Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

“ Thence the common indifference of so many performers, who mind nothing more than a rote of the art, without tracing it to its origin, nature.
To succeed, we must abandon the false taste, and embrace the true; which is not only the best guide to perfection; but when rendered familiar, by much the most easy and the most delightful. It has all the advantages that truth has over falshood.
The greater the simplicity of steps in a dance, the more beautiful it is; and requires the more attention in the performer to exactness and delicacy ”

“ They were in general, in their bodies, extremely well conformed, and disposed for this exercise. Many of them piqued themselves on rivalling, in excellence of execution, the most celebrated masters of the art. That majestic air, so natural to them, while they preserved their liberty, the delicacy of their taste, and the cultivated agility of their limbs, all qualified them for making an agreeable figure in this kind of entertainment. Nothing could be more graceful than the motion of their arms. ”

“ It should also be recommended to the dancers of the minuet, ever to have an expression of that sort of gaity and chearfulness in the countenance, which will give it an amiable and even a noble frankness. Nothing can be more out of character, or even displeasing, than a froward or too pensive a look. There may be a sprightly vacancy, an openness in the face, without the least tincture of any indecent air of levity: as there may be a captivating modesty, without any of that bashfulness which arises either from low breeding, wrong breeding, or no breeding at all. ”

“ Towards the perfection of it, there is yet more, much more required, in that sensibility of soul, which has in it so much more of the gift of nature, than of the acquisition of art; and is perhaps in this, what it is in most other arts and sciences, if not genius itself, an indispensable foundation of genius. There is no executing well with the body, what is not duly felt by the soul: sentiment gives life to the execution, and propriety to the looks, motions and gestures. ”

“ If the merit of a theatrical dancer were to consist, as many imagine, in nothing but in the motions of the legs, in cutting lively or brilliant capers, in surprizing steps, in the agility of the body, in vigorous springs, in vaulting, in a tolerable management of the arms, and especially in being well acquainted with those parts of the stage where the perspective gives him the greatest advantage; the art of dancing might be, as it is generally looked upon to be, an art easily acquired. ”

“ There are some who move their arms with a tolerably natural grace, without knowing the true rules rising out of nature into art: but where the advantage of theory gives yet a greater security, consequently a greater ease and a nobler freedom to the motions of the performer; the performance cannot but meet with fuller approbation. And yet it may be as bad to show too much art, as to have too little. The point is to employ no more of art than just what serves to grace nature, but never to hide or obscure her. ”

“ But, as I have before observed, painting can express no more than an instant of action. Theatrical dancing can exhibit 237 all the successive instants it chuses to paint. Its march proceeds from picture to picture, to which, motion gives life. In painting, life is only imitated; in dancing, it is always the reality itself. ”

“ Every step in dancing has its name and value. But not one should be employed in a vague unmeaning manner. All the movements should be conformable to the expression required, and in harmony with one another. The steps regular, and properly varied, with a graceful suppleness in the limbs, a certain strength, address, and agility; just positions exhibited with ease, delicacy, and above all, with propriety, caracterise the masterly dancer, and in their union, give to his execution its due beauty. ”

“ I have mentioned the distinction of a good master, most assuredly not in the way of a vain silly hint of self-recomdation; but purely for the sake of giving a caution, too often neglected, against parents, or those charged with the education of youth, placing children, at the age when their muscles are most flexible, their limbs the most supple, and their minds the most ductile, and who are consequently susceptible of the best impressions, under such pretended masters of this art, who can only give them the worst, and who, instead of teaching, stand themselves in need of being taught. ”

“ One of the most nice and difficult points of the art of dancing is, certainly, the management and display of the arms; the adapting their motion to the character of the dance. In this many are too arbitrary in forming rules to themselves, without consulting nature, which would not fail of suggesting to them the justest movements. For want of this appropriation of gesture and attitude, the movements fit for one character are indistinctly employed in the representation of another. ”

“ The helps of a lively imagination, joined to great and assiduous practice, carry the art to the highest perfection. But practice will give no eminent distinction without study. Whoever shall flatter himself with forming himself by practice alone, without the true principles and sufficient grounds of the art, can only proceed upon a rote of tradition, which may appear infallible to him. ”

“ People are less tired with a dance, in which the understanding is exercised, without the fatigue of perplexity, than by merely seeing a succession of lively steps, and cabriols, however well executed; which, in point of merit, bear no more proportion to that of a well-composed dance, than a tiresome repetition of vignettes, of head-pieces and tail-pieces, would do to the gravings of historical pieces after a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or a Correggio. ”

“ All the motions, all the gestures, all the attitudes, all the looks, can have no merit, but in their faithful imitation of Nature: while man himself, man, the noblest of her productions, is ever the subject which the 96 dancer paints through all his passions and manners.
The painter presents man in one fixed attitude, with no more of life than the draught and colors can give to his figure: the dancer exhibits him in a succession of attitudes, and, instead of painting with the brush, paints, surely more to the life, with his own person. ”

