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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1908)
THE OREGON SUNDAY ' JOURNAL PORTLAND. ' SUNDAY EOSNa FEBRUARY ' 2 V J905 A. ATlr 4 T. m J ' J t Tlie Ballet as StoulJ Be Again Gr.o.wing in Favor lit,- - ' . K ,J' . 1 Ill: - ; : a-.-V. i 'fill .-VV'-Av-AV Wx iM :1V in rs , P-j 77 I life AMERICA this season appears to be I on the eve of a revival of the most graceful of the arts dancing. That most picturesque phase of danc ing, the pure form of the ballet not the frenzied capers of the comic opera chorus bearing the name is receiving more at tention in the United States this year than it has since the days of Fannie Elssler,vchen cities Vient xvild over one woman's supple swaying. Adeline Genee, with others who have leaped suddenly into a whirl of pop- ' ular interest and admiration, holds the cen- . ter of the stage as a novelty with the mod ern exposition of an art as old as the human :X.race. In Europe, Topsy Sinden, Genee s suc cessor in the London Empire ballet, evokes salvos of applause that bear witness more to the enthusiasm for the art of the ballet itself than for the dancing of the premiere. In Paris and other great cities of the Con tinent, ballerine are flashing suddenly into fame and demonstrating that the revival is world wide, as though some beautiful creature of the senses and the mind, having slept for half a century, were awakened by. a swift enchantment, to rejoice men's eyes anew. K HI WE LOVE dancing, althpugh w haye not really danced, as the highest form of the art is expressed, for, lo ! these many years. Every little while some elegant causeur finds material for half a dozen pages of tender sad ness in deploring the dulness of the New Eng land village, now that the big ballrooms of the countryside inns are closed and the joyous, jovial .rout of dancers has passed as a feature of the national life the fashionable cotillon not being considered as expressing in its true form the poetry of motion. The dirges, however, are not entirely true. , .While the most graceful art has been permitted to languish, a love for it has remained, and the taerry revels of former years have not been lost eight of entirely because of the fashionable mod ernization of dancing. One need only go to the clubs and the socials of any American city to see how well the masses of the people love dancing. The antique stock joke about the summer hotel full of girls pining- for a waltz with an Adam . who is absent from their Eden is taken out and dusted off and furbished up season after season, i'ust because of the love of dancing in American learts. And, too, because dancing is one .of the most primitive forms of expression known to human ity. The need for it is as imperative as the in stinctive need for song, almost as essential as the need for speech. When, a number of years ago, the negroes, responding to that inner impulse, which was felt more strongly by them than by their super-refined neighbors, evolved the cakewalk and carried it to the heights of grotesque posturing and ex travagant antic, the comic humor of it fasci nated the Aiierican sense of the funny. But the universal popularity of the cake walk was far from being due to the national love f humor. The art of the dance, appreciably neglected, needed only that fresh excuse for re nascence; boys and girls, men and women seized upon it with an avidity whoiry natural, wholly instinctive. : We always swing to extremes.' the anta8tic cakewalk yesterday; it is the formal, almost classic ballet today. And ci all dancing, m the wonderfully wide range of the entrancing art, none is more studiously scientific, more impressively picturesque, than 8kt,U i Pe danseuse . ,,Th? ta8 entered in the effulgence of its brilliant hght, serves now as the cynosure of the pubho gaze; but the background of; every Wa city in the land is filled with votaries quite as sincere, and quite as appreciative of the pleas ure of tho dancrf, as any ballet leader who ever pirouetted on two toes. lor the present, end , for a long time to i If A J, J 8 ' HI' ' ' - , 'i X 4 l1 -V 4 V ft: miration and the critical faculty which we, in oux time, taust sedulously cultivaU if we would be worthy of our half -forgotten inheritance of appreciation and if we would: be qualified to rival the audiences who are happy in sitting in judgment on her abroad. Or a Valentine Petit, auburn haired, warm lipped and alluring of eye, may come to us in all the splendid modeling of her ivory snns and shoulders, wearing the brilliant habiliment of the butterfly, the rainbow tints flashing from stage to stage, as though Nature, in some exuberantly generous mooa, naa vouchsafed to mankind a gigantic, daz zling species of lepidoptera to fssci nate the eye and sate the spirit with an incarnation di the adorable myth of Psyche. Queens of the ballet today, in the light of this unforeseen development of interest in their art, are as many, as beautiful and, perhaps, as skilful as those of the past, for, where an art loses in one aspect with the flight of time, it usually gains in another. The grace and pic turesqueness of . Trauhanova, Chasles, Mariiuita, Eosa Mori and Z a m belli I, i ; 5' :yX ' w . : - - 1: B i V TV' J