The stamp of frivolity, put upon the dance by the Christian clergy, has retarded its natural development for several centuries. Italy and Germany, having been the cradles of all modern music and stage arts, have given little inspiration to a systematic development of the art of dancing. The seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that have meant so much to the perfection of the opera, vocal and orchestra technique, gave nothing of any significance to choreography. The church that tolerated Bach, Paësiello, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, put an open ban upon everything that had any relation to the dance. The great musical classics of the past centuries have treated dance as an insignificant side issue, thereby putting a label of inferiority upon this loftiest of arts. All the dance music of the great classics sounds naïve and lacking in choreographic images. Yet dance and music are like light and shadow, each depending upon the other. As canvas is to a painter, so is music to a dancer the essential element upon which he can draw his picture. The fact that the art of dancing has not evolved into its normal state of equality with the other arts, is wholly due to the lack of musical leadership. Neither the reforms of Noverre nor those of Fokine nor Marius Petipa can be of fundamental value if they lack the phonetic designs which alone a choreographic artist can transform into plastic events. Essentially, and æsthetically speaking, dancing should be the elemental expression alike of symbolic religion and love, as it used to be from the earliest human times.
Dancing and architecture are the two primary and plastic arts: the one in Time, the other in Space; the one expressing the soul directly through the medium of the human body, the other giving only an outline of the soul through the medium of fossilized forms. The origin of these two arts is earlier than man himself. Both require mathematics, the one rhythmically, the other symmetrically. For dancing the mathematical forms are to be found in music, for architecture, in geometry. ‘The significance of dancing, in the wide sense, thus lies in the fact that it is simply an intimate concrete appeal of that general rhythm which marks all the physical and spiritual manifestations of life,’ writes Havelock Ellis. ‘The art of dancing moreover is intimately entwined with all human traditions of war, of labor, of pleasure, of education, while some of the wisest philosophers and ancient civilizations have regarded the dance as the pattern in accordance with which the moral life of man must be woven. To realize therefore what dance means for mankind—the poignancy and the many-sidedness of its appeal—we must survey the whole sweep of human life, both at its highest and at its deepest moments.’
Anna Pavlowa.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME TEN
| PAGE | ||
| Introduction by Anna Pavlowa | [vii] | |
| CHAPTER | ||
| I. | The Psychology of Dancing | [1] |
| Æsthetic basis of the dance; national character expressed in dances; ‘survival value’ of dancing; primitive dance and sexual selection; professionalism in dancing—Music and the dance; religion and the dance; historic analysis of folk-dancing and ballet. | ||
| II. | Dancing in Ancient Egypt | [12] |
| Earliest Egyptian records of dancing; hieroglyphic evidence; the Astral dance; Egyptian court and temple rituals; festival of the Sacred Bull—Music of the Egyptian dances; Egyptian dance technique; points of similarity between Egyptian and modern dancing; Hawasis and Almeiis; the Graveyard Dance; modern imitations. | ||
| III. | Dancing in India | [24] |
| Lack of art sense among the Hindoos; dancing and the Brahmin religion; the Apsarazases, Bayaderes and Devadazis; Hindoo music and the dance; dancing in modern India; Fakir dances; philosophic symbolism of the Indian dance. | ||
| IV. | Dances of the Chinese, the Japanese and the American Indians | [30] |
| Influence of the Chinese moral teachings; general characteristics of Chinese dancing; court and social dances of ancient China; Yu-Vang’s ‘historical ballet’; modern Chinese dancing; dancing Mandarins; modern imitations; the Lantern Festival—Japan: the legend of Amaterasu; emotional variety of the Japanese dance; pantomime and mimicry; general characteristics and classification of Japanese dances—The American Indians: The Dream dance; the Ghost dance; the Snake dance. | ||
| V. | Dances of the Hebrews and Arabs | [43] |
| Biblical allusions; sacred dances; the Salome episode and its modern influence—The Arabs; Moorish florescence in the Middle Ages; characteristics of the Moorish dances; the dance in daily life; the harem, the Dance of Greeting; pictorial quality of the Arab dances. | ||
| VI. | Dancing in Ancient Greece | [52] |
