To this school of dancing belongs also Natasha Trouhanova, a fascinatingly beautiful Caucasian girl, whose appearances in Russia and Paris have attracted great attention. Being of semi-Oriental descent herself, Trouhanova’s art has verged on Oriental conceptions. Russian music is rich in excellent Oriental themes; Borodine, Rubinstein, Balakireff, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff and Spendiaroff have written a large number of instrumental works of Oriental cast, which adapt themselves magnificently to dancing. Indeed, the composers of other countries have not been able to approach the Russians in the treatment of Oriental subjects. Mlle. Trouhanova has specialized in a romantic Oriental symbolism, in which she has succeeded more than any of the other living dancers. There is an enchanting, exotic atmosphere in Trouhanova’s plastic expressions, something that breathes of the Thousand and One Nights, seductive and saturated with passion, yet beautiful in every detail. Her best performances have been those which she has given in Oriental surroundings, in the atmosphere to which such expressions belong. Like Lada, Trouhanova seeks the solution of choreography in the music itself. She has been inclined to a kind of symbolism that pertains to the romantic emotions, and in this particular field she stands supreme.
III
How important Lada’s illustration of the theory of concordance of motion and music is at this time of dancing evolution can be more concretely grasped by the coming generations than by an average dance-lover to-day. It is perspective that gives the true visual impression of a mountain. ‘In the unison of plasticity and music, of the visible with the audible, of the spacial with the temporal, lies the guarantee of that new art which we so ardently desire and so unsuccessfully seek,’ writes a celebrated dance authority. But here comes the question of music, the phonetic image that should guide the choreographic artist. Lada complains that she has a very limited choice of compositions that can be danced. The problem of proper dance music is more serious than one would think. Sibelius’ Valse Triste is perhaps the best sample of dramatic dance music that corresponds perfectly to a dancer’s requirements. MacDowell’s ‘Shadow Dance’ is another gem of this kind. There are quite a few by other composers. The sum is slight. But the dancer can hardly blame the composer alone, for the latter knows only the old ballet, the naturalistic school or folk-dance themes. He has never heard of any other dance music than the one which has been danced, either socially or on the stage.
Dancing to music requires short phonetic episodes with sufficient poetic, symbolic or dramatic element, and images clearly depicted in strong rhythmic measure and sufficient background for the story. The more variety of figures, the greater contrasts and the more ‘chapters’ in such a composition, the better for the dancer. The modern decadent, unrhythmic, vague mood music of the radical French and German schools is of little appeal and practically impossible to render in plastic forms. It is the Russian school of music, as also the works of modern Finnish composers, that have all the rich, clear and powerfully vivid magic of the north, and appeal so strongly to a dancer’s imagination. Sibelius’ En Saga, a tone-poem for full orchestra, would be the most grateful composition for this purpose had it not been written in the old symphonic form. It belongs to that baffling and unsatisfactory class of symphonic poems to which Sibelius has failed to give a clear literary basis. The music suggests the recital of some old tale in which the heroic and pathetic elements are skillfully blended. The music is vigorous and highly picturesque, but its interest would be greatly enhanced by a more definite program. Again, the same composer’s ‘Lemminkainen’s Home-Faring’ would make an excellent dance for a man dancer, had the composer rearranged it for a smaller orchestra and for dancing. It is an episode from the Kalevala. Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony is a composition that could be danced, being based on a series of single episodes of extremely imaginary character. But the score is written for a large symphony orchestra, therefore unpractical for dancing in a general way. Sibelius’ incidental music to Adolf Paul’s tragedy, ‘King Christian II,’ and the other to Maeterlinck’s ‘Pelléas and Mélisande’ are large ballets rather than music that could be performed without any particular difficulties by dancers of Lada’s type.
