(extracts, p. 47-144)
THE ART OF THE DANCE
ISADORA DUNCAN
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
SHELDON CHENEY
NEW YORK • THEATRE ARTS BOOKS
Author: Duncan, Isadora, 1877-1927.
Other Authors: Cheney, Sheldon, 1886-1980, (ed.)
Published: New York: Theatre arts, inc., 1928, 147 p.
ISBN-10: 0878300058, ISBN-13: 978-0878300051.
FOREWORD [ ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ ]
A memorial volume consisting of essays by Isadora Duncan, forewords by R. Duncan, Margherita Duncan, Mary F. Roberts, and others; with reproductions of original drawings by L. Bakst, A. Bourdelle, J. Clara and others, and with photographs by A. Genthe and E. Steichen.
Photographs by Steichen and Genthe, drawings by Bourdelle, Rodin, and others. Reproductions de dessins originaux par Leon Bakst, Antoine Bourdelle, Jose Clara, Maurice Denis, Grandjouan, August von Kaulbach, Van deering Perrine, Auguste Rodin, Dunoyer de Segonzac et Abraham Walkowitz avec des photographies d' Arnold Genthe et Edward Steichen.
CONTENTS [ СОДЕРЖАНИЕ ]
-=- Isadora's last dance / Raymond Duncan -=-
-=- Isadora / Margherita Duncan -=-
-=- Isadora - my friend / Mary Fanton Roberts -=-
-=- Isadora Duncan, artist / Shaemas O'Sheel -=-
-=- Isadora Duncan is dead / Max Eastman -=-
-=- Isadora - remembered / Eva LeGallienne -=-
-=- Isadora Duncan / Robert Edmond Jones -=-
047-050. I SEE AMERICA DANCING (1927) [ Я ВИЖУ ТАНЦУЮЩУЮ АМЕРИКУ ].. 06
051-053. THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE OF DANCING (1920) [ ФИЛОСОФСКИЙ КАМЕНЬ ТАНЦА ].. 10
054-063. THE DANCE OF THE FUTURE (1903) [ ТАНЕЦ БУДУЩЕГО ].. 13
064-065. THE PARTHENON (1904) [ ПАРФЕНОН ].. 23
066-070. THE DANCER AND NATURE (1905) [ ТАНЦОВЩИК И ПРИРОДА ].. 25
071-073. WHAT DANCING SHOULD BE (1906) [ КАКИМ ДОЛЖЕН БЫТЬ ТАНЕЦ ].. 35
074-076. A CHILD DANCING (1906) [ РЕБЕНОК ТАНЦУЮЩИЙ ].. 38
077-079. MOVEMENT IS LIFE (1909) [ ДВИЖЕНИЕ - ЖИЗНЬ ].. 41
080-083. BEAUTY AND EXERCISE (1914) [ КРАСОТА И УПРАЖНЕНИЕ ].. 47
084-085. THE DANCE IN RELATION TO TRAGEDY (1915) [ ТАНЕЦ ОТНОСИТЕЛЬНО ТРАГЕДИИ ].. 51
086-087. THE GREEK THEATRE (1915) [ ГРЕЧЕСКИЙ ТЕАТР ].. 53
088-089. EDUCATION AND THE DANCE (?) [ ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ И ТАНЕЦ ].. 55
090-091. TERPSICHORE (1909) [ ТЕРПСИХОРА ].. 57
092-096. THE DANCE OF THE GREEKS (?) [ ТАНЕЦ ГРЕКОВ ].. 59
097-098. YOUTH AND THE DANCE (?) [ МОЛОДЕЖ И ТАНЕЦ ].. 64
099-100. DEPTH (?) [ ГЛУБИНА ].. 66
101-104. THE GREAT SOURCE (1913) [ ВЕЛИКИЙ ИСТОЧНИК ].. 68
105-106. RICHARD WAGNER (1921) [ РИХАРД ВАГНЕР ].. 72
107-108. A LETTER TO THE PUPILS (1919) [ ПИСЬМО К УЧЕНИЦАМ ].. 73
109-115. MOSCOW IMPRESSIONS (1921-1927) [ МОСКОВСКИЕ ВПЕЧАТЛЕНИЯ ].. 75
116-120. REFLECTIONS, AFTER MOSCOW (1927) [ РАЗМЫШЛЕНИЯ, ПОСЛЕ МОСКВЫ].. 82
121-127. DANCING IN RELATION TO RELIGION AND LOVE (1927) [ ТАНЕЦ В ОТНОШЕНИИ К РЕЛИГИИ И ЛЮБВИ ].. 87
128-144. FRAGMENTS AND THOUGHTS [ ФРАГМЕНТЫИ МЫСЛИ ].. 94-110
"Isadora-=-My Friend" by Mary Fanton Roberts
Isadora's own ideal of what the future might bring for the world she once wrote for a program … "Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future; the free spirit, who will inhabit the body of new women; more glorious than any woman that has yet been; more beautiful than the Egyptian, than any woman that has yet been; more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the Greek, the Early Italian, than all women of past centuries-=-the highest intelligence in the freest body!" P29
The Art of the Dance
by Isadora Duncan
There was a time when I use up the entire notebook notes and observations, when I myself was imbued with the consciousness of the apostolic values of my art; I was saturated with all sorts of beliefs, burning all sorts of naive audacity. At that time I wanted to transform human life, beginning with the smallest details of costume, customs, food. But since then, it took ten years; I was able to admit the vanity of my noble aspirations, and now I live only the pleasures of work and occupation of their art.
On the dance can convincingly say dancing than typing comments and explanations. In addition, all this is unnecessary for the art: his truth shall identify itself when this truth is really beautiful.
That's why I do not want to write any more theory or speak the guidelines. But I can not for fear of accusations of wanting something to promote, explain here the idea of the dance, which I have always been.
For me, dance is not only art that allows the human soul to reveal in his movements, but he is also the basis of the whole concept of life, more refined, more harmonious, more natural.
Dance is not as likely to think a lot, the combination of more or less random "pa", which are the result of a mechanical combination, which, if they can be used for technical exercises, yet dare not, and claim the title of art - it is only a means, not target.
