A Treatise on the Art of Dancing Part 7

The proofs shown of the perfection of dancing at Athens, and under the reign of Augustus, being incontestable, it is plain that what now pa.s.ses for the art of dancing, is as yet only in its infancy. To display the arms gracefully, to preserve the equilibrium in the positions, to form steps with a lightness of air; to unfold all the springs of the body in harmony to the music, all these points, sufficient to what may be called private, or to a.s.sembly-dancing, are little more than the alphabet of the theatrical dances, or of pantomime execution.

The steps and figures are but the letters and words of this art.

A writing-master is one who teaches the mechanical part of forming letters. A mere dancing-master is an artist who teaches to form steps. But the first is not more different from what we call a man of letters, or a _writer_, than the second is from what may deserve on the theatre, the name of princ.i.p.al dancer.

Besides the necessity of learning his art elementally, a dancer, like a writer, should have a stile of his own, an original stile: more or less valuable, according as he can exhibit, express, and paint with elegance a greater or lesser quant.i.ty of things admirable, agreeable, and useful.

Speech is scarce more expressive, than the gestual language. The art of painting, which places before our eyes the most pathetic, or the most gay images of human life, composes them of nothing but of att.i.tudes, of positions of the arms, expressions of the countenance, and of all these parts dancing is composed, as well as painting.

But, as I have before observed, painting can express no more than an instant of action. Theatrical dancing can exhibit all the successive instants it chuses to paint. Its march proceeds from picture to picture, to which, motion gives life. In painting, life is only imitated; in dancing, it is always the reality itself.

Dancing is, evidently, in its nature, an action upon the theatres; nothing is wanting to it but meaning: it moves to the right, to the left; it retrogrades, it advances, it forms steps, it delineates figures. There is only wanting to all this an arrangement of the motions, to furnish to the eye a theatrical action upon any subject whatever.

The history of the art proves that the dancers of genius, had no other means or a.s.sistance in the world but this to express all the human pa.s.sions, and the possibilities of it are in all times, the very same.

Both here, and in France, there have been some of these dramatic pieces in action, by dance, attempted, which have been well received by the public.

Some years ago, the Dutchess of Maine ordered simphonies to be composed for the scene of the fourth act of the _Horatii_; in which the young Horatius kills Camilla. Two dancers, one of each s.e.x, represented this action at _Sceaux_; and their dance painted it with all the energy and pathos of which it was susceptible.

In Italy especially many subjects of a what may be called low comedy, are very naturally expressed by dancing. In short, there is hardly any comic action but what they represent upon their theatres, if not with perfection, at least satisfactorily. And certainly the dance in action has the same superiority over sheer unmeaning dancing, that a fine history-piece has over cutting flowers in paper. In the last there is little more required than mechanical nicety, and, at the best, it affords no great pretention to merit. But it is only for genius to order, distribute and compose, in the other. A Raphael is allowed to take place in the Temple of Fame, by a Virgil; and the art of dancing is capable of having its Raphaels too. Pilades, and Bathillus were painters, and great ones, in their way.

Picturesque composition is not less the duty of a composer of dances, than of a painter.

Among the antients, that _Protheus_, of whom fabulous history records such wonders, was only one of their dancers, who, by the rapidity of his steps, by the strength of his expression, and by the employment of the theatrical deceptions, seemed at every instant, to change his form. The celebrated _Empusa_ was a female dancer, whose agility was so prodigious that she appeared and vanished like a spirit.

But it was at Rome that the Pantomime art received its highest improvement. Pilades born in Cilicia, and Bathillus of Alexandria, where the two most surprising geniuses, who, under the reigns of Augustus Caesar, displayed their talents in their utmost l.u.s.tre. The first invented the solemn, grave and pathetic dances. The compositions of Bathillus were in the lively, gay, and sprightly stile.

Bathillus had been the slave of Mecenas, who had given him his freedom in favor of his talents. Having seen Pilades in Cilicia, he engaged him to come to Rome, where he had disposed Mecenas in his favor, who, becoming the declared protector of both, procured to them the encouragement of the Emperor.

A theatre was built for them: the Romans flocked to it, and saw, with surprise, a complete tragedy; all the pa.s.sions painted with the most vigorous strokes of representation: the exposition, plot, catastrophe expressed in the clearest and most pathetic manner, without any other means or a.s.sistence but that of dancing, executed to the simphonies the best adapted, and far superior to any that had been before heard in Rome.

Their surprise was not to end here. To this a second entertainment succeeded; in which an ingenious action, without needing the voice or speech, presented all the characters, all the pleasant strokes, and humorous pictures of a good comedy.

And in both these kinds, the executive talents of Pilades and Bathillus corresponded to the boldness and beauty of the kind of compositions they had ventured to bring on the stage.

