Anna Pavlova

Æsthetic basis of the dance; national character expressed in dances; ‘survival value’ of dancing; primitive dance and sexual selection; professionalism in dancing—Music and the dance; religion and the dance; historic analysis of folk-dancing and ballet.

I

Every true art is a direct and immediate act of life. As in music and dancing, so in life, rhythm is the skeleton of tone and movement and also the basis of existence. We breathe rhythmically and our heart beats rhythmically. We walk, laugh and weep rhythmically. Rhythm is the only frame to the moving material of the visuo-audible art. What except rhythm can unite living men in order to convert them from a chaotically moving crowd into a work of art? It was undoubtedly the innate feeling for rhythm that actuated the primitive man to dance. All existing races show a strong tendency to dance, as well in their primitive as in the more or less civilized state. The plastic forms of the human body lend themselves more to an Æsthetic expression that contains architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, drama and music, than anything else in creation. The mimic expressions of the face, the agility of the steps, the grace of gestures and poses are all natural means which a man can employ in his dance. The symmetric lines of the body that are produced after the melodic patterns of the music form the Æsthetic basis of the art of dancing. The ability to give a living meaning to these lines is what makes a dance beautiful and divine. Although frequently the beauty of a line and movement can be observed in animals and birds, yet there it is an unconscious act, lacking in that individual and subjective feeling that we call inspiration.

The foremost element in every dance is—the step. Step is also, practically speaking, the first movement of life. In consequence of pure physical laws each step requires a new impulse and thus divides it into two periods: motion and repose. The continuance of these two rhythmic periods produces the feeling of symmetry and joy, which in its turn creates the various combined movements that again are divided into various sub-motions and partial measures. The development of steps in a dance is based on two principles: the movement of the feet, and the combined movement of the body and hands for grace or mimicry. Consequently dance is nothing but a chain of bodily movements that are subjected to a certain musical rhythm and follow the emotional expressions of the dancer. According to an innate principle dance, like speech, was practiced by the primitive races as a medium of the most vital expressions. By means of a dance the savages express their joy, sorrow, anger, tenderness and love. Dance has its peculiar psychology, which varies according to racial temperament, climate and other conditions. This is best illustrated in the various styles of the folk-dance. To the vigorous races of Northern Europe in their cold and damp climate dancing became naturally a function of the legs. The Scandinavian and Finnish folk-dances betray more heavy and massive motion, while those of Spain, Hungary and Italy or France give an impression of romantic grace, coquettish agility and fire. The folk-dances of the Cossacks are usually violent and acrobatic, as is their life. Energy or dreaminess, fire or coolness, and a multitude of other racial qualities assert themselves automatically in a folk-dance. The list of forces that make and preserve a nation’s dances is incomplete without the addition of the powerful element of national pride, weakness or other peculiarities. On the contrary, in the Far East, in Japan, Java, China, etc., dancing is exclusively a motion of the hands and fingers alone. In ancient Rome dancing was predominantly the rhythmic motion of the body, with vibratory or rotatory movements of breast or flanks. The Stomach Dance of the Arabians betrays the wild passion of a nomadic desert race.

According to Louis Robinson, dancing is an innate instinct that has an indirect bearing upon the existence of the human race. Robinson argues that throughout Nature instincts, like the organs of our bodies, are the product of the strict laws of evolution, and have been built up to meet some need. At some critical time in the past they had a certain survival value—i. e., they were capable of determining in the struggle for existence which individuals or tribes should go under and which should survive. This principle can be taken as one of the axioms which must be our pilots in every attempt to account for the faculties which each of us brings into the world, as distinct from those acquired in the life of the individual.

