The Dance

by Unknown

I

Gordon Craig very aptly characterized the French ballet as the most deliciously artificial impertinence that ever turned up its nose at Nature. Commenting on this Prince Volkhonsky says: ‘Seldom one meets in a short definition with such an exhausting acknowledgment of the positive and negative sides of the question. How easy and pleasant it is to agree with a judgment which is penetrated with such impartiality. Who will not acknowledge that that powdered Marquise is charming, and yet who will not acknowledge that that huge pile of false hair sprinkled with powder is against Nature?’ Magnificent as the old Russian ballet has been dramatically and acrobatically, yet it failed to acknowledge the artificialities of its form and the deficiencies of its phonetic conceptions. It failed to see what Delsarte, Mrs. Hovey, Isadora Duncan and the partisans of the naturalistic school had grasped: the call of Nature. Though it banished the powdered Marquise of the French school from the stage, yet it did not banish the creed from the ballerina’s toe—the unmusical acting, the spectacular leaps and pirouettes, the umbrella-like tunics, the acrobatic stunts, the fossilized forms of the dead ages. In praise of the old ballet Mr. A. Levinsohn has written in a Russian magazine of the dance: ‘When a ballerina rises on the tips of her toes (pointés), she frees herself of a natural movement and enters a region of fantastic existence.’ The principal meaning of all the ballet technique in preaching the toe-dance is to defy the laws of gravity and give the dance the semblance of a flight, or floating in the air. There is no question that a few musical phrases require such plastic, particularly in such compositions as Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan,’ or Drigo’s Papillons, which Pavlova has visualized so magnificently. But to apply the same style to express the romantic, poetic, tragic and other human emotions, to apply the toe-technique to every form of dancing, is really abnormal. Prince Volkhonsky, who has contributed so much to the Russian ballet reform, writes with striking argument and vigor: ‘Movement cannot be an aim in itself; such a movement would be nonsense. What does a dancer express when he imitates a spinning-top? What does the ballerina express when with a fascinating smile she regards caressingly her own toe, as she toe-dances over the smooth floor? What does her body express, the human body—the most wonderful instrument of expression on earth—when, carried away by gymnastic enthusiasm in an acrobatic ecstasy, with panting chest and terror in her open eyes, she crosses the stage diagonally, whirling on one toe, while with the other she executes the famous “thirty-two fouettés”?’ ‘Gymnastics transform themselves into fantastics,’ exclaims Levinsohn; ‘but I assure you, when in the circus the man-serpent, all dressed in green scales, puts his legs behind his shoulder, this is no less fantastic.’ The so-called tunic (the French tutu)—a light short garment of pleated gauze—has, with Mr. Levinsohn, not only a physical justification from the point of view of comfort but a logical explanation, an æsthetic sanction; it ‘lends to the body a seeming stability.’ ‘Do you catch this?’ he continues. ‘The perpendicularity of the human figure in our eyes is, so to speak, balanced by the horizontality of the skirt; just the principle of the spinning-top. Now, is it possible to invent a more deplorable formula for transforming man into a machine? Is it possible to give a more definite expression to the principle of eliminating one’s “ego”? Is not art the expression, the manifestation, the blossoming of man? And what, finally, shall we say from the purely æsthetic point of view of that exaltation of a costume which by its umbrella-like stiffness cuts the human body into two? Shall we remain indifferent to the beauty of folds, to the obedience of the flowing veils, to the plastic injunctions of the living movement?

‘The theory of mechanisation of the human body could not but lead to the panegyric of the “flat-toed” ballet slipper. The simple sad necessity of giving to the ballerina a point of support receives a philosophico-æsthetic interpretation: this slipper “generalises the contour of the foot” and “makes the impression of the movement clearer and more finished.” In the name of all—I won’t say of all that is sacred—but of all that is beautiful, is it possible to say such things? You have never admired a foot; you do not know what it is—a foot that slowly rises from the ground, first with the heel, then with the sole; you do not know the beauty of supple toes; you evidently never saw the foot of Botticelli’s “Pallas,” the foot of Houdon’s “Diana.” If it is so valuable to “generalise” the contour of the foot by the flat-toed slipper, why not, then, “generalise” the contour of the hand and give to the ballerinas boxing-gloves? Art is an exteriorisation of man, a spreading of one’s self outside the limits of one’s ego, and here we are asked to cut, to shorten, to hide: a principle which is exactly the contrary of art. It was also a “generalisation” of the human figure when Niobe was being metamorphosed into a rock, but it remains till the end of time the expression of grief; the Greeks have not found a more eloquent myth for the eternalisation of human sorrow than the return of form into that which is not formed. They knew that all process of creation goes from the general to the particular. When the musician shapes the musical material accessible to everybody into a particular musical melody, he goes from the general to the particular. When the sculptor takes away piece by piece from the block of marble, he goes from the general to the particular. If, out of the shapeless mass of the human family, the great types could detach themselves and crystallise themselves into definite characters, it is only thanks to their particularities that they conquer and receive their universal value. The direction of the artist is from the shapeless, from the abstract, into the concrete; the process of art is a process of individualisation. It is easy to understand, therefore, the instinctive hostility which is provoked in a man who loves art, by all attempts at “generalisation”: it is the infiltration into art of that which is not art, it is that which in the course of centuries has deserved the appellation of “routine.” This crust of uniformity and impersonality which spreads over art is nothing but an infiltration of the generalising principle into that which is and ought to remain the sacred domain of personality. It is the desert under whose breath fades and withers the beauty of the oasis.