I studied a lot of visual documents of all times and of all the great artists, but I never saw them as images of creatures, walking on the tips of the fingers or raising the leg above his head; those ugly fake postures and movements can never convey the status of the unconscious Dionysian ecstasy, which is necessary to the dancer. Further movement can not invent, reinvent; they should be open in the same way as people in the music opened the harmony, but did not invent them.
Great, the only principle on which I feel entitled to rely, it is - a constant, absolute, universal unity of form and movement; rhythmic unity, which is observed in all manifestations of nature; water, wind, plants, living beings, infinitely small particles of matter itself - all this is subject to the supreme rhythm, which is a characteristic feature of struenie. Not what nature does not make jumps; among all the states and moments of life there is a sequence that must rigorously observe in their art and dancer, otherwise it will turn into an unnatural, devoid of true beauty, a puppet.
Find the most naturally beautiful shape and find a movement that reveals the soul of this form - that is the art of the dancer.
Only because nature can draw their inspiration dancer, just as a sculptor, with whom she had so much in common. Rodin wrote: "To sculpt, it is not necessary to repeat the works of the ancient sculptors, we must first watch made of nature and see the only way in which the sculptors interpret nature in ancient sculptures."
Rodin rights; and in his art, I do not copy, as many think, a figure from Greek vases, friezes and paintings. I just learned they observe nature, and if some of my movements resemble poses imprinted on any work of art, it is only because they are drawn, as well as those who have one great source of Nature.
I was inspired by the trees move, waves, clouds, the relationship that exists between the passion and the storm, between the breeze and tenderness, and so on. D. And I always try to add to his movements a little of this divine sequence, which gives the nature in its whole beauty and vitality.
This, of course, does not mean that anything quite like moving and waving their arms and legs to get a natural dance!
In art, the most simple works - those that required the greatest effort of synthesis, observation and creativity and all the great artists know what works worth approach to the great, inimitable prototype - nature.
I gave her art has been since childhood twenty years of continuous work, much of which is technical training, yet many believe that I have not. This is because, I repeat, that the craft - not a goal but a means.
In my opinion, the purpose of the dance is an expression of the most profound noble feelings of the human soul, the feelings that come from Apollo, Pan, Bacchus and Aphrodite. Dance should establish fervent in our lives, living harmony. And to see the dance only pleasant or frivolous entertainment, so just to insult this great art.
There is constant communication between mind and body, which is not neglected in antiquity, but which we too often forget. Plato was dancing as well as dancing judge and the elders of the ancient republics; this custom brought to their minds the grace and poise that made them immortal.
And it is quite natural: the posture and the position that we take affect our state of mind: a simple tilting of the head, the work done with passion, awakens in us the joy of tremors Bacchus, heroism or desire. All gestures have a moral resonance, and therefore can directly express all sorts of moral status.
I am deeply convinced that the dancer must be very close connection with the works of human art and appearances of nature.
Every movement that you can dance on the beach, and that would not be in harmony with the waves of rhythm, every movement that you can dance in the woods, and that will not be in harmony with shaking branches and foliage, every movement that you can dance naked, in the open field, and that will not be in harmony with the vibrations and privacy landscape - all these movements are unnatural and false as they detonate among the great lines of nature.
That's why a dancer should elect mainly movement, expressing the strength, health, grace, nobility, or the degree of vexation of living things.
January 9 (Dec. 27) 1913
047-050. I SEE AMERICA DANCING (1927) [ Я ВИЖУ ТАНЦУЮЩУЮ АМЕРИКУ ]
I SEE AMERICA DANCING
IN ONE of his moments of prophetic love for America Walt Whitman said,
“I hear America singing”, and I can imagine the mighty song that Walt heard, from the surge of the Pacific, over the plains, the Voices rising of the vast Choral of children, youths, men and women singing Democracy.
When I read this poem of Whitman’s I, too, had a Vision: the Vision of America dancing a dance that would be the worthy expression of the song Walt heard when he heard America singing. This music would have a rhythm as great as the undulation, the swing or curves, of the Rocky Mountains. It would have nothing to do with the sensual tilting of the Jazz rhythm: it would be the vibration of the American soul riving upward through labour to Harmonious life. No more would this dance that I visioned have any vetige of the Fox Trot or the Charleston - rather would it be the living leap of the child springing toward the heights, toward its future accomplishment, toward a new great vision of life that would express America.
It has often caused me to smile, but somewhat bitterly, when people have called my dancing Greek. For I count its origin in the stories which my Irish Grandmother often told us of crossing the plains with Grandfather in ‘49 in a covered wagon - she eighteen, he twenty-one; and how her firt child was born in such a wagon, during a famous battle with the Redskins. My grandfather, when the Indians were finally frightened away, put his head in at the door of the wagon, with smoking gun still in his hand, to greet his new-born child.
When they reached San Francisco, my grandfather built one of the first wooden houses; and I remember, when I was a little girl, visiting this same house, and my grandmother, remembering Ireland, used often to sing the Irish songs and dance the Irish jigs; only I fancy that into these Irish jigs had crept some of the heroic spirit of the Pioneer and the battles with the Redskins - probably some of the gestures of the Redskins themselves, and, again, a bit of Yankee Doodle when Grandfather Colonel Thomas Gray came marching home from the Civil War. All this Grandmother danced in the Irish Jig; and I learnt it from her, and put into it my own aspiration of Young America, and finally my great spiritual revelation of life from the lines of Walt Whitman. And that is the origin of the so-called Greek dance with which I have flooded the world.
That was the origin, the root. But afterwards, coming to Europe, I had three great Masters, the three great precursors of the Dance of our century - Beethoven, Nietzsche and Wagner. Beethoven created the Dance in mighty rhythm, Wagner in sculptural form, Nietzsche in Spirit. Nietzsche created the dancing philosopher.
I often wonder where is the American composer who will hear Walt’s America singing, and who will compose the true music for the American Dance; which will contain no Jazz rhythm, no rhythm from the waist down; but from the solar plexus, the temporal home of the soul, upwards to the Star-Spangled Banner of the sky which arches over the great stretch of land from the Pacific, over the Plains, over the Sierra Nevadas, over the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic.
I pray you, Young American Composer, create the music for the dance that shall express the America of Walt Whitman, the America of Abraham Lincoln.
