and adored her
as a great artist and great woman. Though not pretty in any sense, as
so many other dancers were, she was fascinating through her distinct
spiritual appeal. This same note of spirituality manifested itself in
her dance. Her admirers used to say that she looked in _La Sylphide_
like some supernatural being always ready to take wing and soar up in
the air. Her steps were pure and innocent, as were all her gestures and
mimic expressions. Even in her romantic dances she failed to suggest
any symptoms of voluptuous or sensual emotions. Throughout her life she
remained as poetic as she was in her art.

In London she appeared first in 1830 in Didelot’s ballet _Flore
et Zéphire_ and made an instantaneous success. On nights when she
was announced to appear the London theatre was literally besieged.
Thackeray immortalized her in his ‘The Newcomes,’ saying, ‘you can
never see anything so graceful as Taglioni.’ She received in London
£100 a night, and insisted on handsome sums for her family, as well
as £600 for her father as ballet master, £900 to her brother and
sister-in-law, together with two benefit performances. She was so much
the fashion of the hour that women wore Taglioni hats, gowns, and
coats, and even a stage coach was called after her.

With all her charm and refinement, Taglioni was in many respects
an undeveloped girl emotionally, capricious and sentimental to her
finger-tips. It is said that one evening when Perrot, her partner,
happened to receive a greater amount of applause than she, she refused
to continue the performance, and accused her surrounding stage people
of having intrigued against her for malicious reason. She received
immense sums of money, but she spent everything just as lavishly as
it was received, not so much on herself as for her relatives, friends
and the poor. She married Comte Gilbert des Voisins in 1832, but their
married life was of short duration. There is a story that she met him
some years later at a dinner at the Comte de Morny’s, when he had the
effrontery to ask to be introduced to Maria Taglioni. She replied that
she thought she had made the gentleman’s acquaintance in 1832, the year
of her marriage. In 1837 she went to Russia and remained there for five
years as prima _ballerina_ of the Imperial Ballet.

Taglioni’s freedom and style had a great influence upon the development
of the ballet at that juncture. Her dress, a long tunic of white silk
muslin which reached almost to her ankles and fell in graceful folds
from her figure, was the first of this kind. Through this she was able
to reveal the plastic lines of her body, and thus made her movements
free from the artificial stiffness that had prevailed before her. She
was a reformer in many ways, and in this her father, as a practical
ballet-master, was of material help. It was not until Fanny Elssler
appeared in 1847 that Taglioni began to lose her hold upon the public.
Little by little her art grew old-fashioned to the novelty-loving
audiences, as the dancing of Elssler brought a new note of more
romantic nature to the stage. Actually this change was nothing but a
turn of public sentiment indicative of some new social fad. Trying
to maintain her living by giving dancing lessons in various European
capitals, she died in Marseilles in 1884, in great poverty, forsaken by
all her previous adorers and frenzied audiences.

II

Of a very different nature were the art and personality of Fanny
Elssler, the pretty Viennese girl, who in many respects followed the
example of Taglioni. Emerson, who saw her dancing in Boston, exclaimed,
‘that is poetry!’ But Margaret Fuller, who sat next to him, replied,
‘Ralph, it’s religion.’ Turgenieff was so impressed by her art that
he wrote to Balzac: ‘Her dance is the most magic novel that I have
ever read. What a mystery of beauty! Her every step and gesture is a
line of unwritten verse. Her lines are accentuated phrases, her poses
illustrations to the intoxicating text. Her art haunts me.’

Born in Vienna in 1810, Elssler received an early and thorough musical
education from her father, who was a copyist to Haydn. Her ballet
training, which she received partly in Vienna, partly in Italy, was of
the old order. It was the _Cachucha_ that made her a favorite of the
Milan and Naples audiences, but, as with Taglioni, it was _La Sylphide_
that made Elssler’s final reputation. Elssler saw _La Sylphide_ danced
by Taglioni in Munich and it electrified her so that she made it a main
aim of her ambition to surpass Taglioni, which she did.

A girl of receptive mind, good education and great talent, Elssler took
notice of all the critical views of her future rival, as expressed by
her contemporary ballet-masters, composers and dance critics. This
enabled her to embody in her art and style the features which were
less developed and most disliked by Taglioni. Taglioni was said to be
poetic, but lacking in romantic warmth and dramatic sentiment. In this
latter quality Elssler excelled. She made a special study of those
gestures, poses and steps, which express by passionate emotions, and
made appropriate use of them. The mechanical features of the dance
interested her little, though occasionally she indulged in acrobatic
tricks. Chorley, the English critic, writes of her: ‘The exquisite
management of her bust and arms set her apart from everyone whom I have
ever seen before or since. Nothing in execution was too daring for
her, nothing too pointed. If Mademoiselle Taglioni flew, she flashed.
The one floated on the stage like a nymph, the other showered every
sparkling fascination round her like a sorceress. There was more,
however, of the Circe than of the Diana in her smile.’

[Illustration: Sylphides; a Typical Classic Ballet]

A graphic description of Elssler is given by Gautier. ‘Clad in a skirt
of rose-colored satin clinging closely to the hips, adorned with deep
flounces of black lace, she came forward with a bold carriage of her
slender body, and a flashing of diamonds on her breast. Her leg, like
polished marble, gleams through the frail net of the stocking. Her
small foot is at rest, only awaiting the signal of the music to start
into motion. How charming she is with the large comb in her hair, the
rose behind her ear, her flame-like glance, and her sparkling smile! At
the extremity of her rose-dipped fingers tremble the ebony castañets.
Now she darts forward; the castañets commence their sonorous clatter;
with her hands she seems to shake down clusters of rhythm. How she
twists! how she bends! what fire! what voluptuousness of motion! what
eager zest! Her arms seem to swoon, her head droops, her body curves
backward until her white shoulders almost graze the ground. What charm
of gesture! And with that hand which sweeps over the dazzle of the
footlights would not any one say that she gathered all the desires and
all the enthusiasm of those who watch her?’

It was a pity that such a bitter rivalry was created between Elssler
and Taglioni by theatrical managers, which became a source of fierce
controversy throughout Europe. We are told by the writers of that
time that a veritable war of sentiments between the Taglionists and
Elsslerists lasted for years. Now the one, now the other party claimed
victory. Each party claimed to have the highest art in the individual
style of its idolized dancer. It was a conflict between two movements
rather than two artists: here the classic idealism, there the romantic
realism. Elssler at the end remained the winner, but not for a long
time, as the political unrest that swept Europe in the middle of the
nineteenth century distracted the public attention from the ballet.
After a successful tour in America, Elssler returned to Milan, when
the La Scala opera, which was supported by the Austrian government,
began to feel keenly the political pulse of the time. Elssler was to
appear in Perrot’s ballet _Faust_, when she beheld the members of the
ballet wearing a medal that represented the new liberal Pope, who was
strongly pro-Italian, while Elssler was an Austrian. To her it seemed a
demonstration directed against her fatherland and she refused to go on
the stage unless the demonstration stopped. The audience was informed
of the trouble behind the scenes, and from this time on Elssler’s
career was finished. Vainly trying her luck in Russia and England till
1851, she realized the sentimental opposition of all the audiences to
her art and retired forever. She spent her life in comfort, as the
American tour alone had netted her a sum of five hundred thousand
dollars. She died in 1884 in Vienna, a few months after the death of
her rival, Taglioni.

The star that followed Taglioni and Elssler was Carlotta Grisi, born in
a village of Istria and educated in Milan by Perrot. She was a medium
between the poetic Taglioni and romantic Elssler. Her favorite ballets
were _La Peri_ and _Ghiselle_ (the libretto of the latter by Théophile
Gautier and the music by Adolphe Adam). She was excellent in fairy
rôles, in which she showed a marvellous conception of imaginary motions
and gestures. Her fragile figure was favorable to similar rôles and in
these her mimic expressions were superb. She danced in England with
success, but somehow failed to arouse the enthusiasm that greeted her
contemporary Fanny Cerito. Grisi married her former teacher Perrot, who
composed for her many ballets.

Cerito distinguished herself in _Ondine_ and _La Vivandière_, and was
for a long time a favorite of the French audiences. A French critic
writes of her: ‘A good many of our readers will probably remember
Saint-Léon, the distinguished and popular ballet-master. Originally an
eminent violinist, it was out of love for the fairy-like Cerito, whom
he married, that he first gave himself up to the enthusiastic study of
dancing. Mme. Cerito bewitched the public with her exquisite dancing,
while Saint-Léon delighted them with his skill upon the violin and the
dignity and distinction of his compositions.’

There were several French, Italian or Austrian ballet dancers who
distinguished themselves at home, but none of them succeeded in
attracting much the English or American public’s attention. Katty
Lanner and Madame Weiss danced with some success in London, and enjoyed
a high reputation in Vienna. The characteristics of all the Vienna
dancers of this age were their decadent manners and their pretty,
plastic poses. Vienna developed more conspicuous operetta dancers than
real ballet dancers. Katty Lanner achieved a particular grace and
agility in the _Le Papillon_, by Emma Livry.

Of the French and Italian ballet dancers that appeared during the
second half of the nineteenth century most conspicuous are Leontine
Beaugrand, Mlle. Subra, Rosetta Mauri, Mlle. Bernay, Mlle. Petipa, and
Rita Sangalli. Though local critics praised one or other of these as
rivals of Taglioni and Elssler, the fact is they were all either mere
acrobatic imitators, decadent impressionists, or conventional figures.
The ballet shrinks into a secondary position, as the vogue for opera
and orchestral music occupies the foremost attention of the public.
Stage dancing degenerates into shows of insignificant meaning. With our
best will we can find nothing that would seem worthy of the attention
of the French critic who writes of Beaugrand:

‘Before long the public will learn to love this strange profile--so
like a frightened bird’s--and criticism will have to reckon with this
aspiring talent. She has not yet put forth all her strength. It was not
until she appeared in the part of _Coppélia_ that she wholly revealed
what was in her, and that the full extent of her grace and poetic
feeling was unfolded to the public.’

