Having caught his partner after her spin, waltzed again with her for a few bars, and lifted her up at arm’s length in sheer playfulness, the man joins arms with her in such fashion as to form almost a duplicate of the “mirror” figure of the Minuet. The courtliness of the cavalier in the Minuet is matched by adroitness on the part of the schuhplatteltanzer; he contrives to draw his partner’s head nearer and nearer to his, as they walk around in a lessening circle. Finally, when the circle of the promenade can become no smaller, and the faces have come close to the imaginary mirror framed by the arms, he suddenly but daintily kisses her lips.
Germany is the home of the Waltz, of which it has evolved several varieties. The Rheinlander Waltz is perhaps the most popular. In one form or another it has spread through the Balkan countries; not, however, with any apparent detriment to the native dances, because of these dances’ natural crudeness. Servia, Montenegro and the neighbouring monarchies celebrate weddings and christenings and enliven picnics with a “round” called in Servian language the Kolo, that employs the simple old figures of the bridge of arms and the like, but which, as to step, is quite formless. Colour in the costumes goes far to provide spectacular interest to these exuberant frolics. The linen gowns of the women are embroidered in big—and good—designs of two distinct reds, scarlet and rose; emerald-green and a warm yellow-green; the most brilliant of yellows; wine-colour and blue. As is frequently found in a region that has kept a scheme of design through a sufficient number of generations to allow the formation of traditions based on long experiment, the seemingly impossible is accomplished by the peasant women of the Balkans: the colours whose enumeration on the same page would seem outrageous are, in practical application, brought into harmony. It is a question of proportionate size of spots of colour, and their juxtaposition. The results of using the same colours in new designs is to be seen in the expressions of sundry new schools of painting that refuse to acknowledge limitations.
Men’s sleeves and waistcoats are frequently embroidered in the same way as the jacket and sleeves of the women, as exemplified in the accompanying photographs of Madame Koritiç. Loose linen trousers, which are sometimes worn, may be likewise decorated. In the sunlight and in appropriate surroundings, a performance of the Kolo should be a sight to dispel trouble, whatever its deficiencies from the point of view of dancing.
Greece, too, diverts itself with rustic rounds, as formless as in other lands. Of the Hellas that gave the Occident its civilisation there remain some architectural ruins, to which latter-day inhabitants of the land may have given some care; and certain statues, preserved in the museums of other lands. For Hellenic ideals and Attic salt, search the hat-boy at the entrance to the restaurant. The Greek of to-day is a composite of Turk and Slav; his dances have neither the grace of the one nor the fire of the other. The discovery in Greece of survivors of ancient dances—which discovery is occasionally asserted—may have a basis in fact; but more likely its foundation is in a similarity between an ancient and a modern word. But enough of disappointments and of great things lost.
Hungary, Russia and Poland have a family of strictly national dances that not only take a position among the world’s best character dances; without departing from their true premise as expressions of racial temperament, some of them attain to the dignity of great romantic art, combined with optical beauty of the highest order. A Czardás in one of the Pavlowa programmes (season 1913-14) showed qualities of choreographic composition that were equalled, in that entertainment, only by the ballet arrangements of the most capable composers whose works were represented. The juxtaposition of ballet and character numbers, performed with the same skill and accompanied by the same orchestra, furnished an uncommonly good measure of the folk-dances’ actual merit.
The Czardás, the Mazurka and the Cossack Dance of Russia and the Obertass of Poland form a group that occupy in the dance the place that Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody” fills in music: they are the candid