The question of appropriate music for the latest phase of the art of dancing is so serious that it requires earnest consideration. In considering the best dances of all the great dancers of all ages and schools we find that among the phonetic images the symbolic element renders itself most gratefully to plastic transformation. By its very nature dancing is the symbolic rendering of music. The more symbolic the subject of a composition the better chance it has of being transmitted into a visible language. A dancer represents in his vibrating body lines the symbolic complex of all the phonetic unities of a composition. He is, so to speak, the unset type. Music is the text that he has to print in such pictorial forms, in such symbols that our mind can grasp it. Throughout his dance, he remains a kaleidoscopic tracer of the musical designs of the composition. The plastic positions of the human body, the mimic expression of the face, the gestures and the steps, are the mediums that can suggest certain phases of emotion and feeling, certain ideas and impressions of soul and body. There is a certain tonal and pictorial ‘logic,’ a kind of unarticulated thinking, in music as well as in dancing. But this cannot be depicted in any other than symbolic form. Essentially both arts are composed of a succession of peculiar emotional symbolic images. Music is the vibration of the sound, dancing the vibration of the form. Both arts appeal directly to our emotions, music more than dancing, the latter being more mixed with our intellectual processes. Dancing may be termed the translating of the absolutely subjective language into a more objective one. According to this theory all the ballets in the old form of drama, where the characters dance their rôles, is against the principle of pure art dancing. It is impossible to imagine that there is any music on the order of our conventional dramas, of so or so many characters. At the utmost there can be only two dancing figures, two characters that we could imagine in a tone-drama of this kind; but even so, the other could be only the acting, the pantomimic character, while only one dancer at a time can render the real transformation process of the musical theme.
To comply with the requirements of the above-described theory of musical dancing, the writer has composed a scenario, ‘The Legend of Life,’ to which Reinhold Glière is composing the music. In this ballet, or more correctly plastomime, which is arranged in three scenes, there is only one single dancer throughout the whole performance, and she is the symbolic image, the visualized imagination of a young monk, who is sitting in the evening before the festival of ordainment in his gloomy cell and thinking of the girl he used to love outside. Here he begins to hear the worldly music that is interrupted by the chimes and the choir of the church. The girl of whom he is thinking appears before him and dances romantic episodes—dances, so to speak, his vivid reminiscences. The monk is the realistic figure, the dancing girl the symbolic image of the music. It is a whole drama, which takes place in the monk’s mind. The drama is in music, and is his love, his romantic emotion, which is often interrupted by ecclesiastic surroundings. The second scene is the dream of the monk at night in a beautiful garden. The vision of the dancing girl. The third scene depicts him watching his own ordination in the church and the people arriving solemnly through the courtyard to witness the ceremony. Among them he sees his beloved. This scene is laid in the monastery’s courtyard. The charm of the dancing girl here becomes so overwhelming to the monk that he throws off his robe and rushes to her. Here she vanishes like a phantom and the plastomime ends. This, briefly, is an attempt at the sort of literary basis upon which the author considers dance music can be constructed in concordance with the new symbolic ideals.
The above-described scenario is merely one of the innumerable dance themes that modern composers could employ in their future dance music. It is to be hoped that composers will grasp the idea and enrich musical literature with works that adapt themselves to the requirements of a new choreography.
EPILOGUE
FUTURE ASPECTS OF THE ART OF DANCE
As in the physical so in the spiritual world there prevails a kind of circulation of energies and life; growth, maturity and decline. Individuals seem nothing but the beginnings where the universes end, and vice versa. As a man mirrors the world in his soul, so a protoplasm mirrors the man. An invisible hand pushes a worm along the same road of evolution as it does an imperious Cæsar. One and the same feeling heart seems to beat in the breast of man that beats in the action of the constellations. Yet the hand of evolution that tends to adjust the equilibrium between the individual and the cosmic will gives by every new turn a new touch of perfection to the subjective and the objective parties. This tendency manifests itself in the history of individuals and races, and also in the history of art. The greatest genius of to-day is surpassed by another to-morrow.