The Dance

THE DANCE
ITS PLACE IN ART AND LIFE

BY
TROY AND MARGARET WEST KINNEY
(“THE KINNEYS”)
With a frontispiece in colour and one hundred and seventy-six line
drawings and diagrams by the authors, and three hundred
and thirty-four illustrations in black-and-white
from photographs

PREFACE

The pleasant responsibility of writing about one of our two overwhelming enthusiasms was accepted by us only after consultation with friends in the dancing profession.

“A book of technical instruction is not the idea,” we started to explain.

“No,” they concurred, “that would not be an undertaking for painters. Only an experienced master of dancing should write such a book, and he would not be likely to, because he would know that execution is taught only by personal criticism of a pupil’s work.”

We hastened to specify that the proposal involved no more—and no less—than an effort to share our enthusiasm with others. Appreciation of an art requires no faculties not included in the normal human equipment; more than anything else it is a matter of knowing what to look for. When a layman comes to a painter asking what it is that people find so enjoyable in classic mural decoration, the answer is not difficult. A few hours in an art museum, with some direction of his attention to line as a vehicle of beauty, acquaint him with the idea of beauty as a self-sufficient object; and he goes on his way rejoicing in the possession of a lasting process of making happiness for himself.

Great dancing, to us, always had been a gratification of the same senses that are addressed by decoration. The same suggestions, therefore, that convey the power to enjoy classic mural painting, would enable us to communicate our satisfaction in the dance. But the question arose, was our point of view on dancing in accord with its real intent, and that of its performers and composers?

Madame Cavallazi disposed of the doubt at one stroke. “The ballet,” she said, “is mural decoration.”

Sanctioned by such authority, we have followed the lines above indicated, treating the dance from the standpoint of pure optical beauty. Its enjoyment, experience proves, is distinctly sharpened by acquaintance with choreographic technique. One not fairly familiar with the resources of the art, though he be conscious that the dance before his eyes is progressing, like music, in conformity with an artistic argument, is confused by the speed and seeming intricacy of steps. As a result he loses the greater part of the beauty of the succession of pictures unfolded before him. Whereas the ability to grasp the theme of a composition, and then to follow its elaboration through a vocabulary of already familiar steps, is in effect to quicken the vision. Instead of being harassed by a sensation of scrambling to keep up with the argument, the spectator finds himself with abundant time to luxuriate in every movement, every posture. And, like a connoisseur of any other art, he sees a thousand beauties unnoticed by the untrained.

To the end of furnishing the needed acquaintance with the alphabet of the art, the book includes a chapter of explanation of the salient steps of the ballet. These steps, with superficial variations and additions, form the basis also of all natural or “character” dances that can lay claim to any consideration as interpretative art. It is convenient to learn the theories of them as accepted by the great ballet academies, since those institutions alone have defined them clearly, and brought to perfection the ideals for their execution. Incidentally the school of the ballet is made the subject of considerable attention. In the first place, after getting a grasp of its ideals and intent, any one will catch the sentiment of a folk-dance in a moment. Moreover, it is in itself an important institution. During its long history it has undergone several periods of retirement from public attention, the most recent beginning about sixty years ago. From this eclipse it has already returned to the delighted gaze of Europe; as always after its absences, so far evolved beyond the standards within the memory of living men that posterity seems to have been robbed of the chance of discovering anything further. The renaissance is moving westward from St. Petersburg; London is wholly under its influence; America has felt a touch of it.

American love of animated beauty and delight in skill predestine us to be a race of ardent enthusiasts over the dance. Among us, however, there are many who have never accepted it as an art worthy of serious attention. As a gentle answer to that point of view, a historical résumé is included, wherein statesmen, philosophers and monarchs show the high respect in which the art has been held, save in occasional lapses, in all periods of civilised history.

Direct practical instruction is furnished on the subject of present-day ballroom dancing, to the extent of clear and exact directions for the performance of steps now fashionable in Europe and America. The chapter was prepared under the careful supervision of Mr. John Murray Anderson.

Neither in word nor picture does the book contain any statement not based upon the authors’ personal knowledge, or choreographic writings of unquestioned authority, or the word of dancers or ballet-masters of the utmost reliability. To these artists and to certain managers we are greatly indebted. Much of the matter has never before been printed in English; a considerable portion of it has here its first publication in any language. The illustrations of dances of modern times are made from artists in the very front rank of their respective lines. If the new material so contributed to choreographic literature proves, according to the belief of dancers who have read the manuscript, to be of value to producers, the authors will experience the gratification that comes of having been of service. But their efforts will be more directly repaid if the influence of the book hastens by a day that insistence upon a high choreographic ideal in America, and that unification of dance-lovers which must exist in order that worthy productions may be reasonably insured of recognition in proportion to their quality.

Finally, a word of thanks to those whose aid has made this book possible. Though busy, as successful people always are, they have given time and thought unsparingly to the effort, in co-operation with the authors, to make this a substantial addition to the layman’s understanding of the dancing art.

T. K. and M. W. K.

New York, November, 1913.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE DANCE

The Dance

CHAPTER I
THE DANCING OF ANCIENT EGYPT AND GREECE

BEFORE logic, man knew emotion; before creed, ritual. With leap and mad gesture the savage mimics his triumph, to the accompaniment of crude saltation performed by a hero-worshipping tribe.

Not by argument is the coming storm propitiated, but by a unified expression of tribal humility. To the rhythm of beaten drums, the tribe, as one, performs the genuflexions and prostrations that denote supplication and fear.

So on through the gamut of simple emotions—love and hate, fealty and jealousy, desire and achievement—primitive man expresses his mood in terms of the dance. History shows that dancing persists on a plane with words, paint and music as a means of expression, however far a race may advance along the road of evolution; and that the few exceptions to this rule are to be found among peoples who have allowed a Frankenstein of logic to suppress, for a time, their naturalness of spirit.

Egyptian carvings of six thousand years ago record the use of the dance in religious ritual; and abundant evidence attests the importance in which it was held at all times through the period of Egypt’s power. In lines as stately as the columns of a temple, sculptors have traced choreography’s majestic poses, its orchestral repetitions and variations. As a dance may be, the religious dances of Egypt were a translation and an equivalent of the spirit of the Pharaohs’ monumental architecture; that they were no less imposing than those temples we cannot avoid believing.

Plato, deeply impressed by these hierarchical ballets, finds that their evolutions symbolised the harmonious movements of the stars. Modern deduction carries the astronomical theme still further: the central altar is believed to have represented the sun; the choral movements around it, the movements of the celestial bodies. Apis, the sacred black bull, was honoured in life by dances of adoration, in death by ballets of mourning.

Either dancing was attributed to the divinities (according to a Christian saint of later centuries, it is the practice of angels) or some of the divinities were represented by dancers in the religious ballets. A carving in the Metropolitan Museum of New York shows Anubis and Horus kneeling, their arms completing a pose that is seen to this day in the dances of Spain.

Important as was the dancing of Egypt as the root from which grows the choreography of all the Occident—and of India too, for anything known to the contrary—the carvings reveal little of its philosophy or symbolism. But the history of other peoples at once

demonstrates its force as example, at least, if not as teacher of actual technique. The Hebrews of very early days gave dancing a high place in the ceremony of worship. Moses, after the crossing of the Red Sea, bade the children of Israel dance. David danced before the Ark of the Covenant.

Numerous Biblical allusions show that dancing was held in high respect among early leaders of thought. “Praise the Lord ... praise Him with timbrel and the dance,” is commanded. With dancing the Maccabees celebrated that supremely solemn event, the restoration of the Temple. To honour the slayer of Goliath, the women came out from all the cities of Israel, “singing and dancing ... with tabrets, with joy and with instruments of musick.” Relative to the capture of wives the sons of Benjamin were told: “ ... if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife ... and the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught” (Judges 21:21 and 23). “Thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry” (Jeremiah 31:4). “Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance” (Jeremiah 31:13). “And David danced before the Lord with all his might” (2 Samuel 6:14). In the solemn chapter of Matthew narrating the beheading of John the Baptist we read: “But when Herod’s birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatever she would ask.”

Perhaps with an idea of forestalling discussion of the art’s antiquity, one of the early writers eliminates argument by a simple stroke of the pen. “The stars conform to laws of co-ordinated movement. ‘Co-ordinated movement’ is the definition of dancing, which therefore is older than humanity.” Taking this at its face value, human institutions are thrown together into one period, in which differences of a thousand years are as nothing.

In turning to Greece, years need lend no aid to make the subject attractive. In that little world of thought we find choreography luxuriant, perhaps, as it never has been since; protected by priesthood and state, practised by rich and poor, philosopher and buffoon. Great mimetic ballets memorialised great events; simple rustic dances celebrated the gathering of the crops and the coming of the flowers. Priestesses performed the sacred numbers, the origins of which tradition attributed to Olympian gods; eccentric comedy teams enlivened the streets of Athens; gilded youth held dancing an elegant accomplishment. Philosophers taught it to pupils for its effect on body and mind; it was a means of giving soldiers carriage, agility and health, and cultivating esprit de corps. To the development of dancing were turned the Greek ideals of beauty, which in their turn undoubtedly received a mighty and constant uplift from the beauty of harmonised movements of healthy bodies. Technique has evolved new things since the days of classic Greece; scenery, music and costume have created effects undreamed of in the early times. But notwithstanding the lack of incidental factors—and one questions if any such lack were not cancelled by the gain through simplicity—the wide-spread practice of good dancing, the greatness and frequency of municipal ballets, the variety of emotional and æsthetic motives that dancing was made to express, all combine to give Greece a rank never surpassed as a dancing nation.

The man-made attributes of man’s gods are a synopsis of man’s important thoughts. Cybele, mother of the gods and friend of mankind, taught dancing to the corybantes as a fitting gift to be passed along to her mortal foster-children. Apollo, speaking through the mouths of priestesses, dictated further choreographic laws. Orpheus journeyed to Egypt to study its dances, that he might add to the scope of the Hellenic steps and movements. One of the nine muses was devoted to the fostering of this particular art. All of which shows a profound belief in the Greek mind that dancing was worthy of a great deal of divine attention. Certainly no subsequent civilisation has been so well qualified to judge the importance of dancing, for none has experimented so completely in the effect of rhythmic exercise on the body and mind of a nation.

