Before I go further on the subject, I cannot but stop a little to dwell more particularly on the necessity there is for more attention than we usually find paid to the management of the arms, and general person, in dancing.
In looking on at a ball, perhaps you will see that every woman, in a dance of twenty couple, moves her feet with sufficient attention to beauty and elegance; but, with regard to the deportment, of the rest of the person, most likely you will not discover one in a hundred who seems to know more about it than the most uncultivated damsel that ever jogged at a village wake.
I cannot exactly describe what it is that we see in the carriage of our young ladies in the dance; for it is difficult to point out a want by any other expression than a negative. But it is only requisite for my readers to recall to memory the many inanimate, ungraceful forms, from the waist upwards, that they nightly see at balls, and I need not describe more circumstantially.
For these ladies to suppose that they are fine dancers because they execute a variety of difficult steps with ease and precision, is a great mistake. The motion of the feet is but half the art of dancing; the other, and indeed the most conspicuous part, lies in the movement of the body, arms, and head. Here elegance must be conspicuous.
The body should always be poised with such ease as to command a power of graceful undulation, in harmony with the motion of the limbs in the dance. Nothing is more ugly than a stiff body and neck during this lively exercise. The general carriage should be elevated and light; the chest thrown out, the head easily erect, but flexible to move with every turn of the figure; and the limbs should be all braced and animated with the spirit of motion, which seems ready to bound through the very air. By this elasticity pervading the whole person when the dancer moves off, her flexible shape will gracefully sway with the varied steps of her feet; and her arms, instead of hanging loosely by her side, or rising abruptly and squarely up to take hands with her partner, will be raised in beautiful and harmonious unison and time with the music and the figure; and her whole person will thus exhibit to the delighted eye perfection in beauty, grace, and motion.
This attention to the movement of the general figure, and particularly to that of the arms (for with them is the charm of elegant action,) though, in a moderated degree, is equally applicable to the English country dance and the Scotch reel, as to the minuet, the cotillon, and other French dances.
A general idea of natural grace, in all dances, being laid down as a first principle in this elegant art, I shall suggest a few remarks on the leading characters of each style; and from them, I hope, my fair friends will be able to gather some rules which may serve them as useful auxiliaries to the lessons of their dancing-master.
The English country-dance, as its very name implies, consists of simplicity and cheerfulness; hence the female who engages in it, must aim at nothing more, in treading its easy mazes, than executing a few simple steps with unaffected elegance. Her body, her arms, the turn of her head, the expression of her countenance, all must bear the same character of negligent grace, of elegant activity, of decorous gaiety.
The Scotch reel has steps appropriated to itself, and in the dance can never be displaced for those of France, without an absurdity too ridiculous even to imagine without laughing. There are no dancers in the world more expressive of inward hilarity and happiness than the Scotch are, when performing in their own reels. The music is sufficient—so jocund are its sounds—to set a whole company on their feet in a moment, and to dance with all their might, till it ceases, like people bit by the tarantula. Hence, as the character of reels is merriment, they must be performed with much more joyance of manner than even the country-dance; and, therefore, they are better adapted, as society is now constituted, to the social private circle, than to the public ball. They demand a frankness of deportment, an undisguised jocularity, which few large parties will properly admit; therefore, they are more at home in the baronial and kindred-filled hall of the thane of the Highland clan, than in the splendid and mixed ball-room of the now modish Anglo-Scottish earl.
French dances, which includes minuets, cotillons, and all the round of ballet figures, admit of every new refinement and dexterity in the agile art; and, while exhibiting in them, there is no step, no turn, no attitude, within the verge of maiden delicacy, that the dancer may not adopt and practise.