PART TWO
THE TWILIGHT OF THE ACROBAT
Where is our once charming acrobat—our minstrel of muscular music? What has become of these groups of fascinating people gotten up in silk and spangle? Who may the evil genius be who has taken them and their fascinating art from our stage, who the ogre of taste that has dispensed with them and their charm? How seldom it is in these times that one encounters them, as formerly when they were so much the charming part of our lighter entertainment. What are they doing since popular and fickle notions have removed them from our midst?
It is two years since I have seen the American stage. I used to say to myself in other countries, at least America is the home of real variety and the real lover of the acrobat. But I hear no one saying much for him these days, and for his charming type of art.
What has become of them all, the graceful little lady of the slack wire, those charming and lovely figures that undulate upon the air by means of the simple trapeze, those fascinating ensembles and all the various types of melodic muscular virtuosity?
We have been given much, of late, of that virtuosity of foot and leg which is usually called dancing; and that is excellent among us here, quite the contribution of the American, so singularly the product of this special physique. Sometimes I think there are no other dancers but Americans. It used to be so delightful a diversion watching our acrobat and his group with their strong and graceful bodies writhing with rhythmical certitude over a bar or upon a trapeze against a happily colored space. Now we get little more in the field of acrobatics beyond a varied buck and wing; everything seems tuxedoed for drawing room purposes. We get no more than a decent handspring or two, an over-elaborated form of split. It all seems to be over with our once so fashionable acrobat. There is no end of good stepping, as witness the Cohan Revue, a dancing team in Robinson Crusoe, Jr., and "Archie and Bertie" (I think they call themselves). This in itself might be called the modern American school: the elongated and elastic gentleman who finds his co-operator among the thin ones of his race, artistically speaking. I did not get to the circus this year, much to my regret; perhaps I would have found my lost genius there, among the animals disporting themselves in less charitable places. But we cannot follow the circus naturally, and these minstrel folk are disappearing rapidly. Variety seems quite to have given them up and replaced them with often very tiresome and mediocre acts of singing.
How can one forget, for instance, the Famille Bouvier who used to appear regularly at the fêtes in the streets of Paris in the summer season, living all of them in a roving gipsy wagon as is the custom of these fête people. What a charming moment it was always to see the simple but well built Mlle. Jeanne of twenty-two pick up her stalwart and beautifully proportioned brother of nineteen, a strong, broad-shouldered, manly chap, and balance him on one hand upright in the air. It was a classic moment in the art of the acrobat, interesting to watch the father of them all training the fragile bodies of the younger boys and girls to the systematic movement of the business while the mother sat in the doorway of the caravan nursing the youngest at the breast, no doubt the perfect future acrobat. And how charming it was to look in at the doors of these little houses on wheels and note the excellent domestic order of them, most always with a canary or a linnet at the curtained window and at least one cat or dog or maybe both. This type is the progenitor of our stage acrobat, it is the primitive stage of these old-time troubadours, and it is still prevalent in times of peace in France. The strong man gotten in tawdry pink tights and much worn black velvet with his very elaborate and drawn out speeches, in delicate French, concerning the marvels of his art and the long wait for the stipulated number of dix centimes pieces before his marvellous demonstration could begin. This is, so to say, the vagabond element of our type of entertainment, the wandering minstrel who keeps generation after generation to the art of his forefathers, this fine old art of the pavement and the open country road. But we look for our artist in vain these days, those groups whose one art is the exquisite rhythmical display of the human body, concerted muscular melody. We cannot find him on the street in the shade of a stately chestnut tree as once in Paris we found him at least twice a year, and we seek him in vain in our modern music hall.