Classic sculpture no more than suggests the importance of dancing in Greek life. An assemblage of a few Greek thinkers’ observations on the subject furnishes an idea of the value they gave it as a factor in education. Plato, for instance, specifies it among the necessities for the ideal republic, “for the acquisition of noble, harmonious, and graceful attitudes.” Socrates urged it upon his pupils. Physicians of the time of Aristophanes prescribed its rhythmic exercise for many ailments. Lycurgus gave it an important place in the training of youth, military and otherwise. Among the special dances whose teaching he decreed, was one, the Hormos, that was traditionally performed without clothing. Plutarch tells of a protest against the nudity of the women. The Law-giver of Athens replied: “I wish them [the women] to perform the same exercises as men, that they may equal men in strength, health, virtue and generosity of soul, and that they may learn to despise the opinion of the vulgar.”

Of great men’s dancing in public there are instances in abundance. The very method of choosing the leaders of great civic choreographic spectacles insured the association of people of consequence, for these leaders were always selected from the highest rank of citizens. Epaminondas, Antiochus, and Ptolemæus are variously mentioned for their skill in dancing, as well as their prominence in national affairs. Sophocles danced around the trophies of the battle of Salamis. Æschylus and Aristophanes danced in various performances of their own plays. And Socrates, one of the very fathers of human reasoning, danced among friends after dinner. Aristides danced at a banquet given by Dionysius of Syracuse. Anacreon, in his odes, declares that he is always ready to dance.

Professional dancers enjoyed high prestige. Philip of Macedon had one as a wife; the mother of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, was a dancer. Aristodemus, a famous dancer of Athens, at one time was sent to the court of Philip of Macedon as ambassador.

This chapter must not be understood as trying to represent that Athenian civil life was given over to an endless round of choreographic celebration; nor have the later chapters concerning the courts of the Louis any intent to picture a set of beings whose minds were devoted to dancing to the exclusion of all else. What is intended, however, is to call attention to an important omission in the writings of the general historian, who never has given dancing its due proportion of consideration as a force in those and other high civilisations. Literature and the graphic arts followed the coming of civilisation, and are among its results; they have been analysed with all degrees of profundity. The dance is, undoubtedly, among the causes of Greek vigour of mind and body; but it is of far less concern to the average historical writer than any disputed date. The microscopist charting the pores of the skin knows nothing of the beauty of the figure. And the grammarian’s myopic search for eccentricities of verb-forms atrophies his ability to perceive the qualities of literature, until finally he will try to convince his listeners that literary quality is, after all, a subject for the attention of smaller minds.

Greek philosophy, mathematics, political and military science are part of the structure of Occidental society—a good and useful part. Had the importance of the dance been appreciated—had proper authority recognised its inherent part in the Greek social organism—who can say how much dulness, ugliness and sickliness of body and spirit the world might have escaped? Folk-dancing has been introduced into the public schools of certain cities; a movement too new to be judged. Let it be neither praised nor censured until results have had time to assert themselves. If at the end of ten years the children who have danced their quota of minutes per day do not excel in freedom from nervous abnormalities, the children who have not danced; if they fail to manifest a better co-ordination of mind and body, and a superior power of receiving and acting upon suggestion—then let public school dancing be abolished as of no value beyond amusement and exercise.

Of recent years a good deal of ingenuity has gone into study of the dances of classic Greece, with view to their re-creation. From paintings on vases, bas-reliefs and the Tanagra statuettes has been gathered a general idea of the character of Greek movement. The results have been pleasing, and in Miss Duncan’s case radical, as an influence on contemporary choreographic art. But, beautiful and descriptive as they are, the plastic representations are of scattered poses from dances not as a rule identified. If, therefore, present-day re-creations often fail to show the flights of cumulative interest common in modern ballet, Spanish and Slavonic work, the shortcoming is due at least in part to the lack of explicit records of sequences of step, movement and pantomimic symbol. For it is impossible to believe that the dance composers of the age of Pericles did not equal their successors, even as their contemporaries in the fields of sculpture, architecture and poetry left work never yet excelled.

Of the names and motives of dances the record seems to be pretty complete. Sacred, military and profane are the general categories into which the very numerous Greek dances divide themselves. The sacred group falls into four classes: the Emmeleia, the Hyporchema, the Gymnopædia, and the Endymatia. Of these the two latter seem to have been coloured by sentiments more or less apart from the purely religious.

Of the Emmeleia, Plato records that some had the character of gentleness, gravity and nobility suitable to the sentiments by which a mortal should be permeated when he invokes the gods. Others were of heroic or tragic aspect, emphasising majesty and strength. A characteristic of this group was its performance without accompaniment of chorus or voice. The origin of the group is attributed to Orpheus, as a fruit of his memories of Colchis and Saïs.

The Hyporchema, equally religious, were distinguished by their use of choral accompaniment. In some cases it might be more accurate to say that the dances were an accompaniment to recited poetry; for in very early times the dances seem to have been employed to personify, or materialise, the abstractions of poetic metaphor. Both men and women engaged in dances of this group, and its plane was of lofty dignity. In it were the oldest dances of Greece, besides some composed by the poet Pindar.

The Gymnopædia were more or less dedicated to the worship of Apollo, and were especially cultivated in Arcadia. As the name implies, the performers were nude—youths wearing chaplets of palm. A material character seems to have marked this group: Athenæus finds in it points of identity with the Anapale, which is known to have been a pantomimic representation of combat.

The Endymatia crossed the border-line between the sacred and profane. They were brightly costumed dances, and in demand for general entertainment. In connection with this group we find the first allusion to the highly modern institution of dancers’ “private engagements”—professionals aiding in the entertainment of dinner-parties. The Greek and Roman custom of seeing dancers instead of listening to after-dinner speeches is too well known to justify more than a mention.

These four groups are the fundamentals from which numberless other dances were derived, to be variously dedicated to gods, public events, abstract qualities, crops, and fighting. If no particular occasion offered, people would dance for the good reason that they felt like it, as Neapolitans dance the Tarantella to-day. To the

glory of Bacchus were the Dionysia; the Iambic was sacred to Mars, the Caryatis, a dance symbolising innocence, and danced nude, to Diana. Hercules, Theseus, the daughters of Jupiter, Castor and Pollux were so honoured—each dance having its special identification of movement, meaning or costume.

Semirelated to the religious group were the dances of mourning. Unlike certain modern dances of the same intent, these are not recorded as having been primarily an individual’s pantomimic dance representing qualities of the deceased, or illustrating his relations during life with friends and family; although there was a time in which the cortège was headed by an individual dressed in the clothes of the deceased, imitating his virtues and sometimes also his failings. Regularly, however, the dancing was strictly ritualistic, forming a solemn decorative concomitant of the vocal and instrumental music. (At what point in his evolution did the Occidental determine that his ritualistic expressions should be directed almost exclusively to the ear?) A corps of fifteen girls danced before the funeral car, which was surrounded by a band of youths. Naturally the brilliancy of the function was more or less proportionate to the station and estate of the departed.

On dances of war the Greeks relied as an important element in the soldier’s training. In their pantomime the veteran lived over the moments of combat, while his children and even his wife caught anew the spirit of Hellenic arms.

Plutarch wrote: “The military dance was an indefinable stimulus which inflamed courage and gave strength to persevere in the paths of honour and valour.” It is still known that a body of men moving in step feel fatigue distinctly less than when walking out of step. One of the things learned by the long-distance runner, the wood-cutter, or any other performer of continued work, is the importance of establishing as quickly as possible a regular rhythmic relation between the separate parts of a complete movement, including the intake and expulsion of breath among those parts. Such a rhythm once established, movement succeeds movement with something like momentum; the several steps, or blows of the axe, do not each require a separate effort of the will. Something of this was Plutarch’s “indefinable stimulus.”

Apart from efficiency of the individual, experience has shown that a command moving “in time” is unified in the fullest sense, with each soldier more or less perfectly proof against any impulse at variance with the esprit de corps. To weld a number of men ever more closely into the condition of a military unit is one of the purposes of drill. Drill is in great part a matter of keeping in step. The Greeks carried to a high pitch the unification of a military body in respect to all the movements of attack and defence. History repeatedly records the demoralisation of the enemy, carried by the assaults of the perfectly organised Greek fighting bodies. But undoubtedly an important value of the study for perfection of corps unity was the disciplinary effect on the Greek soldier himself.

As a means toward such perfection, Greek law prescribed dancing for the soldier. An obvious benefit from his practice of the art was the advantage due to mere muscular exercise; and that in itself is no small thing when the dance is performed in full armour, as the Greek soldier performed it.

Authorities classify the military dances as Pyrrhic and Memphitic; but the division seems hardly essential, since the meagre technical descriptions draw no distinct line between the two groups. In both, performers carried sword or spear and shield. The movements brought in the manœuvres of individual combat—cutting and thrusting, parrying, dodging and stooping. That they might be carried to a degree of realism is indicated in a description by Xenophon. At the end of a mimic combat between two Thracians, at the conclusion of which the victor sang a song of victory and possessed himself of the vanquished man’s weapons, the spectators cried out with emotion, believing that the fallen man was killed.

Of the words “Pyrrhic” and “Memphitic,” the latter seems to connote a performance less insistent on the element of combat. To Minerva is credited the origin of the Memphitic group, legend having it that the goddess of wisdom composed these dances to celebrate the defeat of the Titans. The usual accompaniment was the flute, according with the idea of comparative tranquillity. Both styles were danced by women; special fame for proficiency was given to the vigorous daughters of Sparta, Argos, and Arcadia, and to the Amazons.

Pantomime was important in most Greek dances. Greek writers interested themselves in an effort to trace pantomime to its origin; but they were not very successful, because they went no further back than the demigods. Whereas sign-talk, if inference may be drawn from savages, antedates spoken language—which is beside the point of the present sketch.

Pantomime artists of Greece were of various ranks, according to the plane of thought represented in their work. Ethologues represented moralities, or [Greek: upotheses]; they “depicted the emotions and the conduct of man so faithfully, that their art served as a rigorous censorship and taught useful lessons,” writes De l’Aulnaye, in De la Saltation Théâtrale. They were not only artists, but philosophers of a moral standard of the utmost height and purity: the poems of one of them, Sophron of Syracuse, were among the writings kept at hand by Plato during his last hours. [Greek: Thumelikoi] were pantomimists of lesser rank, whose work was principally comedy of a farcical nature—though the word seems to have the primitive meaning of “chorister.”

Rich in scope was the Greek stage; and, until later days, generally high in plane. For its effects it drew upon poetry, music, dancing, grouping and posing. Little is known of the music; re-creations of it (how authoritative the authors do not know) are simple and melodious, with no attempt at grandeur. But in the other departments, what veritable gods in collaboration! Euripides, Aristophanes, and Æschylus are of those who supplied texts. Sculptors whose works are no less perishable gave their knowledge to grouping and posing. Of the merit of the performers there is no adequate record, for lack, among other things, of an explicit choreographic terminology. (This deficiency was first made up in the French language, after the organisation of the National Academy of Music and Dancing, in the seventeenth century.) What is known, however, is that dancing was considered a proper medium of expression of great motives, and that great-minded artists chose it as a career; not in spite of a public condescension to it, but with the support of a profound public respect.

