Diversions of a Naturalist

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

CHAPTER XIX
SCIENCE AND DANCING

THERE is at the present day in this country a real and most happy revival of interest in the great art of dancing as exhibited on the stage. We owe this to the creative ability of the musical composers and directors of the Russian Imperial Ballet, as well as to the highly-trained and gifted Russian artists who have visited this country, and especially to the poetical genius of Madame Anna Pavlova. Though dancing may seem, on first thought, a subject remote from science, yet, like all other human developments, it is a matter for scientific investigation, and one upon which science can throw much light. What is the origin and essential nature of "dancing"? Do animals dance? What is its early history in mankind? What is its relation not merely historically, but from the point of view of psychology—the study of the mind—to other arts? What is its real "value" and possible achievement?

To dance is to trip with measured steps, and, whilst primarily referring to human movement, the word is secondarily applied to rapid rhythmic movements even of inanimate objects. Rhythm is what distinguishes dancing from ordinary movement of progression or from simple gesture or mere antics. Dancing on the part of man or animal implies a sense of rhythm. Though not common amongst animals, it is exhibited by many birds, by spiders, and by some crustaceans! Rhythm is an essential feature of the sequence of sounds which we call "music." The singing of birds is related to their perception of and pleasure in rhythm, and it is not, therefore, surprising that they should also dance. It is, however, curious that the birds which "dance" are not the "singing birds," and that there are many birds which neither sing nor dance. The dancing of birds is usually part of the "display" of the males for the purpose of attracting the females at the breeding season. It is well known in some African cranes, as well as in rails and other similar birds, and may be witnessed at the Zoological Gardens in London. Other birds "strut" rather than dance, whilst displaying their plumage, as, for instance, the turkey and pheasant tribe and the bustards. Parrots and cockatoos will often make a rhythmical up-and-down movement of the neck in time to music, but usually the "dance" is the accompaniment of definite emotion. The male spider of some species courts the female by making dancing movements and posing itself in a very curious way, so as to display a spot of bright colour on the head to her observation. The same kind of movement and action has been observed in marine shrimp-like creatures. Some spiders are excited and made to dance by the vibrating note of a tuning-fork set going near them. I once had the chance to observe a male octopus in the aquarium at Naples, who was displaying himself to the female, changing colour rapidly from one shade to another, and rolling his long sucker-bearing arms in the form of spirals. Probably one should not consider this as a "dance," since no rhythmic interruption or succession of movements was observable.

It is established that in mankind, as well as many animals, when in a state of emotion, movement and gesture, as well as the vocal utterance, take on a rhythmic character, that is to say, become a dance and a song. The emotion is not necessarily that of amorous passion; in mankind it is frequently of a warlike or religious character, and is worked up by the sympathy, imitativeness, and desire for unison in expression which is common in troops or large gatherings of animals of social habits. Man presents a more advanced development in variety, sensitiveness, and abandonment to social or combined action and expression than do other animals, and this is equally true of the more civilized and of the more barbarous races. Apparently in obedience to the same tendencies as those which convert simple forms of movement into a rhythmic dance, the speech of man, under conditions of emotion, assumes a rhythmic form, so that dancing bears the same relation to the ordinary movements of locomotion and gesture which verse does to ordinary speech, or, again, which song bears to mere exclamations and cries, indicative of feeling. Dancing is the universal and most primitive expression of that sense of rhythm which is a widely distributed attribute of the nervous system in animals generally. In primitive men it is a simple but often very violent demonstration of strong emotion, such as social joy, religious exaltation, martial ardour, or amatory passion. The voice and the facial muscles, as well as those of the limbs and body, are affected, and the dancers derive an intense pleasure from the excitement, which so far from exhausting them leads them on to more and more violent rhythmic or undulatory action. In its purest form this ecstatic condition is seen in the spinning dervishes. It was developed into the mad and dangerous festivals of the worshippers of Bacchus and other deities in ancient Greece. It has been seen in mediaeval Europe as the dancing mania and tarantism. The liability to this and similar forms of "mania" lurks beneath the surface among populations which are nevertheless staid and phlegmatic in their usual behaviour. The Romans in ancient times recognized its unhealthy character, and though fond of ceremonial dances and theatrical shows, and even of the performances of dancing girls from Greece and the East, disapproved of dancing on the part of a Roman citizen. Cicero says, "As a rule no one, who is not drunk, dances—unless he is, temporarily, out of his mind."

