Ballet dancer

“ How drearily impersonal it can be, we are realising afresh now that the success of the Russian ballet has let loose a flood of indifferent ballet-dancers upon the stage. It permits a high degree of technical accomplishment divorced from the slightest emotional significance. It is the dance par excellence for the uneducated and unintelligent dancer—and it is she who must be banished from the stage. ”

“ If not as a gypsy, then as a ballet dancer or a columbine. Or anything else that takes your fancy. We won't let you stay at home, so get that out of your head."
"Silly boy," said Cornelia, with a prolonged, musical laugh. "A ballet dancer's dress calls for the most cast iron of corsets. ”

“ As a dancer, she is an excellent comedienne; yet for years she fancied herself as a classical ballerina. Her insistence on dancing in such ballets as The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Pas de Quatre, Petroushka, Princess Aurora, and most of all, Les Sylphides, was so regrettable that it raises the question that, if she is so unconscious of her own limitations as a dancer, what are her qualifications for the directorship of a ballet company? ”

“ Appearing in a ballet that is really very little more than a ballet of amateurs, she achieves without great difficulty the effect desired I suppose by every ballet-dancer,—that of a visitant from some more gracious and ethereal sphere. ”

“ It is very beneficial to everyone in every way, and unqualifiedly essential to the beginner in stage dancing in any of its forms. The prospective ballet dancer, by going through these exercises in the studio for a series of twenty lessons or so, and practicing three hours or more at home daily during the same period, develops strength in the muscles of the back, legs, ankles and feet that fits her for the ballet technique ”

“ He soon becomes the boon companion of shady sporting men, latter-day coachmen, pink and paragraphic journalists, and middle-aged ladies, who, having once been, or been once, on the stage, still affect the skittish manners of a ballet-dancer. ”

“ The purity and nobility of her style compensated and more than compensated for any production shortcomings. The important thing she left behind is an ineffable spirit that inhabits every performance of classical ballet, every classroom where classical ballet is taught. As a dancer, no one had had a greater flexibility in styles, a finer dramatic ability, a deeper sense of character, a wider range of facial expressions. Let us not forget her successful excursions into the Oriental dance, the Hindu, the dances of Japan. ”

“ The principal dancers, such as Bonafanti, and Morlacchi, of course, have an easier time than the ordinary ballet girls, but all work hard.
It is commonly supposed that the ballet-dancer is of necessity an impure woman. Too many of them are; but, as a class, they are much abused. ”

“ Now, of course, the ballet has its vulnerable side—it almost needs, at any rate it has always assumed, a scantier style of dress than is otherwise in ordinary use. And then the movements of the dancer of necessity involve greater display of the human form than is required by the simpler acts of riding, walking, or sitting. In dancing it is inevitable that there should be swaying and bending of the figure, possibly waving to and fro of the arms, certainly some standing upon the toes, and raising of the nether limbs more or less high in the air. ”

“ But the step in itself is unnatural, and naturalness is above all things essential in the dance. When the part which it plays in the ballet is no longer incidental{59}—the emphasis given to a moment’s pose or the suggestion of intriguing daintiness added to a brief passage—but becomes the basis of all the dancer’s movements, it results in producing a sense of utter weariness on the part of the spectator. ”

“ The famous Austrian dancer scarcely merited the reproach, for she above all other{220} dancers danced with the head and the heart; but in general it is a just indictment of the ballet technique that it has disproportionately emphasised the importance of the legs and the feet. In the period of the decline of the ballet, the dancers of Paris and Milan in particular were little more than automata agitated by a pair of muscular legs, which worked with the precision and monotony of clockwork. The modern dance demands expression in every line of the body. ”

“ If the English ballet has yet produced no native ballerina worthy to rank with the great Continental dancers, the absence of a male dancer of any distinction is still more remarkable. An exception can scarcely be made in favour of Mr Fred Farren, who fills the dual rôle of premier danseur and maître de ballet at the Empire. ”

“ In addition to teaching what we call the legitimate American Ballet, we add to the students' repertoire what are known as "tricks," which earn applause for the dancer. Many of our pupils go directly from our courses to the professional stage, since it would be difficult for them to earn a supporting salary in the musical comedy field doing straight ballet work alone. We teach straight toe dances, and also eccentric toe dances, as will be demonstrated in another chapter. ”

“ Ballet Performers.
“The Ballet,” said a street-dancer to me, “is a very favourite amusement with the people who go to cheap penny theatres. They are all comic, like pantomimes; indeed, they come under that term, only there’s no comic scenes or transformations. They’re like the story of a pantomime, and nothing else. Nearly all the popular clowns are famous for their ballet performances; they take the comic parts mostly, and the pantaloons take the old men’s parts. Ballets have been favourites in this country for forty or fifty year. There is always a comic part in every ballet. ”

“ The ballet became a spectacle. It was buried beneath a mass of unmeaning accessories. The stage was encumbered with gorgeous properties and with the crowd of those who did not dance but merely took their place in the pageant. The effect may have been magnificent, but it was not art. At the same time the ballet-dancers, whose business was to dance, were transformed into members of a chorus, whose chief function was to look pretty. They marched and counter-marched across the stage, performing a number of evolutions with a kind of military precision. ”

“ It is the same with the ballet; the musician composes the ballet, he puts the plot to music. Imagine a dancer coming out and acting the plot alone; he will be far from the fulfillment of his task; he will have accomplished but the lesser part of it. For the ballet does not relate how the Sleeping Beauty, for instance, fell asleep and awoke (this is the business of literature, declamation and drama) ; the ballet relates how music tells it. Music is the only real essence in that which forms the subject of the ballet. ”