Accuracy of rhythm is of an importance obvious to grades of intelligence far below that of the Greeks. They laid stress no less on what may be called rhythmic quality than on mere emphasis of tempo. A time-marker was provided with an assortment of sandals soled with metal or wood of various thicknesses; by means of these he produced sounds consistent with the changing sentiments of the action. (Compare the modes of getting varied sounds from castanets, in chapter on Spanish dancing.) Castanets, too, were used in Greece, essentially the same as those of Spain to-day; also flat sticks in pairs, like clappers, but which unlike clappers were gripped between the thumb and fingers. Little cymbals on the dancers’ hands sometimes added their voice, and the tambourine was popular. The variety of these time-marking instruments indicates knowledge of the many effects attainable by tempo alone. Indeed a reading of the poets emphasises this: their selection of words for sound as well as meaning will force even a mediocre reader into an observance of the author’s intention of ritard and accelerando, legato and staccato, emphasis and climax. Associated with ballet production, as the ablest poets were, it may be taken as assured that the devices of tempo were made familiar to dancers—unless it was the dance that taught the metre to the poets.

Masks were worn to identify character; but their primary function appears to have been the concealment of a sound-magnifying device to carry the voice through the great spaces of out-door theatres. Women’s parts in the ballets were played by men at least frequently; whether the reverse was a conspicuous exception is also uncertain. Both usages were destined to survive in pantomime through centuries. Objection to the mask always was overruled by authority; the Greek play was such an irreproachable organism that deviation from its accepted formulas was deemed an impious and dangerous heresy. In the eighteenth century a premier danseur’s absence put a French ballet director temporarily at the mercy of the second dancer, a young radical, who refused to “go on” wearing a mask.[A] Not until then was the mask tradition disturbed.

[A] See also page 101.

Though exact data of the steps of popular dances are lacking, literary allusions record dance names and general character in great number. A complete catalogue of them would offer little inspiration to the lay student or the professional; no more than a hint of their broad scope is necessary. Dances suggesting the life of animals were plentiful. Some were underlaid with a symbolic significance, as that of the crane, the bird’s confused wanderings representing the efforts of Theseus to find his way out of the labyrinth, the legend in its turn probably having some relation to life and the tricks it plays on its possessors. The fox was a favourite subject, and the lion was not overlooked. Though the author of Chanticler may have been the first to avail himself of the grotesqueries of poultry, the Greeks danced owls and vultures. Similar to the Oriental Danse du Ventre was the Kolia, probably brought across from Egypt. Another suggestion of North Africa was known in Greek language as the Dance of Spilled Meal—what more reasonable than to infer that it was the same in scheme as the Flour Dance of present-day Algeria? The flour or meal that identifies this performance is spread on the floor, and a more or less involved design traced in it. What follows is interesting chiefly as a test of a species of virtuosity: the dancer’s object is, in her successive turns across and about the design, to plant her feet always within the same spaces, the loose meal exposing any failure. Rapidity of tempo and involution of step may raise the difficulties to a point beyond the reach of any but the most skilful. The children’s game of Hop-scotch is a degenerated kinsman of the dance in and over a design.

There were dances of satyrs and goats, nymphs, monkeys, gods and goddesses, flowers, grapes and the wine-press. Combat was rendered into poetry in the Spear Dance, the Fight with the Shadow ([Greek: skiamachia]), the fights with shields, with swords. There were “rounds,” performed by an indefinite number of people joining hands in a ring; traces of these are said to survive as peasant dances of the Greece of to-day. There were solos, pas de deux and pas de quatre. Pythagoras made a period of dancing a part of the daily routine of his pupils, Hymeneia were danced to help celebrate a well-conducted wedding. Prayers, sacrifices and funerals, as stated before, were incomplete without their several and special dances.

Movement no less than speech is a vehicle for satire, wit, sensuality and indecency. Theophrastus, with the intent of showing the degree of shamelessness to which erring humanity may fall, tells of a man who performed a dance called the Cordax without the excuse of being drunk at the time of the deed. Covering a wide range of light motives was the Sikinnis, the word being applied both to a certain dance and to a form of satirical mimo-drama. In the latter sense it burlesqued the politics, philosophy and drama of the day. As all peoples divide themselves into masses and classes on lines of taste as well as of money, so also eventually the Athenians. In the hands of the Athens rabble—catered to perhaps by ancestors of certain twentieth-century managers—the Sikinnis, as a satire, fell into the slough of vulgarity.

As a dance it may be thought of as a favourite of that Alcibiades type of youth in whom education has not depressed Arcadian frivolity. How such a one vexed the solemnity of a court is the subject of an anecdote compiled by Herodotus. Clisthenes, king of Sicyon, in order to marry his daughter to the greatest advantage, decided to settle the selection of her husband by competition. The invitation met with due interest on the

part of the rich and the great. Suitors came from far and near, among them two from Athens. An ominous circumstance, for “Attic salt” was out of the same barrel as the “sal de Andalucia” of to-day; both have the record of becoming operative immediately on exposure to any air of oversolemnity.

After days of regal festivity, Clisthenes dedicated a hecatomb to the gods, gave a final banquet, and announced that the suitor-selecting competition would be along the lines of music and poetry. When it came to the turn of Hippoclides, one of the two Athenians, he asked that a table be brought in. On this he mounted, stood on his hands, and traced the figures of a Sikinnis in the air with his feet!

Until the king’s temper was quite gone, the performance was received in silence. Herodotus supposed that Hippoclides interpreted the silence as encouragement; but Herodotus very clearly did not know that kind of boy. The polished though inverted youth on the table was estimating the horror among his worthy spectators, and luxuriating.

Greece, with her fine simplicity of thought, furnished the pattern on which was cut the civilisation of early Rome; Greek art, the concrete expression of her lofty thought, furnished Rome a model. Which model Rome followed until loot and tribute provided her with means to express the taste that was her own.

CHAPTER II
DANCING IN ROME

AN art that achieves beauty by means of the grace of simple lines, elegance of proportion and other simple resources of composition, is the art of a vigorous nation. Such an art scorns florid treatment, surface realism, triviality; and such an art was that of early Rome. It had that something clumsily called semiasceticism, that attaches to dignity.

A national art quality exists, as is axiomatic, upon a basis and by virtue of a corresponding public state of mind; each influencing the other, but the public state of mind being the force that shapes the art, rather than the reverse. The spirit of simplicity dominated Greece through many centuries of her grandeur. In Rome it endured until Rome grew rich. Its coexistence in the case of the two peoples was no more than a coincidence; they arrived at their common simplicity through wholly different processes.

In Greece, beauty was understood. Action and adornment were restrained because their value was found to be multiplied by sparing use; because, too, any excess of them detracted from the great qualities of line and proportion. In Greece, moreover, beauty dissociated from subject or sentiment could always find an appreciative reception; the Hellenic mind loved beauty for its own sake. And that is the cause of the reserve that governs the best Greek art.

Early Rome, too, instilled into her children the spirit of simplicity. Not, however, with any understanding of the relation of simplicity to beauty and dignity. War and lust for conquest made the early Roman stern; and simplicity, attached to a very real asceticism, was thrust upon him by the uncompromising hand of poverty. But, after a few centuries of fattening on loot and tribute, what of Rome? Stupidity, degeneracy and vulgarity.

Loot and tribute! In respect to riches both material and mental, other peoples’ contributions to Rome’s destiny were of a degree of importance sometimes underrated. Her monumental physical structure was built from taxes gathered by the mailed hand. In respect to her thought, expressed in essays, poems, orations, letters, commentaries or whatsoever other form, the extent of other nations’ contribution to Rome’s apparent originality is, at first glance, less evident. Upon Greek foundations of narrative structure, metre, and form in general, Roman writings are built, Romanised though they be in subject-matter—but Rome’s sterility of invention in that field is suited rather to the discussion of literary men than of dance-lovers.

But sculpture is pertinent. The first so-called Roman art was accomplished by carving Roman faces upon thickened figures in Greek poses, executing them in Greek technique of modelling, and naming them Roman gods and senators. Later the Greek simplicity of modelling was discarded; to replace it there was achieved an ostentatious mediocrity. The Pompeian frescoes? The good ones were painted by Greeks, brought across for the purpose. And the vivacious little statues found in Pompeii express the same artistically witty point of view.

In the field of material gain and convenience Rome’s contribution to the world is not to be questioned. But water-supply, paving, land laws and fortifications are not related to questions of taste. It is Roman taste of which one tries to form a conception, in order to explain, at least in part, the disappointing history of dancing under the Cæsars. And the mere direction of attention to Rome’s relation to the arts anticipates the story of her treatment of the dance, leaving only details to be told.

First in chronology is found the dancing symbolical of war. Then comes a simple religious choreography, under the Salic priests, supplementing the ritual of sacrifice. As time goes on Greek dances are transplanted, with the degree of success to be expected among a race whose minds, though active, are pleased only by material power, gain, and ostentation: by a process of atrophy following non-appreciation, the symbolism disappears from symbolic dances and the ideal of beauty from the purely beautiful dances. They became at best a display of agility to amuse rustics. More generally they fell into the service of sex allurement; not the suggestive merely, nor the provocative, but unbridled depiction of what should not be revealed and of things that should not exist. This condition of affairs is more than hinted in works of some of the much-read Latin writers, stated by archæologists, and confirmed by certain Pompeian statues.

Such offences, despite the resentment they arouse in the feelings of any naturally constituted person, might be partially pardoned by the dance-lover if they contributed anything to the dance. But absolutely they do not. There is latent drama and good drama in sex relationships; but not one accent of its valid expression can be traced to dances of obscenity. The dancer who gives himself over to obscenity loses, every time, the things that made him a dancer: form, truth and beauty of movement and posture. Where the art of dancing is appreciated, artists avoid obscene suggestion. Where it is not, many are forced to it in order to make a living. However, even where the art is appreciated, obscenity furnishes the incompetent a means of pretence of an artist’s career; for obscenity is sure of a mixed following of rabblement, some in rags and some in velvet.

Among the Romans themselves, actual participation in the dance was not popular. Propriety forbade so close an association with an art disfigured and dirtied, the Roman reviling as unclean the image soiled by his own hand. From Spain, Greece and Syria people were brought to dance before gourmands and wasters, degraded to the level of their patrons’ appreciation, and discarded when they had exhausted the scope of novelties suitable to the demand. Several centuries of Roman employment of dancers contributed not one step, gesture or expression to the art; the plastic and graphic records show only that which is Greek, or, on the other hand inane, vulgar, or degenerate. To the latter levels sank the Ludiones and the Saturnalia; instituted as religious celebrations, ending as orgies.

