Felix Cherniavsky - News Clippings 1900s 2

Added 18th Mar 2022 by Beth Dobson (Archives and Programming Assistant, DCD) / Last update 18th Mar 2022

Maud Allan 378a 51 2008-1-29.jpg
Maud Allan 378a 51 2008-1-29.jpg
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Felix Cherniavsky - News Clippings 1900s 2

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Maud Allan Research Collection
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C March " The dancing over which London has recently gone mad has a technique entirely different . In fact , it has no DANCING AND THE MASQUE . technique . It has no conventions , and no rules . For that TLS Sept 1908 very reason , it is less likely than the other to find competent Among the many foreign visitors welcomed by London exponents . Taglionis and Genées are rare ; yet where there this summer the one that received the warmest welcome of are rules to be learned any one of moderate natural endow all was a foreign style of dancing . Two ladies , Miss Maud ment may learn them so well as to become at least competent Allan and Miss Isadora Duncan , both won troops of admirers in the art . But where there are no rules , everything depends in a style of their art on which London hitherto had looked on natural endowment , and the lack of beauty , grace , or coldly ; and their success prompts certain reflections on the intelligence would be fatal . There are no conventions to possibility of reviving a peculiarly English form of drama , on help the dancer out , because she is not concerned with facts , the composition of which great English artists in various only with emotions . She becomes an instrument on which lines were once employed , to the delight of the best taste in the music plays ; and where there is a story it is her part the country . not to tell it , but to comment on it . To take some instances All dancing falls naturally into two divisions , as regards from Miss Allan's performance , she does not tell the story of its origin . There is the dancing which man shares with the Salome ; she expresses the emotions felt by Salome , the beasts — the unsystematized leaps and bounds by which cause of which the audience must find other means of the lamb or the kitten or the natural man instinctively learning . Her pantomime is very small in quantity and expresses joy in being alive . A development of this — the move- | very sketchy in quality . We see , indeed , the maiden ments in which man , alone of the animals , has expressed grief in the " Spring Song " catching butterflies and picking -has affinities with the second division , that of self - con- flowers ; the Sugar - plum Fairy appears to find sugar - plums , scious dancing , as it might be called , movements organized as a conjuror finds coins , in the air , and to pop them into the and arranged more or less completely to express or celebrate | mouths of children ; and in the dance on Chopin's “ Funeral certain facts , the end of harvest , or the festival of a deity , or we come so near to the suggestion of actual & victory over enemies . Attempts at classification nearly || things that we can see , fairly distinctly , the grave . But always leave the borders overlapping , and it is obvious that || in all these cases the effort is not to make the audience these two divisions run into one another . Indeed , the second see the things , but to make them see what the dancer feels may be only a development of the first . But , broadly on seeing them . The vision might be pushed even further speaking , a difference may always be observed between the back . The ideas of these things are not in the dancer's dancing that began by being unselfconscious and the || brain , but in the music itself - that is to say , in the com dancing that began in a deliberate purpose , ritual or other . The former kind seems to have remained the more popular in the East , where , long after it has passed into a self- ' poser's brain . The dance is all commentary ; though conscious stage , it continues to be used to express and to commentary , like criticism , may be creative , arouse simple emotions , usually , of course , that of love . Hitherto music , acting , and dancing have never been The same characteristics are found in Spanish dancing , perfectly fused into a single work of art . It is safe , perhaps , which one would be inclined to ascribe to Moorish influence , say never , though it would be interesting to know the were it not known that the Gaditanae who delighted ancient stages by which the Rome of the Empire Arrived at the Rome danced very much as the women of Cadiz dance highly finished , very formal art of the pantomimus at his best . Finally , as is generally known , the pantomimus to - day . danced the whole story of the tragedy , while a chorus The development of the other division has been more and an orchestra sang the lyrie portions only . Buch marked . It is characteristic of the West , and having been performance must have implied a perfectly conventionalized adapted from the earliest times to the expression of fact as art , though no doubt , as in the case of the modern ballota well as , and in preference to , emotion , it has grown into that dancer , an extremely graceful art . Faets and things had formal dancing of exact steps and strictly conventional to be expressed , as well as emotions , and symbols must pantomime which we see in the ballets of modern London . have been used for their expression . But there was a pro The waltz , polka , and other such dances , show its influence ceding period in which , while a single singer and flute also . Quite apart from the long training which is essential player performed the words and music of the lyric parts , to the proper performance of its difficult technique , it has a the actors themselves danced an accompaniment , and fixed convention by which every part with which it deals is then went on to speak and act the dialogue in the ordinary expressed by one gesture and no other . The admirers of manner . To dance to a lyrio chorus seems certainly to Mlle . Adeline Genée , a supreme exponent of this branch of imply something of the kind of dancing which we have the art , will be aware how exact is her pantomime ; if you seen lately in London . know the code , the meaning is unmistakable . But her At any rate , since those days there has been no real steps are no less exact . Every step has its name , and its | fusion of music , acting , and dancing . The texts of the order ; there is only one way of doing it right ; and the masques of Elizabethan and Stuart days show that in them beauty and apparent spontaneity of movement which the dances were not to any great extent integral portions fascinate us in her performances are obtained by the of the drama . " They were episodes or entr " actes , used in mastery of a science as strict as the law . the main as in Comus Milton used the dances of the rout , or the rustic and Court dances . Dancing in those days was a formal matter with steps at once more complicated and more striet than in the private dancing of to - day , and the dancing of the masques was only an extension of the private dancing . Some orities of opera , again , tell us that the fusion between music and acting , or dialogue , is far from complete , and dancing has no important of essential place in opera . It appears in plenty as spectacle , and even where it is essential to the plot , as in Parsifaly it is still definitely a dance that is performed , as a dance , and the dance is a part of the story . Cases such as the opening of Tannhäuser , where dancing is used to expron the atmosphere , are very rare . to a PToo