One season later the expected virtuoso vanishes from the public
eye and a new aspirant takes her place. Considering one after the
other, one finds little crisp and spontaneous beauty in the steps and
gestures of the _ballerinas_ of the last part of the past century. The
umbrella-like stiff dress of the classic ballet has only a momentary
semi-sensuous appeal. In the long run it becomes unæsthetic and
unpractical, since it hides the natural lines of the human body.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BALLET IN SCANDINAVIA

  The Danish ballet and Bournoville’s reform; Lucile Grahn, Augusta
  Nielsen, etc.--Mrs. Elna Jörgen-Jensen; Adeline Genée; the mission
  of the Danish ballet.

The French ballet dominated civilized Europe for centuries, as did the
French fashions, manners, language, art and social traditions. The high
society of every country was outspokenly French, and so were its views
and entertainments. How much even Germany was in the grip of French
ideals can be seen best from the efforts of her eighteenth-century
writers and reformers on behalf of their own national traditions.
Lessing was most bitterly fighting the French influence in German
life and art. It was only natural that semi-aristocratic Sweden
and Denmark felt the French sway. Stockholm introduced the ballet
during the last part of the eighteenth century, but used it for the
most part as an accessory of the opera. Taglioni, the father of the
celebrated _ballerina_, was employed as a ballet-master in Stockholm
where, in addition to his actual stage work, he was training dancers
for the ballet corps. He was succeeded by no one else than the great
Didelot, who later became a director of the ballet and ballet school
in Petrograd. But Sweden strictly followed the footsteps of France
and Italy and never took another direction. The Swedish ballet of the
nineteenth century was strictly French-Italian.

But the Danish ballet, which had been founded at the same time with
the Swedish, took a different turn. The early part and middle of the
nineteenth century mark a great turning point in the history of the
Danish stage dance. This is wholly due to the patriotic efforts of
its great reformer, Bournoville, who did not like the foreign flavor
of such an important art as dancing, and, moreover, found the stiff
style, artificial manners and the incoherent relation between the music
and dancing too crude and outmoded for a new era. On the other hand,
the method of training the dancers was lacking in system and seemed
too insufficient to make any thorough artists of the young men and
women who wished to make their career as dancers. Vincenzo Tomaselli
Galeotti, who had been for half a century an autocratic figure and
ballet-master of Denmark, emphasized either the acrobatic Italian or
the stereotyped French styles. For Galeotti the Danish ballet was
perfection itself, but not so for Bournoville.

Antoine Auguste Bournoville was born in 1805 in Copenhagen, where
his father had been a dancer and assistant conductor under Galeotti.
Already at the age of eight he danced in small parts in Copenhagen.
But it was not until 1829 that he made his real début in _Gratiereness
Hulding_. In 1824 he made a trip with Orloff to Paris where he saw
Vestris and Gardel, whose instruction and art inspired him to do for
the Danish ballet what they had done for the French. After a tour in
Austria and Italy, Bournoville settled down in Copenhagen and began to
reform the stage of his native land.

Bournoville’s main reformative idea was that a dancer should first of
all have a perfect technique, and then be an individual and not a dead
figure in a spectacular design. The technique of the Milan school was
to him one-sided, striving for gymnastic effects at the expense of the
musical and thematic requirements of a composition. Taglioni had just
made her reputation on the foundations that Bournoville had laid for
the Danish ballet. Virtuosity had been the danger of the old school.
Admiration was centred exclusively in the difficulty of the execution
of the steps. The _pointes_ and _pirouettes_ had been regarded as
the highest form of accomplishment. Bournoville realized that this
step, when it is abused, becomes the curse of ballet dancing. While
recognizing that it was absolutely necessary for momentary use, when
completing an attitude or giving a suggestion of ethereal lightness (as
of the poise of a winged being alighting for an instant upon the earth)
he combated the tendency to base the significance of the dance only on
this. On other occasions, one quick passage across the stage, the tips
of the toes scarcely brushing the dust of the carpet, the dancer may
make the impression of the grace of a bird’s flight. But if this trick
is displayed constantly during a performance the effect is lost in the
ugliness of the effort.

Bournoville was also dissatisfied with the ballet compositions and
plots. He remodelled many French ballets and wrote some himself. In
many things Bournoville coöperated with Pierre J. Larcher. The most
conspicuous of their works was _Valdemar_, which was first performed
in 1835, with music by Froehlich. Not less successful was the _Festen
i Albano_, an idyllic ballet in one act with music by Froehlich. This
was first performed in 1839. A very popular ballet that Bournoville
arranged to the music of Hartmann was _Olaf den Hellige_.

The most conspicuous pupil of Bournoville and the foremost of his prima
_ballerinas_ was Lucile Grahn, a girl of outspoken individuality,
temperament and dramatic force. She was a rival of Taglioni and
Elssler, not only in Denmark, but in France, England and in other
European countries. Grahn’s favored ballet was _La Sylphide_, though
she danced superbly in the _Fiorella_, and _Brahma und Bayaderen_. The
Danish critics wrote that the Copenhagen audience fairly went wild over
her dancing in the _Robert af Normandie_. Grahn differed from Taglioni
in her individual style, which was more romantic and lofty, and in her
dramatic talent. Besides being a great dancer she was an excellent
actress. The London and Petrograd audiences were particularly fond
of her _divertissement_ numbers, mostly written by Danish composers.
She was born in 1819 and died in Munich in 1875, after having lived
nineteen years of happy married life with Friedrich Young, a celebrated
opera singer of that time.

Next to Lucile Grahn in the Danish ballet stands Augusta Nielsen, born
in 1823 in Copenhagen. As a girl of fifteen, she danced in _Valdemar_.
But her real career began with _Toreadoren_, in which she danced for
the first time in 1840. Nielsen’s tendency in dancing was to be natural
rather than acrobatic. Her mimic and rhythmic talent surpassed by far
that of Grahn, Taglioni and Elssler. But since she strove less for
gymnastic effects than her celebrated contemporaries, she failed to
arouse the enthusiasm that greeted the others. She came close to the
modern natural dancers, since dancing was for her an individual art
like singing, in which each artist should express only the best of his
inner self. Like many other Danish dancers, Nielsen was a born actress
and emphasized the dramatic features as the most important ones in the
ballet.

Among Danish ballet dancers the most conspicuous figures are Adolph
F. Stramboe, Johann Ferdinand Hoppe, Waldemar Price and Hans Beck.
They all follow the footsteps of Bournoville, whose reforms in Danish
dancing are equal to those of Noverre in France, or Petipa in Russia.
Bournoville’s main efforts were to make dancing a serious dramatic
art. In this he succeeded. The influence of the Danish ballet upon
the Russian is of far-reaching extent. Didelot, having been a
ballet-master in Stockholm, was inspired by Bournoville’s attempts,
and followed his example after becoming a ballet director in Russia.
But the art of dancing has its period of youth, maturity, decay and
rebirth. The Danish ballet stopped its evolution after Bournoville. It
has remained what it was half a century ago. It is sound, classic, and
noble in its spirit, but it lacks the fire and soul of youth.

II

The writer has a record of the young living solo dancer of the
Danish Royal Ballet, Mrs. Elna Jörgen-Jensen, whose exquisite
delicate plastic art in Strindberg’s _Brott och Brott_, and Gabriele
d’Annunzio’s _Gioconda_ aroused stormy enthusiasm among Copenhagen’s
audiences. Haagen Falkenfleth, the celebrated ballet critic of
the _Nationaltidende of Copenhagen_, writes of her; ‘Mrs. Elna
Jörgen-Jensen, the _prima ballerina_ of the Danish Royal Ballet,
entered the Copenhagen Ballet School as a child, as the result of
an episode that is still little known. Her parents knew that little
Elna was passionately fond of dancing, but their surprise was great
when one day she disappeared from her home. It appeared that she had
run after a street organ-grinder to whose screaming tune she was
dancing in the middle of the street to the surprise of the occasional
spectators. At the age of seven she became a pupil of the Royal Ballet
School in Copenhagen, where the children are taught not only dancing
and _calisthenics_, but also the general school subjects, in the same
way as the dancers are educated in the Russian Imperial Ballet School
in Petrograd. As a pupil she was favored with small dancing parts in
certain ballets. She was excellent for little fairy rôles. In this way
she received a gradual training for the stage and had already mastered
her routine when she made her real début in Drigo’s “Harlequin’s
Millions.” She had personified Sylvia’s child in d’Annunzio’s
_Gioconda_ and the page in Schiller’s _Don Carlos_. Her dancing was so
sure, her movements so graceful and her mimicry so true to life that
her reputation was instantly established; but how versatile she was
became known only later.

‘No one who saw her during her début in the rôle of the gay Pierrette,
with frolic-humorous eyes and graceful juvenile steps, could imagine
that on the next occasion she would be so easily transformed into a
tragedienne in Schnitzler’s and Dohnányi’s “Veil of Pierrette.” She
practically created her rôle. Her romantic eyes, so full of sorrow and
despair, added a magic gloom to her dramatic dance, in which she stands
so high above her many contemporaries. She is realistically gripping.
Already at the age of nineteen she was an accomplished mute actress of
the modern type, and a great solo dancer. Dohnányi, who attended the
performance, told me that he had not supposed she could possibly add
such a tragic fire to the rôle that he wrote for untrained theatrical
dancers. Mrs. Jörgen-Jensen proved in this rôle that she had broken
loose from all the traditions of the Bournoville school in which she
was trained. You could not see a line of the conventional ballet style.