Pilades especially, who was at the head of this project, was the most singular man that had till then appeared on the theatre.

His fertile imagination constantly supplied him with new means of perfecting his art and embellishing his entertainments.

Athenaeus mentions his having written a book much esteemed on the depths and principles of his art.

Before him, some flutes composed the orchestra of the Romans. He reinforced it with all the known instruments. He added choruses of dances to his representations, and took care that their steps and figures, should always have some relation or affinity to the princ.i.p.al action. He provided them with dresses in the highest taste of propriety, and omitted nothing towards producing, keeping up, and pushing to the highest pitch, the charm of the theatrical illusion.

The actions on the Roman theatres were tragic, comic, or satirical; these last pretty nearly answering to what we understand by grotesque or farcical.

Esopus and Roscius had been, from their excellence in declamation, the delight and admiration of Rome. But on their leaving no successors to their degree of merit; the taste for dramatic poetry which was no longer supported by actors equal to them, began to decline; and the theatrical dances under such great masters as Pilades and Bathillus, either by their novelty, or by their merit, or by both, made the Romans the less feel their loss of those incomparable actors. The gestual language took place of that which was declaimed; and produced regular pieces acted in the three kinds of tragedy, comedy, and farce or grotesque. The spectators grew pleased with such an exercise of their understanding. Steps, motions, att.i.tudes, figures, positions, now were subst.i.tuted to speech; and there resulted from them an expression so natural, images so resembling, a pathos so moving, or a pleasantry so agreeable, that people imagined they heard the actions they saw. The gestures alone supplied the place of the sweetness of the voice, of the energy of speech, and of the charms of poetry.[*]

[Footnote *: Hanc partem Musicae disciplinae Majores mutam nominarunt, quae ore clauso loquitur, et quibusdam gesticulationibus facit intelligi, quod vix narrante lingua, aut scripturae textu possit agnosci.

_Ca.s.siod_, var. 1. 20.

Loquacissimas ma.n.u.s, linguosos digitos, silentium clamosum, expositionem tacitam.

_Idem._]

This kind of entertainment, so new, though formed upon a ground-work already known, planned and executed by genius, and adopted with a pa.s.sionate fondness by the Romans, was called the _Italic dance_; and in the transports of pleasures it caused them, they gave to the actors of it, the t.i.tle of _Pantomimes_.

This was no more than a lively, and not at all exagerated expression, of the truth of their action, which was one continual picture to the eyes of the spectators. Their motion, their feet, their hands, their arms, were but so many different parts of the picture; none of them were to remain idle; but all, with propriety, were to concur to the formation of that a.s.semblage, from which result the harmony, and, with pardon for the expression, the happy _all-together_ of the composition and performance. A dancer learned from his very name of _pantomime_, that he could be in no esteem in Rome, but so far as he should be _all the actor_.

And, in fact, this art was carried to a point of perfection hard to believe; but for such a number of concurrent and authentic testimonies.

It appears also clearly from history, that this art, in its origin, (so favored by an arbitrary prince, and who also made some use of it, towards establishing his despotism, nay even primordially introduced by Bathillus, a slave) could no longer preserve its great excellence, than the spirit of liberty was not wholly worn out in the Roman b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and, like its other sister arts, gradually decayed and sunk under the subsequent emperors.

Pilades gave a memorable instance of the (as yet) unextinguished spirit of liberty, when, upon his being banished Rome, for some time, by Augustus Cesar, upon account of the disturbances the pantomime parties occasioned, he told him plainly to his face, that he was ungrateful for the good his power received, by the diversion to the Romans from more serious thoughts on the loss of their liberty. "Why do not you," says he, "let the people amuse themselves with our quarrels?"

This dancer had such great powers in all his tragedies, that he could draw tears from even those of the spectators the least used to the melting mood.

But in truth, the effect of these pantomimes, in general, was prodigious. Tears and sobs interrupted often the representation of the tragedy of _Glaucus_, in which the pantomime Plancus played the princ.i.p.al character.

Bathillus, in painting the amours of Leda, never failed of exciting the utmost sensibility in the Roman ladies.

But what is more surprising yet, _Memphir_, a Pithagorean philosopher, as Athenaeus tells us, expressed, by dancing, all the excellence of the philosophy of Pithagoras, with more elegance, more clearness and energy, than the most eloquent professor of philosophy could have done.

Upon considering all this, one is almost tempted to say, with M.

Cahusac, "We have, upon the stage, excellent feet, lively legs, admirable arms: what a pity it is, that with all this we have so little of the art of dancing!"