It is vaguely asserted that the Roman stage amplified the Greek scope of pantomime. And, notwithstanding the many reasons to distrust such a statement, there were two artists whose work may have been of a class to justify it. They were Pylades and Bathyllus, natives respectively of Silicia and Alexandria. Their names live in the impression they produced. Of the character of their work it is impossible to learn anything explicit; “softly dancing Bathyllus” is as concrete a reference as anything to be found about them in writings of their period. So it is impossible to know whether their great popularity was due to merit, or to ingenious compliance with the taste of their adopted city. Their record, therefore, must stand as the story of a furor, and not necessarily as that of artistic achievement.

“The rivalries of Pylades and Bathyllus occupied the Romans as much as the gravest affairs of state. Every Roman was a Bathyllian or a Pyladian,” De l’Aulnaye writes. Vuillier presents a more graphic image of their hold on public attention: “Their theatrical supporters, clad in different liveries, used to fight in the streets, and bloody brawls were frequent throughout the city.” For the endless quarrelling and intriguing between the two, Pylades was once taken to task by the emperor. The answer was that of a lofty artist or a publicity-seeking gallery-player, let him decide who can: “Cæsar, it is well for you that the people are occupied with our quarrels; their attention is in that way diverted from your actions.”

His arrogance directed itself impartially toward ruler and subject. Representing the madness of Hercules—he combined pantomime with dancing—he shot arrows into the audience. Octavius being present on such an occasion refrained from any expression of disapproval. Was he afraid of offending his people by so much as an implied criticism of their favourite? It is not unlikely. When, unable to control his impatience with Pylades’ unsettling influence, the emperor banished him, a revocation of the decree was made imperative by signs of a popular insurrection!

Not the least of the instances of Pyladian insolence was his interruption of the action of a play to scold his audience. During a performance of Hercules some one complained loudly that the movement was extravagant. Pylades tore off his mask and shouted back, “I am representing a madman, you fools!”

So much for Pylades and Bathyllus. The jealous, hypertemperamental artist who allows nothing to interfere with the effect of the work to which he is consecrated sometimes falls into eccentricities of conduct. Such eccentricities are copied to admiration by impudent incompetents; and, contrary to P. T. Barnum’s aphorism, some of them do “fool all the people all the time”—especially if those people themselves lack the clear vision of simplicity. Impudence to emperors and “shooting up” audiences may mean the utmost of either sincerity or hypocrisy; choice of opinion is free. Certainly the Roman Empire’s political intrigues reveal a profound and practical knowledge of the science of publicity; it is an ancient profession.

Artists, advertisers or both, it matters not at all, Pylades and Bathyllus failed to lift dancing from the mire. The self-styled “Eternal City,” the Rome of the Cæsars, held it down to her level till her rotted hands could cling no longer, yet treated it from first to last with scorn. Horace, who never allowed his wit to lead him into danger of offending any except those without influence on his patron Mæcenas, repeatedly uses association with dancers as a synonym of disreputability. Cicero takes a fling at the art; Sallust attacks a lady for dancing with a degree of skill unbecoming a virtuous woman. With the logic of a father who locked up his children so that they should not teach bad manners to their parents, successive emperors banished dancers for doing their work according to the taste of their patrons.

Rome’s inability to move her imagination on a high plane had decayed her, muscle, brain and bone; wealth slipped away, and all of her that was respected was her remote past. In the meantime she had imposed upon Europe her laws and prejudices. Ears trained to credulous attention were those that heard her complaint of the depravity of dancing—a complaint given colour by the obscenity of the only secular dancing known to Europeans (outside of Spain) in the time of the empire’s decadence. With such a combined force of misrepresentation against it, its restoration to a proper position among the great arts was destined to be postponed a thousand years. To this day there persists to its injury an echo of its early defamation.

Yet in the hour of humiliation, the dance gained the respect of the only earthly power that might reasonably hope, in such an extremity, to save it from a miserable end. It was taken under the protection of the Christian Church.

CHAPTER III
THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE

CHRISTIANITY, like the religions of the Hebrews of old and the Greeks, employed dancing as an important part of the ritual of worship. During the greater part of a thousand years, the relation was not violently disturbed; the ballet d’action served in the mass before the altar, and in the “moralities” that long held favour as an agency of spiritual instruction. A clerical it was who eventually composed and staged the great pantomime which the many authorities place as the first modern ballet.

European society, slowly emerging from the mire of Roman manners, at length found itself hungry for beauty, and capable of intelligent use of pearls. The ballet masque was evolved, and long remained the supremely brilliant feature of noble festivities. Polite society, headed by a king, was the founder of the ballet as it is now known. But this was in modern times. The institution that had conserved choreography through the brutishness of the Dark Ages was the Church.

To one Father Menestrier is owed a compilation of data about dancing, especially in relation to religion. The good father was a Jesuit living in the seventeenth century, his book having been written about 1682. While his own comments are not always contributory to exact knowledge of choreographic detail, the facts he collected from a great variety of sources are important and interesting. In the following passage he definitely attaches dancing to the ritual:

“Divine service was composed of psalms, hymns and canticles, because men sang and danced the praises of God, as they read His oracles in those extracts of the Old and New Testaments which we still know under the name of Lessons. The place in which these acts of worship were offered to God was called the choir, just as those portions of comedies and tragedies in which dancing and singing combined to make up the interludes were called choruses. Prelates were called in the Latin tongue, Præsules a Præsiliendo, because in the choir they took that part in the praises of God which he who led the dances, and was called by the Greeks Choregus, took in the public games.”

The word “præsul” was the designation of the chief priest of the Salii, of early Rome.

Quoting from St. Basil’s Epistle to St. Gregory, Menestrier writes further: “What could be more blessed than to imitate on earth the rhythm of angels?” (“Quid itaque beatius esse poterit quam in terra tripudia Angelorum imitari?”) To this he adds: “Philosophers have also existed who believed that these spirits had no other means of communication among themselves but signs and movements arranged after the manner of dances. After this we need not be surprised that Virgil, in the sixth book of the Æneid, makes the spirits dance in the Elysian fields.”

The Emperor Julian was reproved by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, not for dancing, but for the kind of dances with which he occupied himself. “If you are fond of dancing,” said the saint, “if your inclination leads you to these festivals that you appear to love so passionately, dance as much as you will; I consent. But why revive before our eyes the dissolute dances of the barbarous Herodias and the Pagans? Rather perform the dances of King David before the Ark; dance to the honour of God. Such exercises of peace and piety are worthy of an emperor and a Christian.”

No more need be quoted to explain the adoption of dancing by the Church, and the regard in which it was held by the reverend fathers. By some of them, that is. Others held it in different estimation. Odon, Bishop of Paris, proscribed dancing in the twelfth century. Notwithstanding, the fifteenth and sixteenth see in Spain the so-called Villancicos de Navidad (a choreographic celebration of the birth of Christ) and the dances of the Seises, then as now performed in the Cathedral of Seville. The latter were authorised in 1439 by a Bull of Pope Eugenius IV. Their discontinuance was ordered by Don Jayme de Palafox, Archbishop of Seville. To settle the matter the Seises were taken to Rome and their dances shown to the Pope, who as a consequence approved their continuance.

France, too, declined to take the proscription seriously, as almost numberless documents and images attest. In 1584 the Canon of Langres, by name Jehan Tabourot, otherwise Thoinet Arbeau, wrote (in his seventieth year) his work called Orchesographie. He refers cheerfully to opposition: “We practice such merrymaking on days of wedding celebrations, and of the solemnities of the feasts of our Church, even though the reformers abhor such things; but in this matter they deserve to be treated like some hind-quarter of goat put into dough without lard.” (“Mais ils mériteroient d’y être traictez de quelque gigot de bouc mis en paste sans lard.”) Not an infelicitous metaphor, after inquiry reveals that dough without lard bakes to the hardness of concrete, so that the aid of a hammer is necessary to crack the shell. What more satisfying disposal of dissenters from one’s own opinions?

Proofs of the dance’s tenacious inclination to embody itself in the worship of the vital new religion are many. Records of efforts to establish it are mingled with those of counter-efforts to expel it; on the one side a belief that worship is an emotional expression, on the other a leaning toward logic. Whether religious uplift is a matter of emotion or of reason is a question perhaps not wholly settled yet. Certainly the mediæval writers recorded little to reflect a spirit of compromise—no concession that ritual or logic might advantageously be chosen with some reference to the psychology of the individual. At the suggestion of the Council of Toledo, a ritual rich in sacred choreography was composed by Saint Isidore, archbishop of Seville in the seventh century. Another century produced two occurrences of choreographic importance at about the same moment: from Pope Zacharias, a prohibition of dancing; from the Moorish invasion, preservation of the seven churches of Toledo. Of the two influences, the latter was deemed paramount. In the seven churches a mass known as the Mozarabe was established, continued in all of them through the generations of Moorish occupancy of the city, and is still celebrated daily in the cathedral. In the other six churches it was discontinued toward the middle of the nineteenth century. With accompaniment of the tambourine, whose resonance Saint Isidore characterised as “the half of melody,” the service included solemn dancing of the style of the Saraband and the Pavane. Whether or not the choreographic features are still retained, the authors are unable to say.

Writing in 1731 a Discourse on Comedy, Father Pierre le Brun contributes the information: “ ... that while the preachers were saying their mass, buffoons, histrions, players of instruments and different other farceurs were made to come; this disorder is severely forbidden, as well as dances and the presentation of spectacles in the churches and cemeteries. The same prohibition is found in the synodic statutes of the diocese of Soissons, printed in that city in 1561. Dances were sometimes performed before the church, and there was not less objection made against the practice at that time.... Meanwhile it is disgracefully tolerated in some of the country parishes.”

These “spectacles” were the vehicle that carried the mimetic ballet through the Dark Ages from Rome’s licentious theatre and banquet hall to the stately salon of the Medici. Under the name of “moralities” they survive to this day in convents, though clipped as to their choreographic wings. Everyman, played a few years ago by Ben Greet and his company, was a re-creation of some of the elements of the early morality, plus speech and minus dancing. Love, aspiration, reverence, envy, fear, remorse and various other elemental abstractions that inhabit the human soul were the source of most of the morality’s characters; the dramatic action consisted—usually if not always—in a simple treatment of the influences wrought by the varied forces on the destiny of a man. The man, no more and no less than the abstract qualities, was represented by an actor. Occurrences of man’s life, both earthly and subsequent, were equally available as dramatic material. Apostles, angels and even God were of frequent representation.