‘Bournoville, the reformer of the Danish ballet, introduced a
strong dramatic element into the national art. Yet his tendency was
outspokenly romantic. In this he aimed to be classic and strictly
choreographic. In many of his ballets the romantic and the realistic
issues are closely interwoven. In these Mrs. Jörgen-Jensen sometimes
has gone against the Bournoville principles and used her own judgment.
She has figured as the principal dancer in the “Flower Festival
at Genzano,” _La Ventana_, “Far from Danemark,” _Coppélia_ and
_Swanhilde_. But in “The Little Mermaid,” a ballet based on Hans
Andersen’s fairy-tale, she is best of all. While dancing in the rôle
of the Mermaid, she makes the impression of a magic creature of a
different world, with grace and charms that we have never known, yet
which cast a spell upon us. Mrs. Jörgen-Jensen’s repertoire is large,
but still larger is the range of her dramatic personifications. The
Copenhagen audiences are sorry to see her so little, but the stage of
our National Theatre is more adapted to the opera and drama than to the
ballet.’

Perhaps the best known of the living Danish dancers is Adeline Genée,
whose name has figured during the past twenty years in the ballet
repertoires of all the more or less known opera houses. She has been
a special favorite of the London public, where she made her début in
_Monte Cristo_ in November, 1897. She has shown her best in Delibes’
_Coppélia_, though some critics maintain that her triumph in the
_Dryad_ is even greater. But what _La Sylphide_ was to Taglioni,
_Ghiselle_ to Grisi and _Éoline_ to Lucile Grahn, that is _Coppélia_
to Genée. She is a true exponent of the Bournoville school of ballet,
though she claims that she owes her brilliant technique to some
other sources. Though she studied dancing with her uncle in Denmark,
yet the method, style and technique originate from Bournoville. Max
Beerbohm has given a pretty characteristic account of her appearance
in _Coppélia_ in London. ‘No monstrous automaton is that young lady.
Perfect though she be in the _haute école_, she has by some miracle
preserved her own self. She was born a comedian and a comedian she
remains, light as foam. A mermaid were not a more surprising creature
than she--she of whom one half is that of an authentic _ballerina_,
whilst the other is that of a most intelligent, most delightful human
actress. A mermaid were, indeed, less marvellous in our eyes. She
would not be able to diffuse any semblance of humanity into her tail.
Madame Genée’s intelligence seems to vibrate in her very toes. Her
dancing, strictly classical though it is, is a part of her acting. And
her acting, moreover, is of so fine a quality, that she makes the old
ineloquent conventions of gesture tell meanings to me, and tell them so
exquisitely that I quite forget my craving for words.--Taglioni in _Les
Arabesques_? I suspect in my heart of hearts, she was no better than
a doll. Grisi in _Ghiselle_? She may or may not have been passable.
Genée! It is a name our grandchildren will cherish, even as we cherish
now the names of those bygone dancers. And alas! our grandchildren will
never believe, will never be able to imagine, what Genée was.’

The writer has attended a number of Genée’s performances in Europe and
in America, and does not agree entirely with Mr. Beerbohm’s eulogy. As
already explained above, Bournoville’s method was a great improvement
over the French-Italian schools of dancing, in that it emphasized
the dramatic issues and individual traits in the ballet, which Genée
has exactly followed; but unfortunately the evolution of the Danish
ballet stopped with Bournoville. The art remained in its preliminary
state of development and ended with the Dresden-china steps. It is
this very style that makes Genée an attractive museum figure. In this
she stands unrivalled. She exhibits an art of the past, with every
detail sedulously studied. You can see how mathematically exact is the
position of the fingers, the attitude of the head, the lines of the
arms and limbs, and so on. ‘Every step has its name, every gesture
belongs to its code; there is only one way and no other of executing
them rightly, and that way is Madame Genée’s,’ writes one of her
admirers. But the dance is more than an exhibition of mathematical
figures. The studied smile and sorrow fail to arouse the emotions of
the audience. The Dresden-china step is a fossilized thing of bygone
centuries. It somehow does not belong to the stage.

The significance of the Danish ballet, and its influence upon the
evolution of the art of dancing is greater than it is universally
admitted. The Danes introduced the element of drama into the ballet in
order to make the dancing a kind of mute acting. They were the first
to revolt against many time-worn rules of the old schools. They were
the first to advocate the imitation of nature to a certain extent.
Bournoville said ‘as nature moves in curves and gradations rather than
by leaps and turns, dancing should take that into consideration.’ The
Russian ballet was influenced through the Danish and Swedish. The
Danish ballet was a stepping-stone between the academic French-Italian
and ethno-dramatic Russian schools. It has accomplished a great task
in the evolution of the art of dancing by making the ballet a dramatic
expression on academic lines.

CHAPTER XIV

THE RUSSIAN BALLET

  Nationalism of the Russian ballet; pedagogic principles of the
  Russian school; French and Russian schools compared--Begutcheff and
  Ostrowsky; history of the Russian ballet--Didelot and the Imperial
  ballet school; Petipa and his reforms--Tschaikowsky’s ‘Snow-Maiden’
  and other ballets; Pavlova and other famous _ballerinas_; Mordkin;
  Volinin, Kyasht, Lopokova.

The celebrated saying of the German poet, ‘_Und neues Leben blüht aus
den Ruinen_’ applies better than anything else to the Russian ballet,
which has risen out of the West European choreographic ruins. The
Russian ballet marks a new era in the history of the art of dancing.
The Russian ballet is a new word in the dance world. It brings the
smell of trees and flowers, the songs of birds, the leaps of gazelles
and lions and the very soil of nature to the stage. It breathes the
spectral shadows of the trees and mountains; it begins with the
simplest mushroom and ends with the most complicated hot-house plant.
It emanates nature with all its uncouthness and grace. Like the Russian
composers and poets, the Russian dancers strive to echo Nature with all
its majesty and mystery.

Even with the beginning of the nineteenth century the Russian ballet
begins a course entirely different from that which the schools of
Western Europe were preaching and teaching. Though the ballet-masters
and instructors are foreigners, yet they are actuated by outward
circumstances to apply their academic theories to the conditions of
a different school. With the advent of a national school of music
and drama, at the head of which stood Balakireff, Borodine, Seroff,
Moussorgsky, Tschaikowsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff in music, and Ostrowsky,
Turgenieff, Gogol and others in the drama, the Russian ballet is
forced in the same channels. The Russian ballet grows gradually into
a new nationalistic art, and separates itself altogether from the
French-Italian aristocratic academicism. The frequent remarks of the
foreign critics, suggesting that the Russian ballet was and is a
direct offspring and copy of the classic French-Italian schools, are
absolutely wrong. It is true that the Russians borrowed from the French
the skeleton and from the Italians the mechanic contrivances, but they
built up the body themselves and created something entirely different
from what Western Europe knew of the ballet.

A born dancer, the Russian could never stand the prescribed poses,
smiles, tears, steps and gestures, that were and are still practised
outside. He is ready to undergo the most strenuous training, and
follows microscopically the instructions of the teachers, in order to
acquire the necessary technique; but when it comes to a performance,
he will put his spontaneous ideas and impulses above the technique and
act according to his emotions and inspiration. This is a peculiarity of
the Russian. He is and remains an individual. No school can put him on
the same level with his fellow-students. Is not Pavlova quite different
from Fokina or Karsavina?

No other nation cares so much for racial beauty as the Russian. And
in this it is essentially democratic. All Russian art is based on
the peasant, and not on aristocratic ideals. It expresses this by
being simple, direct, spontaneous and rugged. The greatest factor
in separating the Russian ballet from the western, is the Russian
folk-dance. It owes everything to folk-art. No outside influence
has ever been able to change the Russian æsthetic taste. In art,
particularly in the ballet, the peasant ideals force themselves upon
all aristocratic and bureaucratic classes. Already as a youth he sucks
from the atmosphere the innumerable forms of dance expression. In
his blood lives unconsciously the whole choreographic code, as his
ancestors have known and practised it for centuries. The design of a
peasant is the æsthetic scale of a Russian artist, particularly of
a dancer. Aristocratic ideals never amounted to anything in Russia.
The fact is, the nobleman follows in matters of æsthetic taste the
_moujik_, but never _vice versa_. The benefit of this has been that
neither the court nor foreign academicism could influence the Russian
art of dancing.

Besides the racial motives, the question of scientific education has
been a hobby with the Russian art pedagogues since the early part of
the last century. The Russians are almost fanatic in this respect
and have specialized their educational institutions to such a degree
that they stand unique. The method of training the dancers in other
countries was centred mainly in training the step technique and was, so
to speak, purely choreographic. The Russians took into consideration
all the arts that are related to dancing, and made a rule that all
pupils in the dancing schools should have at least an elementary
training in human anatomy, in sculpture, drama, architecture, painting,
music and in general educational subjects. To know every branch of art
correspondingly well--this made it necessary that children be educated
in an institute from their childhood on. Thus the education for the
Russian ballet is given in the two Imperial Ballet Schools, one in
Petrograd, the other in Moscow, both being connected with the dramatic
departments in which children are trained for the stage. The course
in the school lasts eight years, with an extra one or two years’
post-graduate practice at some opera stage, after which a graduate
receives his ‘Free Artist’ degree which places him on an equal rank
with the graduates of a college, university or musical conservatory.

