Dancing master

“ Evidently the dance is nothing except with a master, with an actress who shall abandon herself to the tide of feeling which the music suggests and throw herself into the full passion of it; who knows how to tell a story by pantomime, and to depict the woes of love and despair. All this needs grace, beauty, and genius. Few dancing-girls have either. An old resident of Luxor complains that the dancing is not at all what it was twenty years ago, that the old fire and art seem to be lost. ”

“ He put a great deal of strength into it, and made it evident that he possessed still more; strength enough to master the art of dancing once and for all, by the sheer force of it, if he cared to exert it, and a laughing light in his eyes, as if dancing was not important enough for that, and nothing else was. ”

“ Instead of the really useful knowledge of the economy of the frame, and the means of preserving health, girls are taught the constrained attitudes and the artificial deportment of the dancing master. The remark of Sir Joshua Reynolds on this subject has been often quoted. He said, “All the motions of children are full of grace; affectation and distortion come in with the dancing master.” To dancing itself there is not the slightest objection; it is at once an agreeable and healthy occupation, and it affords a pleasing and innocent recreation. ”

“ Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. ”

“ Movements may have an intrinsic grace and beauty, as words that utter no meaning may possess a splendour of sound. But the dance is to movement what language is to words: it implies selection and co-ordination for the purpose of expressing something—in this case the very essence of the sentimental emotions which the vibrant music of the strings evokes. Never was the ecstasy of the valse so irresistibly expressed. Leaping, swaying, its whole being abandoned to the intoxicating rhythm, the dancing phantom seems to draw the very power which animates it from the music’s throbbing pulse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Almost any one will admit that dancing is an art, but in truth it is really all arts in one; it is music incarnate, it is the poetry of motion, and it is painting. Often it is one of the loveliest of moving-picture representations—we refer, of course, to real dancing, and real dancing is not a species of gymnastic contortions, nor hoidenish romping, though we have recently seen both in the ball-rooms and on the stage.
Real dancing means graceful measures tripped to the lilting rhythm of fine music. To such dancing is our present Tango craze leading us. ”

“ The theory that a dancer can ignore with impunity the restrictions of technique, that she is bound to please if only she is natural and happy, and allows herself to follow the momentary inspiration of the music, and dances with the same gleeful spontaneity as a child dancing to a barrel-organ, is a doctrine as seductive as it is fatal. Already we have seen upon the stage performers who, in the name of Greek art, race and romp rather than dance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The truth may possibly be that that freedom from convention in which she glories is in reality a bondage. In her own words, “dancing is the spontaneous expression of the spiritual state.” The dance is “not an acquired but a spontaneous art, revealing the temperament of the dancer.” She is compelled to acknowledge the necessity for technique, but she fears that if it becomes excessive the art will no longer be able to stir the soul. ”

“ When I had finished studying my dances, I went in search of a manager. I was acquainted with them all. During my career as singer and actress I had served all of them more or less frequently.
I was, however, hardly prepared for the reception which they gave me. The first one laughed me in the face as he said:
“You a dancer! Well, that’s too good! When I want you for a theatrical part I’ll look you up with pleasure; but as for dancing, good heavens! When I engage a dancer she will have to be a star. ”

“ This is what makes her body seem like a highly strung instrument, whose strings the slightest breath of wind can set quivering. Let us hope that she will not change her views and aspirations for the sake of managerial or timely requirements, as so many successful dancers have done. It would be a loss to the evolution of the art of dancing. ”

“ Whatever may be said in dispraise of the school of the ballet—and it has its detractors not a few—it has at least the advantage of possessing a technique, the terrors of which are sufficient to protect it against the incursion of that mob of gentlewomen who dance with ease, or rather who would dance with ease were it not for the necessary pains without which that ease cannot be acquired. “Natural” dancing, by its very name, is inviting to those who are averse to hard work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like every other art, dancing too has its economy and its self-restraint. And the way to this ideal harmony is through the simplifications of convention and the discipline of a graceful technique. The dancer has to learn by painful practice to move her limbs in harmony with the rhythms of her melody, to avoid all that is abrupt or unsymmetrical. Each pose should be that of a statue, emotion poising in a harmony of line and balance. ”

