But these dances are not often ill done—at least by the people to whom they belong. We are credibly informed that the problems of involved steps and tricky tempo, exacting requirements of agility and expression, are met with a laugh; that, while great virtuosity is naturally rare, real elegance of execution is the rule. Which leads back, of course, to national choreographic traditions and ideals. The artistic level they occupy in Russia (and presumably Hungary and Poland) is indicated in a few lines of a letter to the authors from Princess Chirinski-Chichmatoff, of Moscow. Apart from its value as quite the finest statement of the meaning of character dancing that is to be found in the literature of choreography, the paragraph has the interest of showing one of the reasons why the folk-dancing of northeastern Europe is good:
In every dance the principal things are the harmony (1) of movements with the rhythm of the music, (2) of movements with the subject that the music represents, and (3) of the sentiments with the pantomime, to give a certain impression; and finally this, that it should be a dance which has exclusively the national character, with the movements natural [familiers] to a certain people and to a certain epoch. In the dance the artist ought to show all the richness of his soul; ought to instil into his movements all of that which the sculptor puts into his marble; while above the idea and the mood ought to be felt the beauty and freedom of movements and lines.
Quite a difference between that and some other national ideas of character dancing!
Describing her national dance (i. e., the Cossack Dance and its derivatives) she writes:
“The Russian dance is composed in two parts, Adagio and Allegro. In each part we see the traits most natural to the people, and which were formed in historic times, under other conditions.
“1. Adagio: length, freedom, tranquillity of movement with much dignity and grace, and with a little softness and simplicity; all relating to the traits that were formed during the period when all Russian women passed the whole time in their térémas (house of Russian style), retired from the world, working and singing, thinking melancholy thoughts about life but never seeing it in reality, never leaving the house nor being seen except on the rare occasion of visits.
“2. Allegro: expresses, with the gay and popular songs, the vivacity, the carelessness, the humour and the pleasantry that were born in a people still a little barbarous and simple, whose sadness and gaiety were somewhat naïve. All the traits natural to the Russian people are portrayed in their national dance and in the simple music created from the most popular and beloved songs.”
Within the form so sketched there is room for a wide variety of interpretation. The peasant expresses the motives of happiness and vivacity in movements that translate the joy of an almost wild man. An advance while maintaining a low squatting position, the spring for each step coming from a leg bent double, is a grotesquery trying to the strength of the toughest thighs. Still more difficult and as grotesque is a movement of squatting on one heel, and rapidly tracing circles with the extended leg held straight, as though it were the arm of a compass. The feminine version of the movements is less violent; but the Allegro portion of the woman’s work is nevertheless tremendously animated in the rustic version of this dance.
As the court of seventeenth-century France took the dances of the peasant and modified them into adornments of ceremonious occasions, so polite society has done in Russia. The Court Dance is the result. Refinement has not robbed it of the national qualities described by Princess Chirinski; her own performance of it demonstrates, in almost spiritual terms, the “dignity and grace,” the “little softness and simplicity,” the “sadness and gaiety” that she puts into words. Through her performance, too, runs an undercurrent of the indefinable—a hint of latent mystery that is not European. It is a quality not infrequently sensed in the work of artists of Tartar blood; it is a trace of the Orient.