A start was made in a direction destined to lead to the development of scenery. Whereas the Greek drama established the setting by means of spoken words (and the Roman apparently made no exception to the same practice), the early morality specified the setting by means of words or crude symbols marked on objects, the back wall, and other available surfaces: “forest,” “front of house,” “Heaven,” “street,” or whatever was necessary. Elaboration by degrees brought these primitive suggestions up to the point of real scenery, with practical mechanical devices for sensational entrances.

One must infer that the semiconstant opposition of the Church to these representations was necessitated by occasional forgetfulness of their sacred character. The pagan gods persistently lingered among the dramatis personæ, undismayed by the fact that they were dead, and unshamed by the treatment their followers had accorded Christianity. Performers no less than authors were sometimes guilty of ribaldry ranging from the frivolous to the impious. “A canon playing entirely nude the rôle of Christ, and a clerk representing Saint Francis in a scene of seduction, undressed in the same manner, were not at all spectacles of which the originators of the genre had dreamed.”

Yet the good clearly outweighed the bad. And although repeatedly prohibited, no mention is found of dancing being severely penalised. Now at the altar and again at the feast it serves, in whatever capacity is required of it, until at length it comes into prominent connection with the strolling ballet.

For the morality play—or mystery, as it is otherwise known—becomes an elaborate affair, with casts and mechanical and scenic effects, on such a scale that it must collect more coppers than one town affords, in order to recover the initial expense of the production. On a scale sufficient to make an impression on its times was the spectacle designed to celebrate the canonisation of Carlo Borroméo, at Lisbon in 1610. In the words of Vuillier: “A ship, bearing a statue of St. Carlo, advanced toward Lisbon, as though to take possession of the soil of Portugal, and all the ships in the harbour went out to meet it. St. Anthony of Padua and St. Vincent, patrons of the town, received the newcomer, amid salvoes of artillery from forts and vessels. On his disembarkation, St. Carlo Borroméo was received by the clergy and carried in a procession in which figured four enormous chariots. The first represented Fame, the second the city of Milan, the third Portugal, and the fourth the Church. Each religious body and each brotherhood in the procession carried its patron saint upon a richly decorated litter.

“The statue of St. Carlo Borroméo was enriched with jewels of enormous value, and each saint was decorated with rich ornaments. It is estimated that the value of the jewelry that bedecked these images was not less than four millions of francs (£160,000).

“Between each chariot, bands of dancers enacted various scenes. In Portugal, at that period, processions and religious ceremonies would have been incomplete if they had not been accompanied by dancing in token of joy.

“In order to add brilliancy to these celebrations, tall gilded masts, decorated with crowns and many-coloured banners, were erected at the doors of the churches and along the route of the choreographic procession. These masts also served to show the points at which the procession should halt, for the dancers to perform the principal scenes of their ballet.”

A century and a half before this—in 1462—King René of Provence had organised an entertainment, at once religious and social, given on the eve of Corpus Christi. The word “entremet” was applied to the allegorical scenes, denoting “interlude,” like the Italian “intermezzo.” Other components of the representation were combats and dances. The affair as a whole was a mixture of the sacred and profane to which any idea of unity was completely alien: Fame on a winged horse; burlesque representations of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, riding donkeys (why represented, no one knows—but during three centuries the two were travestied in Corpus Christi processions); Mars and Minerva, Pan and Syrinx, Pluto and Proserpine, fauns, dryads and tritons dancing to drums, fifes and castanets; Jupiter, Juno, Venus and Love following in a chariot. The three Fates, King Herod persecuted by devils, more devils pursuing a soul, it in turn protected by a guardian angel; Jews dancing around a golden calf; the Queen of Sheba and suite; Magi following a star hung at the end of a pole; the Massacre of the Innocents; Christ and the Apostles—all were scattered through and among the groups of legendary beings of Greece. More dancers, a detachment of soldiers, and Death with a scythe following after all others, approximately completed the fantastic catalogue.

The entertainment as a whole was called by the king the Lou Gué. A number of the French popular dance airs that lasted for centuries are said to date back to it. Tradition credits the king with the composition of the work in all its branches—conception, ballets, music and all.

The childish lack of theme, or scheme, bars the Lou Gué and the entertainments that followed from any comparison with a ballet spectacle of later times, or of antiquity. But it bridged a gap to better things, kept the ballet in existence, and had the merit of being amusing. In eccentricity it may well be coupled with the celebration of the wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of England; “fabulous spectacles imprinted with a savage gallantry,” as M. Brussel puts it. The procession of the latter affair included a leopard riding a unicorn, a dwarf on a gigantic lion, and a dromedary bearing panniers of birds, “strangely painted as though they came from India,” that were released among the company.

The fête organised by Bergonzio de Botta in 1489, showed a step in the direction of the ballet’s destined progress. The occasion was the marriage of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, with Isabel of Aragon. This fête employed the dance, music, poetry and pantomime in the adornment of a banquet; and the whole entertainment was unified with ingenious consistency. The description of it given by Castil-Blaze cannot be improved upon:

“The Amphitryon chose for his theatre a magnificent hall surrounded by a gallery, in which several bands of music had been stationed; an empty table occupied the middle. At the moment when the Duke and Duchess appeared, Jason and the Argonauts advanced proudly to the sound of martial music. They bore the Golden Fleece; this was the tablecloth, with which they covered the table, after having executed a stately dance, expressive of their admiration of so beautiful a princess, and of a sovereign so worthy to possess her. Next came Mercury, who related how he had been clever enough to trick Apollo, shepherd of Admetus, and rob him of a fat calf, which he ventured to present to the newly married pair, after having had it nobly trussed and prepared by the best cook on Olympus. While he was placing it upon the table, three quadrilles that followed him danced round the fatted calf, as the Hebrews had formerly capered round that of gold.

“Diana and her nymphs followed Mercury. It is unnecessary to say that a fanfare of hunting-horns heralded the entrance of Diana, and accompanied the dance of the nymphs.

“The music changed its character; lutes and flutes announced the approach of Orpheus. I would recall to the memory of those who might have forgotten it, that at that period they changed their instruments according to the varying expression of the music played. Each singer, each dancer, had his especial orchestra, which was arranged for him according to the sentiments intended to be expressed by his song or his dance. It was an excellent plan, and served to vary the symphonies; it announced the return of a character who had already appeared, and produced a varied succession of trumpets, of violins with their sharp notes, of the arpeggios of lutes, and of the soft melodies of flutes and reed pipes. The orchestrations of Monteverde prove that the composers at that time varied their instrumentation thus, and this particular artifice was not one of the least causes of the prodigious success of opera in the first years of its creation.

“But to return to the singer of Thrace, whom I left standing somewhat too long at the door. He appeared chanting the praises of the Duchess, and accompanying himself on a lyre.

“ ‘I wept,’ he went on, ‘long did I weep on the Apennine mount the death of the gentle Eurydice. I have heard of the union of two lovers worthy to live one for the other, and for the first time since my misfortune I have experienced a feeling of pleasure. My songs changed with the feelings of my heart. A crowd of birds fluttered down to listen to me; I seized these imprudent listeners, and I spitted them all to roast them for the most beautiful princess on earth, since Eurydice is no more.’

“A sound of brass instruments interrupted the bird-snaring virtuoso; Atalanta and Theseus, escorted by a brilliant and agile troop, represented a boar hunt by means of lively dances. It ended in the death of the boar of Calydon, which they offered to the young Duke, executing a triumphal ballet. Iris, in a chariot drawn by peacocks, followed by nymphs clad in light transparent gauze, appeared on one side, and laid on the table dishes of her own superb and delicate birds. Hebe, bearing nectar, appeared on the other side, accompanied by shepherds from Arcady, and by Vertumnus and Pomona, who presented iced creams and cheeses, peaches, apples, oranges and grapes. At the same moment the shade of the gastronomer Apicius rose from the earth. The illustrious professor came to inspect this splendid banquet, and to communicate his discoveries to the guests.

“This spectacle disappeared to give place to a great ballet of Tritons and Rivers laden with the most delicious fish. Crowned with parsley and watercress, these aquatic deities despoiled themselves of their headdresses to make a bed for the turbot, the trout, and the perch that they placed upon the table.

“I know not whether the epicures invited by the host were much amused by these ingenious ceremonies, and whether their tantalised stomachs did not cry out against all the pleasures offered to their eyes and ears; history does not enter into these details. Moreover, Bergonzio de Botta understood too well how to organise a feast not to have put some ballast into his guests in the shape of a copious luncheon, which might serve as a preface, or argument, an introduction if you will, to the dinner prepared by the gods, demigods, Nymphs, Tritons, Fauns and Dryads.

“This memorable repast was followed by a singular spectacle. It was inaugurated by Orpheus, who conducted Hymen and Cupids. The Graces presented Conjugal Fidelity, who offered herself to wait upon the princess. Semiramus, Helen, Phædra, Medea and Cleopatra interrupted the solo of Conjugal Fidelity by singing of their own lapses, and the delights of infidelity. Fidelity, indignant at such audacity, ordered these criminal queens to retire. The Cupids attacked them, pursuing them with their torches, and setting fire to the long veils that covered their heads. Something, clearly, was necessary to counterbalance this scene. Lucretia, Penelope, Thomyris, Judith, Portia and Sulpicia advanced, and laid at the feet of the duchess the palms of virtue they had won during their lives. As the graceful and modest dance of the matrons might have seemed a somewhat cold termination to so brilliant a fête, the author had recourse to Bacchus, Silenus and to the Satyrs, and their follies animated the end of the ballet.”

The entertainment made a sensation. It was at the time of the Renaissance; the Occidental mind was awakening after a thousand years of sleep, and craved employment. Taste was being reborn, along with mentality. The pleasures of contact between minds was being rediscovered; the institution of Polite Society was rapidly finding itself.

