The modern Spanish dances as performed by Rosario Guerrero, La Otero and La Carmencita, are in fact a perfected type of Spanish folk-dances. The Kinneys write of them as follows: ‘So gracious, so stately, so rich in light and shade is the Sevillanas, that it alone gives play to all the qualities needed to make a great artist. When, a few summers ago, Rosario Guerrero charmed New York with her pantomime of “The Rose and the Dagger,” it was the first two coplas of this movement-poem that charmed the dagger away from the bandit. The same steps glorified Carmencita in her day and Otero, now popular as a singer in the opera in Paris. All three of these goddesses read into their interpretation a powerful idea of majesty, which left it none the less seductive.’ It is clear that none but a Spaniard could perform the more or less perfected folk-dances of the country. It requires a physique with born talent and traditions to give the dance its proper fire and brutal elegance.
Maud Allan
After a painting by Otto Marcus
Havelock Ellis gives a graphic picture of the Spanish dance. ‘One of the characteristics of Spanish dancing,’ he writes, ‘lies in its accompaniments, and particularly in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators are themselves performers. In flamenco dancing, among an audience of the people, every one takes a part by rhythmic clapping and stamping, and by the occasional prolonged “oles” and other cries by which the dancer is encouraged or applauded. Thus the dance is not the spectacle for the amusement of a languid and passive public, as with us. It is rather the visible embodiment of an emotion in which every spectator himself takes an active and helpful part; it is, as it were, a vision evoked by the spectators themselves and upborne on the continuous waves of rhythmical sound which they generate. Thus it is that at the end of a dance an absolute silence often falls, with no sound of applause; the relation of performer and public has ceased to exist. So personal is this dancing that it may be said that an animate association with the spectators is necessary for its full manifestation. The finest Spanish dancing is at once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent or unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be transplanted but remains local.’
The naturalistic school of dancing is by no means an invention of Isadora Duncan, though she has been one of its most persistent preachers. The true psychological origin belongs to Delsarte, whose method of poetic plasticism inspired Mrs. Hovey to give lessons and lectures on the subject. It branched out like a tree. Every country was interested in the new idea in its own way. America, having no æsthetic traditions whatsoever, found the pioneers in Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis; Germany found hers in the sisters Wiesenthal, Miss Rita Sacchetto and others; France, in Mme. Olga Desmond; Spain, in the refined and talented folk-dancers; Russia, in the rise of a new ballet, and so on. Like a magic message, the idea filled the air and was inhaled by special minds. There was a strong argument in favor of its development, and that argument was the spiritual yeast that set the world into a ferment. The more it was opposed and fought the more it spread and grew. The naturalistic dance has been thus far more an awakening than a mature art. As such it is apt to be crude and imperfect. There is no reason to fear that a fate like that which befell the Skirt Dance may overtake the ‘classical’ dancing of the naturalistic school. It has accomplished a great service in bringing the audiences to realize that the argument of natural plasticism is based on philosophical truth. Soon the ranks of those who believe that ‘natural’ dancing is that which requires the least technique will decrease in favor of those serious minded artists, who seek the solution in technique plus talent. ‘The theory that a dancer can ignore with impunity the restrictions of technique, that she is bound to please if only she is natural and happy and allows herself to follow the momentary inspiration of the music and dances with the same gleeful spontaneity as a child dancing to a barrel-organ is a doctrine as seductive as it is fatal.’ The future solution of the movement lies in perfection of the technique and in grasping the deeper depths of musical relation to the art of dancing.
‘The chief value of reaction resides in its negative destructive element,’ says Prince Volkhonsky. ‘If, for instance, we had never seen the old ballet, with its stereotyped character, I do not think that the appearance of Isadora Duncan would have called forth such enthusiasm. In Isadora we greeted the deliverance. Yet in order to appreciate liberty we must have felt the chains. She liberated, and her followers seek to exploit that liberty.’
CHAPTER XVII
THE NEW RUSSIAN BALLET
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 Pavillon d’Armide, ‘Scheherezade’—Nijinsky and Karsavina—Stravinsky’s ballets: ‘Petrouchka,’ ‘The Fire-Bird,’ etc.; other ballets and arrangements.