Dancing bear

“ At low levels in civilization it is clear that dancing and play-acting are one. The North American dog-dance and bear-dance are mimic performances with ludicrously faithful imitations of the creatures’ pawing and rolling and biting. So the scenes of hunting and war furnish barbarians with subjects for dances, as when the Gold Coast negroes have gone out to war, and their wives at home dance a fetish-dance in imitation of battle, to give their absent husbands strength and courage. Historians trace from the sacred dances of ancient Greece the dramatic art of the civilized world. ”

“ When the bear heard the music he could not help dancing, and after he had danced some time he was so pleased that he said to the tailor, ‘I say, is fiddling difficult?’ ‘Mere child’s play,’ replied the tailor ”

“ The performers in this dance do not encircle any object; it is simply a dance in the form of a circle; they do not hold hands, but go round in a follow-my-leader style. Although the dancing in honour of the bear reminds one of the Ἀρκτεία performed in honour of Artemis, it differs from this in that only men take part in it; and the Ἀρκτεία, in which the performers are only young girls is, as we have seen, an initiation ceremony. A closer parallel of the dance of the Timagani Indians is the “Bear Dance” among the Sioux Indians mentioned by Réville [167] . ”

“ Curiously enough, the dance as a means of promoting sociability among the farm population was not discussed, possibly because of an old-fashioned prejudice against dancing that still prevails in many rural regions. Why certain good people should object to the dance, innocent, joyous and beneficial as it is in practically all its manifestations and associations, can only be explained on the grounds given by Lord Macaulay from the British Puritan's objection to the sport of bear-baiting. ”

“ We, for instance, see the pensive bear dancing in public places, lifting up its hind feet one after the other in mechanical alternation, and holding its fore paws off the ground altogether, and we forget perhaps at first why it does so. ”

“ When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he rehearses his hunt in a bear dance.
Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the quite young from sheer joie de vivre, and essentially inappropriate to the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word31 nolávoa means both “to work” and “to dance.” An old man will reproach a young man saying, “Why do you not go and work?” ”

“ Travellers have told of their sagacity; we believe them: but, that bears are made to stand upon hot iron, and undergo the severest discipline before they are fit for public exhibition, is a truth which harrows the feeling, and makes me wish the dancing bears unmuzzled, and let loose upon those who have the guidance of their education. ”

“ X. X. Misty communicated some remarks on the disappearance of dancing-bears from the streets of London, with observations on the exhibition of monkeys as connected with barrel-organs. The writer had observed, with feelings of the utmost pain and regret, that some years ago a sudden and unaccountable change in the public taste took place with reference to itinerant bears, who, being discountenanced by the populace, gradually fell off one by one from the streets of the metropolis, until not one remained to create a taste for natural history in the breasts of the poor and uninstructed. ”

“ But evening is approaching, and the revels are beginning to take on a noisy, riotous turn. To swinging, pulsing music there is a dance of nursegirls and coachmen, which sets the feet of all who watch it sympathetically a-stamping. The advent of a performing bear, walking gingerly upright at the end of the chain which his owner holds, creates a small diversion; a more lively one is produced by the reappearance of the tipsy merchant, who scatters bank notes promiscuously among the crowd. ”

“ At such times they would dance and hop with great delight; and the little hens, in a circle round them, watched their hops and steps with absorbed interest. Immensely pleased with himself, the young dancer would fluff out his feathers, so as to look as big as possible, and after strutting about, would suddenly shoot out a leg and a wing, first on one side and then on the other, then spring high into the air, and do a sort of step dance when his feet touched the earth again. Endless were the tricks he resorted to, to show off his feathers and dancing to the best advantage ”

“ The women sing, and produce a rhythmical accompaniment by beating two pieces of wood together; while the men, who represent the Kangaroos, produce sounds peculiar to these animals. The North American Indians have an Eagle Dance, a Bear Dance, and even a Dog Dance. The natives of Kamtschatka have a dance in which they cleverly imitate, not only the attitudes and tricks of the Bear, but also its voice. The peasants in Finland, in the beginning of the present century, still occasionally performed a similar dance, or rather action. ”

“ Soon the dancers began to assemble. Some were naked, except for loin-cloths and beaded dance moccasins, and had their faces and bodies variously painted. Others wore fine costumes, with war shirts of soft-tanned buckskin, which were decorated with colored beads and trimmed over the shoulders and legs with black-tipped ermine tails. They had breast ornaments and necklaces of beads, of elk teeth and grizzly bear claws. They carried tomahawks, bows and arrows, and rattles made of bunches of deer and elk hoofs ”

“ There follows a passage between captive and captor, which can scarcely be described as a dance, yet is something more than the mere acting of a scene. Desperately and repeatedly the Fire Bird strives to escape from the strong arms which imprison it; again and again the Prince, though hard put to it to retain the elusive creature in his grasp, frustrates these fluttering efforts. Though dancing, in the sense of rhythmic movement, is not the precise descriptive term for these expressive postures and motions, one needs it to convey the poetic sense of beauty which Karsavina here reveals. ”

“ In this dance she represents with singular beauty the proud carriage of that remote bird, its swooning death and its sudden collapse into lifelessness. It displays her skill in the difficult act of falling; she sinks to earth without any suggestion of arrangement or preparedness, ceasing to dance as swiftly and silently as a flame may cease to burn, her limbs failing her, as though her body had actually resigned its spirit. ”

“ The bear dance, in which those engaged in it imitated the movements of the animal, was a religious ceremony, and generally the bear was regarded with respect far beyond that paid to any other animal. It is unfortunate for the bear that it did not from the first cultivate its power of walking upon its hind legs, for there can be no doubt that had it done so it would have stood much higher in the esteem of man. ”

