After a little promenade to the music of the pipe, or piffara, that has descended unchanged from the days of the shepherds on the slope of Mount Ida, and the tambourine of equally venerable age, the tambourine is passed before an imaginary circle of auditors. The imaginary coins failing to come forth, the couple impulsively decide to dance anyway, for their own amusement. The dance proper is of the flowing style of the Tarantella, but includes only the simpler steps. An important contribution to the amusing character of the performance is a bit of by-play that begins after the work has apparently terminated: the shepherd, oaf though he is, expresses an interest in a pretty face in the audience, and even a belief that his interest is reciprocated. He is roundly scolded by his wife, soothes her feelings, and at last retires under a not misplaced surveillance.
The Saltarello, an old and lively step-dance identified with Rome, and including several steps of the Tarantella, completes the list of popular dances for which Italy is famous. Other names there are in abundance, but of dances identified with their localities. La Siciliana is a delicate but insufficiently varied product of the island from which it has its name. Messina has a pantomimic dance known as la Ruggera; Florence its Trescona, and so on indefinitely. Of these, such as have any choreographic interest are said to owe it to the Tarantella. Of many the interest is chiefly historical, since they are woven into one tissue with old songs and old legends. Poetic and altogether fascinating as such compositions frequently are, however, their prevailing lack of the essential qualities of dancing makes discussion of them inappropriate to a book on that subject. On the other hand, the highly characteristic flavour of the music and the words of their accompanying songs makes them a fascinating study under the heads of folk-lore and folk-music, in which connection they are the subject of several writings of great interest.
CHAPTER VIII
EUROPEAN FOLK-DANCING IN GENERAL
TO people who toil long hours at confining work that requires care and skill, there comes at the end of the day a craving for exercise that will release the mind from the constraint of attention, that will let the muscles play with vigour and abandon. In response to this demand of nature there exists one class of folk-dancing—the genre of the careless, energetic romp of people bedecked in bright colours, joining hands now to form themselves in rings, or again in interweaving lines, improvising figures, heedless of step except the simplest skipping and balancing.
Acting contrariwise to the influence of daily labour involving skill and attention, is the force of habitual work that does not require enough precision to satisfy the healthy craving for fine co-ordination of muscle, nerve and mind. The latter condition, too, moves to the dance. But here, in the case of a people whose potency of skill is not spent in the day’s work, the dance is likely to assume forms of such precision and elaboration that its performance requires considerable training, and such beauty that it attains to the plane of art.
These two divisions are far from exact; many influences modify them. But they serve as a beginning of the process of separating the gems of folk-dancing from the mass of that which bears a superficial sparkle but is without intrinsic choreographic value.