| Homeric testimony; importance of the dance in Greek life; Xenophon’s description; Greek religion and the dance; Terpsichore—Dancing of youths, educational value; Greek dance music; Hyporchema and Saltation; Gymnopœdia; the Pyrrhic dance; the Dipoda and the Babasis; the Emmeleia; The Cordax; the Hormos—Greek theatres; comparison of periods; the Eleusinian mysteries; the Dionysian mysteries; the Heteræ; technique. | ||
| VII. | Dancing in the Roman Empire | [72] |
| Æsthetic subservience to Greece; Pylades and Bathyllus; the Bellicrepa saltatio; the Ludiones; the Roman pantomime; the Lupercalia and Floralia; Bacchantic orgies; the Augustinian age; importations from Cadiz; famous dancers. | ||
| VIII. | Dancing in the Middle Ages | [78] |
| The mediæval eclipse; ecclesiastical dancing in Spain; the strolling ballets of Spain and Italy; suppression of dancing by the church; dances of the mediæval nobility; Renaissance court ballets; the English masques; famous masques of the seventeenth century. | ||
| IX. | The Grand Ballet of France | [86] |
| Louis XIV and the ballet; the Pavane and the Courante; reforms under Louis XV; Noverre and the ballet d’action; Auguste Vestris and others; famous ballets of the period—the Revolution and the Consulate; the French technique, the foundation of ‘choreographic grammar’; the ‘five positions’; the ballet steps—Famous danseuses; Sallé, Camargo; Madeleine Guimard; Allard. | ||
| X. | The Folk-Dances of Europe | [104] |
| The rise of nationalism—The Spanish folk-dances: the Fandango; the Jota; the Bolero; the Seguidilla; other Spanish folk-dances; general characteristics; costumes—England: the Morris dance; the Country dance; the Sword dance; the Horn dance—Scotland: Scotch Reel, Hornpipe, etc.—Ireland: the Jig; British social dances—France: Rondo, Bourrée and Farandole—Italy: the Tarantella, etc.—Hungary: the Czardas, Szolo and related dances; the Esthonians—Germany: the Fackeltanz, etc.—Finland; Scandinavia and Holland—The Lithuanians, Poles and Southern Slavs; the Roumanians and Armenians—The Russians: ballad dances; the Kasatchy and Kamarienskaya; conclusion. | ||
| XI. | The Celebrated Social Dances of the Past | [144] |
| The Pavane and the Courante; the Allemande and the Sarabande; the Minuet and the Gavotte; the Rigaudon and other dances—The Waltz. | ||
| XII. | The Classic Ballet of the Nineteenth Century | [151] |
| Aims and tendencies of the nineteenth century—Maria Taglioni—Fanny Elssler—Carlotta Grisi and Fanny Cerito; decadence of the classic ballet. | ||
| XIII. | The Ballet in Scandinavia | [161] |
| The Danish ballet and Boumoville’s reform; Lucile Grahn, Augusta Nielsen, etc.—Mrs. Elna Jörgen-Jensen; Adeline Genée; the mission of the Danish ballet. | ||
| XIV. | The Russian Ballet | [170] |
| Nationalism of the Russian ballet; pedagogic principles of the Russian school; French and Russian schools compared—Begutcheff and Ostrowsky; history of the Russian ballet—Didelot and the Imperial ballet school; Petipa and his reforms—Tschaikowsky’s ‘Snow-Maiden’ and other ballets; Pavlowa and other famous ballerinas; Mordkin; Volinin, Kyasht, Lopokova. | ||
| XV. | The Era of Degeneration | [189] |
| Nineteenth-century decadence; sensationalism—Loie Fuller and the Serpentine Dance—Louise Weber, Lottie Collins and others. | ||
| XVI. | The Naturalistic School of Dancing | [195] |
| The ‘return to nature’; Isadora Duncan—Duncan’s influence: Maud Allan; Duncan’s German followers—Modern music and the dance; the Russian naturalists; Glière’s ‘Chrisis’—Pictorial nationalism: Ruth St. Denis—Modern Spanish dancers; ramifications of the naturalistic idea. | ||
| XVII. | The New Russian Ballet | [214] |
| The old ballet arguments pro and con—The new movement: Diaghileff and Fokine; the advent of Diaghileff’s company; the ballets of Diaghileff’s company; ‘Spectre of the Rose,’ ‘Cleopatra,’ Le Pavilion d’Armide, ‘Scheherezade’—Nijinsky and Karsavina—Stravinsky’s ballets: ‘Petrouchka,’ ‘The Fire-Bird,’ etc.; other ballets and arrangements. | ||
| XVIII. | The Eurhythmics of Jacques-Dalcroze | [234] |
| Jacques-Dalcroze and his creed; essentials of the ‘Eurhythmic’ system—Body-rhythm; the plastic expression of musical ideas; merits and shortcomings of the Dalcroze system—Speculation on the value of Eurhythmics to the dance. | ||
| XIX. | Plastomimic Choreography | [247] |
| The defects of the new Russian and other modern schools; the new ideals; Prince Volkhonsky’s theories—Lada and choreographic symbolism—The question of appropriate music. | ||
| Epilogue: Future Aspects of the Dance | [261] | |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Odalisque in ‘Scheherazade’ (Russian Ballet) | [Frontispiece] |
| PAGE | |
| Egyptian women dancing with cymbals | [21] |
| Greek and Roman Dances as Depicted on Ancient Vases | [68] |
| Danseuses en Scène (The Ballet) | [102] |
| The Ball | [150] |
| Sylphides; a Typical Classic Ballet | [156] |
| Pavlowa | [174] |
| Duncan | [200] |
| Maud Allan | [211] |
| A Plastic Pantomime (Dalcroze Eurhythmics) | [245] |