The main object of Dalcroze’s method is to express by rhythmic movements rhythms perceived by the ear. The exactness of such expression is the main aim of the school. The body must react momentarily to the time and sound-units of the music that the ear perceives. As the wind creates waves in the sea, music is meant to create motion in the human body. Percy B. Ingham writes that characteristic exercises of this group are ‘beating the same time with both arms but in canon, beating two different tempi with the arms while the feet march to one or perhaps march to yet a third time, e. g., the arms 3/4 and 4/4, the feet 5/4. There are, also, exercises in the analysis of a given time unit into various fractions simultaneously, e. g., in a 6/8 bar one arm may beat three to the bar, the other arm two, while the feet march six.’
According to Dalcroze’s plastic theory the arms should express the theme in making as many movements as there are notes, while the feet should mark the counterpoint in crotchets, quavers, triplets or semi-quavers. A compound rhythm can be expressed by the arms taking one rhythm, the feet, another. This is meant to correspond to the technical exercises of orchestral music, by training the body to react to the various tones of different instruments. The general purpose, however, is and remains the development of feeling for rhythm by teaching the physical expression of body rhythms. There is no doubt that shades of crescendos and decrescendos, fortes and pianissimos are achieved by this method, yet the question remains: how near does the Dalcroze school come to visualizing the music in all its symbolic and spiritual depths?
Music is more than rhythm; it is a subjective symbolic language of our soul and the universe. It is a mystic factor of life, human and cosmic. There is an unaccentuated language in every genial and great composition, an æsthetic image and philosophic meaning that we can grasp not by means of the intellect but mostly through the emotions, and it is in expressing this that Dalcroze’s school has failed in so far. Dalcroze has aimed to express the elemental factors of the music, and in this he has succeeded. The performances given by Mr. T. Jarecki, one of the most talented of the graduates of Hellerau, are sufficient proof of the fact that the school has its shortcomings in the above-mentioned directions. He performed a Prelude by Chopin, a composition of Rachmaninoff, one by Schubert, and several numbers of other classics in a costume that looked like a bathing suit. Powerful as he was in all his rhythmic grace, he yet failed to translate the musical language of the compositions by means of bodily plasticity. Chopin’s and Rachmaninoff’s preludes possess distinct tonal expressions and designs of something very human and emotional that lies beyond mere rhythm. Poetry is based on the laws of rhythm, yet it is not alone the rhythm that makes a poem beautiful, but the image that it creates. Thus in the art of dance it is not only the rhythm but the æsthetic episode that concerns a dancer most of all. It is the transformation of this phonetic episode into plastic forms, the visualization of the audible beauty, that lies at the bottom of every great dance. This requires certain symbols and those lie beyond the achievements of the Dalcroze graduates.
III
The great value of Dalcroze’s method lies in his insistence on perfect rhythm as an elementary training upon which the coming art of dancing can be based. The various folk-dances are outspokenly rhythmic, but they contain that peculiar racial flavor which is very difficult to keep outside its proper atmosphere and race. We have found that the best Russian dancers could not give the simple folk-dances of another race with the racial perfection which a native untrained folk-dancer would have imparted to it. In the same way foreign dancers with their best efforts fail in trying to dance what a Russian dances. The national dances can be employed as valuable bases for the individual art, but that is all. They lack the cosmic element, the language of the world. An Italian understands his Tarantella, a Spaniard his Fandango, a Russian his Trepak best of all. The future art of dancing needs a universal element of choreographic design and it is in this that the Dalcroze school may be of immense value. It bases everything on rhythm only, which is very significant, but its aim should lie far beyond that. Rhythm is the syllable and the word, but words must be combined into phrases and phrases into paragraphs before we can read a story. It is after all the story in which the mind is interested, not the words and phrases.
We have seen in previous chapters that the foundation of the ballet lacks the firmness and soundness of a natural art. It is decadent and altogether shaky. No genius could build anything lasting unless the foundation is firm. The aim of dancing is not acrobatic nor gymnastic effect, but plasticity. Symmetry is the chief element of architecture, rhythm that of music. If we can combine the symmetric rules with those of the rhythmic we have the basis upon which a new choreography can be built. Isadora Duncan, Fokine, Lada, Trouhanova and many others are trying to grasp the truth in their individual ways, but the elemental truth lies in Dalcroze’s system. That Dalcroze has not aimed to train any stage artists is evidenced by the bathing-suit-like costume that his pupils wear, which in itself is unæsthetic and objectionable to our eye, though it may fit well for regular class-room work. It is at illusion that the stage aims, and this is not to be found in naked realism but in something else.
A Plastic Pantomime (Dalcroze Eurhythmics)
Some writers and critics seem to think that the great importance of Dalcroze’s system lies in his Neo-Hellenism, in that it is so close to the ancient Greek ideas. This view is particularly widespread in Germany, the country of classic adoration. But Greek spirit and ideals cannot help but only mislead a modern man. We have our problems, so many thousand years of evolution after the Greek civilization, that differ fundamentally from those of the bygone centuries. It is not in looking backward, but in looking forward that we have to find the great cosmic ideal of beauty. Dalcroze is by no means an imitator of the Greeks, but a man of to-day. He maintains emphatically that his method of eurhythmics is meant to be a general educational subject in all the schools—an elementary rhythmic training for life.