The foregoing instances are no more than a specimen of the varieties of tradition that dancing may commemorate. Europe collectively doubtless will produce thousands of such dances, when the task of collecting them is entered upon with the necessary combination of leisure and zeal.
Bavaria’s Schuhplatteltanz is altogether delightful in itself, without aid from history or tradition to supplement its interest. It is full of a quaint Tyrolean grace mingled with happy and delicate grotesquery. Women it causes to spin as though they were some quaint species of combination doll and top; the atmosphere that surrounds a marvellous and pretty mechanical toy is preserved in a delicate unreality in the pantomime and in the treatment throughout.
It is accompanied by zithers, instruments which themselves sing of a world suspended somewhere in the air. In silvery, floating tones they play less a waltz than the dream of a waltz, in sounds as unmaterial as the illusive voice of an Æolian harp.
A little opening promenade; a few bars of the couple’s waltzing together—in steps infinitesimal, prim with conscious propriety. The man raises the girl’s hand and starts her spinning. She neither retards nor helps, being a little figure of no weight, moved solely by power from without itself. Her skirt stands out as straight and steady as though it were cardboard; her partner must lean far over now, not to touch it and spoil the spin. Now she is whirling perfectly; with a parting impulse to her arm, he releases her. On she turns, at a speed steady as clockwork, revolving, as a top will, slowly around a large circle.
Her partner follows, beating time in a way that bewilders eye and ear alike; for his hands pat shoes and leather breeches with a swiftness incredible and ecstatic. Of this perhaps sixteen bars when, as though his partner were beginning to “run down,” he starts blowing her along with vigorous puffs. Nevertheless, she is slowing down; the skirt is settling. He reaches over it, gets his hands on her waist. To the last the spinning illusion is preserved by an appearance of her rotary motion being stopped only by the pressure of the man’s hand as a brake.
The foregoing interpretation is suggested by the delicate work of Herr and Frau Nagel, and the company with which they are associated. It is a dance whose fancy easily could disappear under its mechanics, if performed without imagination.