To attempt to repeat the Bergonzio de Botta entertainment would have been to invite comparisons; to surpass it in any point but magnitude would have been excessively difficult. Its influence on entertainments that followed directed itself toward the development of the masque, a form of musical pantomime that remained, through centuries, an indispensable adjunct of festal gatherings in the courts of the Continent and England. The characters in the De Botta production, it will be noted, were, with two or three exceptions, from Greek mythology. This was the culmination of a fashion that had been growing, and is fairly representative of the revival of learning then in progress. It was not until a few years ago that familiarity with classic tradition ceased to be considered a part of the education of a lady or gentleman. There is no reason to believe that the lack of such erudition makes one the less a lady or a gentleman; but its discontinuance is unfortunate for the pantomime ballet. In Greek mythology, both natural manifestations and mental attributes were personified. Not with the completeness of a catalogue, but enough to express a great many points by the mere presence of certain characters. Venus, Minerva, Diana; Dionysius, Orpheus, Apollo, Mercury—all were accepted symbols of certain human qualities. In relegating their acquaintance to the depository of cast-off mental furniture, people have failed to create new symbols to take the place of the old. Harlequin and Columbine we have, and a few others. But how many are the figures whose mere entrance, without the interruption of dramatic action, could be depended upon to introduce definite and recognisable ideas? Pantomime has to be explained on the programme nowadays; and as nobody gets to his seat until after the auditorium lights are down, the programme is unread and people complain that the characters lack meaning. Broadly, Modernism has devised for itself an education that teaches it to earn each day the cost of a thousand pleasures, but by which it is robbed of the power to enjoy any one of them.

Scattered through mediæval choreographic history are allusions to an employment of chivalry as subject-matter of pantomime. But the idea never seems to have taken root, as is natural enough, considering the relation between dancing and armour—and armour was worn by the unfortunate dancers chosen to represent knights. The dance of chivalry was not an influence, and is mentioned only as a choreographic curiosity.

Bergonzio de Botta’s great entertainment, as has been shown, led squarely up to the masque, one of the ballet’s immediate forerunners. Meantime the Church’s contribution to the art was no longer a matter of moralities for the edification of mediæval rustics; high dignitaries, proceeding partly under ecclesiastical inspiration and partly under tolerance, were evolving a choro-dramatic form that took no second place to the masque in preparing the way for the art that was to come. Sixteenth-century Rome and Florence saw “sacred representations” in which were utilised the Saltarello [see chapter on Italian dances], the Pavane, the Siciliana, la Gigue, the Gaillarde and la Moresca. The last was accompanied by heel-tappings, like many of the dances of Spain to-day. Its music survives in Monteverde’s opera Orfeo, written at the beginning of the seventeenth century; in other words, music was beginning to be worth while. More important than any other single acquisition, to say the least, was the alliance of some of the monarchs of form and colour to whom half the glory of the Renaissance is due. Of Ariosto’s Suppositi, presented in the Vatican in 1518, the decorations were by Raphael. Andrea del Sarto, Brunelleschi and Cecca enriched with their sacred figures the mimo-dramas played in Florence. In Milan, Leonardo da Vinci lent to the reality and beauty of the religious ballet the palette from which was painted the “Mona Lisa.” Furthermore, it is not to be supposed that these and other masters of line, colour and the drama of light were not called to the aid of ballet grouping and movement. The period leaves no record of a great ballet composer or director. It does leave reason to believe, nevertheless, that in grouping and evolution, as well as decoration, music and accessories, these sacred representations lacked nothing to entitle them to a respectable place in the annals of opera ballet. Steps were still primitive, but sufficient unto their day.

Authorities disagree as to which one of several performances is entitled to the recognition due the first presentation of modern ballet. As a matter of accuracy, any decision should be made only after considering exactly which of several species of modern ballet is meant. For the organisation of the first ballet spectacle conforming to the multiple standards of modern excellence, the honour seems to be deserved by Catherine de Medici. True to her family traditions, she took it as an expression of beauty for its own sake, and developed it in accordance with French genius for order and form, as is described in later pages. But the first production of opera ballet, in the sense of a divertissement or intermezzo composed to interpret sentiments of dramatic action that it precedes or follows, the consensus of authority attributes to a work of Cardinal Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. He composed and staged in Castel San Angelo a number of productions in which the ballet was important, during the latter part of the fifteenth century. Besides Pope Sixtus IV, Alexander VI and Leo X were strongly in sympathy with the movement to exalt choreography to its ancient and proper estate. The educated aristocracy of various Italian cities gave it support and protection. Important among these champions was Lorenzo de Medici, with his rare combination of means and scholarly understanding of the arts. Savonarola acidly charged him with softening the people by means of pagan spectacles, while Lorenzo went on adapting and composing.

The Jewish element of Italian society contributed its part to the new art’s development. At Mantua, where the Jews formed a numerous colony, they built a theatre on the models of antiquity. Productions were directed by Bernard Tasso, father of the author of Jerusalem Delivered. Torquato himself went in 1573 to produce La Pastorale, which was a feature of a celebration given on the Island of the Belvidere, near Ferrara.

The ballet entertainment was fashionable; no great event was complete without it as a supplement. The visit of the Duke of Anjou (the future Henry III) to Cracow was the occasion of a fête whose historic importance was the discovery of a genius in ballet arrangement, Baltarazini, otherwise known as Beaujoyeulx. Catherine de Medici sent for him to take charge of the choreographic entertainments of the French court, the Marshal de Brissac acting as intermediary. “Baltarazini dit Beaujoyeulx” had his first great opportunity in 1581, on the occasion of the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse. Le Ballet Comique de la Reine was the designation of the offering; it was an addition to the now growing list of tremendous successes. Full details are recorded in the journal of one L’Estoile, and in L’Art de la Danse by Jean Etienne Despréaux. To repeat them in full is neither necessary nor possible: the amiable L’Estoile in particular experiences all the delight of a simple soul surrounded by several days’ proceedings of which not a single detail is anything less than amazing. The lords and ladies appeared in a fresh costume every day, a new practice of whose extravagance L’Estoile writes with a mixture of awe and disapproval.

The story of Le Ballet Comique was the mixture of Old Testament story and mythology already familiar. Fountains, artificial fire and aquatic machines lent their several notes of richness and variety. Important from the point of view of the amateur of the ballet is a comment on the geometrical precision that governed the ballet’s groupings and corps movements: “d’une rectitude qu’ Archimède n’eut pas desavoué.” The true and modern note of form in grouping had been struck, and the standard of exactness set that was to become the backbone of the ballet of later centuries. As the first artistically logical relation of dancing to the sentiment of the whole work had been effected in the “sacred representations” of Italy, so Le Ballet Comique de la Reine seems to have been the first work of the kind to be produced under a modern (which is to say ancient Greek) understanding of the laws of harmony of line.

The performance lasted from ten o’clock in the evening until four in the morning. Estimates of its cost range from six hundred thousand to a million dollars (three to five million francs). Of tournaments, presents and numberless other items of the several days’ celebration the cost is reckoned apart from that of producing Le Ballet Comique. Apart from lavishness, there is interest in the fact that queen and princesses participated. They represented nereids and naiads.

England, meantime, was in nowise ignoring the example of Continental neighbours. Pantomimes she had under the names of “mysteries,” “dumb-shows” and “moralities”—religious, and melodramatic, and variously proportioned mixtures of both. They figure in the history of the English drama, as a source of plots for the early playwright. Though the translation of gesture into word filled a want felt by a part of the people, it subtracted nothing from the popularity of the masque. Henry VIII was its patron, and occasionally took part in it. Elizabeth carried it on. Francis Bacon, with whom love of stage representation was a passion, wrote plots—and dialogue where it was needed. Charles I brought it to a climax of taste and opulence. Inigo Jones—of whose high merits as an artist evidences are extant—designed decorations. Ben Jonson was accustomed to write the book for important productions. A notable work of collaboration of the two, with the addition of Lawes, the musical composer, was a masque presented at Whitehall by the Inns of Court in 1633. The cost is stated as £21,000. Although a ballet was perhaps the principal feature of the production, its composer is not named in the records. England’s failure to credit the original genius may or may not bear some relation to her sterility as a contributor to the dance. With support, both sentimental and material, she has been lavish—in the wake of other nations’ enthusiasms. Of invention she has given nothing of consequence. We therefore turn our attention again to France, where history was busy.

Henry IV was of a happy disposition; the dance in his reign was happy in motive, and healthy in growth. To give time to its practice none was too high in station or serious in mind. Sully, the philosopher, profiting by training given him by the king’s sister, played a part in one of the fêtes. The journal of L’Estoile mentions the production of eighty new ballets during the twenty-one years of the reign.

The nature of Louis XIII was taciturn; an influence that caused the ballet to oscillate between the sombre and the trivial. The monarch himself played “The

Demon of Fire” in La Delivrance de Renault, in 1617. Of Le Ballet de la Merlaison that he produced in 1635, he composed the dance music.

A whim of this reign is to the credit of the Duke of Nemours. To contrive a choreographic composition “docile to his rheumatism,” he composed in 1630 a Ballet of the Gouty. Meantime the dance was becoming frivolous, if not licentious. To rectify its shortcomings Richelieu applied himself—not to preaching damnations of dancing in general, but to the creation of an allegorical ballet of the sort he thought suitable. Quatre Monarchies Chrétiennes, played in 1635, is a result of his efforts; “full of pageantry the most opulent and morality the most orthodox,” in the words of Robert Brussel.

The regency of Anne of Austria developed nothing in particular; a delicate character enveloped the dance in conformity to the regent’s disposition and taste. But distinct progress was not destined to take place until the reign of Louis XIV, founder of the national ballet academy, perhaps the most helpful patron the dance ever had, and as devoutly enthusiastic an amateur performer as ever lived. He played prominent parts in ballet pantomimes to the number of twenty-six.

The date of the founding of the school, L’Académie Nationale de Musique et de la Danse, is 1661. From that time, through several decades, developments follow with extraordinary rapidity, and in so many different directions that it is impossible to follow them consecutively. Great performers begin to appear; artists whose work enraptures the public by grace of beauty alone, signifying that execution had been awakened. Mlles. Prévost and Sallé were contemporaries and rivals, each with a great and ardent supporting faction. Of the latter’s personality, it is of interest that she was a friend of Locke, author of Human Understanding. Her popularity is gauged by her pay for a single performance in London, namely, something over two hundred thousand francs. The amount probably includes the considerable quantity of gold and jewels thrown to the stage during the performance, for enthusiasm appears to have reached the point of mania. This admiration was won without very rapid movement, Sallé believing only in the majestic; or any high or very broad steps, which did not exist in the ballet in her time. To have stirred the public as she did without these resources argues a degree of grace and expressiveness less earthly than heavenly.

Yet her reputation was to be eclipsed by a girl who was studying during the very hours when Sallé was gathering laurels. Camargo was her name. She was born in Brussels, daughter of a dancing master. To natural grace and health she added an inordinate fondness for dancing, and eager facility for learning its technicalities. Parental vacillation and educational theories cripple many an artist’s career at its beginning. But Camargo’s father being a dancing teacher, there was just one thing for the child to do in the natural course of events, and that was to learn to dance.