Practically every savage people has elaborate dances and spends a good deal of time in such exercises. Among adults dancing takes the place of the play of children. When we come to analyze the play of all young creatures from the historical standpoint we find it forms part of an elaborate natural system of physical training. The perpetual motion of the kitten while it is awake is obviously a training for those accomplishments which in later life mean a livelihood. Such astonishing skill and agility as are shown by the cats in securing prey cannot be attained by any ready-made machinery like that of the dragon-fly or the mantis: they must be built up and manufactured. Herein the nervous mechanism of the mammalia has prevailed over the limited mechanical perfection of lower things such as reptiles, fish, and insects. Most of them can do some one thing or other supremely well, but the mammalia, with their better nervous system and receptive brains, can excel in many things. We, with our greater gifts of the same sort, are the most versatile and teachable of all; hence we prevail over the rest of creation. The kitten, the puppy, and the young savage, by their continual restless and organized activity, gain great advantage in certain movements necessary in after life, and foster the growth of the particular muscles which later on will be absolutely requisite in the serious business of holding their place in the world. Obviously such instincts would become out of date and inappropriate should the general manner of living undergo a complete change. Hence we find that much of the play of young children in civilized lands has little or no reference to the serious life which comes afterwards. Such instincts, however, were developed during or before the long stretch of time of the Stone Age, when all men played hide and seek, and chased one another, and threw things, and ran, and jumped, and wrestled for exactly the same reason that makes us scan commercial articles, attend markets, and work in our studies or offices. What is observable in any nursery or playground affords a good illustration of the persistence of instincts long after the need which created them has passed away. For some reason the play instinct in most creatures tends to lapse at the time of full bodily maturity. It does not cease entirely, but apparently it no longer suffices as an incentive for the battle of life.

Man in the savage state is naturally lazy and does not like to exert himself when food comes easily. When no urgent need or human authority is pushing him, he prefers to eat to repletion and then to lie in the sun or loaf. We even find this primitive habit cropping up in strenuous lands where the stimulus of moral education and competition has been at work for generations.

We are all aware that, when we are lazy for any length of time, we get slack and soft. The primitive savage who lives by hunting and is in continual danger of raids from his neighbors, cannot afford to get slack. He must keep himself fit every day of life. How was this to be managed by our prehistoric forefathers when there was no fighting, with the weather soft, and a delicious fish easily to be caught quite near the dwelling? It is pretty safe to say that, owing to the want of condition—if they were not dancing tribes—they did not leave descendants which are among us in the twentieth century.

It seems strange how readily a group of negroes who are apparently exhausted after a long day’s work will join in dance with their fellows, and how, when not very tired, they will in their laziest moments spring up and take vigorous exercise of this kind. Every doctor will tell you that there are plenty of women to-day who have not the strength nor the energy to do any work or to walk a couple of miles, but who will dance from evening till morning without showing any great fatigue. Among such Pagans as the Zulus and Masai, who organize themselves for war almost as well as has ever been done by the most civilized Christians, there is practically no distinction between military exercises and dancing. This is proof enough to show that dancing had a survival value throughout the long stretch of the Stone Age. Dancing taught primitive men to move in compact bodies without confusion, and especially without getting so bunched together that they could not use their weapons.

To-day the true war-dance only persists among us in the form of military marchings, but the other primitive dances have left numerous descendants of all kinds and degrees, down to the modern tango. Among these non-military dances the survival value, apart from the healthy exercise which they provided and their general disciplinary effects, worked through the agency of sexual selection.

In the case of the primitive dances the working of sexual selection was beneficial as conducive to racial fitness. The dances in which women took part gave opportunity for appraisement of exactly the kind needed for a sound choice of mates under savage conditions. It afforded the chance, so lacking in our present civilization, of advertising any admirable qualities which might be possessed. It was a test not only of physical grace and perfection, but of activity, taste and temper. It contributed to honest matrimonial dealing—especially when danced in the approved ballroom costumes of savage times.

There have been many discussions as to why clothes were first worn—whether for ornament, warmth, or decency—but one may fairly say without any doubt whatever that, from the first ages until now, dance clothing has been mainly decorative. Here we find an ethical justification of matters connected with dancing dress, which has often provoked severe criticism among puritans. Without a doubt from the earliest times until now the dance has been a chief purifying agent in the marriage market—has played the part, in fact, of those market inspectors appointed to guard against adulteration.

