compose a translation of that people’s point of view and habit of thought.
To exactly the same process Bizet subjected the music of Spain to produce the score of Carmen; Le Sage to construct Gil Blas. Than the latter there is nothing in Spain that could more quickly acquaint a foreigner with certain aspects of “Españolism.”
A link with antiquity is furnished by multitudinous carvings of dancers on Hindu and Buddhistic temples in India and Java. The temple in Java, some of whose sculpture is here reproduced, was recently rediscovered after several centuries of burial in a jungle. It is known to be at least eight hundred years old. A comparison between the style of the dancers there represented, that of the little Javanese present-day dancer shown in a photograph, and that which is indicated in line drawings (from photographs of temples in India) hints at indefinite age back of Oriental dancing as we know it, as to style, technique and spirit. The photographs, including those from which the line drawings were made, are from the collection of Mr. H. C. Ostrander.
With variations, the India type of movement and pantomime, with the practice of striking a significant pose at regular intervals, continues eastward as far as the Hawaiian Islands. The Hula-Hula of the graceful Hawaiians has been well exemplified recently in an interpolation in The Bird of Paradise. Essentially, the Hula-Hula is a dance of coquetry; its thematic position, which recurs like a refrain, is that shown in one of the accompanying drawings.
Any effort to trace the path of Oriental dancing farther east than the Hawaiian Islands leads to the shoals of unsubstantial speculation. Aztec ruins are said (on authority not vouched for) to bear carvings that show the early existence of the India type of dancing in Mexico. There are said to be traces of India influences in the dancing of Mexican Indians of to-day. But the interest of such fact—even if it is a fact—is more closely related to ethnology than choreography; because it is pretty certain that any trace of India dancing that may exist will be an almost unrecognisable corruption. The study of dances on grounds of oddity, ethnological curiosity or legendary association leads away from the study of dancing for its own sake, and that of its inherent beauty. It is in the endeavour to keep within the lines of reasonably pure choreography that this book has been restrained from digressions into the quasi-dancing of American Indians, African negroes, various South Sea Islanders and many other interesting folk.
Dancing has an immense importance in religious worship of most of the many denominations of India. Priestesses are trained to it; corps de ballet into which they are organised are maintained in the temples under a system like that of ancient Egypt. Their rites are unknown—or practically so—to those outside of their own faith. In other cults the rites are performed, in part, by laymen. The latter ceremonies include a not-to-be-described orgy periodically celebrated in certain Hindu temples, by women, with the motives of propitiating Vishnu.
China has a school of rhythmic pantomime, the movement of which hardly justifies its consideration as a branch of real dancing—so far as known to the authors. An annual religious spectacle is to be noted: in it are employed animals’ heads, recalling the Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians.