‘Only through the rhythm will the ballet come back to music and accomplish the fusion which has been destroyed by independent acting. Schopenhauer said that music is a melody to which the universe serves as a text; take away the music from the ballet—it will have nothing to say. There is quite a clear parallel here with the vocal art. The musician composes a song; he puts words to music. Imagine a singer coming out and telling us only the words; he will be far from the fulfillment of his task; he will have accomplished but the half of it, the lesser part of it. It is the same with the ballet; the musician composes the ballet, he puts the plot to music. Imagine a dancer coming out and acting the plot alone; he will be far from the fulfillment of his task; he will have accomplished but the lesser part of it. For the ballet does not relate how the Sleeping Beauty, for instance, fell asleep and awoke (this is the business of literature, declamation and drama); the ballet relates how music tells it. Music is the only real essence in that which forms the subject of the ballet. All the remaining “reality,” the real man with his real movement, is nothing but a means of expression, nothing but artistic material. It is evident how wrong, how offensive it is (for a musician) when this material of living movement embodies a new moving formula which is not implied in the music. Have you seen those “processions” of maidens, slaves, priests, etc.? Have you ever been shocked by the discord of their walk with music? Have you noticed that the pace which you see is quite different from the one you hear? Have you ever felt offended on seeing that they step between the notes and thus give you the impression of syncopes which are in no way justified by music? I am afraid you have not. Few are those who realize the importance of the accord of movement and sound, who long for its realization, and, together with Schiller, desire that “Music in its ascendant ennoblement shall become Image.”
‘The music we hear is the subject of the image we see. And in fact the singer sings music, the dancer dances music, and cannot dance anything else; he cannot “dance” jealousy or grief or fright, but he can and must dance the music which expresses the feeling of jealousy, grief or fright. And when he has rendered the music he will, by the same means, have rendered its contents, and naturally the silly question will be dropped: “How is it possible that on the stage the people should dance everything, whereas in life only dances are danced, or, at the utmost, joy?” The question is strange, to be sure, yet no less strange are those who forget that the only thing they may dance is music, and think they may dance a “rôle.” The dramatic principle based upon an arbitrary division of time is directly opposed to the choreographic principle, which is wholly founded on the musical, consequently regulated, division of time. Therefore the introduction of the element of “personal feeling,”[D] of individual choice, and even more, destroys the very essence of the choreographic art, and eats away its very texture.
[D] As the Duncanites do.—Editor.
I do not speak against the working out of such; I speak against an independent working out—that is, a separate one running a course other than that in which music is the greatest essential. I remember one of the best ballerinas contorting herself in wild movements of anguish while the notes of the violin were dying away in one long sound of a trill. She “acted,” and there is, of course, no harm in this, but she acted according to her ideas, instead of acting according to music. It is just the same sin against art as if a singer were to execute a lyric song with bravado. Would you forgive him? Why, then, do we not forgive a singer, yet forgive a mimic, even admire his “acting”? Why is it every one understands that singing must agree with music, and so few, almost nobody, feel the offensiveness of movement which disagrees with music? And yet how sensitive to the observation of the musico-plastic principle are those who are so indifferent to its non-observation. How much they enjoy, though unconsciously, every manifestation of that concordance! We may say with certitude that for the best moments, the moments of greatest satisfaction in the living art—that is, the musico-plastic art combining the visible with the audible—we are indebted to the simultaneous concurrence of the plastic movement with the musical; in other words, to the equality in division of space and time. In an old French treatise on the dance, published in the year 1589, the author says among other bits of advice: “It is wrong for the foot to say one thing and the instrument the other.” In its naïve conciseness this sentence represents the germ of all that has been said, perhaps with some prolixity, in these pages.
‘Space and time are the fundamental conditions of all material existence—and for that same reason the inevitable conditions of all material manifestation of man within the limits of his earthly being. If we agree that art is the highest manifestation of order in matter, and order in its essence nothing but division of space and time, we shall understand the fullness of artistic satisfaction which man must feel when both his organs of perfection, eye and ear, convey to him not only each separate enjoyment, but the enjoyment of fusion; when all his æsthetic functions are awakened in him not separately but collectively, in one unique impression: the visible rhythm penetrated by the audible, the audible realized in the visible, and both united in movement. This is the combination of the spacial order with the temporal. And when this combination is accomplished, and still more when it is animated with expression, then no chord of human impressionability is left untouched, no category of human existence is neglected; space and time are filled with art, the whole man is but one æsthetic perception.
‘And, once we have understood all that, how is it possible not to express the wish that the leaders of the art of the ballet should assimilate the principle of concordance of motion and music? Without this there is no art in movement, and all our old “pointés” and “fouettés,” all those records of rapidity and difficulties are nothing but words without significance, whereas the new “choreographical” pictures are but a dramatization of movement to the sound of an accompanying music.’
II
One of the first among living dancers to realize the truth of the above-described lack of concordance between motion and music in all the ancient and new schools, and to devise, intuitively, a method of her own in expressing only the music, is Lada, a young American girl, who had been assiduously studying dancing in Europe and in Russia. She felt so keenly the discord in the ballet, in the art of Isadora Duncan, in the dances of so many modern celebrities, that she was led to draw her inspiration from the folk-dances of various European countries. Here was something simple and primitive, the simple and naïve harmonic relation between the audible, and the visible, the plastic, conception. It was the concordance of motion and music.
Lada’s New York début in the late spring of 1914 was, in spite of so many unfavorable circumstances, a choreographic triumph such as few dancers have achieved under similar conditions. The New York musical and dramatic critics, though unfamiliar with subtle choreographic issues, declared her an artist of the foremost rank. Yet this girl has not had yet the chance to display the best of her art. Her art may be divided into three different categories: those based on the racial, on the dramatic and on the symbolic principles. Her Brahms’ Hungarian Dance, Glinka’s Kamarienskaya, and Schubert’s Biedermayer are distinct ethnographic plastic panoramas; her Sibelius’ Valse Triste is a masterpiece among her dramatic and realistic dances, while MacDowell’s ‘Shadow Dance,’ Sibelius’ ‘Swan of Tuonela,’ Glière’s Lada, and Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Antar are perfect choreographic gems of unusual symbolic breadth. In the Valse Triste the sad majesty, as if absorbed in infinite grief, overcomes the spectator so irresistibly that he almost forgets the morbidly beautiful music of Sibelius. On occasions, impressively executed with unsurpassed loftiness and freedom, she places before us a visionary being, though on the verge of death, in whose presence everything low falls from us, and our feelings express the same elevation that they do in genuine tragedy.
But, however excellently Lada may interpret the sentimental issues of various ethnographic compositions and how well she may portray the tragic vigor of the dramatic music, the best of her art lies in the symbolic visualization of phonetic beauties. In these she appears like a supernatural being raised above common humanity. Her rendering of Gretchaninoff’s ‘Bells,’ which we have seen so far only in rehearsals, makes an impression as if she were lost in sacred revery. A touch of religious feeling pervades the beautiful panorama. In other dances of similar religious character she seems floating in mid-air, unsubstantial as the moon whose pale beams pour a magic beauty over sleeping Nature—and yet so far removed. Her art is an absolute image of the music. Lada is by no means a mood creator or a believer in genial spontaneity that requires nothing but a stage and orchestra. She possesses in her simplest folk-dance-like choreographic sketches the same technical perfection, the same strenuous practice, as the most accomplished ballet dancer. This is what makes her body seem like a highly strung instrument, whose strings the slightest breath of wind can set quivering. Let us hope that she will not change her views and aspirations for the sake of managerial or timely requirements, as so many successful dancers have done. It would be a loss to the evolution of the art of dancing.