It is a most extraordinary thing, when we come to consider man’s place in Nature, that he ever began to dance. Not that dancing is uncommon in Nature; many birds, especially those of the crane tribe, execute elaborate dances during their season of courtship, and as a mere pastime when they have nothing else to do. Few, if any, of the mammalia appear to indulge in organized dances, unless we give such a name to the frisking of young lambs and the prancing evolutions of horses and antelopes. Assuredly, in our direct line of descent nothing of the kind could have existed as far back as our knowledge and imagination will carry us. You cannot very well dance in the trees, which, according to Darwin, were the real nurseries of our species; and when you come down to solid earth your weak prehensile lower members would only make you ridiculous and contemptible if they attempted any performance of the kind.

Mother Nature, however, is a dame of infinite varieties, and seems continually to be trying the most bizarre experiments apparently without the least prompting or justification. The products of these experiments are called ‘sports,’ and there seems no limit to their possibilities. Chimpanzees delight in thumping hollow trees and knocking pieces of wood together, while it is said that the gorilla waddles to war to the sound of the drum, improvising a substitute by beating his hands against his brawny chest.

In the Western world professionalism in dancing has happily not had the blighting effect on the pursuit that it seems to have had on some other forms of pastime. But if we go to the East we find that practically all other forms of dancing have ceased to exist. We see the effect of this tendency most fully developed in China, where the recreative dancing of European society seems to be quite beyond the comprehension of a well-bred Chinese, who naÏvely asks the question: ‘Why do you not pay people to dance for you?’

Stage dancing seems to be an interesting instance of the degeneration into pure luxury or something which was at one time a helpful influence to the race. This is a tendency observable in many phases of life when the pressure of evolutionary forces is somewhat relaxed. Most of the luxuries pertain to matters which at one time had a survival value, and it cannot be said that they have retired from among the evolutionary forces even to-day; but their effect, if still beneficial to the race, lies in aiding Nature to eliminate the unfit.

II

From the earliest times on dancing has been dependent upon music of some kind. The question whether music is older than dancing has not been answered satisfactorily by academic anthropologists yet. However, all scholars agree that the appearance of these two arts must have been more or less simultaneous, the one influencing the other. But undoubtedly the first dance music was not instrumental but vocal. The savages to-day dance most of their sexual dances to rhythmic recitation of certain words. Music is in every phase of evolution the only true essence of that which forms the subject of the dance.

To the transformation of more or less primitive folk-dances into those of strictly religious character is due the principal idea of the modern ballet. In the Oriental temples dancing underwent a strange transformation. While dancing was made the basis of dramatic and symbolic ideas, yet this very fact became detrimental to the musical influence upon the choreography. The Egyptians, whom we consider the pioneers in religious dances, originated elaborate temple ballets, which were based more upon a dramatic than a musical theme. Though the tradition speaks of rounds, of symbolic and sidereal motions, and the instruments chiefly employed, as the Egyptian guitar, used both by men and women, the single and double pipe, the harp, lyre, and flute, yet essentially this all resembled a pantomime rather than actual dance.