“ Thus a painter who should paint Orestes agitated by the furies, can only give him one single expression of his countenance and posture: but a dancer, charged with the representation of that character, can, seconded by a well-adapted music, execute a succession of motions and attitudes, that will more strongly and surely with more liveliness, convey the idea of that character, with all its transports of fury and disorder. ”

“ Invention is also as much a requisite in our art as in any other. But to save the pains of study, we often borrow and copy from one another. Indolence is the bane of our art. The trouble of thinking necessary to the invention and composition of dances, appears to many too great a fatigue: this engages them to appropriate to themselves the fruits of other peoples invention; and they appear to themselves well provided at a small expence, when they have made free with the productions of others. ”

“ Here, on this point, recurs that never too often repeated rule, as infallible as it is plain: let nature, in every thing, be the guide of art; and let art, in every thing, aim at imitating nature: a rule this, than which there is not one more trite, more hackneyed in the theory, nor less regarded in the practice.
Nature then being always Nature, always invariable in her operations and productions; there is no false conclusion, nor straining inferences, in avering, that the art of dancing could not but be a great gainer by a revival of the taste of the antients for the pantomime branch ”

“ A man who has not sufficient share of genius to attempt the vanquishing these difficulties, of which, in his false conception of things, he has formed to himself no notion; either treats these great essentials of the art, as innovations, and such as he is not bound to admit, or in the despair of acquiring them, sits down contented with his mediocrity. It is well if he does not rail at, or attempt to turn into ridicule, perfections which are beyond his reach. ”

“ To these it may sound more than strange; it may appear incredible, that on the theatre of Athens, the dance of the Eumenides, or Furies, had so expressive a character, as to strike the spectators with irresistible terror. The Areopagus itself shuddered with horror and affright; men grown old in the profession of arms, trembled; the 232 multitude ran out; women with child miscarried; people imagined they saw in earnest those barbarous deities commissioned with the vengeance of heaven, pursue and punish the crimes of the earth. ”

“ Whereas that dancing, of which they were so fond, afforded them, not only a pleasing employ of vacant hours, but, withall, in its keeping up the pliability of their limbs, made them find more ease in the application of themselves to more athletic, or to more violent exercises, either of war or of the chace: while all together bred that firmness of their muscles, that robust compactness and vigor of body, which enabled them to atchieve that military valor, to which they owed all their conquests and their glory. ”

“ Great is the difference between the antient and the modern dances. The antient ones were full of sublime simplicity. But that simplicity was far 63 from excluding the delicate, the graceful, and even the brilliant. The moderns are so accustomed to those dances from which nature is banished, and false refinements substituted in her room, that it is to be questioned whether they would relish the returning in practice to the purer principles of the art. ”

“ In this part of the world, so lately discovered, nothing is a stronger proof of the universality of dancing, of its being, in short, rather an human instinct, than an art, than the fondness for dancing every where diffused over this vast continent. ”

“ The heathens used especially to form dances before their altars, and round the statues of their gods. The Salii, or priests of Mars, whose dances were so framed as to give an idea of military exercise and activity, threw into their performance steps so expressive and majestic, as not only to defend their motions and gestures from any idea of levity and burlesque, which it is so natural for the moderns to associate with that of dancing, but even to inspire the beholders with respect and a religious awe. ”

“ The motion of the arms is as essential, at least, as that of the legs, for an expressive attitude: and both receive their justness from the nature of the passions they are meant to express. The passions are the springs which must actuate the machine, while a close observation of nature furnishes the art of giving to those motions the grace of ease and expertness. Any thing that, on the stage especially, has the air of being forced, or improper, cannot fail of having a bad effect. A frivolous, affected turn of the wrist, is surely no grace. ”

“ Dancing is, evidently, in its nature, an action upon the theatres; nothing is wanting to it but meaning: it moves to the right, to the left; it retrogrades, it advances, it forms steps, it delineates figures. ”

“ Nature does not refuse cultivation, but she will not bear being forced. The great art of the dancing-master is not to give graces, for that is impossible, but to call forth into a nobly modest display those latent ones in his scholars, which may have been buried for want of opportunities or of education to break forth in their native lustre, or which have been spoiled or perverted, by wrong instruction, or by bad models of imitations. ”

“ But if he has not a genius, susceptible of cultivation, and which is itself far the most essential gift, he will make no progress towards the desirable distinction: he is a body without a soul: his performance will have more of the poppet moved by wires, than of the actor giving that life to the character, which himself receives from the sensibility of genius. ”

“ He whose motions are dirrected only by rote and custom, will soon be discovered essentially inferior to him whose practice is governed by a knowledge of the principles of his art.
A master does not do his duty by his pupil, in this art, if he fails of strongly inculcating to him the necessity of studying those principles; and of kindling in him that ardor for attaining to excellence, which if it is not itself genius, it is certain that no genius will do much without it. ”

“ Commonly those dancers who have from nature eminently those gifts which enable them to shine in the grottesque branch, do not chuse to give themselves the trouble of going to the bottom of their art, and acquiring its perfection. Content with their bodily powers, and with the applause their performances actually do receive from the public, they look no further, and remain in ignorance of the rest of their duty. ”