‘No wonder that a reaction should set in against an art which seeks its justification in such theories; the reaction against the stereotyped ballet is a direct act of logic—it is the voice of common sense: it would be impossible that a form of art should live which is in contradiction to the principle of art. When I say “live,” I do not mean the right of existence; I take the word in its most real sense: to live, that is, to possess the elements of development. In the form into which it has developed the “classical” ballet lacks these elements—it cannot evolve; as Mr. Svetloff judiciously remarked, if every ballerina could execute seventy-five instead of “thirty-two fouettés,” it would be a greater difficulty to overcome, it would not be art developed. Thus I repeat, when I say that such a form of art as the old ballet cannot live I am not denying its right to exist, but I am indicating the absence of elements of development, the atrophy of the principle of vitality.

‘There is one point of view possible as to the “classical ballet”; it is the one form in which we see the established forms of old dances. Who will deny the charm of the minuet, of the gavotte, of the pavane? But, on the other hand, who ever will dare to say that this is the final word of plastic art? Miniature painting is a lovely art, is it not? Yet equally wrong are those who would assert that the miniature has expressed all that painting is capable of, and those who would say that miniature is “all right, but it needs enlarging.” And when we consider the ballet from the only possible point of view, from the point of view of the crystallised dance, how offensive will appear to us “gymnastics that transform themselves into fantastics.” On the other hand, we shall not be astonished when we hear the regrets of some adherents of the old “dance” in the presence of the “Scythian invasion” on that same stage where the plastic formulas of the Latin race have blossomed; only imagine it—where the gavotte and sarabanda used to reign there now bursts out the tempest of the “Tartar hordes”!’

II

The appearance of Isadora Duncan and her pupils in Russia was truly a high explosive bomb. Her art startled the Russian dancers and public. It was the very opposite of what everybody had been accustomed to see, and what everybody imagined the dance to be. Though the limited character of her technique decreased the effect, yet the truth of her principle was what caused the greatest discussion and made the deepest impression. In the fundamentals of her dance were that freedom, individuality and relief which the Russian mind had missed in the old ballet. It was this theoretical argument that made Miss Duncan’s art such a factor in Russia. Marius Petipa had been an excellent scholar and academician in his days, but he had grown old and his views had become obsolete. His genius saw the evolution of the ballet only in the conventional channels. Among his assistants were a group of talented young dancers and teachers, some of whom were dissatisfied with the old order, yet found themselves forced to follow the time-worn rules. One of the young students of this type was M. Fokine, a very intelligent student and gifted artist, who was particularly electrified by Miss Duncan’s art. He saw the shortcomings of Miss Duncan’s school and realized that here he, with his thorough understanding of the ballet and its technique, could do much that she had been unable to do.

With all the best will Fokine found himself bound to the old order of things. But it was at this very juncture that M. Diaghileff, who had been successfully editing the annual Reviews of the Imperial Ballet, laid the foundation for a new art magazine on radical principles. Having been a graduate of the Conservatory of Music of Petrograd and a connoisseur of the art of dancing, he was just the man to gather a group of radical dance and music students and artists of every description around his venture and attempt to accomplish something radically modern in all the fields of stage art. His efforts found a quick response among the various artists of the ballet, who already knew of his work and tendencies. One of them was Fokine, and with him came many of his talented pupils and friends. Like with every other new movement this needed crystallization theoretically and practically. For some reason or other Diaghileff’s magazine failed. But it had already accomplished its evolutionary task: a group of artists was ready to join any leaders of revolution who would be worthy of their confidence.

The next move from the revolutionary Diaghileff and his general Fokine was their unexpected appearance in Paris. Here they had surrounded themselves with a few genial ballet dancers of Petrograd and Moscow. The announcement of an appearance of the Russian ballet in Paris, under the management of Diaghileff and Fokine and with stars like Nijinsky, Mmes. Fokina, Karsavina and Astafieva, marks the first revolutionary move in Russian dance history. It was undoubtedly the phenomenal success that Pavlova and Mordkin had had outside of Russia, particularly in Paris and London, which actuated and encouraged the rebels. They argued, ‘If Pavlova and Mordkin had such phenomenal success as solo dancers, in the old classic style, we are more sure of a success in real modern ballets.’ And they proved that they had. Here is what a London critic writes of the appearance of the Diaghileff company:

‘For the unknown to be successful in London it is always necessary to create what is called a boom—marvelous clothes or the lack of them; a terrifying top note; a tame lion; a Star that has been shining with unparalleled brilliancy in another city. But we were told nothing about the Russian dancers when they arrived in 1909—some half dozen of them only—and so we expected nothing. And it is to be feared that some of us found what we expected. Now, two years later, we are slowly opening our eyes.