Although the mad performances of bacchanalians and dervishes are recognized as unhealthy, civilized peoples in Europe since the fifteenth century have developed and practised dancing as an art in two directions—first, as a popular amusement in which definite combinations of graceful movements are performed for the sake of the pleasure which the exercise affords to the dancer and to the spectator, and secondly, as carefully trained movements which are meant by the dancer vividly to represent the actions and passions of other people, and are exhibited by specially skilled performers on a stage. The first kind is what we call "country dances," "popular dances," also "Court and ball-room dances," and has been commended by the philosopher Locke and other writers as a valuable training for both mind and body, and by physicians as a health-giving exercise. The second is "the ballet."

In the dances of savages and primitive peoples, some kind of music is always found associated with dancing, the one helping and developing the other; they are descendants of one parentage. Very commonly, too, some kind of "acting"—the representation of a hunt, a fight, or a love adventure—is an important feature of such dancing. Modern popular and Court dances are intimately connected with and dependent on special music, the rhythm and variation of time and strength in which is, as it were, illustrated by the dancing, and serves to guide it and to keep the dancers in unison. The signification behind all such modern dancing is courtship—the addresses of the man to the woman, and her elusive reception or rejection of them. In the Cathedral of Seville, however, you may still see, at the festival of the Corpus Christi, a religious dance, a dance of worship and adoration, performed by acolytes in front of the high altar. In the early days of the Church such ritual dancing, by both old and young, was a regular thing, as it was in the still earlier religious ceremonies of the ancient Romans and in the time of King David.

The development of dancing as a fine art has only been rendered possible by the establishment, under the patronage of various European princes, of great exhibitions of dancing, called "ballets," and the creation of a profession of dancers, who, like professional actors and musicians, devote their lives to the study of their art and the training necessary for efficiency in its practice. In this, its highest development, dancing, whilst maintaining its dominance, is entirely dependent on the aid of music, and becomes blended with the art of the actor and pantomimist. As in "opera" the effect of the musical art is enhanced by the meaning of the words sung, by the acting of the performers, and by the accessories of scenery and costume, so in the ballet do all these factors, except the human voice, contribute to the artistic result. The latest development of the ballet is, in fact, "grand opera," without a voice, without words. Gesture, facial expression, and movement of the limbs, marvellous for its grace and directness of appeal, take the place of words. In fact, dance, the appeal to the eye, takes the place of verse, the appeal to the ear. And it is a fact, unexpected and astonishing to those new to it, that the same quality of "poetic imagination" which distinguishes "word-poems" from mere doggerel or commonplace verse, can also inspire the great dancer and give to a wordless dance the unmistakable value of poetical art, distinguishing it from purely acrobatic or barbaric capering. It is a fact that poetic imagination may be conveyed in one kind of art as in another, and that dancing, though greatly limited in its range of detailed expression, yet is closely similar in its forms to music, verse, and to glyptic and pictorial art, of all of which it is the parent and forerunner. Its primitive character is no less remarkable than the readiness with which it exerts its charm and develops new importance at the present day.

Regarded as a fine art, and not merely as a pastime, dancing has frequently great beauty in its simple quality of the rhythmic movement of decorative form and colour. The dances depicted on Greek vases had this character, and so, with varying degree of merit, have the ballets common during the last fifty years in London and other great centres. But before this period the makers of ballets (a word originally signifying to dance, to sing, to rejoice, and representing three modern words—ballet, ball, and ballad) did not aim at a mere exhibition of living rhythmic decoration, but at the production of a theatrical performance in which a story is told only by gesture and dancing accompanied by music. The real modern founder and exponent of the ballet as thus understood was Noverre, a Frenchman (called by Garrick "the Shakespeare of the dance"), who died in 1810. He brought to a high degree of perfection the art of presenting a story by pantomime, and he never allowed dancing which was not the direct expression of a particular attitude of mind. His professed effort was to introduce the steps and poses of ancient Greek dancing shown in sculpture and painted pottery—as the model for stage dancing. And he succeeded. The great dancers of the past who are known to us by tradition—Vestris, Camargo in the eighteenth, and Cerito, Grisi, and Taglioni in the earlier half of the nineteenth century—were not merely perfectly trained as dancers, but were actors, and possessed poetic imagination. Women did not appear in the ballet until the time of Louis XIV, and Mlle. Camargo was the first to wear the conventional short stiff ballet skirt.