It seems to me monstrous for anyone to believe that the Jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm express the South African savage. America’s music will be something different. It has yet to be written. No composer has yet caught the rhythm of America - it is too mightly for the ears of most. But some day it will gush forth from the great stretches of earth, rain down from the vast sky spaces of stars, and the American will be expressed in some mighty music that will shape its chaos to Harmony.
Long-legged strong boys and girls will dance to this music - not the tottering, ape-like convulsions of the Charleston, but a striking upward tremendous mounting, powerful mounting above the pyramids of Egypt, beyond the Parthenon of Greece, an expression of Beauty and Strength such as no civilization has ever known. That will be America dancing.
And this dance will have nothing in it either of the servile coquetry of the ballet or the sensual convulsion of the South African negro. It will be clean. I see America dancing, beautiful, strong, with one foot poised on the highest point of the Rockies, her two hands stretched out from the Atlantic to the Pacific, her fine head tossed to the sky, her forehead shining with a crown of a million stars.
How grotesque that they have encouraged in America schools of so-called bodily culture, of Swedish gymnastics, Daicroze and the ballet. The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe-walking. It is noteworthy that all great ballet dancers have been very short women with small frames. A tall finely made woman could never dance the ballet. The type which expresses America at its finest could never dance the ballet. With the wildest turn of the imagination, you cannot picture the Goddess of Liberty dancing the ballet.
Then why accept this school in America?
Henry Ford has expressed the wish that all the children of Ford City should dance. He also does not approve of the modern dances, but says let them dance the old-fashioned Waltz, Mazurka and Minuet. But the old-fashioned Waltz and Mazurka are an expression of sickly sentimentality and romance, which our youth has grown out of; and the Minuet is the expression of the unctuous servility of courtiers of the time of Louis XIV and of crinoline. What have these movements to do with the free youth of America? Doesn’t Mr. Ford know that movements are as eloquent as words?
Why should our children bend the knee in that fastidious and servile dance, the Minuet, or twirl in the mazes of the false sentimentality of the Waltz? Rather let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, dancing the language of our pioneers, the fortitude of our heroes, the justice, kindness, purity of our women, and through it all the inspired love and tenderness of our mothers.
When the American children dance in this way, it will make of them Beautiful Beings worthy of the name of Democracy.
That will be America dancing.
© 1927.
Pp. 47-50.
051-053. THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE OF DANCING (1920) [ ФИЛОСОФСКИЙ КАМЕНЬ ТАНЦА ]
THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE OF DANCING
IN MUSIC there are three sorts of composers: first, those who think out a scholarly music, who seek about and arrange, through their brains, a skillful and subtly effective score which appeals through the mind to the senses. Second, there are those who know how to translate their own emotions into the medium of sound, the joys and sorrows of their own hearts creating a music that appeals directly to the listener’s heart, and brings tears by the memories it evokes of joys and sorrows, by the remembrance of happiness gone by. Third, there are those who, subconsciously, hear with their souls some melody of another world, and are able to express this in terms comprehensible and joyous to human ears.
There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul. This third sort of dancer understands that the body, by force of the soul, can in fast be converted to a luminous fluid. The flesh becomes light and transparent, as shown through the X-ray - but with the difference that the human soul is lighter than these rays. When, in its divine power, it completely possesses the body, it converts that into a luminous moving cloud and thus can manifest itself in the whole of its divinity. This is the explanation of the miracle of St. Francis walking on the sea. His body no longer weighed like ours, so light had it become through the soul.
Imagine then a dancer who, after long study, prayer and inspiration, has attained such a degree of understanding that his body is simply the luminous manifestation of his soul; whose body dances in accordance with a music heard inwardly, in an expression of something out of another, a profounder world. This is the truly creative dancer, natural but not imitative, speaking in movement out of himself and out of something greater than all selves.
So confident am I that the soul can be awakened, can completely possess the body, that when I have taken children into my schools I have aimed above all else to bring to them a consciousness of this power within themselves, of their relationship to the universal rhythm, to evoke from them the ecstasy, the beauty of this realization. The means to this awakening may be in part a revelation of the beauty of nature, and it may be in part that sort of music that the third group of composers gives us, that arises from and speaks to the soul.
There are perhaps grown people who have forgotten the language of the soul. But children understand. It is only necessary to say to them: “Listen to the music with your soul. Now, while you are listening, do you not feel an inner self awakening deep within you - that it is by its strength that your head is lifted, that your arms are raised, that you are walking slowly toward the light?”
This awakening is the first lep in dancing, as I undertand it.
When I began to dance with the movements and gestures my enraptured soul knew how to communicate to my body, others began to imitate me, not understanding that it was necessary to go back to a beginning, to find something in themselves first. In many theatres and schools I have seen these dancers, who comprehended only with the brain, who loaded down their dances with gestures; and their movements seemed empty, dull and devoid of meaning. What they translated through the mind lacked all inspiration, all life. So, too, do those systems of dancing that are only arranged gymnastics, only too logically understood (Dalcroze, etc.). It seems to me criminal to entrust children, who cannot defend themselves, to this injurious training; for it is a crime to teach the child to guide his growing body by the stern power of the brain, while deadening impulse and inspiration.
The only power that can satisfactorily guide the child’s body is the inspiration of the soul.
1920.
Pp. 51-53.
054-063. THE DANCE OF THE FUTURE (1903) [ ТАНЕЦ БУДУЩЕГО ]
THE DANCE OF THE FUTURE.
A WOMAN once asked me why I dance with bare feet and I replied, “Madam, I believe in the religion of the beauty of the human foot.” The lady replied, “But I do not,” and I said, “Yet you must, Madam, for the expression and intelligence of the human foot is one of the greatest triumphs of the evolution of man.” “But,” said the lady, “I do not believe in the evolution of man”; at this said I, “My task is at an end. I refer you to my most revered teachers, Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Ernl Haeckel.” “But,” said the lady, “I do not believe in Darwin and Hacckel.” At this point I could think of nothing more to say. So you see that to convince people, I am of little value and ought not to speak. But I am brought from the seclusion of my study, trembling and stammering before a public and told to lecture on the dance of the future.
