LA GUERRERO
Photograph: W. & D. Downey
expressive of the individuality of the dancer and of the race. It was as easy and as eloquent as Spanish speech. It was in fact the dancer’s manner of conversing with the spectator, and it had all the daring, the wit, the provocativeness and at times the real poetry of her couplets.
It is little wonder that all the essential fire of the Spanish dance is quenched when it is performed upon the foreign stage. The atmosphere of Andalusia cannot be created in London or New York even by dancers of greater genius than Otero, Guerrero and Tortajada; and it should not be forgotten that Mr Royall Tyler, whose word upon the inner life of Spain must be taken as final, has remarked that “neither of those three ladies dances well enough to earn her living by the art in Spain. Their dances are intended for exportation into foreign countries where they are more appreciated.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE REVIVAL OF THE MORRIS DANCE
NO view of the modern renaissance of dancing would be complete which did not take account of the revival of the Morris Dance.
Perhaps it has been too lightly assumed that England being a nation of shopkeepers has never been a nation of dancers. But shopkeeping is merely a habit, the product of circumstance, and in its nature a temporary makeshift. Dancing is a need of the spirit, a daughter of the high moods, and if, as Lucian said, it is as old as love, it is surely also as everlasting. The shopkeeping spirit may be, and probably is, antagonistic to dancing; but by the shopkeeping spirit I do not mean the modern spirit, for that is an incalculable, energetic and mobile thing, which is going to bear I know not what strange fruit in life and art. I mean that austere, unsmiling, level and practical temper which began to overshadow Western Europe some time in the sixteenth century; which set its face against ecstasy, and art which is the expression of ecstasy; which regarded poverty and vagabondage and unrestrained laughter as disreputable; which worshipped respectability, common-sense, such success as could be expressed in terms of cash, and all things that were materially substantial and enduring; which created Puritanism, the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution. To this temper, which found a secure lodgment in the Anglo-Saxon mind, dancing was naturally unsympathetic. But though it long held Britain, and America too, in its grip, it was not strong enough to strangle the free and joyous spirit which had created “Merrie England.”