Our tragedy and our comedy have an extent and duration which are supported by the charms of speech, by the interestingness of narration, by the variety of the sallies of wit. The action is divided into acts, each act into scenes, these scenes successively present new situations, and these situations keep up the warmth of interest and attention, form the plot, lead to the conclusion or unravelment, and prepare it.

Such must have been, or such must be, (but with more precision and markingness) tragedies or comedies represented by dancing; as gesture is something more marking and succinct than speech.

There are required many words to express a thought, but one single motion may paint several thoughts, and situations.

In such compositions, then, made to be danced, the theatrical action must go forward with the utmost rapidity: there must not be one unmeaning entry, figure, or step in them. Such a piece ought to be a close crouded abstract of some excellent written dramatic piece.

Dancing, like painting, can only present situations to the eye; and every truly theatrical situation is nothing but a living picture.

If a composer of dances should undertake to represent upon the stage any great action or theatrical subject, he must begin by making an extract from it, of all the most picturesque situations. No other parts beside these can enter into his plan; all the others are defective or useless, they can only embarras, perplex, confound, and render it cold and insipid.

Whereas, if the situations succeed one another naturally, and in great number; if their being well linked together conducts them with rapidity, from the first situation to the last, which must clearly and strikingly unravel the whole; the choice is complete, and the theatrical effect will be sure.

It is that final effect, of which, in the execution, the composer and performer must never lose sight. Successive pictures must be exhibited, and animated with all the expression that can result from the impa.s.sioned motions of the dance.

This was doubtless the great secret of the art of Pilades, who so highly excelled in his ideas of theatrical expression: this is, perhaps, too for all kinds of theatrical composition, whether to be declaimed, or to be executed by dancing, a general rule that is not to be slighted.

One instance of the regard shewn by Pilades to theatrical propriety is preserved to us, and not unworthy of attention. He had been publickly challenged by Hilas, once a pupil of his, to represent the greatness of Agamemnon: Hilas came upon the stage with buskins, which, in the nature of stilts, made him of an artificial height; in consequence of which he greatly over-topped the croud of actors who surrounded him. This pa.s.sed well enough, 'till Pilades appeared with an air, stern and majestic. His serious steps, his arms a-cross, his motion sometimes slow, sometimes animated, with pauses full of meaning, his looks now fixed on the ground, now lifted to heaven, with all the att.i.tudes of profound pensiveness, painted strongly a man taken up with great things, which he was meditating, weighing, and comparing, with all the dignity of kingly importance. The spectators, struck with the justness, with the energy and real elevation of so expressive a portraiture, unanimously adjudged the preference to Pilades, who, coolly turning to Hilas, said to him, "_Young man, we had to represent a king who commanded over twenty kings: you made him tall: I showed him great._"

It was in the reign of Nero, that a cinical mock-philosopher, called Demetrius, saw, for the first time, one of these pantomime compositions. Struck with the truth of the representation, he could not help expressing the greatest marks of astonishment: but whether his pride made him feel a sort of shame for the admiration he had involuntarily shewn, or whether naturally envious and selfish, he could not bear the cruel pain of being forced to approve any thing but his own singularities; he attributed to the music the strong impression that has been made upon him: as, in that reign, a false philosophy very naturally had a greater influence than the real, this man was, it seems, of consequence enough for the managers of the dances to take notice of this partiality, or at least to be piqued enough, for their own honor, to lay a scheme for undeceiving him. He was once more brought to their theatre, and seated in a conspicuous part of the house, without his having been acquainted with their intention.

The orchestra began: an actor opens the scene: on the moment of his entrance, the simphony ceases, and the representation continues. Without any aid but that of the steps, the positions of the body, the movements of the arms, the piece is performed, in which are successively represented the amours of Mars and Venus, the Sun discovering them to the jealous husband of the G.o.ddess, the snares which he sets for his faithless spouse and her formidable gallant, the quick effect of the treacherous net, which, while it compleats the revenge of Vulcan, only publishes his shame, the confusion of Venus, the rage of Mars, the arch mirth of the G.o.ds, who came to enjoy the sight.

The whole audience gave to the excellence of the performance its due applause, but the Cinic, out of himself, could not help crying out, in a transport of delight; "_No! this is not a representation; it is the very thing itself._"

Much about the same time a dancer represented the _labors of_ Hercules. He retraced in so true a manner all the different situations of that hero, that a king of Pontus, then at Rome, and who had never seen such a sight before, easily followed the thread of the action, and charmed with it, asked with great earnestness of the emperor, that he would let him have with him that extraordinary dancer, who had made such an impression upon him.

"Do not, says he to Nero, be surprised at my request. I have for borderers upon my kingdom, some Barbarian nations whose language none of my people could understand, nor they learn ours. Such a man as this dancer would be an admirable interpreter between us."