“ They have beautiful ballet-dancers here, though. There is one little creature named Fräulein David, who is a wonderful artist. She does such steps that it turns one's head to see her. She is as light as down, and so extremely graceful that when you watch her floating about to the enchanting ballet music, it is too captivating. There were four other dancers nearly as good, who were all dressed exactly alike in white dresses trimmed with pink satin. ”

“ It speaks well for the growing sensibility of mankind that this form of dancing is gradually losing favour. Like the vocal tight-rope dancing of the operatic prime donne with whom ballet-dancers are associated, their art is a mere circus-trick, gaped at as a difficult tour de force, but appealing in no sense to æsthetic sentiments. ”

“ To quote a dictum of Simon, what a horse does under compulsion he does blindly, and his performance is no more beautiful than would be that of a ballet-dancer taught by whip and goad. ”

“ Jealous husbands do not allow their wives to waltz with another man. They are right, for the waltz is the Dance of Love.”
BALLET-DANCING There is one more form of dancing which may be briefly alluded to, because it illustrates the hypocrisy of the average mortal as well as the rarity of true æsthetic taste. Solo ballet-dancing is admired not only by the bald-headed old men in the parquet, but there are critics who seriously discuss such dancing as if it were a fine art; generally lamenting the good old times of the great and graceful ballet-dancers. ”

“ You know, of course, that in this course the ballet is not taught in the old, antiquated way, taking years of your time before you are permitted to do solo work. We teach you our own modern, scientific way, giving you first our foundation technique, then letting you learn how to use your arms, head, the upper part of your body and your legs gracefully and prettily, and making you as good ballet dancers as the old long-drawn-out practice ever made, enabling you to qualify for a paying engagement without a discouraging wait of years and years. ”

“ I have taken amateurs who never did a ballet step in their lives, put them in training by my personally devised method, and made perfect solo dancers of them in a few months' time, secured them engagements, and their fame as ballet dancers par excellence is today world-wide. ”

“ Now, this will never become a world full of ballet dancers, because not everyone could learn this graceful undulation if they wanted to. (All the more reason, I say, why those who have the talent should profit123 by it.) Not all of my pupils, nor all of my best pupils in other forms of the art, can hope to become solo artistes in ballet work. ”

“ Ballet dancers have as hard work, if not harder than236 any other class in the profession. They must rehearse or practice daily, and for hours and hours at a time. The maitre is there with cane and eye-glass, with velvet coat and lavender trousers, to show them the motions, and line after line the strength and limberness of the limbs of the corps de ballet are tested. ”

“ When she dances, it is not only dancing, but a complete representation of character, for she plays a rôle by her motions just the same as if she were an actress. I have seen many a ballet, but I never conceived what an art dancing is before. ”

“ There was an unconscionable confusion in the darkened opera house as the audience rattled down the aisles, chattering, greeting friends, and shattering the spell of the Prologue, disturbing those who had taken the trouble to arrive on time as much as they did the artists on the stage. My concern on this point is as much for the audience as for the dancers. A ballet, being a work of art, is conceived as an entity, from beginning to end, from the first notes of the overture, till the last one of the coda. ”

“ You cannot fancy her fatigued when, with her peculiar softness of motion, she courtesies to the applause of an enchanted audience, and walks lightly away. You are never apprehensive that she has undertaken too much. You never detect as you do in all other dancers, defects slurred over adroitly and movements that, from their anticipating the music of the ballet, are known by the critical eye to cover some flaw in the step, from giddiness or loss of balance. But oh what a new relation bears the music to the dance, when this spirit of grace replaces her companions in the ballet! ”

“ I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. ”

“ Every revue, musical comedy, and other light musical production includes a collection of young women called a ballet; and each year of increased general intelligence in dancing matters adds to the desirability that these ballets should justify the name. The pretty girl, plus coloured lights, drapery, and lively cavorting, no longer constitutes a perfectly secure grip on public approval (except always in burlesque, with which we are not concerned) . The result is an insatiable demand for girls who can even half dance. And that demand, in its turn, is a steady drain on the Opera’s school. ”

“ Only amateurs have the courage to dance in shoes. Even that strict and stilted institution, the ballet, was forced generations ago to break through its time-honored traditions by abandoning heels as useless appendages. Had she been on the stage, she would have danced in her bare feet as she had done on the night of the fiesta when Captain Forest had seen her. ”

“ The British amateur of the dance, therefore, has seen but a part of her genius, for that pure mimesis, in which she excels no less than in the actual dancing itself, requires for its full scope the interaction of characters which belongs to the ballet proper. She herself told me that she preferred playing in the ballet to dancing alone, but it is difficult to believe that her personality could find fuller expression than in the single dances in which she has the whole stage to herself. ”

“ You see although the American girl is smart and sharp, and pretty original in many other things, she is entirely imitative in dancing. She watches the other girls, and although she may not even be fairly grounded in the fundamental principles of ballet dancing, she frequently faces an audience and does well—sometimes astonishingly well in fact. Some of these girls climb up out of the ranks very fast; others who are lazy and give too much time to flirting and drinking wine, remain in the same line, usually the last,262 for years, and are really in a ballet master's way all the time. ”

“ This ballet is certainly the essence of a ballet. What a grace and a liveliness there is in it! What spirit and invention! What can exceed the ingenuity of the dance in which the favoured lover joins in with his mistress and the rival, and makes all sorts of advances to her, and receives her favours, her pressures of the hand, and even kisses, without being found out by the other, who thinks all these demonstrations of fondness intended for him! What an enthusiasm for art in the character of the master of the house, who is seized by the Dansomanie! ”