The sudden discredit into which rope-dancing has fallen during the last few years dates from the appearance of Oceana.
This young woman, anxious to adopt a “novelty” which [p219] would exhibit her beauty without too much exertion, chose a wire, which, hanging slacker than the cord, enabled her, with a little oscillation, to assume the attitude of reclining in a hammock, the voluptuous indolent postures of Sarah la baigneuse. But the genuine rope-dancers at once determined to reproduce all the exercises of the cord upon the wire, which Oceana had so easily brought into fashion, and, with the exception of the horse-spring, they can all be performed upon it. The difficulty of preserving the equilibrium on a support that is even more unstable than the cord delighted the equilibrists.
A young Oriental, Lady Ibrahim, in the winter of 1888, at the Folies Bergère, showed us the advantages a clever equilibrist could derive from the flexibility of the wire.
A little too tall, with the almost thin arms of a dancer, she allowed herself to be raised by one hand to a rather high platform, from which she started, far above all heads. Once there, she opened a Chinese parasol, which she used as a balance; then, with a very serious expression, an anxious [p220] rigidity of the whole face, her eagle eyes fixed on the point of sight, she stepped upon the wire, which, brilliantly plated with nickel, looked like the slippery floor of a skating-rink under her feet. When she reached the centre of her wire, Lady Ibrahim caught a steel hoop in its flight; for one second she placed it behind her head; it was the starlit night: then she slipped it over her head, and slowly, with graceful precautions, she made it glide down the whole length of her [p221] body to her feet. Some flags arranged in a small wheel, so that their folds waved as she moved, afterwards replaced the parasol in her hand, and then, suspended between the draperies of undulating silk, Lady Ibrahim violently swung herself from right to left on one leg; suddenly she closed her feet, raised herself in the air on the points of her toes, turned, and went towards the back croisé. The performance was crowned by a promenade on a plank balanced on the wire. Lady Ibrahim repeated upon the plank the various exercises that I have already described, until at last, amidst loud [p222] applause, she picked it up and carried it off upon her shoulder.
The wish to conquer increasing difficulties has raised the equilibrists from the slack wire to the trapeze. The danger of this work lies in the instability of the support. The slack wire and cord are less steady than the ball; the trapeze, although weighted by lumps of lead at the ends of the two cords, oscillates perceptibly more than the cord.
It is like a thoroughbred, a nervous, supple, and rebellious horse, which must be mounted with infinite care and delicacy of movement. Therefore the equilibrists who have once tried the trapeze will never abandon it. Through the meshes of their net they disdainfully look down upon the poor slack wire-dancers, who are with difficulty raised two yards above the sand of the arena by the croisés.