“ According to the traditions of the man dancer, his entire being was transformed into mere feet and legs. His gaze and expression became cataleptic; his body, unbending above the waist, but as light as a cork, bobbed like the same cork dancing on the ripples of a running brook. The beat of his heels and toes pleased you like a snare-drum obligato. The performance ended with an amazing clatter of leather against wood that culminated in a sudden flat-footed stamp, leaving the dancer erect and as motionless as a pillar of the colonial portico of a mansion in a Kentucky prohibition town. ”

“ The dancer who calls the spirits moves with gliding steps, the arms outstretched, the hands beckoning upward in a gentle, enticing manner. The grace, dignity and earnestness of this dance linger with the writer as a beautiful memory after the lapse of many years.
Properties.—A green scarf for the Caller. Blue, white and rosy scarfs for as many dancers as will personate the three Flowers that respond to the call: Violets, Wild-roses and Daisies. A twisted rope of green to link the dancing Flowers together in the final dance. ”

“ Most emphatically I want to impress upon you that it is not "chorus work" that you learn in my courses. It is professional, individual dancing, taught thoroughly and completely.
Anyone who masters the dances takes on a certain confident feeling in time, after exercising great patience in practice. With this confidence the happy pupil radiates a new magnetic personality which the audience feels. But more about this later on, when you will learn just how one's self is injected into the dances until they are vitalized and made living exponents of a beautiful art. ”

“ From the time of the perspiring, disordered, exhausted, and out-of-breath dancing devotees who gave to the ball-room ensemble the look of a football field after the battle, the day has at last come when repose is an essential quality for the up-to-date dance enthusiast.
For the modern dance, when properly executed, is an exquisite sight, and the swaying, gliding Tango lovers or Hesitation Waltzers develop a grace of motion and an ease of deportment that probably most of them would never develop without these aids. ”

“ No, the most common type of the male "perfect dancer" is of a different stamp. This is the blockhead who covers his brains with his boots—to whom dancing is the one serious practical employment of life, and who, it must be confessed, is most diligent and painstaking in his profession. He is chastity's paramour—strong and lusty in the presence of the unattainable, feeble-kneed and trembling in the glance of invitation; in pursuit a god, in possession an incapable—satyr of dalliance, eunuch of opportunity. ”

“ We have attended innumerable dance performances, have seen many new and old ballets, in Russia and abroad, have seen the new and ultra-modern dancers, yet we have so far seen but a microscopic fragment of what we here call ‘dancing the music.’ Certainly the greatest part of the repertoire of all the celebrated dancers has been the dancing of something else than the music. ”

“ Still others care nothing for the motion picture, and cannot be induced to witness a performance on the screen. But everyone—men and women, young or mature, can enjoy the beauty, harmony, and exhilaration of a well conceived and well executed dance. There is something in the nature of us all that responds immediately to the message that the dancer conveys. Perfection of form, grace of movement, harmony of action with appropriate music, all combine to make up a spectacle that thrills and inspires. ”

“ THERE is a wonderful field for the dancer who can create an appealing dance of his or her own, or who can take some type of dance and by sheer personality so develop it as to be identified with it as the representative of that form of dancing.
Not everyone can be a specialty dancer of this sort, but to be one is well worth the effort of every ambitious exponent of the dancing art. ”

“ Dancing plays a more subordinate part in them than in the ballet proper. It falls into a natural relation to the ensemble, and yet the dance, in the exotic world here represented to us, is the apt, indeed the only conceivable gesture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are moments when it completes an attitude, giving a suggestion of ethereal lightness, the poise of a winged god alighting for an instant upon the earth. In one brief passage across the stage, the tips of the toes scarcely brushing the dust off the boards, the dancer may capture something of the grace of a bird’s flight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dancing has altogether ceased to play, indeed it never has played, a rôle of any importance in their lives. It means nothing more than paying occasionally to see the performance of some seven nights’ wonder at a prominent music-hall, or, more usually, gyrating languidly on a beeswaxed floor to waltz time or bounding along kangaroo-like to the swinging melody of a popular two-step. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Firmness of step, a graceful and regular motion of all the parts, suppleness, easy bendings and risings, the whole accompanied with a good air, and managed with the greatest ease of expertness and dexterity, constitute the merit of this kind of dancing. The soul itself should be seen in every motion of the body, and express something naturally noble, and even 76 heroic. Every step should have its beauty.
The painter draws, or ought to draw his copy, the actor his action, and the statuary his model, all from the truth of nature. ”