At the age of ten, her art attracted the attention of a patroness, and she was sent to Paris to study under Mlle. Prévost. In the corps de ballet at the opera she bolted into public notice by joining impulse to accident. One Dumoulin, on a certain occasion, missed his musical cue for entrance to perform a solo. Mlle. Camargo leaped from her place and executed the solo to the delight of the audience. Introduced at court, her triumph so affected Prévost that she discontinued her pupil’s instruction. It was no longer needed. Camargo’s genius had carried her beyond the reach of jealousy, or even the active intrigue that her ex-teacher directed against her.

Her matrimonial and other social ventures were conducted with such an air of candour, and were of such a diversity that they are, above all, amusing. She was a much-petted personage at court, and an esteemed friend of the king. In general she was known “as a model of charity, modesty and good conduct.” She was given a maiden’s funeral.

Castil-Blaze writes of her: “She added to distinction and fire of execution a bewitching gaiety that was all her own. Her figure was very favourable to her talent: hands, feet, limbs, stature, all were perfect. But her face, though expressive, was not remarkably beautiful. And, as in the case of the famous harlequin, Dominique, her gaiety was a gaiety of the stage only. In private life she was sadness itself.”

In a technical sense she may be regarded as the first modern. Her work comprised all that constituted the ballet up to her time; to the resources that came to her as an artistic heritage she began a process of addition that was to be carried on by successors. She is credited with the invention of the entrechat, for instance; and here many readers will find themselves confronted by the need of some explanation of ballet technique as a means of intelligent discussion of the dancing of modern times. Before that chapter, however, it is not amiss to glance over the old dances from which the ballet, up to the foundation of the Academy in 1661, derived most of its steps.

The Gavotte, the Minuet, the Pavane, the Saraband, the Tordion, the Bourrée, the Passecaille, the Passepied, the Chaconne, the Volte, the Allemande, the Gaillarde, and the Courante—these were the dances whose measures were trod by courtiers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among those who have been moved to study these old dances during the past few years to the end of reconstructing them, no one is more fortunately equipped for the task than the only resident of America who has applied himself seriously to the subject, Mr. John Murray Anderson. He is at once a dancer, an educated man, and for years a devoted student of the social aspect of western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A period of months that he recently spent in the choreographic libraries of Europe, and in joint study with others similarly engaged, has resulted in the opportunity to see in America a fine and true representation of the old court steps. With Miss Margaret Crawford, Mr. Anderson posed for the accompanying photographs of the Gavotte, the Minuet, the Bourrée, and the Tordion. The groupings were selected with view to indicating the character of each dance. Collectively they give a good idea of the school of formality in which the French ballet was conceived, and from which it received its determining influences.

From the beginnings of time, people who give entertainments have followed a practice of employing performers of dances characteristic of various peoples. With appropriate costume, the danses caracteristiques give a synopsis, or essence, of the picturesque aspect of the people the dancer represents. Sixteenth-century nobility availed itself of the entertainment value of these folk-dances, as Athens did in its golden days and as London and Newport do to-day. In such manner did French society gather its material for many of the dances that eventually became identified with the ballroom.

The Gavotte is of such origin. A few generations of languid cultivation refined the life out of it, though it was at first a comparatively active dance. After dropping nearly into disuse it was revived and popularised by Marie Antoinette, for whose rendering of it Gluck composed music. After the Revolution, with its paralysing influence, the Gavotte was once again revived—and revised—by Gardel, premier danseur of the Opera, in a composition based on music by Grétry. But this composition was not of a kind for the execution of any but trained dancers of the stage, Gardel having made it a metier for the exploitation of his own capabilities. Among new elaborations the simple little jumping steps and the easy arabesque that distinguished the Gavotte of earlier days were lost.

The Tordion is another dance of lively origin. Sometimes it was made a vehicle for the grotesque, such as black-face comedy—let no one be surprised that the “coon comedian” of to-day is an ancient institution. It was stepped briskly, even in the stately environment of court. The position of the foot with the heel on the floor and the toe up was not adopted by the ballet, but is found in folk or “character” dances in all parts of Europe.

The Allemande also was a dance of movement; so was the Volte. In the former the man turns his partner by her raised hand; in the costume of the time, the whirl is very effective. The Volte is supposed to be the immediate ancestor of the Waltz.

The Saraband came into France from Spain, where it was tremendously popular as la Zarabanda. It dates from the twelfth century, and was praised by Cervantes. Its character justifies the belief that it comes from Moorish origins. It is a solo dance making noble use of the arms, and is executed with a plastic relaxation of the body. A distinctly Oriental mannerism is its quick shift of the foot, just as it is placed on the floor, from the customary position of toeing out to a position of toeing in. The foot-work, moreover, has little more than slow glides. Its exotic qualities, nevertheless, are subordinate to its Occidental courtliness; like all the other dances of polite society, it conformed to the etiquette of its time and place, notwithstanding improprieties of which it had been guilty in earlier centuries.

Marguerite de Valois was fond of the Bourrée because, according to tradition, she had an extraordinary natural endowment in the shape of feet and ankles. And the skipping step (related to the modern polka-step)

of the Bourrée necessitated the wearing of a shorter skirt than the mode of her day permitted for ordinary use. It never was a rigorously formulated composition, perhaps because it never became very popular at court. It contributed to the ballet the latter’s useful pas de bourrée, and continues as a diversion of the peasants of Auvergne, where it originated.

The Passepied was one of a family known as les branles, whose family characteristics are ill defined, despite the frequency with which the term is used by seventeenth-century writers. In England the word became “brawl.” It was the Branle du Haut Barrois in which gentry costumed themselves as the shepherds and shepherdesses perpetuated by Watteau. Another, the Branle des Lavandières, was based on pantomime of the operations of the laundress. In the Branle des Ermites, monk’s dress was worn. In that of the Flambeaux, torches were passed to newly selected partners, as in a present-day cotillion figure; it was a fashionable figure at wedding celebrations.

Tabourot’s amiable hints for the elegant execution of branles probably are not directed at the court. But they are illuminating. “Talk gracefully, and be clean and well shod; be sure that the hose is straight, and that the slipper is clean ... do not use your handkerchief more than is necessary, but if you use it, be sure it is very clean.” There is more; but, after all, why violate illusions?

The Chaconne, like the Saraband, came to France from across the Pyrenees. The dance of the Seises in the Seville Cathedral is said to be a Chacona unchanged from its sixteenth-century form.

The Gaillarde is sometimes grouped with the Tordion, from which it differs in the respect that the theme of its steps is little jumps, while the Tordion is, for the most part, glided. One form of it, however, “Si je t’aime ou non,” contained some energetic kicks. Indeed, it was of a character to exercise heart and muscle; excellence in some of its steps “was looked upon as an accomplishment equal to riding or fencing.” To that form of it known as “Baisons-nous Belle” was attached interest of another variety, in the shape of kisses exchanged between partners. “A pleasant variation,” comments the venerable Thoinet-Arbeau. A variation employed to prevent monotony in some of the other dances as well, among them the early Gavotte.

The Courante was one of the more formal dances, never having been popular even in its origin. It was the Courante that was favoured by Louis XIV, during his many years of study under a dancing master. He is credited, before he was overtaken by the demon of adiposity, with having executed the Courante better than any one else of his time. In style it has been compared to the Seguidillas (q. v.) of Spain.

Of all, the dances most typical of the formality of the most formal society western civilisation has produced are the Minuet and the Pavane. Both might be characterised as variations of deep bows and curtsies. In the Pavane photographs it will be noted that instead of taking hold of her partner’s hand, the lady rests her hand on the back of his.

Hernando Cortez is said to have composed the Pavane (Spanish Pavana) and introduced it in the court of his land on returning from America. If so, he was a solemn person, as well as dignified; to the imposing grace of majesty the dance joins the aloof grandeur of a ritual. These qualities gave to it the office of opening great court functions. Brocades and armour and swords promenaded very slowly around the room, each couple making its reverence to the monarchs before proceeding to the steps of the dance. These were few, simple, and slow; there were many curtsies, retreats and advances, during which last the gentleman led the lady by the upraised hand, while following her. Poses and groups were held, statue-like, for a space of time that allowed them to impress themselves on the vision. So fond was Elizabeth of England of the Pavane (in writings of her land and period spelled Pavin and otherwise) that it was more than whispered that excellence in its performance was more valued than statesmanship as a basis of political favour.

The Minuet’s formality was graded. Le Menuet du Dauphin, le Menuet de la Reine, le Menuet d’Exaudet and le Menuet de la Cour were its four species, the stateliness increasing in the sequence mentioned. The accompanying Minuet photographs of Mr. Anderson and Miss Crawford are of the form de la Reine. The “mirror” figure is perhaps its most salient feature—a pretty bit of expression accompanying an interlacement of arms whose composition comes as a climax to strikingly ingenious and gracious arm movements.

The popularity of the Minuet, in its various forms, was practically unlimited; lonely and cheerless indeed must have been the social life of the man who did not dance. After the decline of the Pavane it continued as an inseparable adjunct of gatherings of all degrees of conventionality within the scope of a polite mode of living. At court balls, at the romping Christmas parties of English country places; in the remote homes of Virginia planters, at governor-generals’ receptions, in the palaces of intendants in the far North it saluted, made coquetry with fan and eye, incarnated in gallant figures the brave and reverent spirit of chivalry. Pictures represent its performance in home surroundings during daylight; slight pretext seems to have served as occasion for its performance. In connection with this popularity it must be remembered that, even in its simpler forms, so much as a passable execution of the Minuet was far from easy to acquire.

Let it be understood that the grand ballet of to-day did not spring full-grown from the dances above enumerated. Some of their forms continued unchanged through years of academic influence. Present-day “elevation,” as scope of high and low level is called, the great leaps, great turns, and, in short, most of the dazzling elements of to-day’s ballet are the accumulated contribution of individual artists from time to time. Taglioni, of the middle nineteenth century, is the last to add notably to the classic ballet’s alphabet of steps. It is not unsafe to say that the next few years will see its range increased: the Russians, avid for new things, have ransacked Egyptian carvings and Greek vases. Trained to perfection in the technique and philosophy of their art, they are incorporating intelligently the newly rediscovered with the long familiar. But a concrete idea of their relation to the art, or of the art itself, cannot be had without some acquaintance with its actual mechanics; it is time to consider the salient steps on which most Occidental dancing is based, and which the ballet has reduced to perfect definition.