Marius Petipa, the director and leading spirit of the Petrograd ballet
school, has, upon one occasion, said to the writer: ‘We employ the
French, the Italian, the Danish and the Russian instructors in order
to give the best of every school and style to our pupils. We teach
things that no other school would teach. For instance, our pupils must
know psychology, which is supposed to be unnecessary for a dancer. But
I say, no. How can a girl personify the Snow Maiden when she does not
know the psychology of a fairy? It’s ridiculous, you might think, as
fairies are only legendary figures. But the very fact that they are
imaginary makes it necessary for a girl to know how to avoid showing
any human characteristics.

‘The foreign schools do not care in what steps a dancer should express
such subtle emotions as jealousy, longing, bliss and sorrow. Abroad
they prescribe pirouettes for joy and happiness. They prescribe acting
in this, dancing in that phrase. It is not so with us. We teach the
pupil to see the various human emotions in historic sculpture and
painting. We show them the attitudes of various celebrated actresses in
this or that emotion. Then, we go back to psychology and leave it to
the artist to formulate the position that he would occupy in various
emotions. So you see psychology is very important to a dancer.

‘Dancing is the cream of architecture and sculpture. We teach our
future dancers to know the difference between architecture and
sculpture and then between a dance and a dramatic pose, which are
just as different as opera singing and concert singing. All our
graduates must be accomplished dancers, actors, acrobats, architects
and designers. We teach the difference between a Gothic and Byzantine
line, a Moorish and Romanesque design. We have to analyze music and
sculpture to their elementary parts in order to be able to show the
manifold manifestations of the human soul, and the manifold forms of
beauty. It is in this way that a dancer comes to know which step or
gesture corresponds to the emotions of a Romanesque Italian, Gothic
German or Byzantine Russian.

‘I have been assailed by our critics and composers as being too
strict in demanding technique from our dancers. But tell me, please,
can any talent make a man an artist without technical ability, where
mathematical laws are required as in dancing and in music? Can there
ever be a Rubinstein, Paderewski or Kubelik without the acquired
harmonic and melodic skill on the instrument which I call technique?
Just as little chance has a man of being a great dancer if he does not
possess the ability to control his body, though he be the greatest
choreographic genius in the world. Art is technique plus talent. No
great artist in dancing was ever produced without technique.

‘Do you know what Lubke said in his immortal History of Sculpture, that
applies also to a dancer? I am telling all my pupils when they leave
the institution that, like sculptor in the clay, a dancer in himself
must seek the “Image of God,” the spark of divine life. When he fails
to find this in separate lines, poses, gestures, attitudes and mimic
expressions, he must search for it in the whole, and, by thoughtful
study and thinking, he will certainly attain the reflex of immortal
beauty--the image of deity. This I call artistic creation. In sculpture
as in dancing the divine and heroic are the aims of the artistic
achievements. Without this striving after the divine spark nothing is
produced but lifeless figures and dead forms. A dancer, like any other
artist, should aspire after spirit-breathing beauty.’

[Illustration: Pavlowa

_a painting by John Lavery_]

This briefly expresses the fundamental traditions of the Russian
ballet school. To a certain extent it is academic, but it has never
interfered with the racial and the individual tendencies of the
artists. Though there are only three large independent ballet corps in
Russia, those of Petrograd, Moscow, and Warsaw, yet nearly every one of
the sixty or more provincial opera houses keeps its local ballet corps
in connection with the operatic and dramatic staff. While in foreign
countries ballet has been appreciated mainly as an accessory to the
opera for its spectacular effects, its æsthetic appeal being regarded
as not possessing a high order of merit, in Russia it is considered a
great and independent art of the stage, standing on a plane with opera,
both musically and dramatically. When a few years ago the Russian
dancers made their appearance abroad the public was startled, as no one
could imagine that any good thing could come out of Czardom. It is a
great mistake to suppose that the Russian ballet is an aristocratic or
autocratic institution. By no means. Like Russian drama and music the
Russian ballet is a national institution and a national achievement.

In how far the Russian ballet differs from her sister institutions
outside is best to be seen in such old-fashioned ballets as _Les
Sylphides_, which was danced by Taglioni, and is danced by the artists
of the French-Italian schools and figures in the repertoires of the
Russian ballet. Another work of similar nature is the _Coppélia_.
Not only are these two time-worn ballets wholly changed in their
thematic and musical sense but in the very form of conception. The
Russian _Sylphides_ and _Coppélia_ are old scenes in modern light,
the French-Italian _Sylphides_ and _Coppélia_ are pitiable museum
shows. Where a French-Italian _ballerina_ would leap and whirl, a
Russian acts and poses. Like the art of an actress that of a Russian
_ballerina_ is in the first place a personification of the character
in whose rôle she is dancing. Pavlova as she depicts the incomparable
fury of Glazounoff’s _L’Autômne Bacchanale_, could not by any means
be a Cleopatra as personified by Astafieva. Karsavina with all her
dramatic thrill and _arabesques_ is a mediocrity in the rôles in which
Pavlova excels. The dramatic issue is the foremost question in the
Russian ballet, often to such an extent that it minimizes the musical
significance. The most talented of the foreign ballet dancers do not
begin to go into the dramatic details of a dance as the Russians do.

To get an idea of the Russian ballet with all its true atmosphere one
must go to Russia. The performances of the Diaghileff company which
foreign audiences have seen, belong to the revolutionary school, but
not to the typical classic dance of Russia, which we shall discuss
later. The Russian ballet dancer is free from all the stiffness,
decadent artificiality, preconceived emotions, and fossilized
formalities of the French-Italian ballet dancers. This freedom he owes,
in the first place, to the thorough training in the school; second,
to the distinctly racial traditions of the Russian drama and art; and
third, to the serious critical attitude of the audiences. To say that
the Russian ballet has not travelled in ideals far from those of Milan
in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, as a foreign dance
critic has said, is untrue. The difference between these two schools is
just as real as that between the Catholic and the Protestant church:
the one believes in the form, the other in the spirit.

II

How much the Russian ballet has influenced drama, opera, painting and
music can be judged from the fact that almost without an exception all
the Russian operas require dancing; thus there are several dramas and
orchestra works interwoven with the ballet. On the other hand the
dancer has made use of themes and compositions that had been created
for other purposes; for all such ballets as the _Scheherezade_,
_Prince Igor_, _Baba Yaga_ and many others, were written as orchestral
suites, symphonic poems or parts of operas. But the choric imagination
discovered in them latent music dramas adapted for dancing. We are
inclined to think that the Moscow ballet, but not that of Petrograd,
is a thoroughly Russian institution, since Begutcheff, who was a
director of the Moscow Opera and Ballet at the time of Tschaikowsky and
Ostrowsky, banished all foreign influence from that stage, more so than
has ever happened in Petrograd.

In 1873 Begutcheff asked Ostrowsky, one of the foremost Russian
dramatists, to write a fairy ballet for performance at the Imperial
Opera in St. Petersburg, exacting that it should be free from any
satirical or politically undesirable element. Begutcheff asked the
dramatist to submit the scenario to him for approval. Ostrowsky was
noted for his bitter sarcasm anent the Russian bureaucracy and for
his idealization of the peasants. This he was told he should avoid in
the ballet, ‘for such would be not pleasing to the imperial family.’
Ostrowsky smiled, grunting: ‘God be thanked, the imperial family
has no business to interfere with the imagination of an artist.’ He
finished his libretto without consulting Begutcheff and entitled
it _Snegourotchka_--‘Snow Maiden.’ The director of the Petrograd
ballet did not like Ostrowsky’s libretto and refused to consider it.
Begutcheff, however, turned the libretto over to Tschaikowsky to
compose the music and it was performed with great success in Moscow.

One of the special features of the Russian ballet is its _chorovody_
character--that is, the musical accompaniment, on many occasions,
is supplied by the singing of the dancers themselves. This species
of vocal ballets evidently originated in the choral dances of
the peasants. The Russian ballet is, in fact, an outgrowth of the
folk-dance just as Russian music emanates from the folk-song. While
watching the Russian ballet, you see glimpses of the racial traits.
It is not like the music, however, a picture of the gloom of lonely
_moujik_ life, in which only here and there a beam of light breaks
through the melancholy. It is a succession of brilliant pictures of the
mediæval Boyars, the semi-barbaric nobility. Every part of the ballet
is meant to show the rich Byzantine colors, and primitive passions as
set forth in a half-civilized garb.

It is true the Russian ballet is controlled by the court and therefore
is forced to be aristocratic in appearance. The composers and the
ballet-masters have been strictly instructed to avoid all undesirable
themes; but, strange to say, the ballet is just as much a mirror of
the hospitable, good natured, naïve and emotional peasant as it is of
a spoiled Boyar. It is not that all the ballet dancers are children of
peasants, educated for the stage by the court, but because the Russian
dramatists and composers have unconsciously put their own _moujik_
souls in their creations, for, though most of the Russian composers and
dramatists are descendants of the aristocracy, yet in their hearts they
have remained one with the people, whose life they live in thought and
feeling.

In its principles the ballet is the most aristocratic and the oldest of
all Russian arts of the stage. The unwritten history of the enchanting
Russian dance would make a thrilling record of more than two centuries.
The romances, tragedies, mysteries, and intrigues connected with this
sealed drama have often played a decisive rôle in the affairs of the
country. As the result of a romance with pretty Teleshova Griboyedoff,
a famous Russian dramatist was killed in Teheran. For having dedicated
his ‘Eugene Onyegin’ to the fascinating Istomina, prima _ballerina_ of
the Imperial Opera, Poushkin, the poet, lost the love of his wife and
was subsequently shot in a duel. The Czar Paul fell in love with Eugeny
Kolossova and in consequence was strangled at his palace in Petrograd.
Before the present Czar ascended the throne he was said to have been so
much in love with Mathilda Kshesinskaya that he made plans to renounce
his throne and marry her.

