Corps de ballet

“ They were the idols of society; the fashionable world could think and talk of nothing but their dancing. The reign of the ballet had begun. Already in the first season the cost of the ballet exceeded that of the opera by some £2000. No other form of theatrical art approached the ballet in popularity. The King’s Theatre, afterwards transformed and renamed Her Majesty’s, kept a permanent corps de ballet. The Haymarket, Her Majesty’s, and Covent Garden nightly drew crowded houses to witness displays of the most accomplished dancing that had ever been seen on the English stage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the premiere who sits with sealskin sack over her stage costume with her pet dog by her side down to the latest acquisition to the maitre's (the ballet master's) corps, all must be on hand to rehearse with or without music. In the latter instance the steps are slowly but carefully gone through. Not only is there a day rehearsal, but there is private individual rehearsal of the steps at night previous to going on the stage; for there is much grace in a corps de ballet, and no girl in love with her art wishes to be considered awkward or in the rear ”

“ The members of the ballet troups are Government servants, with the attendant rights and privileges of this class. Most of the corps du ballet are of quite humble origin, and are generally the daughters of small clerks, of the theatre attendants, who have naturally numerous facilities for advancing their children, and of former ballet-dancers. The training of a dancer is long and severe. After having passed through a process of selection and of physical inspection, girls are taken into the Government ballet schools from the age of eight to ten. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The ballet is in effect the combination of a number of arts, co-operating in the production of a single whole. It achieves distinction only when it attracts to itself the best artistic talent of the day. The ballet-master is powerless unless he is assisted by the artist and the musician. The dancing, the music, and the décor should be informed by a single spirit. There had been a time when the foremost men of letters and composers had shared in the production of 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ineffectual rhythms of the dance were suddenly caught up into the masterful rhythms of life itself. What is revolutionary in the new ballet is the power to rouse and trouble the imagination. The innovators have extended the range of the ballet, a range as wide as that of the drama—one is tempted to say wider, for not only does it express a minute grace as choice as the grouping of the petals of a rose, but at times its huge leaping rhythms throb with an unconstrained and elemental violence, all too shattering for the formal mould of speech. ”

“ Considering one after the other, one finds little crisp and spontaneous beauty in the steps and gestures of the ballerinas of the last part of the past century. The umbrella-like stiff dress of the classic ballet has only a momentary semi-sensuous appeal. In the long run it becomes unæsthetic and unpractical, since it hides the natural lines of the human body. ”

“ The essential difference is to be found, not in technique, but in idea. The ballet has been brought into relation with life. Dancing, which had its origin in the most elemental emotions, gradually strayed further and further from its source, until in the ballet it lost its last remnant of vital significance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ANY account of the modern renaissance of dancing must needs begin with the ballet. In one sense it is in the ballet that the dance attains its completest mode of expression. It may be regarded as the limit of its evolution, its most complex and elaborate statement. The more orderly sequence would be to trace the simpler forms of dancing through the various stages of their evolution until they arrive at their ultimate development in the ballet. The concern of this book, however, is not with the history of the dance, but rather with the interest which it has for the present time as an art-form. ”

“ You forget that supreme instant when the master-spirit of the ballet comes skipping suddenly forward, and leaping into the air with calves that exchange a shimmer of kisses, and catches the prima ballerina at the waist, and tosses her aloft, and when she comes down supports her as she bends this way and that way, and all at once stiffens for her bow to the house. ”

“ The movements of the head, of the eyes, the expression of the face, all are of tremendous importance in perfecting the ballet. It is because of the necessity of bearing constantly in mind the various attitudes of head, torso, arms and legs that I believe that the ballet contributes more than any other type of dancing to the general development of grace and poise of the whole body. ”

“ The main tendency of the nineteenth century ballet is to get rid of the mechanical contrivances, the monstrous etiquette and majestic solemnity and, like music, give it more coherence and better harmony with the plot. Between 1820 and 1850 it became an inseparable accompaniment to the opera to such an extent that the occupants of the gilded boxes preferred the thrill of the dancing to the music. ”

“ What has made the Male Dancers word "ballet" a sort of synonym for vice if it is not the idea that it provides an opportunity for women to attract admirers—not so much on account of their dancing as for the sake of their physical charm? I think that a mixed ballet has the effect of concentrating attention on the art of the dance rather than on the seductiveness of the dancers. And the free and noble plastic of the male dancers in the Russian ballet has influenced the plastic of the women, making it far less sexual and far more beautiful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Oh, the costumer knew his business and those dainty high-heeled French slippers seemed at least five sizes smaller than they really were as they tripped so lightly through the mazes of the ballet. But alack! the illusion was just a TRIFLE dispelled when the ballet-girls broke into a rollicking chorus, for some of those voices boomed across the auditorium with an undoubtable masculine power. ”

“ The question was would the manager want her when the fatal night of her first stage appearance had come and gone!
In those days of rehearsals, costumes were one of her most vital interests; for a ballet girl's dress is most important, as there is so little of it, that it must be perfect of its kind. The ballet of which the young person was now a member were supposed to be fairies in one dance. ”

“ To this native spirit, however, the ballet owes little or nothing. Doubtless it has in a manner fertilised the soil, created a public interested in the dance and, if heredity counts for anything, provided a raw material ready for the ballet-master to mould to his will. But the ballet, as I have said before, is in its origin aristocratic, and nowhere more so than in Russia. The Russian ballet is entirely the product of the Court. ”

“ One authority has styled dancing "the music of the eye." The dancer who neglects the difficult study which the arms require because she believes that the only necessity is brilliant execution in the legs, will be an imperfect artist. It is not enough to know how to dance with one's legs; the ballet must also be executed with the trunk of the body and the arms. Their movements must be graceful and in harmony with those of the legs, since they constitute a weight for the equilibrium of the body when it rests on one leg. ”

“ In ballet—the classical ballet, character dances, mime, tuition in the roles of the classical ballets and modern works in the repertoire of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Companies. It is important to note that all ballet classes for boys are taken by male teachers. ”

“ The gymnastic, and particularly the acrobatic, features occupied the foremost place in the ballet performances. Thus dancers in a ballet were not considered human beings but rather moving figures in a decorative design. Even the celebrated prima ballerinas, Mlles. Sallé, Camargo and Guimard, who are considered as the first accomplished women dancers on the European stage, with their ‘ravishing figures,’ and ‘enchanting appearances’ as Voltaire praised them in his poems, remained acrobatic puppets, as compared with our modern terpsichorean celebrities. ”

“ Even the average ballet dancing, which is supposed to be the perfection of artistic movement, is merely a series of pirouettes and gymnastic contortions, with the theatrical smile of a pretty woman to throw the glare of a calcium light over the imperfections and dazzle us. The average ballet girl is not adequately trained, from the natural and artistic standpoint. If this is the case in what should be the quintessence of natural, and so of artistic movement, it is to a great degree owing to the absolute carelessness in the selection of the muscles to be used in every movement of daily life. ”

“ 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 to be feared that the English ballet-dancer does not take herself sufficiently seriously. It may even be that she is a little ashamed of herself. One has the uneasy feeling that she regards dancing as merely a stepping-stone to higher things—to musical comedy for instance! It is her profession, not her art. Not until English dancers begin to realise the significance of the dance as art and to create that choregraphic atmosphere which at present appears to exist only in Russia, shall we have a true renaissance of the Ballet in England.{186} ”

“ While such an organization is far from ideal for the presentation of spectacular ballet, which must have a large company, eye-filling stage settings, and all the appurtenances of the modern theatre, since ballet is essentially a theatre art, it nevertheless permitted us to take a form of ballet to cities and towns where, because of physical conditions, the full panoply of ballet at its most glamorous cannot be given. ”

“ In the earlier days of the ballet the dancers were dressed in the elaborate and fulsome costume of the period—the women in hooped petticoats falling to the ankle, with their powdered hair piled up a foot or more upon their heads, the men in long-skirted coats, set out from their hips with padding. ”

“ It must be considered that in the ballet the movement of the arms is very important, and to perform it properly requires long study and extreme accuracy. Just as the art of painting blends and composes colors, and by the composition of scenes and figures makes a whole that is125 pleasant to the eye, so the movements of the arms in dancing add many and diverse forms of grace to the body, guiding and regulating its movements so as to result in a harmonious whole. ”