CHAPTER IV
A GLANCE AT THE BALLET’S TECHNIQUE

THE name of Camargo, which arose in the first half of the eighteenth century, may be taken as the milestone that marks the progress of dancing into its modern development. Predecessors had brought to it pleasing execution and a good spirit; Camargo appears to have surpassed them in both qualities, and, in addition, to have added immensely to the art’s scope both of expression and of technique. Her relation to the dancing of her time has been profoundly studied by Mme. Genée, whose fascinating programme of re-creations is the result. After the work attributed to Sallé and Prévost, that of the re-created Camargo shows a very striking emancipation from former limitations. Sallé and Prévost, charmingly graceful, consummately skilful, performed their Dresden-china steps evenly, coolly, in full conformity to the fastidious etiquette of the aristocracy of their day. Camargo, without bruising a petal of the hot-house flower that was her artistic inheritance, first freed it from a fungus of affectation that others had mistaken for the bloom of daintiness. Then she arranged it to show the play of light and shade, to make it surprising—in short, to make it a vehicle of interpretation.

The material at her disposal, as noted before, was limited. To her advantage in “elevation,” she replaced high-heeled shoes with ballet slippers; she was the first, since antiquity, to dance on the toes. Nevertheless her changes of level were not exciting; of big leaps she had none. The day of vivid pirouettes was yet to dawn. Her most extended step was a little balloné. Her entrechat was almost the only step that raised both her feet distinctly off the floor; it, with petits battements, gave brilliancy but nothing of grandeur. Hers was a dance of simple and little steps. But they were composed, those steps, with appreciation of the value of contrast. By contrast, movement was made long or short in effect. Movements soft and crisp were juxtaposed. We may believe that Camargo’s knowledge of composition compensated for the meagre step-vocabulary of her day; that she commanded cumulative interest, surprise, and climax. In short, that she produced an expression; limited to the lyrical, but none the less real.

That there may be no risk of misunderstanding the present use of the word “expression,” let it be agreed that the word here has the same application that it has in relation to instrumental music; also let it be agreed emphatically that it has nothing to do with the imitation of nature. Wagner makes a composition of tones portray the attributes of heroes and gods. Grieg’s gnomes are of the same tissue: suggested attributes as distinguished from specified facts of the concrete. Broadly, such suggestion is called music. For present clearness let it be known as music of the ear. Because, the very same mental sensations produced by rhythm and sound variously juxtaposed and combined, acting through the medium of hearing, are susceptible of stimulation by means of rhythm and line, in suitable juxtapositions and combinations, acting through the medium of vision. It follows that dancing, in effect, is music of the eye. The familiar musical resources serve both choreographer and composer impartially. As will be understood before the reading of this chapter is completed, the equivalent of long and short notes is found in steps of varying length; musical phrases are, to the mind, the same as step-combinations, or enchainements; argument toward expression of motive is as possible to the silent music as to music of the ear. Indeed the values of the several orchestral instruments have their parallels in steps; the light staccato of the clarinet is no more playful than are certain delicate steps executed sur les pointes, nor is the blare of brass more stirring than the noble renversé. The scope of expression, in short, that is attainable by the orchestra is identical with that within range of pure dancing—dancing without pantomime. Add pantomime, and in effect you add to your music the explanatory accompaniment of words. Broadly, music is sentiment, while the words of a song are supplementary description. In the ballet, the dance, as such, is the sentiment (or its representation), the pantomime the accompanying description.

Added expression in this musical sense was among Camargo’s contribution to the art, definitely restoring to it a quality it had held in a grasp at best precarious since the passing of the glory of Athens. Belief in pantomime rises and recedes from one decade to another. But purely orchestral or æsthetic expression continues at all times (with interruptions) as the fundamental intent of the classic French and Italian ballets. To demand that the figures in a composition conceived in this idea should act and look like the people of every-day life, owing to the mere coincidence of their being human beings, would be like asking the composer of Pagliacci to rewrite his score to include the sound of squeaking wheels, because of the latter’s pertinence to the wagon of the strolling players represented in the opera. The function of the composer of the opera is to suggest by such tonal symbols as have been found effective, the various emotions undergone by his characters. Identically, the function of the ballet-master is to suggest by the countless combinations of line—majestic and playful, severe and gracious—and by the infinite variety of movements and postures, the emotions he would arouse in the spectators of his work. At his disposal he has a number of plastic, sentient and sympathetic figures, trained to movements of grace. They are the instruments of his orchestra, the paint on his palette. That they also are human beings is absolutely a coincidence and beside the point.

Pantomime, to be sure, is carried to a high development in both French and Italian academies; they present mimo-dramas calling for practically unlimited scope of expression. Pantomime they added to the dance without departure from the ballet’s basic intent. Both schools well know that the introduction of one pose or gesture imitating an act of human life, automatically throws the work into another category; that which was purely interpretative mural decoration verges toward the story-telling picture.

The argument is put rather insistently because of the periodical complaint that the ballet “looks artificial.” “In real life,” people say, “you never see hands held as they are held in the ballet.” Mother of all the muses, why should they be? In real life hands are doctoring fountain pens, hewing wood and drawing water, reaching out for things; in real life hands are concerned with their practical occupation, and quite disregardful of their grace or expression while so engaged. Whereas the ballet uses hands as the vehicle for lines of grace, exaltation, vivacity, or whatever emotion you will, expressed in terms of the abstract. It is the same in regard to work on the toe: in real life people have no occasion to walk on the tip ends of their feet, because as a means of locomotion it is inconvenient. The ballet’s use of it is not based on a belief in the minds of ballet-masters that it is a fashion either in polite society or among nymphs of the primeval forest. The position “on the point” makes possible an agreeable change in elevation, and can instantaneously eliminate the appearance of avoirdupois. The ballet art is a convention, strictly; the figures in it are changing units of a moving design, and not people. A ballerina does not ask, “How do I look in this pose?” She asks, “What kind of a line does this pose make?”

Of late years the classic ballet has suffered from public indifference. Doubtless this has been due in part to an insufficiency of competent performers; a great work requires great execution, and the difficulties created by the ballet’s ideals are tremendous. But failure on the part of the public to consider the ballet’s intent has certainly contributed to an unsatisfactory state of its affairs.

A general acquaintance with the individual steps adds in various ways to the spectator’s enjoyment. Relieved of effort to decipher a dancer’s means and methods, he who understands the mechanics of the steps can surrender himself to a luxuriance in their grace of execution, and be the more susceptible to the hypnotic charm of the rhythmic movement playing upon his eye. To him who has taken the trouble to learn some of the elemental theories, that which was once a bewildering maze of movement, which he mentally scrambled to follow, becomes an ordered and deliberate sequence, whose argument he follows with ease; instead of a kaleidoscope, he sees phrasing, repetition, and progress of interest, theme, enrichment and climax. With bits of special virtuosity he is instantly gratified; shortcomings he instantly detects. To communicate his observations he has a vocabulary of specific expression; and there is satisfaction in that, for a ballet performance is just as fruitful a subject of controversy among its connoisseurs as a new novel among its readers. Furthermore, the need of a general power of expression as an essential to the betterment of American choreographic conditions is self-evident.

While the ensuing analysis of ballet steps is far from complete from the point of view of the academy, it should give the reader a comprehension of the steps that make an impression on the layman’s eye. The material that follows is selected with that end in view. Some description of simple fundamentals, though not in themselves “showy,” is included in order to facilitate analysis of the great steps and turns. Moreover, since character dancing includes nothing of technical note that is not also used in the ballet, it is confidently hoped that the subjoined analysis will serve as a useful lens through which to look at dancing of all kinds.

Those whose interest in the subject leads them to seek a more complete knowledge are referred to Zorn, Grammar of the Art of Dancing; by means of his choreographic stenography he goes into sub-variations of ballet steps with the utmost exactness. Naturally a course of instruction under a good ballet teacher is best of all;

theory is best understood by its application. And execution, it should go without saying, is acquired only by long practice under expert and watchful eyes.

Before considering actual movements, it must be borne in mind that separately they are incomplete. Like tones that unite to form chords of music, each in itself may seem lacking in richness. Interdependence of successive parts is more marked in the classic ballet than in any other great school of choreography. The dance of the Moor is a series of statues, each self-sufficient. Of the ballet movements, almost the reverse is true. Their magic comes of the flow of one unit into another.

As France is the mother and nurse of the ballet, it follows that French is its language. Few of the terms translate successfully. To rename the movements would be superfluous—and in practical use, worse; for a big corps de ballet is often a gathering from many nations. Being explicit and sufficient, the French terms are the accepted designation of the steps in all lands where the ballet is danced.

To describe steps with precision, it is necessary to use a system of choro-stenography not easily learned, or to refer to positions of the feet. The latter is the usual method, and long usage proves its adequacy. The following arbitrary designation of positions of the feet has long been standard wherever Occidental dancing is taught:

Simple positions one to five, inclusive, are the fundamentals, which are modified in a great variety of ways. Figures 6 and 7 represent instances of such modification.

The weight may be upon both feet, or either.

In third, fourth and fifth positions: speaking of either foot (say the right) it is said to be in anterior or posterior third, fourth or fifth position.

Second and fourth positions are defined as closed or amplified, according as the feet are separated by the length of a foot, or more.

The positions, unless otherwise specified, indicate both feet on the floor. But the second, third and fourth positions sometimes relate to positions in which one foot is raised; for instance, right foot in raised second position.

The same designations apply whether the feet be flat on the floor, on the ball, on the point, or a composite of these: as for instance, second position, right foot on the point, left foot flat, etc.

Heights are definitely divided; ankle, calf and knee serve as the measures. But as the subjoined explanations are aided by diagrams, the terms to measure heights may be disregarded for the sake of simplicity. Likewise we need not go into the enumeration and names of crossed positions and other complications. The five fundamental positions, however, are important and should be memorised. Apart from their importance in any discussion of ballet work, familiarity with them greatly aids the acquisition of ballroom dances. (The latter place the feet at an angle of 45° to the line in which the dancer’s body faces, instead of 90°, the form of the French-Italian ballet.)

The school of the ballet also defines the positions of the arms, in the same manner. They need not be memorised as a preliminary to reading this chapter; but they are interesting as a matter of record of the limitations of the classic school, and as a measure of the distance to which the Russians have departed in the direction of freedom of arm movement.

Figure 8, arms in repose, sustained; 9, extended; 10, rounded in front of the chest; 11, rounded above the head; 12, high and open; 13, à la lyre; 14, on the hips; 15, 16, one arm high, one extended; 18, one arm rounded in front of the chest, one open horizontal; 17, 19, one arm high, one on the hip.

Steps, which are now to be considered, fall naturally into the classes of gliding, beating, turning and jumping. Each class ranges from simplicity to more or less complexity, and certain steps have a composite character, partaking of the nature of more than one of the above general classes.

Dancers distinguish between a step and a temps, whose relation to each other is that between a word and a syllable. A temps is a single movement. By definition, a step must effect a transfer of weight; subject to that definition, a single movement may be a step.