Modern dancing and dancers

by J. E. Crawford Flitch

KATE VAUGHAN

IN TURKISH COSTUME

Photograph: W. & D. Downey

condescended at times to introduce into her dance some of those hideous steps which vulgarised 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.

The followers of Kate Vaughan were legion. Most of them were not dancers at all in the proper sense of the word. They devoted themselves to the Skirt Dance merely because it was the fashion of the hour, but of every other branch of dancing they were almost wholly ignorant. But there were three dancers who were something more than imitators of Kate Vaughan—Letty Lind, Alice Lethbridge and Sylvia Grey. It is notable that all of them were originally trained for the ballet. Alice Lethbridge showed that she was no revolutionary in her view of what she regarded as the foundation of all technical excellence in dancing, when she said: “As long as dancing continues, the special movements of the older ballet, its entrechats, pirouettes, and countless other steps, must also exist, for they are but the great groundwork of it all.”

It was she who developed the Skirt Dance by introducing a revolving motion, to which she gave the rather vague name of the “waltz movement.” While dancing the ordinary waltz, she bent her body backwards until it was almost horizontal, and in this position, still making all the correct steps of the dance, she rotated the body around its own axis and at the same time described a large circle round the stage. The swaying of the body in slow time to the rapid movements of the feet and the graceful waving of the skirts produced a curious and pleasing effect which won for her an enormous celebrity. Her other most famous performances were her Marionette Dance, her Fire Dance and some clever shadow dances, which depended for their effect chiefly upon the skilful use of reflected lights. Her dancing was characterised by an extreme vivacity, by the lightnings of eye and hand, which were nevertheless always subdued to the rhythm of the music.

Letty Lind was a dancer almost by accident. When still quite unknown she was somewhat embarrassed by having a song given her in one of her plays. She knew the limitations of her voice and asked if she might be allowed to do a dance instead. Her performance was an astonishing success, and from that moment her career was made. She devoted herself to musical comedy, which was then coming into vogue, realising that there is always room on the lighter operatic stage for an actress who is also an accomplished dancer. For some years she was one of the principal “stars” at Daly’s Theatre, but her reputation was always based chiefly upon her dancing. As a skirt-dancer she never reached the perfection of Kate Vaughan, but she always showed herself a dainty and finished artist.

The Skirt Dance, with its swift rushes and billowy undulations of flowing drapery, was at most a charming but trivial dance, of no great pretension or particular significance. It demanded only an average ability on the part of the performer, and no previous training in the intricacies of the dance. It came at a time when, apart from the ballet proper, the usual style of dancing was a kind of energetic double-shuffling and step-dance, generally performed by ponderous principal “boys” in vividly-coloured tights. Kate Vaughan brought to it a personality which would have given distinction to a dance far less artistic, and a daintiness of peculiar fascination. If it had followed more closely the Greek models, with which it had some remote connection, it might have evolved into a dance of greater artistic importance; but its development was in the contrary direction. It degenerated into a romp; it lost whatever precision of technique it had once demanded; and as the width of the skirt grew to larger and larger dimensions, the dancer gradually disappeared in the extravagance of her costume.