of Andalusia with her flowers and her latent tragedy. Not that it is particularly a vehicle for pantomime. Rather its suggestions are conveyed as are the motives of flowers, or architecture—by relations and qualities of line and form that work upon the senses by alchemy no more understood than that of music. The accumulating intricacy has been so artfully designed that, as the dance progresses, its performers actually seem to free themselves from the restrictions of earth. Each new marvel tightens the knot of emotion in the throat; shouts invoking divine blessings on the mother of the bailarina—“Que Dios bendiga tu madre!“—unite with the tumult of the jaleo. For shouting may save one from other emotional expressions less becoming.
The music contributes to this hysteria, of course. But, with no accompaniment but their own castanets, a good team can work the magic. That might be considered a test of the quality of composition in a dance, as well as of execution.
So gracious, so stately, so rich in light and shade is Sevillanas, that it alone gives play to all the qualities needed to make a great artist. When, a few summers ago, Rosario Guerrero charmed New York with her pantomime of The Rose and the Dagger, it was the first two coplas of this movement-poem that charmed the dagger away from the bandit. The same steps glorified Carmencita in her day; and Otero, now popular as a singer in the Opera in Paris. All three of these goddesses read into their interpretation a powerful idea of majesty, which left it none the less seductive. Taking it at a comparatively slow tempo, the perfection of every detail had its highest value. A new generation of performers has been rather upset by a passing mode of rapid foot-work, and under its influence too many of them tend to rush the dance and so detract from its majesty. True it is that a great work of art can stand a good deal of abuse; but any menace to such a work as the one discussed, points out the need of a national academy, where the treasures of the dancing art could be preserved from possible whims of even an artistically intelligent public, and the compliance of a non-resisting majority of artists. Unlike most great European nations, Spain has no national academy of the dance.