If we seek the real source of the dance, if we go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and will always be the same.
The movement of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever in the same lasting harmony. We do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement in the past and what will be its movement in the future. We realize that the movement peculiar to its nature is eternal to its nature. The movement of the free animals and birds remains always in correspondence to their nature, the necessities and wants of that nature, and its correspondence to the earth nature. It is only when you put free animals under false restrictions that they lose the power of moving in harmony with nature, and adopt a movement expressive of the restrictions placed about them.
So it has been with civilized man. The movements of the savage, who lived in freedom in constant touch with Nature, were unrestricted, natural and beautiful. Only the movements of the naked body can be perfectly natural. Man, arrived at the end of civilization, will have to return to nakedness, not to the unconscious nakedness of the savage, but to the conscious and acknowledged nakedness of the mature Man, whose body will be the harmonious expression of his spiritual being.
And the movements of this Man will be natural and beautiful like those of the free animals.
..
The movement of the universe concentrating in an individual becomes what is termed the will; for example, the movement of the earth, being the concentration of surrounding forces, gives to the earth its individuality, its will of movement. So creatures of the earth, receiving in turn these concentrating forces in their different relations, as transmitted to them through their ancestors and to those by the earth, in themselves evolve the movement of individuals which is termed the will.
The dance should simply be, then, the natural gravitation of this will of the individual, which in the end is no more nor less than a human translation of the gravitation of the universe.
The school of the ballet of today, vainly striving again the natural laws of gravitation or the natural will of the individual, and working in discord in its form and movement with the form and movement of nature, produces a sterile movement which gives no birth to future movements, but dies as it is made.
The expression of the modern school of ballet, wherein each action is an end, and no movement, pose or rhythm is successive or can be made to evolve succeeding action, is an expression of degeneration, of living death. All the movements of our modern ballet school are sterile movements because they are unnatural: their purpose is to create the delusion that the law of gravitation does not exist for them.
The primary or fundamental movements of the new school of the dance must have within them the seeds from which will evolve all other movements, each in turn to give birth to others in unending sequence of still higher and greater expression, thoughts and ideas.
To those who nevertheless still enjoy the movements, for historical or choreographic or whatever other reasons, to those I answer: They see no farther than the skirts and tricots. But look - under the skirts, under the tricots are dancing deformed muscles. Look still farther - underneath the muscles are deformed bones. A deformed skeleton is dancing before you. This deformation through incorrect dress and incorrect movement is the result of the training necessary to the ballet.
The ballet condemns itself by enforcing the deformation of the beautiful woman’s body! No historical, no choreographic reasons can prevail against that!
It is the mission of all art to express the highest and most beautiful ideals of man. What ideal does the ballet express?
No, the dance was once the most noble of all arts; and it shall be again. From the great depth to which it has fallen, it shall be raised. The dancer of the future shall attain so great a height that all other arts shall be helped thereby.
To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art - this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life.
..
These flowers before me contain the dream of a dance; it could be named “The light falling on white flowers.” A dance that would be a subtle translation of the light and the whiteness. So pure, so strong, that people would say: it is a soul we see moving, a soul that has reached the light and found the whiteness. We are glad it should move so. Through its human medium we have a satisfying sense of movement, of light and glad things. Through this human medium, the movement of all nature runs also through us, is transmitted to us from the dancer. We feel the movement of light intermingled with the thought of whiteness. It is a prayer, this dance; each movement reaches in long undulations to the heavens and becomes a part of the eternal rhythm of the spheres.
..
To find those primary movements for the human body from which shall evolve the movements of the future dance in ever-varying, natural, unending sequences, that is the duty of the new dancer of today.
As an example of this, we might take the pose of the Hermes of the Greeks. He is represented as flying on the wind. If the artist had pleased to pose his foot in a vertical position, he might have done so, as the God, flying on the wind, is not touching the earth; but realizing that no movement is true unless suggesting sequence of movements, the sculptor placed the Hermes with the ball of his foot resting on the wind, giving the movement an eternal quality.
In the same way I might make an example of each pose and gesture in the thousands of figures we have left to us on the Greek vases and bas-reliefs; there is not one which in its movement does not presuppose another movement.
This is because the Greeks were the greatest students of the laws of nature, wherein all is the expression of unending, ever-increasing evolution, wherein are no ends and no tops.
Such movements will always have to depend on and correspond to the form that is moving. The movements of a beetle correspond to its form. So do those of the horse. Even so the movements of the human body must correspond to its form. The dances of no two persons should be alike.
People have thought that so long as one danced in rhythm, the form and design did not matter; but no, one must perfectly correspond to the other. The Greeks understood this very well. There is a statuette that shows a dancing cupid. It is a child’s dance. The movements of the plump little feet and arms are perfectly suited to its form. The sole of the foot rests flat on the ground, a position which might be ugly in a more developed person, but is natural in a child trying to keep its balance. One of the legs is half raised; if it were outstretched it would irritate us, because the movement would be unnatural. There is also a statue of a satyr in a dance that is quite different from that of the cupid. His movements are those of a ripe and muscular man. They are in perfect harmony with the structure of his body.
The Greeks in all their painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, dance and tragedy evolved their movements from the movement of nature, as we plainly see expressed in all representations of the Greek gods, who, being no other than the representatives of natural forces, are always designed in a pose expressing the concentration and evolution of these forces. This is why the art of the Greeks is not a national or characteristic art but has been and will be the art of all humanity for all time.
Therefore dancing naked upon the earth I naturally fall into Greek positions, for Greek positions are only earth positions.
..
The noblest in art is the nude. This truth is recognized by all, and followed by painters, sculptors and poets; only the dancer has forgotten it, who should most remember it, as the instrument of her art is the human body itself.
Man’s fist conception of beauty is gained from the form and symmetry of the human body. The new school of the dance should begin with that movement which is in harmony with and will develop the highest form of the human body.
I intend to work for this dance of the future. I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities: I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament. But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.
..
Let me anticipate all that can be said against my qualification for my work, in the following little fable:
The Gods looked down through the glass roof of my studio and Athene said, “She is not wise, she is not wise, in fact, she is remarkably stupid.”
