CHAPTER XXXV
FINALE: THE RUSSIANS AND—THE FUTURE
It is curious to recall the fact that a taste for dancing has always been a characteristic of the Londoners, who have supported really artistic ballet as often as they have had an opportunity.
The Elizabethan masques; the ballet dancers imported by Rich in the reign of Anne; and by Garrick, later; by Lumley at Her Majesty’s in the ’forties; the native productions of Ballet at the Empire and Alhambra for over a quarter of a century; and, since, the importation of Russian ballet, first at various “vaudeville” theatres and then at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane, have all met with enthusiastic support, and the support has been as catholic as it has been cordial.
Dancers, of various schools, whether of the traditional ballet “school,” or otherwise, have quickly found their way into popular favour. Looking back over theatrical memories of the past twenty years or so, dance lovers will recall with pleasure seeing at the Palace Theatre that statuesque and extremely graceful dancer, Miss Mimi St. Cyr, in a delightful little miniature ballet, “La Baigneuse,” a dance-scena invented by Mr. George R. Sims, in which she lured to life the fountain-statue of a piping faun. Some will recall also a dancer of very different school, Miss Lottie Collins, whose “Tarrara-boom-de-ay” was a sensation in its way. Then, too, who that saw her could ever forget that electric dancer hailing from Australia, Mlle. Saharet, who entered as on the wings of a whirlwind and, seeming all compact of
“Passion and power and pride incarnate in laughter,” held us all spellbound and breathless with sympathetic joy in her abounding vitality, stimulating and tonic as champagne.
In more recent times the sensational success of Miss Maud Allan—who presented us with the somewhat mystical definition of dancing as “the spontaneous expression of a spiritual state”; and, subsequently, of Mme. Pavlova and M. Mordkin; is too recent to need recalling, and too evident to call for specific praise from me when so many and abler pens have already exhausted their ink in regretting they could not write in fire. Admirers, particularly feminine devotees, flocked in hundreds to see Miss Maud Allan dance in a manner which many doubtless thought wholly new to London, though some might have recalled that it was somewhat of the same school—though temperamentally very different—as that of Miss Isadora Duncan, who had given us dances of a rather similar order some ten years before, and that they were akin to the mimetic dances of ancient days.
Miss Allan achieved a remarkable flexibility of movement that was seen to advantage in her dances to the music of Chopin and other classic masters. Her interpretation of the “Spring Song” of Mendelssohn was not wholly new to those who had seen Miss Isadora Duncan’s exposition of the same music some ten years before. Her “Salome,” a melodrama in dancing, created a sensation, though somewhat morbid in effect, and hardly of the same artistic interest as some of her other achievements. Of her popularity there was no doubt, and a photograph of one of the queues which awaited any one of her performances, especially the matinées, would—if one exist—always be valuable to future historians of our time as a mute but eloquent record.
Mme. Pavlova, who also first appeared at the Palace Theatre, is an extremely accomplished danseuse who probably has not troubled, and certainly has not needed to trouble herself, about definitions of the dance, for she belongs to a “school,” the basis of which was defined a century or more ago, and she herself is one of its most recent and perfect blossomings. Mons. Mordkin, nurtured by the same school, is superb, and it was no wonder that the first appearance of these two artistes in their wonderful pas de deux, “L’Automne Bacchanale,” should have fired some of our finest dramatic critics to expressions of almost frenzied admiration and doubtless driven shoals of lesser men to the neighbourhood of Hanwell in despair at the impossibility of finding suitable adjectives for the new wonder that had come amongst us. One can only deplore the fact that the harmony which made possible the pas de deux of the first season should have been, even temporarily, broken, and permitted us only to enjoy the work of both dancers subsequently in pas seuls, or in pas de deux—with other partners.