The ballet was introduced in Russia as early as 1672. Czar Alexis
Mihailowitch ordered his aid-de-camp, Colonel Van Staden, to have a
troupe of Dutch comedians brought to Moscow. Van Staden made a contract
with a ballet manager in Brussels, but the foreigner was frightened
into giving up the venture because of a rumor that he and his troupe
might eventually land in Siberia. After this a German pastor, the
Rev. Johann Gregory, undertook the management of the troupe, hiring
sixty-four German and Italian dancers and producing in 1673 the first
ballet, ‘Orpheus and Euridice,’ with great success. Peter the Great was
so fascinated with the ballet that he himself took part and for this
purpose received lessons from the ballet-master.

The ballet of this time was, of course, Italian-French in conception
and music. But the early foreign masters soon produced a school of
native instructors who gradually made use of the peculiarities of
national dances. Many Russian ballets were already at this time of
national color, one of them, _Baba Yaga_, having been written by the
Czar himself. _Baba Yaga_ is a Russian fairy tale. Like the English
‘Witch on a Broomstick,’ _Baba Yaga_ rides through the sky on a huge
mortar, propelling herself with a pestle, while her great tongue licks
up the clouds as she passes. The dancers were trained in various
military or municipal schools and the teaching was unsystematic in
every respect.

The first impetus to a national dancing academy was given by Empress
Anna Ivanovna, the sister of Peter the Great, who felt that the
education of the dancers was not systematic enough, and regretted
that the best dancers had to be hired from abroad. In 1735, she asked
Christian Wellmann, a teacher of gymnastics in the Cadet Corps, to
found a dramatic dancing school in which girls and boys could be
educated for the ballet. The Italian composer Francesca Areja was
employed to take care of the music, while Lande, a pupil of Noverre,
was to act as ballet director. As the newly formed school could not
get children of the nobility to learn dancing, Lande trained a number
of poor city boys and girls free of any charge, and with them gave
a performance at the palace. The Empress was so pleased with their
dance that she instructed that the pupils be educated in the Imperial
Dramatic Dancing School free of charge.

The most conspicuous figures in the development of the early Russian
ballet were Locatelli, Hilferding and Lessogoroff. To the latter’s
efforts are due the reforms that made the Russian school independent
from French-Italian influences. But to Charles Louis Didelot is due
the thorough and many sided system of training that makes the School a
unique institution in Europe. He may be considered the real father of
all the pedagogic technical perfection, for it was he who emphasized
the importance of a systematic training in a true dramatic spirit,
contending that a good ballet dancer should also be a good actress and
an artist and a poet at heart. Up to his time lessons had consisted
mostly of physical training, fencing and gymnastics, but he insisted
that the ballet be put on the same basis as drama. Whereas the dance
had been merely a spectacular part of opera he intended that it should
become an independent production. This brought upon him a storm of
indignation on the part of the clergy and their supporters, the quarrel
becoming so intense that in 1801, as one of its effects, the Czar Paul
was acclaimed a heretic and was combatted by the ecclesiastic powers
until he was strangled in his palace and his son, Alexander I, ascended
the throne. The young Czar was religious, but so much an admirer of the
ballet that he did not interfere with the plans of Didelot and gave him
a still greater authority.

It is strange how Didelot, a rather small, insignificant, pock-marked
and deformed Frenchman, who had been for some time a ballet teacher
in Stockholm, could play a dominating rôle during the twenty-five
years that he was director of the Imperial Ballet School. The best
known dancers of his school were Istomina, Teleshova and the uncle of
Taglioni, who later undertook the training of Maria Taglioni. Miss
Novitzkaya was a celebrated pupil of Didelot, but her career was soon
destroyed by an affair of the heart. Gedeonoff, the director who
followed Didelot, fell madly in love with Novitzkaya and proposed
to her, but the dancer, having given her heart to a poor composer,
remained true to him and became his wife. This was the end of her art,
though critics claimed her superior to Taglioni and Elssler.

By 1847 the Russian ballet had taken a leading place in Europe, but
in a purely artistic sense it was still foreign in character, the
librettos being built mainly on foreign themes or constructed to
foreign music. With the advent of the composers Glinka, Dargomijsky,
Seroff, Balakireff and Moussorgsky, it was evident that ballet faced a
reform similar to that which music had undergone. The ballets of the
old school had usually been divided into several acts and figures,
each of which had _entrées_ and strictly prescribed rules for using
various gestures, steps, etc., in certain places. They, however,
failed to define the relation of emotion and acting to the plot and
made dancing a complicated artificial salon-plant. An uninitiated logic
could hardly grasp the hieroglyphic meaning of all the queer gymnastic
tricks. With the engagement of Marius Petipa, in 1849, there came a
change. Although a Frenchman by birth Petipa was just such a reformer
in the ballet as Michelangelo was in sculpture. More powerful than any
other master, he entered the sphere of choreographic art, transforming
it completely, and assigning it new limits. Petipa was the master
of a new ballet, an idealist in the strictest sense of the word. He
sought for a universally available expression, and often even ignored
questions of racial beauty. He gave himself up for many years to an
anatomical study of the dance and the human body. By him the human form
in all its majesty was valued for its own sake. To exhibit it in all
conceivable attitudes and poses, to display it freely and grandly after
the principles of classic beauty, was the aim of his endeavor. The weak
decadent movements and the forced forms of the Paris and Milan schools
were irritable to his broad views of the art of dancing. Unfettered
subjectivity prevailed in his efforts, which admitted no objective
realism in their absolute sway. All his method betrays an eternal
struggle to introduce into dancing the most sublime ideas, the sway
of idea over form. Whether a figure was natural or not interested him
little, if it only expressed what was floating before his mind. Petipa
infused a new life into Russian ballet. Nevertheless he could not
wholly free himself from the mannerism of the time, nor could he yet
find the path to perfect purity and naïveté of conception.

Petipa surrounded himself with the best dance authorities of the
time. Felix Kshesinsky, Leggatt, Schirjajeff and Bekeffy became his
associates in the task he had undertaken. Coöperating in harmony and
inspired by the new tendency of nationalism in music and drama, they
made the ballet typically national by introducing a long repertoire
of national themes in the dance. With pretty Kshesinskaya, Bogdanova,
Breobrashenskaya, Sokolova, Pavlova, Karsavina, Lopokova and Fokina
as the _prima ballerinas_ many new ballets became thrilling novelties
to the Russian audiences. The ballet in the eyes of the Petipa school
became a mute drama with music, and at once took a high position
artistically and poetically. People grew to find the ballet far more
alluring than the pessimistic drama.

What Petipa did pedagogically for the uplifting of the Russian ballet,
Vsevoloshky did scenically and industrially. Vsevoloshky made himself
the spirit of the nationalistic movement by combining with the purely
choreographic part the creations of the new school of painters and
composers in a highly artistic manner. Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky,
Rimsky-Korsakoff, Arensky and Glazounoff in music, Bilibin, Benois and
Bakst in painting, contributed their best works to the ballet. On the
other hand, while the West European ballets cared little for training
the male dancers, the Russians laid a special stress on training an
equal number of boys with the girls in all their ballet schools. The
training of a boy is different from that of a girl in that it teaches
chiefly those traits that lend virility and strength to expression. A
weak masculine element deprives the ballet of its natural effect. A
Pavlova, Karsavina or Fokina without a Nijinsky, Mordkin or Volinin,
would be like an orchestra without the bass. How repulsive it is to see
the ‘boy’ dancer of the English stage, who is always a girl!

IV

The most typical of the early purely Russian native ballets was the
_Snegourotchka_--‘The Snow Maiden’--which was first performed in
1876 in Moscow. Tschaikowsky took for his musical themes half a dozen
folk-songs from Brokunin’s collection, and a few from the lips of the
village people near Kieff. This ballet has been of the greatest success
on the Russian stage thus far. This is musically and choreographically
a dramatized fairy tale. The Snow Maiden is the issue of the union of
the gladsome fairy, Spring, with the grim old geni, Winter. The father
jealously guards her from the courting Sun-God, who is eager to pour
upon her his scorching and destructive rays. Winter would like to
keep her in the forest, but the mother, proud of her child’s beauty,
wants to send her into the busy world to charm its inhabitants. After
a serious conflict of the parents the father yields. The girl feels
the strange emotions of love and trembles, singing a thrilling melody.
She wanders from village to village in search of a lover, but her
numerous admirers are unable to stir her heart, because snow circulates
through her veins. She realizes that she is void of real passion.
Spring appears to her and endows her with the tenderness of a lily, the
languor of a poppy and the desire of a rose. The Snow Maiden’s heart
is touched at last, but in the moment when she wishes to fall on her
lover’s neck a brilliant sun ray pours its Summer heat on her. She
dissolves in vapor and floats into the skies.

The score is wholly Russian in mood and color. The dramatic treatment
of the subject is the best that Tschaikowsky has ever done. The
Snow Maiden’s theme is very sad and beautiful in the last movement.
The pantomime and steps are excellent, and seem to melt into one
magic whole. Tschaikowsky, with his peculiar genius for evolving
floating, curving dance rhythms and his remarkable gift for lyrical
characterization, made ‘The Snow Maiden’ a great success.

Of less success was Tschaikowsky’s second ballet, ‘Swan Lake,’ though
it has been in recent years a favorite ballet with the Petrograd
audiences. Like the first, it was built on a fairy tale and an old
folk legend theme. It was performed in 1876. Another ballet full of
imaginary episodes and pretty music is ‘The Sleeping Beauty.’ The
finest pages of this score are found in the _Adagio misterioso_,
describing the sleep of the princess. But choreographically the best
part is the _Pas d’action_, in which the _prima ballerina_ seems to
melt into one audio-visible beauty that thrills the utmost depths of
the soul. The ‘Nut Cracker’ has had less success than the others,
yet it is a magnificent work of art. It probably lacks the feminine
sentimentality that is always sure of a stage success.

