The whole audience gave to the excellence of the performance its due applause, but the Cinic, out of himself, could not help crying out, in a transport of delight; ““No! this is not a representation; “it is the very thing itself.”
Much about the same time a dancer represented the labors of Hercules. He retraced in so true a manner all the different situations of that hero, that a king of Pontus, then at Rome, and who had never seen such a sight before, easily followed the thread of the action, and charmed with it, asked with great earnestness of the emperor, that he would let him have with him that extraordinary dancer, who had made
such an impression upon him. “Do not, says he to Nero, “be surprised at my request. “I have for borderers upon my kingdom, some Barbarian nations whose language none of my people could understand, nor they learn ours. “Such a man as this dancer would be an admirable interpreter between us.”
It would then surely be a great error to imagine, that an habitual dexterity, a daily practice, with their arms, their legs and feet, were the only talents of these pantomime dancers. Their execution, without doubt, required all these advantages of the body in the most eminent degree; but their compositions supposed, and indispensably implied an infinite number of combinations which belong intirely to the mind, or intellectual faculties; as for example,
especially an attentive and judicious discernment of the most interesting truths of human nature. How extensive a study this exacts, it is more easy to conceive than to attain.
And surely there is an evident necessity for studying men, before one can undertake to paint or represent them. It is not till after a profound examination of the passions, that one ought to flatter one’s self with characterising them purely by the powers of external signs of actions. All the passions have affinities to each other, which it is only for a great justness of understanding to seize; they have shades that distinguish them, which nothing but a nice eye can perceive, and which easily escape a superficial observer.
In serious dancing, where the character of a hero is to be given, there are in his actions, in the course of his life, certain marking strokes, certain incidents or extraordinary passages, which are subjects proper for the stage, and which must be separated from others perhaps more brilliant in history, but which would infrigidate a theatrical composition.
In the state of dancing of our days, the dancers, and even the composers of dances, aspire to little more than the mechanical part of their art; and, indeed, they hardly know any thing beyond that, and cannot in course, cultivate what they have no conception of.
When M. Cahusac wrote, he observed that this was sufficient for the
spectators, who required nothing more than a brilliant execution from the dancers in the old track of steps and capers; and this is, in fact, true of the greater number now. But lately, the taste for dances of action, animated with meaning and conveying the idea of some fable or subject, has begun to gain ground. People are less tired with a dance, in which the understanding is exercised, without the fatigue of perplexity, than by merely seeing a succession of lively steps, and cabriols, however well executed; which, in point of merit, bear no more proportion to that of a well-composed dance, than a tiresome repetition of vignettes, of head-pieces and tail-pieces, would do to the gravings of historical pieces after a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or a Correggio.