And Demeter looked and said, “She is a weakling; a little thing - not like my deep-breasted daughters who play in the fields of Eleusis; one can see each rib; she is not worthy to dance on my broadwayed Earth.” And Iris looked down and said, “See how heavily she moves - does she guess nothing of the swift and gracious movement of a winged being?” And Pan looked and said, “What? Does she think she knows aught of the movements of my satyrs, splendid ivy-horned fellows who have within them all the fragrant life of the woods and waters?” And then Terpsichore gave one scornful glance; “And she calls that dancing! Why, her feet move more like the lazy steps of a deranged turtle.”
And all the Gods laughed; but I looked bravely up through the glass roof and said: “0 ye immortal Gods, who dwell in high Olympus and live on Ambrosia and Honey-cakes, and pay no studio rent nor bakers’ bills thereof, do not judge me so scornfully. It is true, 0 Athene, that I am not wise, and my head is a rattled institution; but I do occasionally read the word of those who have gazed into the infinite blue of rhine eyes, and I bow my empty gourd head very humbly before thine altars. And, 0 Demeter of the Holy Garland,” I continued, “it is true that the beautiful maidens of your broad-wayed earth would not admit me of their company; still I have thrown aside my sandals that my feet may touch your life-giving earth more reverently, and I have had your sacred Hymn sung before the present day Barbarians, and I have made them to listen and to find it good.
“And, 0 Iris of the golden wings, it is true that mine is but a sluggish movement; others of my profession have luted more violently against the laws of gravitation, from which laws, 0 glorious one, you are alone exempt. Yet the wind from your wings has swept through my poor earthy spirit, and I have often brought prayers to your courage-inspiring image.
“And, 0 Pan, you who were pitiful and gentle to simple Psyche in her wanderings, think more kindly of my little attempts to dance in your woody places.
“And you most exquisite one, Terpsichore, send to me a little comfort and strength that I may proclaim your power on Earth during my life; and afterwards, in the shadowy Hades, my wistful spirit shall dance dances better yet in thine honour.”
Then came the voice of Zeus, the Thunderer:
“Continue your way and rely upon the eternal justice of the immortal Gods; if you work well they shall know of it and be pleased thereof.”
..
In this sense, then, I intend to work, and if I could find in my dance a few or even one single position that the sculptor could transfer into marble so that it might be preserved, my work would not have been in vain; this one form would be a gain; it would be a first step for the future. My intention is, in due time, to found a school, to build a theatre where a hundred little girls shall be trained in my art, which they, in their turn, will better. In this school I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements, but to make their own. I shall not force them to study certain definite movements; I shall help them to develop those movements which are natural to them. Whosoever sees the movements of an untaught little child cannot deny that its movements are beautiful. They are beautiful because they are natural to the child. Even so the movements of the human body may be beautiful in every stage of development so long as they are in harmony with that stage and degree of maturity which the body has attained. There will always be movements which are the perfect expression of that individual body and that individual soul; so we must not force it to make movements which are not natural to it but which belong to a school. An intelligent child must be astonished to find that in the ballet school it is taught movements contrary to all those movements which it would make of its own accord.
..
This may seem a question of little importance, a question of differing opinions on the ballet and the new dance. But it is a great question. It is not only a question of true art, it is a question of race, of the development of the female sex to beauty and health, of the return to the original strength and to natural movements of woman’s body. It is a question of the development of perfect mothers and the birth of healthy and beautiful children. The dancing school of the future is to develop and to show the ideal form of woman. It will be, as it were, a museum of the living beauty of the period.
Travellers coming into a country and seeing the dancers should find in them that country’s ideal of the beauty of form and movement. But strangers who today come to any country, and there see the dancers of the ballet school, would get a strange notion indeed of the ideal of beauty in that country. More than this, dancing like any art of any time should reflect the highest point the spirit of mankind has reached in that special period. Does anybody think that the present day ballet school expresses this?
Why are its positions in such contrast to the beautiful positions of the antique sculptures which we preserve in our museums and which are constantly presented to us as pcrfect models of ideal beauty? Or have our museums been founded only out of historical and archaeological interest, and not for the sake of the beauty of the objects which they contain?
The ideal of beauty of the human body cannot change with fashion but only with evolution. Remember the ory of the beautiful sculpture of a Roman girl which was discovered under the reign of Pope Innocent VIII, and which by its beauty created such a sensation that the men thronged to see it and made pilgrimages to it as to a holy shrine, so that the Pope, troubled by the movement which it originated, finally had it buried again.
And here I want to avoid a misunderstanding that might easily arise. From what I have said you might conclude that my intention is to return to the dances of the old Greeks, or that I think that the dance of the future will be a revival of the antique dances or even of those of the primitive tribes. No, the dance of the future will be a new movement, a consequence of the entire evolution which mankind has passed through. To return to the dances of the Greeks would be as impossible as it is unnecessary. We are not Greeks and therefore cannot dance Greek dances.
But the dance of the future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, is mere merchandise.
The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body. The dancer will not belong to a nation but to all humanity. She will dance not in the form of nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette, but in the form of woman in her greatest and purest expression. She will realize the mission of woman’s body and the holiness of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of woman.
Oh, what a field is here awaiting her! Do you not feel that she is near, that she is coming, this dancer of the future! She will help womankind to a new knowledge of the possible strength and beauty of their bodies, and the relation of their bodies to the earth nature and to the children of the future. She will dance the body emerging again from centuries of civilized forgetfulness, emerging not in the nudity of primitive man, but in a new nakedness, no longer at war with spirituality and intelligence, but joining with them in a glorious harmony.
This is the mission of the dancer of the future. Oh, do you not feel that she is near, do you not long for her coming as I do? Let us prepare the place for her. I would build for her a temple to await her. Perhaps she is yet unborn, perhaps she is now a little child. Perhaps, oh blissful! it may be my holy mission to guide her first steps, to watch the progress of her movements day by day until, far outgrowing my poor teaching, her movements will become godlike, mirroring in themselves the waves, the winds, the movements of growing things, the flight of birds, the passing of clouds, and finally the thought of man in his relation to the universe.
Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future: the free spirit, who will inhabit the body of new woman; more glorious than any woman that has yet been; more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the Greek, the early Italian, than all women of past centuries - the highest intelligence in the freest body!
1902 or 1903. © 1909.
https://idvm.chat.ru/texts/bibe/duncan-dance-of-future.htm#begin
Pp. 54-63.
064-065. THE PARTHENON (1904) [ ПАРФЕНОН ]
THE PARTHENON
ANYONE who, arriving at the foot of the Acropolis, has mounted with prayerful feet toward the Parthenon, and at length standing before this monument of the one immortal Beauty, feeling his soul lifting towards this glorious form, realizing that he has gained that secret middle place from which radiate in vast circles all knowledge and all Beauty - and that he has arrived at the core and root of this beauty - who, lifting his eyes to the rhythmical succession of Doric columns, has felt “form” in its finest and noblest sense fulfill the spirit’s highest want of form, that one will understand for what I am striving in my first dance tonight. It is my effort to express the feeling of the human body in relation to the Doric column.
For the last four months, each day I have stood before this miracle of perfection wrought of human hands. I have seen around it sloping the Hills, in many forms, but in direct contrast to them the Parthenon, expressing their fundamental idea. Not in imitation of the outside forms of nature, but in understanding of nature’s great secret rules, rise the Doric columns.
The first days as I stood there my body was as nothing and my soul was scattered; but gradually called by the great inner voice of the Temple, came back the parts of my self to worship it: first came my soul and looked upon the Doric columns, and then came my body and looked - but in both were silence and stillness, and I did not dare to move, for I realized that of all the movements my body had made, none was worthy to be made before a Doric Temple. And, as I stood thus, I realized that I must find a dance whose effort was to be worthy of the Temple - or never dance again.
Neither Satyr nor Nymph had entered here, neither Shadows nor Bacchantes. All that I had danced was forbidden this Temple - neither love nor hate nor fear, nor joy nor sorrow - only a rhythmic cadence, those Doric columns - only in perfect harmony this glorious Temple, calm through all the ages.
For many days no movement came to me. And then one day came the thought: These columns which seem so straight and still are not really straight, each one is curving gently from the base to the height, each one is in flowing movement, never resting, and the movement of each is in harmony with the others. And, as I thought this, my arms rose slowly toward the Temple, and I leaned forward - and then I knew I had found my dance, and it was a Prayer.
1903 or 1904.
Pp. 64-65.
066-070. THE DANCER AND NATURE (1905) [ ТАНЦОВЩИК И ПРИРОДА ]
THE DANCER AND NATURE
IN NO country is the soul made so sensible of Beauty and of Wisdom as in Greece. Gazing at the sky one knows why Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, was called “the Blue-Eyed One”, and why learning and beauty are always joined in her service. And one feels also why Greece has been the land of great philosophers, lovers of wisdom, and why the greatest of these has called the highest beauty the highest wisdom....
Does the recognition of Beauty as the highest Idea belong wholly to the province of Man’s Intellect?... Or do you think that a woman might also attain to a knowledge of the highest beauty? Considering women in our country as they are today, does it not seem that very few among them have a true feeling and love for beauty as an Idea? Does it not seem they have recognition of that which is trifling and pretty only, but are blind to true beauty?
At the words “true beauty” there comes before my eyes a procession of figures, women’s figures, draped lightly in noble draperies. They go two and two, and the harmony of their bodies swaying to their steps is like music.
One might well be led to believe that women are incapable of knowing beauty as an Idea, but I think this only seems so, not because they are incapable of perceiving but only because they are at present blind to the chief means in their power of understanding True Beauty. Through the eyes beauty most readily finds a way to the soul, but there is another way for women - perhaps an easier way - and that is through the knowledge of their own bodies.
The human body has through all ages itself been the symbol of highest beauty. I see a young goatherd sitting surrounded by his flock, and before him, rose-tipped of the sun, stands the Goddess of Cyprus, and she smiles as she reaches her hand for the prize which she knows to be hers. That exquisitely poised head, those shoulders gently sloping, those breasts firm and round, the ample waist with its free lines, curving to the hips, down to the knees and feet - all one perfect whole.
The artist without this first consciousness of proportion and line of the human form could have had no consciousness of the beauty surrounding him. When his ideal of the human form is a noble one, then his conception of all line and form in Nature is noblest: the knowledge of sky and earth forms - and from this the conception of line and form of architecture, painting and sculpture. All art - does it not come originally from the first human consciousness of the nobility of the lines of the human body?
How shall woman attain a knowledge of this beauty? Shall she find this knowledge in the gymnasium examining her muscles, in the museum regarding the sculptured forms, or by the continual contemplation of beautiful objects, and the reflection of them in the mind? These are all ways, but the chief thing is, she must live this beauty, and her body must be the living exponent of it.
Not by the thought or contemplation of beauty only, but by the living of it, will woman learn. And as form and movement are inseparable, I might say that she will learn by that movement which is in accordance with the beautiful form.
And how shall one name that movement which is in accord with the most beautiful human form? There is a name, the name of one of the oldest of the arts - time-honored as one of the nine Muses - but it is a name that has fallen into such disrepute in our day that it has come to mean jut the opposite of this definition. I would name it the Dance. Woman is to learn beauty of form and movement through the dance.
I believe here is a wonderful undiscovered inheritance for coming womanhood, the old dance which is to become the new. She shall be sculpture not in clay or marble but in her own body which she shall endeavor to bring to the highest state of plastic beauty; she shall be painter, but, as part of a great picture, she shall mingle in many groups of new changing light and color. With the movement of her body she shall find the secret of perfect proportion of line and curve. The art of the dance she will hold as a great well-spring of new life for sculpture, painting and architecture.
Before woman can reach high things in the art of the dance, dancing must exist as an art for her to practice, which at the present day in our country it certainly does not.
Where are we to look for the great fountain-head of movement? Woman is not a thing apart and separate from all other life organic and inorganic. She is but a link in the chain, and her movement must be one with the great movement which runs through the universe; and therefore the fountain-head for the art of the dance will be the study of the movements of Nature.
With the strengthening of the breeze over the seas, the waters form in long undulations. Of all movement which gives us delight and satisfies the soul’s sense of movement, that of the waves of the sea seems to me the finest. This great wave movement runs through all Nature, for when we look over the waters to the long line of hills on the shore, they seem also to have the great undulating movement of the sea; and all movements in Nature seem to me to have as their ground-plan the law of wave movement.
``
Yesterday we were speaking of the movement in Nature, saying that the wave movement was the great foundation. The idea continually presents itself to me, and I see waves rising through all things. Looking through the trees they seem also to be a pattern conforming to lines of waves. We might think of them from another standpoint: that all energy expresses itself through this wave movement. For does not sound travel in waves, and light also? And when we come to the movements of organic nature, it would seem that all free natural movements conform to the law of wave movement: the flight of birds, for instance, or the bounding of animals. It is the alternate attraction and resistance of the law of gravity that causes this wave movement.
I see dance motifs in all things about me. All true dance movements possible to the human body exist primarily in Nature. What is “true dance” in opposition to what might be named the false dance? The true dance is appropriate to the most beautiful human form; the false dance is the opposite of this definition - that is, that movement which conforms to a deformed human body. First draw me the form of a woman as it is in Nature. And now draw me the form of a woman in a modern corset and the satin slippers used by our modern dancers. Now do you not see that the movement that would conform to one figure would be perfectly impossible for the other? To the first all the rhythmic movements that run through Nature would be possible. They would find this form their natural medium for movement. To the second figure these movements would be impossible on account of the rhythm being broken, and stopped at the extremities.
We cannot take movements for the second figure from Nature, but must on the contrary go according to set geometrical figures based on straight lines; and that is exactly what the school of dance of our day has done. They have invented a movement which conforms admirably to the human figure of the second illustration, but which would be impossible to the figure as drawn in our first sketch. Therefore it is only those movements which would be natural to the first figure that I call the true dance.
What I name as “deformed” is by many people held to be an evolution in form to something higher, and the dance which would be appropriate to woman’s natural form would be held by them as primitive and uncultivated. Whereas they would name the dance which is appropriate to the form much improved, compressed in corsets and shoes, as the dance appropriate to the culture of the present day. How would one answer these people?
That man’s culture is the making use of Nature’s forces in channels harmonious to those forces, and never the going directly against Nature and all art intimately connected with Nature at its roots; that the painter, the poet, the sculptor and the dramatist do but fix for us through their work according to their ability to observe in Nature; that Nature always has been and must be the great source of all art; and that there is a complete separation of the dancer’s movement from the movement of Nature....
Probably 1905.
Pp. 66-70.
071-073. WHAT DANCING SHOULD BE (1906) [ КАКИМ ДОЛЖЕН БЫТЬ ТАНЕЦ ]
WHAT DANCING SHOULD BE
I WAS sitting in my study this afternoon, regarding by the light of the dying day some little figures on my book-shelf, a Satyr, a Nymph, an Amazon, an Eros; and the movement of each was different, and the movement of each was beautiful. Why beautiful? Because the movement of each was in direct correspondence with the form and symmetry of each; therefore the form and the movement were one. I was regarding these figures in turn, and my enjoyment of the harmonies in their lines was like that of listening to music, when the door opened, and quite unannounced a little girl came in. She ran to me, and throwing her arms about me, cried, “Dear sweet Miss Duncan, I liked your dance so much, I must come and see you.”
I regarded the glowing life in the face of the child. Something there seemed familiar to me. What was it? Unconsciously I raised my eyes to the shelf where danced my fauns and nymphs. Was it not there, the resemblance? The eternal childhood of the world? The Golden Age, does it not live again, in all ages in all children?
“And why do you find my dance beautiful, little one?” I asked.
“Because it is so natural,” answered the child.
“And,” I said, “are all natural things beautiful?” for I would learn from the child a definition of beauty; and the child answered gladly, “Yes!”
0 wise little philosopher, who answers from the sureness of instinct, without need of consideration! Yes, for Beauty is the soul and the laws of the Universe, and all that is in accordance with this soul and these laws is Beauty. And ugliness is only that which is against the harmony of these laws.
The dance and sculpture are the two arts most closely united, and the foundation of both is Nature. The sculptor and the dancer both have to seek in Nature the most beautiful forms, and the movements which inevitably express the spirit of those forms. So the teaching of sculpture and of the dance ought to go hand in hand. The sculptor may interpret the movements and the forms imaginatively, but only the study of Nature can serve as a foundation. The study of living figures that dance spontaneously, each an expression of an individual soul, of its deepest understanding and personal power, is what the school should offer the sculptor, and what I wish to bring about.
Must the sculptor draw all from his imagination, or from the memory of what is left to us from Greek art? I say that is not sufficient for inspiration - for a great living work. Now where shall the sculptor of today find beautiful living forms in rhythmic movement? Let him leave his studio and his model and go to the opera, to see the school of the dance as represented by the national ballet: let him go pencil and paper in hand, and then let him tell us whether he has found one pose, one movement, one suggestion for the beauty of free woman’s body in the expression of the highest beauty, one feeling which would inspire an art work of purity and holiness.
So I say that the relation of the new school of the dance to sculpture is to be a very close one. From its earliest stages, when the little ones begin their first childish movements, we will have days when every sculptor who asks shall be admitted to study the free unconscious movements of the children without clothes. And as gradually the movements of the little girls develop and become full, rhythmical and beautiful, they will be more and more a source of light for sculptors.
Have you ever seen the little girls who are studying in the ballet of today? The little girls sweet, bright and graceful - but their feet are being tortured into deformed shapes. Their tender little bodies already are being forced into tight bodices and baby corsets, while their natural graceful movements are being tormented into unnatural straight kickings of the legs, toe walking, and all sorts of awkward contortions which are directly contrary to what a child’s natural movement would be if developed in the line of reason and beauty.
I witnessed such a children’s ballet once at the Berlin Opera House, and I say it is a shame and a disgrace to the intelligence of the German nation. Now whence does this style of dancing come? It comes from France, from the time of the most polluted of courts, and I say it suited the falseness and shallowness of those courts perfectly, but it does not suit our time, and it does not find itself at home in a nation in which Schiller and Goethe and Richard Wagner and many other great and beautiful souls have written what real dancing should be.