To our knowledge none of Tschaikowsky’s ballets has been given in
America. Whether the Diaghileff company ever gave any of them in
Paris and London, we have been unable to learn. The Russian ballets
that the foreign audiences have thus far seen abroad, are nearly
without exception musical patch-works. Neither the Rimsky-Korsakoff
_Scheherezade_ nor _Prince Igor_ nor _Cleopatra_ was ever written for
dancing. The _Scheherezade_, for instance, is an orchestral suite of
Rimsky-Korsakoff. He never meant it for a ballet. Of all the real
ballets that the Diaghileff troupe has given only those composed by
Stravinsky and a few by Tcherepnin are meant to be danced.

Among the best Russian ballet dancers of the strictly classic or, as we
should say, of the Petipa school, are Kshesinskaya, Breobrashenskaya,
Geltzer, Pavlova, Mordkin, Novikoff, Volinin, Kyasht and Lopokova,
most of whom are known abroad. But there are quite a number of Russian
_prima ballerinas_, who, for some reason or other, have not been able
to display their art abroad, yet who rival the best we know. As with
other artists, dancers all have their individual traits of superiority
and weakness. In some dances we have seen Kshesinskaya superior to all
the rest, in other rôles she is just a mediocrity. We can imagine
nothing more inspiring and beautiful than Pavlova and Mordkin in
Glazounoff’s _L’Autômne Bacchanale_. No Russian ballet dancers have
surpassed them in this. In the same way we consider Pavlova a goddess
of grace and beauty in Drigo’s _Papillon_ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan.’
We measure her one of the most lyric artists of the Russian classic
ballet.

Mme. Pavlova is a graduate of the Petrograd Ballet School and was for
years a _prima ballerina_ at the Mariensky Theatre in that city before
she made a tour to Riga, Warsaw and Helsingfors. Having been received
with greatest enthusiasm on her provincial tour she decided to try her
luck abroad and made her London début in 1910, where she immediately
had the city at her feet. It is only in recent years that Pavlova
has danced in her own regular ballet, whereas before she appeared
exclusively in solo dances, either with Mordkin, Novikoff or Volinin.
In our judgment she has not added anything to her reputation or success
by her patchy ballet, particularly in America, where the public is
least impressed by pantomimic art of the kind they can see with more
advantage in the moving-picture show. It is Pavlova’s art that the
people admire, not the ballets that are concocted for her. It must be
said that the ballets recently produced by her possess little dramatic
or choreographic appeal.

In questions pertaining to her dancing Pavlova has been broad and
tolerant, and has listened quietly to every eulogistic or critical
remark. She has not remained indifferent to the latest choreographic
movements but has adapted herself to many suggestions, particularly to
those of the movement of the naturalistic school of Isadora Duncan. In
spite of the growing influence of the revolutionary new ballet of the
Fokine-Diaghileff group, and while keeping in view the changing taste
and requirements of the public, Pavlova should, we believe, guard
against too great a compromise. She surpasses in her magic swiftness,
delicacy, bird-like agility, floating grace and lyric pirouettes all
her living rivals. One can see that she has tuned her body to the most
delicate _pianissimi_ and the most powerful _forti_. But when she
attempts to use her arms too conspicuously, or produce Greek poses,
she is a disappointing failure. We must admit with an English critic
that ‘in Pavlova’s dancing we are no longer aware of the conscious and
painful obedience of the body to the dictates of a governing mind. It
is as though the spirit itself had left its central citadel and, by
some unwonted alchemy becoming dissolved in the blood and fibres of her
being, had penetrated to the extremities of the limbs. Soul from body
is no longer distinguishable, and which is servant to the other none
can tell.’

Mordkin and Volinin stand by no means beyond the dynamic beauty of
Pavlova. In their virilly graceful gestures and poses lies something
heroic and strong, something beast-like in its beauty. Mordkin perhaps
more than Volinin is endowed with a robust, massive and splendid
physique, qualities which leave some of his less critical admirers
blind to the deficiencies of his art. Both dancers have acquired most
of their pliancy and manliness by a course of systematic and rigorous
training which gives to their dance an unusual _abandon_ and loftiness.
Their dancing has a tendency to give a semblance of repose to their
quickest motions. They seem to avoid the conventional whirls and pivots
with intention, and to prefer the lion-like leaps and _chassées_. Their
reckless swing in _L’Autômne Bacchanale_ is just as much an expression
of manly vigor as Pavlova’s _pirouette_ and _rond de jambe_ is one of
feminine grace.

The ranks of the Russian ballet dancers are of a peculiar bureaucratic
order, beginning with the simple _danseuse_ and ending with the _prima
ballerina_, which is a rank similar in the hierarchy to that of a full
general. Lydia Kyasht, for instance, is a lieutenant in her rank of
_première sujet_. Pavlova and Karsavina are _ballerinas_, while only
Kshesinskaya and Breobrashenskaya are _prima ballerinas_. Among the
Russian dancers known abroad, Lydia Kyasht and Lydia Lopokova are next
to Pavlova brilliant exponents of the Russian classic or so called ‘Old
Ballet.’ They have both impressed us as sincere and eloquent artists
of their school, the one romantic, the other extremely poetic. The
ethereal twists and glides of Lopokova surpass by far those of Pavlova
in their peculiar fairy-like lines and poses. Kyasht appeals to us
immensely on account of her absolutely classic plastic and enchanting
poses, which add an exotic air to her enchanting expressions.

In introducing Pavlova, Mordkin and other more or less prominent
exponents of the Russian classic ballet to America and England Max
Rabinoff has been the practical spirit behind the scenes. An authority
on the dance, Mr. Rabinoff had the conviction, even when the Russian
dancers were yet unknown in America, that they would ultimately triumph
as they did. To his persistent efforts the Russian ballet owes its
success in America.

The classic Russian ballet is a pure Byzantine piece of stage art.
It mirrors the bizarre glow and colors of the cathedrals, the mystic
romanticism of the Kremlin walls and cupolas, the Tartar minarets, the
vaulted _teremas_ (Boyar houses), the lonely steppes, the gloomy penal
colonies, the luxurious palaces and twisted towers of a semi-Oriental
country. Strongly replete with the character of the passing Boyar life,
it is an era in itself.

CHAPTER XV

THE ERA OF DEGENERATION

  Nineteenth century decadence; sensationalism--Loie Fuller and the
  Serpentine dance--Louise Weber, Lottie Collins and others.

During the last half of the nineteenth century the art of dancing
reached such a low level that Max Nordau said: ‘It is a fleeting
pastime for women and youths, and later on its last atavistic survival
will be the dancing of children.’ An English writer of that time wrote
aptly: ‘In these days of culture, when the public mind is being trained
to perceive and appreciate whatever is lovely in nature and art, when
music is universally studied, when there is ample evidence of general
improvement in taste and design in our streets, our buildings, on the
walls and in the furniture of our homes, is it not strange that a
single art, one which was in classic times deemed worthy to rank with
poetry and painting--the art of dancing--has degenerated to such an
extent that its practice, as frequently exhibited both in public and
in private, is a positive disgrace to the age? This is no exaggerated
statement. It is one which I think any competent critic is hardly
likely to deny.’

The Skirt Dance, the Serpentine Dance, the High Kickers, the Nude
Bayaderes were the sensations of the day. Here Lottie Collins, there
Loie Fuller, now Letti Lind, then again Connie Gilchrist, figured as
the greatest dance attractions of the day. London blamed Paris, Paris
blamed New York. How much the craze for such an art had cast its spell
on the public of that period is best illustrated by the immense sums
of money that the theatrical managers paid for their shows. The gross
receipts during one season in New York of ‘Humpty Dumpty,’ a celebrated
ballet of that time, amounted to $1,406,000. It brought in a similar
sum, if not more, outside.

A brilliant star of the sensational school of dancing was Loie Fuller,
of Chicago. She made her New York début in ‘Jack Sheppard,’ with a
salary of seventy-five dollars a week. While rehearsing a new play,
she received from an English officer a present of an extremely fine
Oriental robe that floated gracefully in the air. This gave her the
idea of using it for her dancing. While making some experiments before
the mirror, she noticed the effects brought about by the then newly
invented electric light. She tried innumerable variations of poses
and all were delightful. This was the birth process of the Serpentine
Dance. J. E. Crawford Flitch writes of the incident:

‘The invention of the Serpentine Dance coincided with the discovery
of electricity as a method of lighting the stage. Until that time gas
alone had been used. Loie Fuller immediately saw the possibilities of
the new scientific illumination, and with the aid of a few friends
she devised a means by which the effect of the vivid sunshine could
be obtained through the use of powerful electric lights placed in
front of reflectors. Then various experiments with color were tried;
for the white light of electricity were substituted different shades
of reds, greens, purples, yellows, blues, by the combinations of
which innumerable and wonderful rainbow-like effects of color were
obtained. Played upon by the multitudinous hues, the diaphanous silk
gave an impression of startling originality and beauty. Coming at the
time when the artistic lighting of the stage was scarcely studied at
all, the riot of color created a sensation. Nothing like it had been
seen before. The old-fashioned limelight, the flickering gas-jets,
the smoking red and blue flames dear to the Christmas pantomime,
paled before this discovery of science which apparently possessed
inexhaustible possibilities of a stage illuminant.’