It is very likely that all the ancient sacred dances originated with the subconscious idea of counteracting the sensuous or strictly playful influence of the social dances. The whole pedigree of our Western religions seems to show a remarkable absence of this method of encouraging religious feeling. The reasons why such manifestations were discouraged by Jewish and Christian moralists pertains to physiology rather than theology. As already said, man’s nature is compounded of many diverse elements, and the machinery of emotion at present at work within us dates back to our animal past. Our most refined and exalted feelings spring from the same nervous reservoirs and pass through the very channels which were at one time solely occupied by grosser passions. The Egyptian church that grew directly of the folk-art of the country was a stranger to Greece and Rome, and still more so to our Christian religion. The ethical ideals that actuated the Egyptian priests in introducing dancing at the altar, sprang directly from the soil and meant, in bringing the better part of human nature to the top, to act as a kind of separator. The priests discovered that the higher emotions, with the help of sacred dancing, can be put to excellent service as impulses to improved conduct. The Christian missionaries, coming from the East, found nothing elevating and ennobling in our Western dancing, which did not appeal to them on account of the very differences of the style and racial character. It is due to their opposition that the religious dances have faded out under the Western civilization. The warfare against dancing generally, on the part of the Apostles of Christianity, dates back to the fanatic era of theological and nationalistic differences. In all countries where the religion descends directly from a racial folk-lore, dancing has remained in high esteem at home and in the temples. This we find true in Egypt, Greece, India and China. In the Jewish form of worship there seems to have been no formally recognized dancing, although we have records of several displays of this kind, as in the case of King David, when, ‘clothed in a linen ephod, he danced before the Ark of the Lord with all his might.’

In Greece, cradle of the arts, the Muses manifested themselves to man as a dancing choir, led by Terpsichore. The Romans imitated the Greeks in all their arts and imported with the Greek slaves Greek dances. But Rome was too barbaric to appreciate the full value of Greece’s poetic arts. The solemn religious dance instituted by Numa and practiced by the Salian priests soon degenerated into ceremonial march that was abolished when Rome became Christian, through a papal decree in 744. Darkness of night fell on the development of secular and religious dancing, a darkness that endured for centuries. The influence of the Nile in Egypt and Cadiz in Spain, which for centuries had been the two great centres of the ancient dancing and supplied their dancers to the Roman potentates, faded out slowly in the history of European nations. The folk-dances were labelled as low and undignified amusements of Pagan peasants. Dance in every form remained an outcast, despised and condemned until the court circles of Italy and France distorted it to an amusement at domestic gatherings and masquerades. It is said that the modern ballet had its origin in the spectacular masquerades arranged for the marriage of Galeazzo, Visconti, Duke of Milan, in 1489. The impression of this performance spread to the Court of Florence. Catherine de Medici, the Queen of France, brought the Italian court pantomime to Paris, where the French kings and queens grew to admire dancing and took actual part in it. The attempts of Noverre to elevate the art of dancing to what it had been in ancient Egypt and Greece, were successful only externally. Music, the soul of dancing in the modern sense, was lacking, and without this soul the art of plastic form is incomplete. Though the Russian reformers elevated dancing from a domestic amusement to a serious and lofty stage art, they did not succeed wholly in giving to it the foundation that it deserves among the other arts. All the past and living goddesses of choreography have not had the freedom, the phonetic means and dramatic threads to thrill their audiences as they would, if man had not distorted and hidden the natural meaning of the dance that inspired his barbaric ancestors.

The philosophical conclusion of our historic analysis of dance leads back to the same axioms that actuated the savage in his practice of agility: the sexual selection and primitive sport, both necessary for evolution and the existence of the race. However, there is neither sexual motive nor instinct for ‘physical culture’ in the ‘Heavenly Alchemy’ of evolution that has created the poetic movements of Taglioni and her successors. The ancient racial propensities have developed into more spiritual ideas. Like the tendency of evolution generally, to universalize an individual and individualize the universe, so in dance the racial characteristics are transformed into cosmic motives. In this stage beauty becomes symbolic and concrete emotions take on a more and more abstract form. The survival value of the greatest art of the dance lies in ennobling the intellect and soul, which has necessarily an indirect bearing upon the physical. Ultimately this means perfection of the whole human organism. It inspires the mind and influences the body.

Civilization has brought humanity to a state where the physical needs depend upon the psychical. We have devised a more complicated form of sexual selection and more complicated means of existence than the primitive dances employed in our animal past. Beauty in the long course of evolution has grown more spiritual, accordingly dancing as an art has become an evolutionary medium of the intellect.