What dancing should be - how many poets, how many philosophers, how many scientist of Germany have written beautiful lines on this subject! And they have mostly written of little children dancing, or of maidens dancing, or of one woman dancing. And when one reads such lines, it is like a call from the depths of their poet-souls: “0 Woman, come before us, before our eyes longing for beauty, and tired of the ugliness of this civilization, come in simple tunics, letting us see the line and harmony of the body beneath, and dance for us. Dance us the sweetness of life and its meanings, dance for us the movements of birds, the waters, waving trees, floating clouds, dance for us the holiness and beauty of woman’s body.”
Like a call it has come from the souls of these great ones to women: “Give us again the sweetness and beauty of the true dance, give us again the joy of seeing the simple unconscious pure body of woman.” Like a great call it has come, and women must hear and answer it.
(1905 or 1906)
Pp. 71-73.
074-076. A CHILD DANCING (1906) [ РЕБЕНОК ТАНЦУЮЩИЙ ]
A CHILD DANCING
SEATED on the beach at Noordwijk, I look on while my little niece, who has come to visit me, from the Griinewald School, dances here before the waves. I gaze across the vast expanse of surging water - wave after wave streaming endlessly past, throwing up the white foam. And in front of it all the dainty little figure in her white fluttering dress, dancing before the monstrous sea! And I feel as though the heart-beat of her little life were sounding in unison with the mighty life of the water, as though it possessed something of the same rhythm, something of the same life, and my heart rejoices at her dancing.
For a long time I am lost in contemplation, and her dance by the sea seems to me to contain in little the whole problem on which I am working. It seems to reflect the naturally beautiful motions of the human body, in the dance. She dances because she is full of the joy of life. She dances because the waves are dancing before her eyes, because the winds are dancing, because she can feel the rhythm of the dance throughout the whole of nature. To her it is a joy to dance; to me it is a joy to watch her. It is summer now, here by the sea, and life is filled with joy; but I think of winter, in the towns, in the streets, in the houses, of life in the towns in the gloomy winter. How can the life of nature, the joy of summer, of sunshine, the joy of a child dancing by the sea, how can all this beauty be drawn into life, into the towns? Can the dancer sugget all this and remind men of it in the winter time, in the cities? Can she call up within me the same delight which she is giving me now as I sit here on the beach and watch her dancing?
I look more closely and study her movements. What is this dance she is dancing? I see that the simple movements and steps are those she has learnt in our school during the past two years. But she invests them with her own spontaneous child-like feelings, her own child-like happiness. She is only dancing what she has been taught, but the movements taught her are so completely in harmony with her child-like nature that they seem to spring direct from her inmost being.
In the memoranda for my method of inrstruction I have laid it down that:- “The child must not be taught to make movements, but her soul, as it grows to maturity must be guided and instructed; in other words, the body must be taught to express itself by means of the motions which are natural to it. We do not allow the child to make a single movement unless it knows why it makes it. I do not mean to say that the meaning of every motion must be explained to the child in words, but that the motion must be of such a nature that the child feels the reason for it in every fibre. In this way the child will become versed in the simple language of gestures.”
These first memoranda in my notebook come back to my memory as I sit here watching Temple dancing on the beach. Her dancing is, in a sense, an epitome of all the hopes and all the efforts I have expended on my school since its foundation.
I can picture to myself the smile of amusement with which some learned professor of the hitory of dancing will read these simple lines. He will doubtless begin with a long dissertation on the history of dancing in every country and age. He will prove conclusively that the art of dancing cannot be acquired either in the woods, or by the seashore, and that it would be madness to found a school in the belief that it was possible. But if we are to bring about a renaissance of the art of dancing, it will not spring from the head of any learned professor, but will rather bud forth from the joyous movements of children’s bodies, guided by the flute of the great god Pan himself.
1906.
Pp. 74-76.
077-079. MOVEMENT IS LIFE (1909) [ ДВИЖЕНИЕ - ЖИЗНЬ ]
MOVEMENT IS LIFE
STUDY the movement of the earth, the movement of plants and trees, of animals, the movement of winds and waves - and then udy the movements of a child. You will find that the movement of all natural things works within harmonious expression. And this is true in the firt years of a child’s life; but very soon the movement is imposed from without by wrong theories of education, and the child soon loses its natural spontaneous life, and its power of expressing that in movement.
I notice that a baby of three or four coming to my school is responsive to the exaltation of beautiful music, whereas a child of eight or nine is already under the influence of a conventional and mechanical conception of life imposed upon it by the pedagogues. The child of nine has already entered into the prison of conventional and me chanical movement, in which it will remain and suffer its entire life, until advancing age brings on paralysis of bodily expression.
When asked for the pedagogic program of my school, I reply: “Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us firt produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child. ”Nietzsche has said that he cannot believe in a god that cannot dance. He has also said, “Let that day be considered loft on which we have not danced”.
But he did not mean the execution of pirouettes. He meant the exaltation of life in movement.
The harmony of music exis equally with the harmony of movementin nature.
Man has not invented the harmony of music. It is one of the underlying principles of life. Neither could the harmony of movement be invented: it is essential to draw one’s conception of it from Nature herself, and to seek the rhythm of human movement from the rhythm of water in motion, from the blowing of the winds on the world, in all the earth’s movements, in the motions of animals, fish, birds, reptiles, and even in primitive man, whose body still moved in harmony with nature.
With the first conception of a conscience, man became selfconscious, lo the natural movements of the body; today in the light of intelligence gained through years of civilization, it is essential that he consciously seek what he has unconsciously loft.
All the movements of the earth follow the lines of wave motion. Both sound and light travel in waves. The motion of water, winds, trees and plants progresses in waves. The flight of a bird and the movements of all animals follow lines like undulating waves. If then one seeks a point of physical beginning for the movement of the human body, there is a clue in the undulating motion of the wave. It is one of the elemental facts of nature, and out of such elementals the child, the dancer, absorbs something basic to dancing.
The human being too is a source. Dancing expresses in a diflerent language, different from nature, the beauty of the body; and the body grows more beautiful with dancing. All the conscious art of mankind has grown out of the discovery of the natural beauty of the human body. Men tried to reproduce it in sand or on a wall, and painting thus was born. From our understanding of the harmonies and proportions of the members of the body sprang