Loie Fuller made a sensation in America, particularly in New York and
Chicago. But her success was much greater when she gave spectacular
performances to the morbid Berlin, Paris and London audiences. Her
début at Folies Bergères was more than a triumph. She became the rage
of France. The management of the Folies Bergères engaged her for three
years at a salary of one thousand dollars a week. How greatly ‘_La
Loie_,’ as she was called in Paris, impressed the French audiences is
best to be seen in what one of the French critics writes of her: ‘We
shall not easily forget the Serpentine Dance, undulating and luminous,
full of weird grace and originality, a veritable revelation! By means
of a novel contrivance, the gauzy iridescent draperies in which Loie
Fuller swathes herself were waved about her, now to form huge wings,
now to surge in great clouds of gold, blue, or crimson, under the
colored rays of the electric light. And in the flood of this dazzling
or pallid light the form of the dancer suddenly became incandescent,
or moved slowly and spectrally in the diaphanous and ever-changing
coloration cast upon it. The spectator never wearied of watching the
transformations of these tissues of living light, which showed in
successive visions the dreamy dancer, moving languidly in a chaos of
figured draperies--in a rainbow of brilliant colors or a sea of vivid
flames. And after having roused us to a pitch of enthusiasm by this
luminous choreography, she appeared triumphant in the pantomime-ballet
_Salome_, reproducing the gloomy episode of the death of John the
Baptist.’

Among the dances that Loie Fuller had in her repertoire, besides
the Serpentine Dance, were the Rainbow Dance, the Flower Dance,
the Butterfly Dance, the Mirror Dance, and the Fire Dance. It is
only natural that all her dances of this kind made necessary a vast
paraphernalia of accessories and an army of assistants. The Fire Dance
she performed in the centre of a darkened stage before an opening
in the floor through which a powerful electric reflector threw up
intensely brilliant rays. None of her dances had any classified steps,
any poses, gestures of the kind employed by dancers of various other
schools and different ages. The function of the limbs and arms was
merely to put veils and draperies into motion.

II

Of somewhat the same class were the entertainments given by Louise
Weber or ‘La Goulu,’ another American girl of the type of Loie Fuller.
Occasionally she exhibited some skill in her kicking scenes. It is
said that she never made pretension to rhythm and grace. Her ‘art’ was
a negation of every beauty. It was a frenzied delirious gymnastic.
An American critic says that her legs were agitated like those of
a marionette, they pawed the air, jerked out in the manner of a
pump-handle, and menaced the hats of the spectators.

Lottie Collins was a favorite of the English, French and American
audiences, though she was little more than a jumper of a new style.
The watchword of the ballet _habitués_ of this time was novelty at
any price. It is extremely amusing to read a Kansas City criticism of
Miss Collins’ performance in that city: ‘Lottie Collins has the stage
all to herself and she bounces and dances and races all over it in the
most reckless and irresponsible way, precisely as if she were a happy
child so full of health and spirits that she couldn’t keep still if
she wanted to. Sometimes she simply runs headlong all the way round
the stage, finishing the lap with perhaps a swift whirl or two, or a
whisk and kick. Sometimes she simply jumps and bounces, and sometimes
she doubles up like a pen-knife with the suddenness of a springlock to
emphasize the “boom.” She is invariably in motion except when she stops
to chant the gibberish that passes for verses, but the wonder is that
she has breath enough to sing after the first cyclonic interlude.’

Still more debased were the performances of Olga Desmond, Villiani
and others, who made erotic gestures and nude dances a fad of many
European capitals. The argument of these dancers was that dancing,
like sculpture, is predominantly an art of nudes. Only the naked body
could show the perfect plastic lines and graceful poses. They strove
to dance slow music, sonatas and symphonic poems, in order to display
the effects of certain pretty poses and arabesques. They put a special
stress upon the rhythm, but their interpretation was morbidly perverse.

The best figure of this decadent school of dancing was Kate Vaughan,
who strove to follow the style and manners of Taglioni’s dance. But the
sensation and novelty-loving public of England found her art too tame
and old-fashioned, so she died in poverty and broken health in South
Africa. Mr. Crawford Flitch says of her: ‘Although of course she never
reached the perfection of her predecessor [Taglioni], it was to her
careful training in the school of the ballet that she owed the ease and
grace of her movements and the wonderful effect of spontaneity with
which she accomplished even the most difficult steps. She danced not
only with her feet, but with every limb of her frail body. She depended
not merely upon the manipulation of the skirt for her effect, but upon
her facility of balance and the skillful use of arms and hands. Her
andante movements in particular were a glorious union of majesty and
grace. It is true that she condescended at times to introduce into her
dance some of those hideous steps which vulgarized the dancing of the
period--in particular that known as the “high kick”; but even this
unpleasant step she accomplished with a certain sense of elegance and
refinement which disguised its essential ugliness and suggestion of
contortion. She danced with a distinct inspiration, and upon her style
was built up all that was best in the dancing of her time.’

This new dance hysteria seemed to be of an epidemic nature. The
vogue for crude and sensational dances held the whole western world
for nearly half a century in its iron grip. With the exception of
Scandinavia and Russia, all Europe and America were affected by a
decadent dance taste. Novelty was reckoned far superior to beauty.
Cleverness was placed high above talent and genius. It was seemingly a
prelude to a subsequent effeminacy that was to spread over Occidental
art and life.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NATURALISTIC SCHOOL OF DANCING

  The ‘return to nature’; Isadora Duncan--Duncan’s influence: Maud
  Allan; Duncan’s German followers--Modern music and the dance; the
  Russian naturalists; Glière’s ‘Chrisis’--Pictorial nationalism:
  Ruth St. Denis--Modern Spanish dancers; ramifications of the
  naturalistic idea.

During the last part of the past and the beginning of the present
century, when the outside world was ignorant of the existence of the
Russian ballet, circles of more serious-minded students of art began to
voice protest against the cult of skirt and fire dancers, jongleurs and
kickers, and the time was ripe for any movement that would bring relief
from the prevailing deterioration of such a noble art as dancing. Even
the general public grew bored of acrobatic performances and as during
every period of decadence ‘there were a few teachers who consistently
resolved to impart to their pupils only what was good and beautiful
in dancing, whose voices, feeble as they sounded, were nevertheless
strong enough to carry weight and rescue their art from the deplorable
condition into which it had for the time fallen,’ as a dancing critic
of that time aptly writes. One of the most ardent advocates of a new
classic art of dancing during this time was Mrs. Richard Hovey. In
all her teaching and preaching Mrs. Hovey based the principles of the
prospective style upon the plastic art of the ancient Greeks. She made
a vigorous propaganda for this in New York, Boston and California.
Whether directly or indirectly Miss Isadora Duncan, who had been
interested in initiating a reform of human life in its least details
of costume, of hygiene and of morals, felt the impulse of Mrs. Hovey’s
propaganda and joined the worthy movement.

The fundamental principle of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda was the return
to nature. According to the theory of this new movement, dancing was
declared an expression of nature. Water, wind, birds and all forces
of nature are subject to a law of rhythm and gravity. Not the tricky,
broken lines, spinning whirls and toe gymnastics, but soft, curved
undulations of nature, are close to Mother Earth. Thus also man in
his normal life and savage state, moved rather in slow curves than in
quick broken lines. This, briefly, was the principal argument of the
few reformers who inspired Miss Duncan. Already Noverre and Petipa had
emphasized the fact that ancient Greek sculpture and Greek designs gave
the best ideas of graceful lines and pleasing human forms. But the
votaries of the new school explained that in a return to the natural
gesture of human life Greek art was the only logical criterion. Miss
Duncan in her essay, ‘The Dance,’ says:

‘To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which
expresses the soul of these forms--this is the art of the dancer. It is
from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the
same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin
has said: “To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the
works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of
nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which
they have interpreted nature.” Rodin is right; and in my art I have
by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases,
friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and
when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works
of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand
natural source.

‘My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds,
from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between
gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavor to
put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to
the whole of nature its beauty and its life.’

Thus Miss Duncan started her career by interpreting natural qualities
by means of natural movements. ‘I have closely studied the figured
documents of all ages and of all the great masters, but I have never
seen in them any representations of human beings walking on the
extremity of the toes or raising the leg higher than the head. These
ugly and false positions in no way express that state of unconscious
Dionysiac delirium which is necessary to the dancer. Moreover,
movements, just like harmonies in music, are not invented; they are
discovered,’ writes Miss Duncan. To her the only mode of dancing is
barefoot. According to her ‘the dancer must choose above all the
movements which express the strength, the health, the grace, the
nobility, the languor or the gravity of living things.’ Gravity to Miss
Duncan is natural and right. A ballet dancer, a Pavlova, Nijinsky and
Karsavina, eager to defy the laws of gravity, is to her a freak.