“ Out in San Francisco where the weather's fair,
They have a dance out there, they call the Grizzly Bear;
All your other lovin' dances don't compare.
Not so coony [or moony] , but a little more than spoony. ”

“ In their dances they are fond of imitating the different animals they pursue, such as the partridge and others, but principally the bear. They represent its sluggish and stupid gait, its different feelings and situations; as the young ones about their dam; the amourous sports of the male with the female ”

“ On the whole, there was a lack of excitement in the baron’s hunt. No one believed that they would find any bears so near the chateau, especially after several days of revelry and feasting. The bear is naturally shy and sulky. He has no liking either for orchestral music or the play of fireworks; and the whisper passed around from one to the other, that if they should happen to find one, it would surely be a tame bear and a capital dancer, who would come of his own accord to give his paw to the chatelain. ”

“ In mid-advance they stop, face each other, chassée, retire, and again come further forward, stop, and the peculiar portion of the dance begins, which is not dancing at all, but a quivering, undulating motion given to the body, as the girl stands with feet planted wide apart. The feet are still, the head scarcely stirs, except with an almost imperceptible snakelike movement, but the muscles of the body to the hips quiver in time to the monotonous music, in muscular thrills, in waves running down, and at intervals extending below the waist. ”

“ It is said that bears are taught to dance by being placed in a den with a floor of heated iron: the animal, endeavouring to avoid the smart to which his paws are thus exposed, rears himself on his hind legs, and alternately raises them with the utmost rapidity, during all which time a flageolet is played to him; and after this lesson has been frequently repeated, he becomes so impressed with the associated recollection of the music and the pain, that, whenever he hears the same tune, he instinctively recurs to the same efforts, in order to escape the fancied danger. ”

“ But the close of the performance was not upon the programme. The impatient bear, getting no nearer his goblet, hugged the man violently with the other paw, striking his claws through the thin shirt. The dance-measure was lost; the legs of the two tangled, and they fell to the floor, the bear undermost. With a growl of rage and disappointment, he brought his teeth together through the man's arm, and it might have fared badly with the latter, had not the goblet been refilled by some one and held to the animal's nose. ”

“ Bears have frequently been taught a great many funny tricks. I remember seeing one, when a boy, that would stand on his head, and dance, and perform sundry other feats of skill. His master was an old man, who passed himself off among the little folks as a conjurer. He was dressed in a most grotesque manner, and played on a drum and some kind of wind instrument at the same time. Besides the bear, who seemed to be the hero in the different performances, the juggler had some dogs, which he had trained to dance to his music, and a cock which would walk and dance, after his fashion, on stilts. ”

“ The dances—save the mark!—are without form or figure, at least those in which the white hunters sport the fantastic toe. Seizing his partner round the waist with the grip of a grisly bear, each mountaineer whirls and twirls, jumps and stamps; introduces Indian steps used in the "scalp" or "buffalo" dances, whooping occasionally with unearthly cry, and then subsiding into the jerking step, raising each foot alternately from the ground, so much in vogue in Indian ballets. ”

“ The dance commences by the men springing forward towards the centre of the circle and back again, flashing their knives about over their heads, and singing in time to the music in a low tone, but gradually the music, singing, and dancing become louder and quicker, belts and turbans are thrown off to allow of greater freedom of movement, and the knives flash more rapidly, until at last the men seem in a very frenzy, and the dancing becomes a series of wild leaps in the air, knives are thrown up and caught again, and the singing changes to a chorus of wild yells. ”

“ The white-painted braves drove the others before them with their lances, but stopped as soon as the two water braves appeared. Then came the brave with the willow branch, who could not stop dancing until the two grizzly bears appeared.
“The bears only danced when they felt like it. They lay in their den and did as they pleased. Sometimes the spectators threw things at them to make them dance. When they [221] were ready they got up slowly, holding their hands the way bears do their paws. ”

“ Different PUEBLO DANCES. dances are used on different occasions; for example, they have the arrow, scalp, turtle, fortune, buffalo, green-corn, and Montezuma dances. Their costumes also vary on each of these occasions, and not only are grotesque masks, but also elk, bear, fox, and other skins used as disguises. The dance is sometimes performed by only one person, but more frequently whole tribes join in, forming figures, shuffling, or hopping about to the time given by the music. ”

“ It is the more primitive love-dance of insects and birds that seems to reappear among human savages in various parts of the world, notably in Africa, and in a conventionalised and symbolised form it is still danced in civilisation to-day. Indeed, it is in this aspect that dancing has so often aroused reprobation, from the days of early Christianity until the present, among those for whom the dance has merely been, in the words of a seventeenth-century writer, a series of “immodest and dissolute movements by which the cupidity of the flesh is aroused.” ”

“ It is performed by a man dressed in a bearskin, who presents himself to the company, led by a pretty girl, who makes him perform all kinds of pranks and buffooneries, greatly to the enjoyment of the spectators, who occasionally join in the dance and give chase to the bear. ”

“ The crazy dance, called Psam by the Cheyenne and Ahaka′wŭ by the Arapaho, belonged to one order of the military organization already described in treating of the Arapaho songs. (See Arapaho song 43.) The name in both languages is derived from the word for “crazy.” Men, women, and children took part in the ceremony, dressed in skins or other costume to represent various animals, as buffaloes, panthers, deer, and birds, with one bear, two foxes, and seven wolves, besides two “medicine wolves.” Each strove to imitate the animal personated in action as well as in appearance. ”