r f " nT now bid fair to rival the preci sion and finish o f Cerito, L a Guimard, D e s Mastins, La Ca margo, Salle, Kosati and Car lotta GrisL 0 I -4 ft "3 - oar come, we are sealed ar.d delivered over to admi ration of la Genee, the beautiful blond Dane,' whose professional ethics hark back to the best traditions of her art, where the dancer, is also the mime and aims to give every posture, every movement, every figure that she executes a meaning which the spectators can interpret in tellectually, while their grace, their lightness, their picturesqueness constitute so many visual delights. Our grandfathers rejoiced in similar alle-. giance to the deities of the dance. La Fontaine created ballet dancing in France in the days and the nights of Louis XIV. Her reward was the hand, the fortune and the title of the mar quis de Saint-Genies. Another famous ballerina of the seventeenth century was the famous Florence, whose son be came archbishop of Oambrai. The name of Taglioni, who made of ballet dancing the art as it is known today, is still one to conjure with; in their old age, men whose memory of their youth preserved the vision of Taglioni in her glory were sure of audiences rapt in marvel of the tale, as though they were the surviving witnesses of a miracle that had come to pass. Fannie Elssler, who made new traditions in her art and informed her dancing with a' qual ity of passion which achieved the impossible a wedding of the brilliant but cold ballet to the seductive, swaying charm of the ancient dances of Artemis, in Greece is almost a treasure-of .. tSf, &&CCzzS SSZxZJ-CfJ before it in the way of forming acquaintance with all the interesting and romantio stages attending the development of a school, of art still foreign to our experience. To Americans, ballet dancing is an accom plishment which any girl of aptitude expects to "pick up" at an age even as late as 20 years. In Europe it is a profession which is studied at old and highly organized schools by candi dates who begin with the beginning of their teens. Yet our dancers are born to all the best endowments of every nation whose beauties have trod the boards. The physical health of the English dancer is theirs, as are the clever ness of the French, the smooth grace of the Italian, tho fire of the Spanish and the sen suous elegance of the Austrian. Only the wealth and the seal of fashion able indorsement, that have made grand opera in America a thing against which all Europe burns with consuming jealousy, are needed to enable us to surpass the Old World. But it is not the rich or the well-to-do only who are the probable contributors to the revival. The interest in dancing is pre-eminently the affair of the whole people, if one universal evidence can be relied upon. It is that one which has long been roost obvious and, therefore, most generally overlooked. Those who are men and women now can recall the scene when the organ-grinder or the German band came into their street twenty years ago. And they can recall, as well, the awkward hip-hopping they and their playmates did to the alluring airs, in the fond imagina tion of a dance. J r 4 'f it J PlHHIIJUt,! .)I'",'D.".U1I - 'S "X ' modern times, for all that she passed from the stage she adorned so many years ago. A Prussian banker won her. while her-sister, Theresa, married the brother of the- Prussian king. If the revival come, if the story of ' our grandfathers is repeated in this generation as it has been repeated in eyejy generatiqn since tho birth among primitive men of the undying art of the dance, the ballet in all its magnifi cent scope may be revivified, with phase upon , phase wafted across the seas in all the beauty in which they are "still enjoyed by peoples who maintain schools fop the art's , perpetuation.' A ChasleSj unfailingly elegant in pose, in imitably graceful in whatever drapery sho as sumes,, will bring us the fruits of her long ap nrenticeahiD. A. Trauhanova will challenge ad- 'TUT ! 1 "u In every art what is most needed to carry it to its highest level is the encouragement of patronage. To every other art America has extended the helping nand in a manner muni ficent rather than merely generous. If it be the turn of the ballet now, the whole world will share in the benefits. .'. And it seems, assuredly, that those who have the .jieans to become patrons of the bal let, , in- the practical fashion of American audiences,-who pay full prices .for their atnuse ments, are prepared to do their full part. This country, if the .ballet divertissement should ever become an institution as national as grand opera is, has some delightful years How different today I, The first strain ox music ''east side, west side, all around tho town" hales forth a troupe of tiny coryphee whose every step and turn is the poetry of mo tion. The whole childish world of America seems, suddenly to have been born "to an inheri tance of the most graceful art, while in. the public schools of New York the pupils are al ready expert in the dances of various nations. Here-and there, in schoolhouso and on Stage, among the young and tho mature, the human need for tho oldest and the most beau tiful of the arts is finding a national expres sion. Shall we revive it, fully nowlv
