Scheherazade is tropic passion marching undeviatingly into tragedy. In contrast to these are such ethereal creations as Le Spectre de la Rose, Le Carnaval, Les Sylphides, Le Lac des Cygnes, and Le Pavillon d’Armide. Le Spectre de la Rose, composed to the melting music of Weber’s Invitation à la Valse, is a fantasy of a girl who falls asleep in her chair after returning from a ball. In her hand she holds a rose which, in her dreams, turns into a spirit that dances with her, kisses her, and departs. Le Carnaval brings to life and unites in a slight plot a group of such fabled personages as Pierrot, Harlequin, Columbine, Pantalone and Papillon, animated by Schumann music with Russian orchestration. Armide is a figure on a tapestry, who, by magic spell, comes forth in courtly dance with her companion figures and enchants a traveller sleeping in the apartment. Le Lac des Cygnes and Les Sylphides are practically plotless reveries in the field of pure beauty; of tissue as unsubstantial as the rainbow.
Still a third division is exemplified in L’Oiseau de Feu and Le Dieu Bleu. As though to test to the utmost the romantic ballet’s range of expression, these last deal with occult Eastern religion, calling for a treatment purely mystic.
CHAPTER XIII
SOCIAL DANCING OF TO-DAY
THE present vogue of dancing is sometimes characterised as a fad. As a matter of fact, it is no more than the resumption of a normal exercise. It is not extraordinary that people should wish to dance every day. It was extraordinary that there should have been a period of sixty years in which people did not wish to dance every day. Occidental history recalls few periods when the dance, natural as speech and exalting as music, underwent such neglect as it suffered during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Self-expression was in bad taste. A phantasm of misinterpreted respectability standardised conduct. The resulting caution of movement sterilised the dance, and sterility all but killed it.
As that which might conveniently be called the Renaissance of Individuality began to be felt, within the past few years, the endless iteration of one step in each dance became inadequate to interpret feelings. People learned that their own ideas were worth at least a trial; forms fell automatically. But, no one being at hand to show how dancing might be made an expression, people turned to other recreations.
Then came the Russian ballet. It showed that dancing, more completely perhaps than any other action within mortal scope, is a means of expression of every emotion humanity may feel. It showed, too, how inconceivably beautiful may be the human body when it is made to conform to the laws of beauty—which are identical with the laws of choreography. And so perfect was the artistry of these demigods from out of the North that “difficulty” became a forgotten word. Every man thought that he felt within himself at least a portion of the essence that animated Volinine, Mordkin, Nijinski; every woman knew she had latent some of the magic of Pavlowa, Lopoukowa, or Karsavina. And they were right. Every normal human is in greater or less degree an artist.
Sudden reactions are usually attended by more violence than discrimination. The appetite for sheer quantity is satisfied before the need of restraint is felt. So with the new dancing that gratified hundreds of thousands of feet suddenly freed from conventional weights on their movements. The Turkey Trot (name to delight posterity) raced eastward from San Francisco in a form to which the word “dancing” could be applied only by exercise of courtesy. Literally, caricaturists could not caricature it; it made caricatures of its devotees. But they were not concerned with that. They were in the exaltation of rediscovery; they were happily, beneficially mad with varied rhythm, marked by free movements of their own bodies. The “trot” was easily learned; the problem became one of finding space in which to dance it, so quickly did its performers fill every floor within hearing-distance of a piano.
The cynical inference that morals or their lack bore any relation to the phenomenon of this dance’s rapid spread, is beside the point. Of the original “trot” nothing remains but the basic step. The elements that drew denunciation upon it have gone from the abiding-places of politeness; yet its gains in popularity continue unchecked. As though to emphasise its superiority to former mannerisms, it is just now urbanely changing its name: it prefers to be known as the One-Step. And in the desire for a new appellation it is justified, since no history ever so vividly recalled the fable of the ugly duckling. The hypothetical turkey whose trot it once portrayed proves, as it matures, to be a creature closely resembling a peacock. The peacock it was whose designation (Spanish pavo) furnished the name of the old Pavane; and the One-Step, moved by some force more potent than coincidence, is now tending strongly toward the form of that favourite of seventeenth-century courts.
With the Turkey Trot came out of the West the Bunny Hug, the Grizzly Bear, and perchance the bearers of other names reminiscent of the zoo. They treated Europe to a mixture of amusement and irritation, but were not destined to long life on either side of the Atlantic.