The Art of Stage Dancing / The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession

by Ned Wayburn

Now all please stand in line around the room, stand quietly and without leaning against the wall. Stand shoulder to shoulder, hands down at sides, heels together, feet flat down, toes pointing left oblique and right oblique; the weight equally distributed between the two feet. Hold your chin high and look straight ahead on a line with your eyes.

I organize the class by first arranging the pupils according to their height. There is a reason for this. If you are five feet tall and stand next to a girl who is five feet eleven, you at once become conscious of your size. It is to avoid this handicap of self-consciousness that I grade you by height.

You are now in line as to heights. Please each of you stand in front of a chair, one pupil to a chair, and number from "one" at the left end. Number thirteen will be called twelve and a half. Speak out your individual number loud and clear. This number you are given is your personal, distinctive number during the life of this class and is never changed. The number of this class is 501. As you call your number out loud please be seated in the chair back of you, and while the stenographer takes your names and the instructor collects your weekly tickets I will say a few words.

I expect you to arrive promptly in the classroom, and request that you time your arrival so as to be here in the studio at least fifteen minutes before class time, so as to be in your practice costume and ready for the call to class right on the hour set.

We have to observe discipline in all your work in the courses, otherwise nothing would be accomplished. We have printed rules posted in the office and elsewhere, and expect you to read and observe them.

Please do not talk at all during class work. It interrupts the work seriously. You have all been to school before and know that silence is one of the important rules of every school. This one is no exception.

Now, the first thing to do is to have your ticket ready. You must have your name signed on the ticket, where it says "Signature of pupil." Turn the ticket over and read it through on both sides. Remember your class number and your individual number in the class. The success of our school depends largely upon the way the classes are organized and thereafter dominated. Much of the success of the work depends upon the lectures you hear in the classes. They are in the form of inspirational talks based on different subjects. You are required to read all of our literature. Get and read the booklet entitled "Your Career." Every month we issue a school paper, "The Ned Wayburn News," which tells of the activities of pupils of the school who are now appearing in New York, or out on the road, and which has many interesting articles and information monthly for students of the dance. Please get a copy and read all of our literature—because it gives you an idea of what the school and its present and graduate pupils are accomplishing.

It is a well established rule of the studio that pupils shall weigh themselves every Monday and keep a record of their weight from week to week. For this purpose use the scales in the main office of the studio, please. They are accurate. We have them tested and adjusted at intervals to be sure that they are right. You are requested and expected to come into my private office and talk with me once a week, and when you do so I shall ask you about your weight, and you must be prepared to tell me. I know just how much you ought to weigh, and am interested in hearing whether you are gaining or losing flesh in the proportion that you should. At the end of the four weeks' period I shall ask each of you individually in the class about the variation in your weights, and I am then able to tell who is faithfully following my instructions as to practice, diet, hours of sleep and the other simple and necessary requirements of our courses. For I know that if my regime is observed as I request that it be, you will show it, and if you neglect to follow my advice you will not have made the progress you should, and will show that. You cannot disguise the real facts from me.

I do not want any of you to overexert at these limbering and stretching exercises. They are scientifically constructed to do for you what no other known cultural movements of this kind will do. At first they will tire you, leave you "all in," I have no doubt. I expect that. You see, in these exercises you are putting into play a lot of muscles that have been lying dormant, perhaps never been used in the way you will use them in this class as preparation for health, comeliness and dancing strength. You need to use these muscles. It is to stir them up and make you strong, and at the same time supple and shapely, that I have devised this series of exercises. It was not made by guess, this plan of developing and conditioning, but as the result of years of study and proof.

These exercises will make you feel perfectly wonderful after a while. Nothing else will do you as much good. But do not, please, expect the perfected results to show in a day or two. It cannot be done so quickly. You have been several years getting the way you are, and if you can improve greatly in a few months you must consider yourself fortunate.