The princess then asked me if the King and Queen of England had seen me dance.
“No, but I suppose they think they have seen me, for in my little theatre at the Exposition of 1900, on the days when I was engaged elsewhere, I was sometimes obliged to be represented by an understudy. During one of my absences the King and Queen of England, who were then the Prince and Princess of Wales, took a box to see the little Japanese tragedienne who was playing at my theatre. That day an understudy was dancing for me, but the King and Queen probably supposed it was I whom they had seen.”
“Oh, well, you will have to dance for them some day.”
Then she asked me if I had danced before her cousin, the Emperor of Germany.
“No,” I answered regretfully.
“Very well, let me know when you will be in Berlin and I will try to have him go and see you. He loves artistic things, and he is an accomplished artist himself.”
Later I did dance before the Queen of England, but I was far from suspecting under what circumstances it would come to pass.
I asked Princess Marie if she had ever been interested in the dances of the Hindus and the Egyptians, their funeral dances, sacred dances, dances of death and the rest. She, in her turn, questioned me as to the methods by which I thought it would be possible to reconstruct these dances.
“There are very few documents treating of the subject, but it seems to me that it should be easy, if one put oneself into the state of mind that prompted the dances in times past, to reproduce them to-day with similar action and movement. If the custom still existed of dancing at funerals, a little reflection will show that the dances would have to suggest and express sadness, despair, grief, agony, resignation and hope. All this can be expressed by motions and hence by the dance. The only question is whether the dancer should express the grief she feels at the loss of a loved one, or if she should reveal to the people who are in mourning resignation and the hope of a future life. In other words, pantomime should be a sort of silent music, a harmony of motions adapted to the situation, for there is harmony in everything—harmony of sounds (which is music), harmony of colours, harmony of ideas, harmony of motions.”
We talked for a long time about these dances, and the princess asked me: