Dance floor

“ You see, on the Saturday of the dance, folks have to move out the beds and dresser and table—or whatever stuff they've got in their front room—to sorta clear the floor so there'll be plenty of space for dancing. All they leave is three or four straight chairs over in the corner for the fiddlers. And sometimes the lady of the house spreads a thick layer of white sand on the floor, just before everybody gets there. That way, she can get her floors tramped clean while the dancing is going on! Soon as the musicians come, they tune up. ”

“ Unless a house has a ballroom the room selected for dancing must have all the furniture moved out of it; and if there are adjoining rooms and the dancing room is not especially big, it adds considerably to the floor space to put no chairs around it. Those who dance seldom sit around a ballroom anyway, and the more informal grouping of chairs in the hall or library is a better arrangement than the wainscot row or wall-flower exposition grounds. ”

“ The dancing of young people is as natural and instinctive as their laughing and singing, and the old Easy Chairs about the wall might as wisely quarrel with the song of the bobolink in the fields as with the dance upon the floor. ”

“ All that is needed is a place to dress in. A section of the round dancing-floor ('orchêstra') is cut off; a booth or 'skênê' is erected, and the front of it made presentable. Normally it becomes a palace with three doors for the actor-poet to go in and out of. Meantime the character of the dancing is somewhat altered, because there is no longer a ring to dance in; the old ring-dance or 'cyclic chorus' has turned into the 'square' chorus of tragedy.
Of course, the choir can change costume too: Pratînas once had a choir representing Dymanian dancing girls. ”

“ Within all is motion and uproar. A large salle de danse occupies the greater part of the ground floor, the central portion of which is appropriated to the waltzers, while a broad slip on each side, beneath an overhanging gallery, running round the whole of the apartment, remains for those who drink, or take a temporary repose. Sometimes, however, the flood of waltzers pours in upon the side-tables, amid the clatter of chairs, the ringing of glass and china, and the laughter of the spectators. Gentlemen are not allowed to dance with their hats on ”

“ Sometimes this impromptu dressing assumes such importance that an adjoining house is taken over as a dressing room; at others it is of so informal a nature that spectators, who have gathered outside arrayed only in sheets, have to borrow a dress or a lavalava from some other spectator before they can appear on the dance floor. 114The form of the dance itself is eminently individualistic. ”

“ The third floor has been planned to meet many more requirements than are usually considered in a theatre. Across the front runs a large rehearsal room, large enough to make a fine dance hall when occasion demands. ”

“ In the rue Lappe in Paris nearly every other house is a Bal Musette and in all but one of these dance halls the floor is taken by men and women of that quarter, working men and women who come in and dance and pay a few sous for each dance. They do this every night and enjoy it; they enjoy the sometimes wheezing accordeon and the bells which, on the right ankle of the player, accentuate the beat. ”

“ Not finding itself expected to take rank with the ballets of other great opera organisations, the Metropolitan’s department of dancing has gone its comfortable gait. It has been under the direction of excellent ballet-masters; but they become easy-going, especially after proving to themselves that girls cannot successfully be asked to perform steps for which they lack the foundation of training. To other mollifying influences is added that of a slippery floor in the room dedicated to ballet rehearsal; a room so beautiful and a floor so perfect that to resin it would be a desecration. ”

“ In the evening we went to the ball, which was held in, or rather out of, a house on the corner of the plaza. The sala was opened as a refreshment room. In the corridor was a row of seats for those who did not take part in the dance, and in front was an arbour projecting into the plaza, with a cemented floor for the dancers. The ball had begun at eight o'clock the evening before, and, with an intermission of a few hours toward daylight, had been continued ever since; but it was manifest that there were limits to the capabilities of human nature even in dancing. ”

“ The dance hall, with its air of license, its dark corners and balconies, its tough dancing, and its heavy drinking, is becoming familiar to every reader of the newspapers. To the girls who attend them they are not all of one kind by any means. The best places are perhaps too “classy” for the West Side girl, and she has not the proper clothes. The character of the dances at any hall depends, our informants said, entirely upon the club that manages the affair. “If they don’t want nothing but society dancing, why the cop’ll keep the floor clear for them. ”

“ Attendants in evening dress were on the floor, making up sets and soliciting the habitues of the place to dance with the female partners, which were easily found for them. A high balcony ran all round the hall, which is 100 feet by 75 in dimension, and in the corners of the saloon, up and down stairs, were cafés and refreshment bars, which were crowded with customers. The entrance to this place is only one shilling, and the class of visitors is of a superior kind to those who go to any other dance-house in London. ”

“ All these halls are equipped with kitchens and refreshment rooms, and are the scenes of frequent community dances. The dramatic performance is invariably followed by a dance, the chairs being removed and the floor cleared with lightning rapidity. These dances are conducted in such a way as to furnish wholesome pleasure to the young people. ”

“ A flower petal falling on the floor acts as a banana skin would, making a slip and a bad fall possible to anyone on the stage. You'd not like to have your dance spoiled by a wad of gum or a flower petal, and perhaps get put out of commission and have to forfeit a contract because of a personal injury. So let's play we are on the professional stage here and do as real professionals do—cut out the cud and forego the posies. If you have flowers handed to you over the footlights when you get to be stars, ladies, let it be at the final curtain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The right leg may do the principal work through eight bars; the same work is naturally to be repeated then with the left leg; but often the composition of the music gives the left leg only six bars. This is good because unexpected, but it adds a great deal to the difficulty of learning Irish dancing.”
The above-named dances represent the utmost development of clogging, which is tapping of heels, and shuffling, or scraping of the sole on the floor. Foot-work, especially that of short and rapid steps, is the element impossible to show in pictorial form. ”

“ It is the Flour Dance. On the floor a design is drawn in an even layer of flour—a favourite figure is the square imposed on a circle, familiar in Saracenic ornament. The dancer’s{206} first journey over the figure establishes a series of footprints; a successful performance consists in planting the feet in the same tracks during subsequent rounds. Difficulties can be added by crossings of the feet, turns and other involutions, and multiplied by increasing speed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In those times there is to be no more dancing. The gentlemen, it is true, are to engage the ladies for a portion of the evening as in these benighted days; but instead of taking her on the floor, he will retire with her to one of a number of little private rooms with which every respectable mansion is to be provided, and there they will do their hugging in private. A great improvement, certainly, upon the present plan, in such matters as decency and comfort, but scarcely in completeness.
It will only remain for the sons and daughters of that future generation to make dancing their religion. ”

“ Fifteen Thousand Square Feet of Floor Space, Two Floors, Comprised in Ned Wayburn's Studios of Stage Dancing, at Columbus Circle and Broadway, New York.
GILDA GRAY AND NED WAYBURN PUPILS IN “IT’S GETTING DARKER ON BROADWAY,” FOLLIES OF 1922
19
THE ART OF STAGE DANCING
A BIT OF ANCIENT HISTORY EVERY age has had its ways of dancing; every people has expressed itself in some form of rhythmic motion.
The dance originally was the natural expression of the simple emotions of a primitive people. ”

“ There is no scenery; merely an immense green curtain for background, and for furniture a couple of odd little striped{55} sofas. The bareness of the stage, the great height of the curtain behind, have the effect of dwarfing the figures of the dancers; the elimination of all superfluous detail produces a needed concentration of attention on their movements. There being no dramatic action to unfold, sentiment rather than passion—and that of the most artificial kind—being the matter for portrayal, gesture and the dance are here submitted to the severest test as means of expression. ”

“ Shall we leave him in his perplexity, and, standing on the stair leading down into the salle de danse, where a dense crowd, in every imaginable dress, is jostled together, endeavouring to dance, and, looking on, admire the sober, judge-like gravity of several men—authors, artists, men of the highest rank, semi-disguised—who are dancing the most grotesque figures without a smile on their countenances? ”

“ It is love in human shape: now he hovers above the sleeping figure, caressing: now he is dancing just in front of the window. And we dare not breathe lest by so doing the air is stirred to drive him back into the moving shapes outside. But he rises on the arms of the wind, he crouches beside the girl. She falls into his arms and the love dream of a ballroom is realized. The music of the night has entered the room, languid music like water which these two spill as they dance to and fro, until, our eyes being opened, we can see as well as hear music. ”

“ In a vast room fronted by a latticed screen, all green and white, roofed by a green and white awning, and having a pattern of latticework, green and white, upon its inner walls, on a vast polished floor was a crowd of couples dancing to the music they had heard. It came loud through the open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of women's gowns as they whirled. ”

“ This same syncopated form of expression manifests itself in American architecture and in its social dancing. The broken lines, the irregular dynamics, and the restless corners here and there that we find predominant in American architecture are nothing but a transposed form of popular music. It is evident that neither one of the arts has yet found its foundation. A New York skyscraper is a silent ‘ragtime’ tune, and vice versa. But the ‘ragtime’ rhythm can be modulated to the same æsthetic expressions as the skyscrapers. Unconsciously the dance follows the patterns of architecture and music. ”

“ At a door, behind which dance music beat, she waited for him and together they debouched into a large, studiolike room, cleared in the center for dancing, and remarkable, as to its perimeter, for its convenient nooks. ”

“ The hall looked totally empty. I saw, when I had taken my bearings, that the whole audience was disposed [Pg 45] in the galleries, forming a balcony half-way up the room. The orchestra finished its overture and I began to dance. After having danced three times, as I was accustomed to do at the theatre, I returned to the scene to acknowledge the applause and I saw before me in luminous letters a sign with the words: “Don’t think Club.” ”

“ The first time she came here she stayed at the Grand Hotel, but the manager has given her the appartement of which I have been speaking. He has had a door let in at the rear of the stage, so that she can return to her rooms without having to go upon the street. She remains forty-five minutes on the stage. The white dance alone lasts eleven minutes. That is very fatiguing for her; she sticks at it too long, but the public is never willing to let her stop. ”

“ A very long and narrow room is obviously of the worst shape for the purpose of dancing, and is fit only for quadrilles and country dances.
The top of the ball-room is the part nearest the orchestra. In a private room, the top is where it would be if the room were a dining-room. It is generally at the farthest point from the door. Dancers should be careful to ascertain the top of the room before taking their places, as the top couples always lead the dances.
A good floor is of the last importance in a ball-room. ”