Prince Serge Volkhonsky, who has been a conspicuous figure in the
Russian dance reform-movement, writes of Miss Duncan’s school in
comparison with that of Jacques-Dalcroze: ‘Her dance is a result
of personal temperament, his movements are the result of music;
she draws from herself, he draws from rhythm; her psychological
basis is subjective; his rhythmical basis is objective; and, in
order to characterize her in a few words, I may say Isadora is the
dancing “ego.” This subjective psychological basis of Isadora’s
art I find clearly emphasized by Mr. Levinsohn’s words: “The
images or moods (_Stimmungen_) created in our mind by the rational
element--music--cannot be identical with every one, and therefore
cannot be compulsory. Just in that dissimilitude of moods and
uncompulsoriness of images resides the best criterion for the
appreciation of Isadora Duncan as a founder of a system. Her dance
is precisely not a system, cannot found what is called a ‘school’;
it needs another similar ‘ego’ to repeat her. And according to this
it seems quite incomprehensible that some people should see in Miss
Duncan’s art ‘a possibility for all of us being beautiful.’ No, not at
all for all of us; for not every temperament, while embodying ‘images
or moods’ called forth by music, will necessarily create something
beautiful; one cannot raise the exceptional into rule. In order to be
certain of creating something beautiful, no matter whether in the moral
or the æsthetical domain, it is not in ourselves that we shall find
the law, but in subjecting ourselves to another principle which lives
outside of ourselves. For the plastic (choreographic), this principle
is Music. It is not instinct expressing itself under the influence
of music--which with every man is different, and only in few chosen
natures beautiful in itself--but the rhythm of music, which in every
given composition is an unchangeable element subjecting our ‘ego.’
This is the basis of living plastic art. And in this respect Isadora’s
art satisfies the double exigencies of the visible and the audible art
as little as the ballet. Her arms are certainly more rhythmical than
her legs, but as a whole we cannot call her rhythmical in the strict
sense of the word, and this appears especially in the slow movements:
her walk, so to speak, does not keep step with music; she often steps
on the weak part of the bar and often between the notes. In general
it is in the examples of slow tempo that the insufficiency of the
principle may be observed. The slower a tempo the more she ‘mimics,’
and the farther, therefore, she strays from the music. If we look at
the impression on the spectators we shall see that all in the paces of
the quick tempos the movement must enter into closer connection with
the music; in cases of very minute divisions of the bar the simple
coincidence of the step with the first ‘heavy’ part already produces a
repeated design which makes ear and eye meet in one common perception.
If the representatives of that particular kind of dance were to realize
this they would endeavor to introduce into slow tempos the rhythmical
element instead of the mimic, which leads them out of the music and
converts the dance into a sort of acting during the music, a sort of
plastic melo-declamation.”’

These critics have pointed out the subjective nature of Miss Duncan’s
dance and her impatience of rules and formal technique. They believe
that because of these two qualities of her art it cannot be repeated,
except by ‘another similar ego.’ But as if in direct answer to these
charges come Miss Duncan’s pupils. They are by no means highly selected
material or ‘similar egos,’ but each (among the more mature pupils)
is a beautiful and individual dancer. To each she has transmitted her
spirit; in each she has preserved the native personality. They are
the best evidence thus far obtained of the truth of Miss Duncan’s
dictum of the ‘possibility for all of us being beautiful.’ Moreover we
must not suppose that Miss Duncan’s contempt for _formal_ technique
is a contempt for technical ability. She herself is a marvellously
plastic and exact dancer, and she demands, ultimately, no less of
her pupils. The limited range of her technique, so often complained
of, is the deliberate result of her belief that the only movements
proper to the dance are the _natural_ movements of the human body.
She stakes the success of her art upon the proposition that these
movements alone are capable of the highest absolute and interpretive
beauty. As to the truth of this proposition each observer must judge
for himself from the results. Again, Miss Duncan does not always ‘dance
the music’ literally, note for note, according to the theory of the
Jacques-Dalcroze system. Her interpretation is frankly emotional and
subjective, but it does not pretend to transcend the music.

In further justice to her efforts we should consider Isadora Duncan
as much a prophet of a new movement, as a dancer of a new school. Her
influence has been more far-reaching in Russia than anywhere else.
She practically brought about a serious revolution among the Russian
dancers, of whom we shall speak in another chapter. She influenced
the art of dancing in Germany, France, Italy and England. She was the
striking contrast to all the deteriorated stage dances of the early
twentieth century in America. She has given a powerful impulse to all
dance reforms by counteracting the academic and time-worn views. She
is the indirect motive of the Diaghileff-Fokine break with the old
Russian ballet and their striving for new rules and ideas in the art
of dancing. To her is due the gradual increase of refined taste and
higher respect for the stage dance. Personally we have found that her
dances failed to tell the phonetic story of the music. Her selection
of the compositions of Gluck, Schubert, Chopin and Beethoven has not
been uniformly successful, since most of them were never meant by the
composer to be danced. Compositions of this kind lack the necessary
choreographic episodes and often even the plastic symbols. No genius,
we believe, could visualize the slow cadences and solemn images of any
symphonic music of those German classics, whose works have been the
choice of Miss Duncan. With a few exceptions, such as the _Moments
Musicals_ and some other pieces, we have never been able to grasp
the meaning of the phonetoplastic images of Isadora Duncan’s dances.

[Illustration: Duncan]

II

It was only natural that Miss Duncan’s laureated appearances in various
European cities quickly found followers and imitators. The best known
exponent of Duncan’s naturalism has been Miss Maud Allan, a talented
Canadian girl, whose dancing in England has made her a special favorite
of the London audiences, before whom she first appeared in 1908. How
favorably she was received by the English audiences is evident from
the fact that the late King Edward invited her to dance for him at
Marienbad. Like Miss Duncan, Maud Allan has danced mostly barefoot, her
body slightly clothed in a loose Greek drapery. The most sensational
in Miss Allan’s repertoire has been the ‘Vision of Salome,’ compiled
from passages from Richard Strauss’ opera, in which she has tried to
give the impression of the ghastly Biblical tragedy by means of plastic
pantomime and dancing. Among her artistically successful dances has
been the Grieg _Peer Gynt_ suite, of which the London critics speak
as of ‘a beautiful art of transposition.’ ‘The faithfulness with
which her movements follow the moods of the composer is probably only
fully realized by those who are musicians as well as connoisseurs of
dance. Her translation of music has not seldom the rare quality of
translations of being finer than the original, and there are not a few
who, when they hear again, unaccompanied, the music which her dancing
has ennobled, will be conscious of a sense of incompleteness and loss,’
writes an English dance authority of her art.

Isadora Duncan’s naturalism has probably made the most powerful direct
impression upon German aspirants, first, through the school of dancing
of Isadora’s sister, Elisabeth, and second, through the pretended
appeal to the moods by means of classic ideals, and yet requiring
comparatively little technique. Assiduously as a German student will
practice in order to acquire the most perfect technique for being
an artist, musician, singer or architect, he lacks the painstaking
persistency of a Russian, Hungarian, Bohemian or Spaniard in acquiring
a thorough technique for his dance. He is inclined to interpret music
by means of the most easily acquired technique, such as seemingly the
naturalistic school requires. For this very reason, Miss Duncan has
been the greatest dance genius for the Germans, as that is so clearly
to be seen in the excellent work of Brandenburg, _Der moderne Tanz_.
This book from the beginning to the end, written in a fine poetic
prose, is a eulogy of Duncan’s naturalism, and an elaborate display
of the minutest pretty moves of the German exponents of the movement.
Among the praised geniuses of Brandenburg are the sisters Wiesenthal,
who attracted widespread attention in some of Max Reinhardt’s
productions.

The sisters Wiesenthal, Elsa and Grete, were received with unparalleled
enthusiasm at home and in consequence made a tour abroad, on which
occasion one of them danced in New York. How little she impressed the
New York audience, can be judged from what one of the most favorable
critics wrote of her as having ‘a pretty fluttering, tottering
marionette manner of her own.’ Our impression is that the sisters
Wiesenthal proved most successful in the quaint, naïve and simple
ensemble performances which they gave in Germany. They displayed
some excellent _ritartandos_ and a few successful _adagio_ figures.
One could see that their steps and arm twists were not a result of
systematic studies but of spontaneous impulses, since in repetitions of
the music there was no sign of a well trained art, the wing-like arms
of the first phrase being arabesque-like in the repetition, etc. They
showed that they possessed a poetic conception of the dance, but failed
to grasp and express its intrinsic meaning. They were rather poets
than dancers, rather actresses than designers in the choreographic
sense. Their acting often interfered with dancing and brought about an
unpleasant disharmony with the musical rhythm. They may have danced
better on other occasions, but what a number of impartial connoisseurs
of the dance saw of them stamps them as talented dilettantes rather
than accomplished artists of a school.

A girl who enjoyed a great reputation in Vienna, Munich and in other
German cities in the first decade of this century, but of whom was
heard nothing later, was Miss Gertrude Barrison, an Anglo-Viennese.
Her art was more clever and more in style with the principles of the
naturalistic than that of the sisters Wiesenthal. She won the ear of
Austria for the new message. With a certain assurance in the conviction
of her individuality, Miss Barrison treated her art with freedom
and loftiness. She enforced her personality more than her art upon
the spectators, and this was, to a great extent, the secret of her
phenomenal success.

The best of all the German dancers of this century thus far has been
Rita Sacchetto, a pretty Bavarian girl, who made her début in Munich,
and was at once recognized as an artist of much talent. Though the
Berlin critics did not receive her with the enthusiasm that they had
shown to the Wiesenthals, she was by far the biggest artist of all.
Her slighter recognition was possibly due to her lighter style of work
and an unfavorable repertoire, lacking in music that was of timely
importance. This withholding of recognition has always been peculiar
to Berlin. Tired out by hundreds of aspiring virtuosi and artists of
every description, an average Berlin critic, like one of New York,
grows at the end of a season nervous in the presence of the vast
majority of mediocrities and press-agented celebrities, so that he is
likely to ignore or tear down the serious beginner, if her performance
coincides with his ‘blue’ moods. This is what probably happened to
Miss Sacchetto. The connoisseurs and authorities of other countries
who have seen her dances speak of them in highest terms as pretty and
exceedingly graceful exhibitions of poetic youthful soul. What has
become of Miss Sacchetto lately the writer has been unable to learn.

Though none of the above mentioned dancers of Germany has pretended
to be a follower of Miss Duncan, yet all belong to the new movement
that was brought into being by her persistent efforts. They all defy
the principle of the classic ballet, they all pretend to interpret
music in their ‘plastic art,’ as they have preferred to term the
dance. Traditionally the German music has been either inclined to