The Art of Stage Dancing Part 15

_Pet.i.t Battement_--Low beating.

_Pet.i.t Battement avec Port de Bras_--Low bending [Transcriber's Note: beating?] with arm movements.

_Pet.i.t Battement sur le Cou de Pied_--Small beatings around the ankle.

_Pet.i.te Rond de Jambe_--Small foot circles described on the floor.

_Plier_--To bend the knees.

_Pirouette_--An artistic turn executed on one foot.

_Pointe_--The toe.

_Port de Bras_--Carriage of the arms. The five arm movements are: Bending, stretching, raising, lowering, turning.

_Rond de Jambe_--Circles in the air executed by the leg.

_Saute_--To hop.

_Step_--A placing of the foot in any direction and transferring the weight onto it.

_Terre a Terre_--A series of pas de bourrees of four or more steps.

_Three-step Turn_--A complete turn, right or left, in three steps.

_Tortiller_--To turn or twist the leg.

_Tour de Basque_--A basque turn; pirouette de basque.

_Tour Jete_--Jete with a turn; one step sideward to right, one leap and complete turn; one step sideward onto right foot.

_Tour Saute_--One step, one hop, turning completely around in direction of the step.

MR. WAYBURN ADDRESSES THE BEGINNERS' CLa.s.s IN BALLET TECHNIQUE

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You have now advanced in your studies to where it becomes necessary to train yourselves for the stage mentally as well as physically. You have acquired the flexibility, strength of body and symmetry of form that was promised in my earlier courses to those who faithfully attended cla.s.s and persistently practiced at home.

You have progressed through the hard foundation technique to a point where you are physically fitted to undertake the beautiful work of our ballet technique.

But now that you are entering on a new phase of your life work, it is no time to let down and by carelessness lose what you have already acquired by your obedience to your studio instruction. I am sure you will not disappoint me by doing this.

Please bear in mind you have still some hard work before you, both mental and physical hard work, before you are ready to capitalize your efforts, to get the substantial rewards that come to the graduate pupils of these courses. You can by looking back a few weeks see your own improvement. You are able today to do many things of value in a stage career that when you entered here you found impossible of accomplishment. But you are still in the formative period as to the finished product, as represented by the solo ballet, the stage work par excellence, to which you all aspire, and in which you will realize your fondest hopes when you possess its full technique as we teach it.

You are more fortunate than you may realize in having available the benefit of our ballet technique instead of having to go through the long years of excessive labor that would have been your lot if you lived abroad and wished to become a premier danseuse. Long training, at least four years' daily instruction and practice, is required of ballet students in England, France, Italy, Russia, or anywhere else in the world. The foreign methods tend to bunch the muscles. You have seen dancers with knotted calves, bunchy knees, huge thighs, all the result of the old technique. As you know, we insist upon your preparing for the ballet course by taking our limbering and stretching exercises, and today you know why. You have a genuine foundation to build upon. Your bodies are lithe and supple, your muscles hard yet not misshapen, and you have advanced by easy stages through the foundation work to where you are today, ready for the finishing touches.

In your ballet work you must be careful how you land when you jump into the air. My system lands the body with the knees bent, otherwise you might undermine your health. To come down full weight on your heels repeatedly would prove very injurious.

Keep your muscles exercised. There is no better exercise for the dancer than walking, and three miles a day is none too much. Take long deep breaths out of doors. Horseback riding, golf, tennis, all are good for you. Dancing itself is the best exercise you can have, but when you have a one-hour lesson or more, and then practice at home three or more hours daily you will find walking a rest, a relaxation, because it is a change of work.

Occasionally we have a Pupils' Frolic in our own Demi-Ta.s.se Theatre, to give you a chance to do a turn before a friendly audience. This is good experience and encourages talent.

Some of you sing. Some are accomplished in other forms of dancing. I like to hear your voices and see your dances. They may be valuable aids to you in your stage work, even if not just of a stage character.

I can tell about that when you sing or dance for me. Anyway, they indicate that you have talent and are accomplished and able to improve yourself, and that suggests that you possess a personality of your own, one of the great essentials of your future success. Sometimes we arrange special exhibitions for charity affairs and call upon our best talent to appear in these. Such an opportunity is very valuable experience for you and I am glad for your sake always when I can get you a chance to appear in public or social affairs, to give you self-confidence and inspiration.

Now one more very important lesson you must learn before you finish here, and that is in the art of makeup. For it is an art, and one that every actress must be fully posted upon. If you don't know how much depends upon correct makeup, come and ask me about it and I will tell you. We hold cla.s.ses in makeup in our Demi-Ta.s.se Theatre on occasional Sat.u.r.day afternoons. I advise you to secure a place in this cla.s.s soon. You will find it very interesting and valuable. Your application should be made at the counter in the main business office. The charge is $2.00 for a cla.s.s lesson, and we teach our own methods, dry, cream, and grease-paint makeups. Usually we take three girls, a blonde, a brunette and a red-head, and make them up in cla.s.s, explaining the work as we do so. For private instruction in makeup our charge is $5.00 a lesson.

It is very practical instruction and you will obtain much positive benefit from it. It is not always the girl who is most beautiful on the street or in the parlor who makes up best. Often the contrary is the case, and the girl with the ordinary street appearance becomes very attractive looking on the stage with the proper makeup. In any event, my makeup directions will make a vast improvement in your appearance for stage effect, as well as for street.

There is no doubt but that you are obtaining in my courses the most valuable ballet instruction in America, if not in the entire world.

The instructors I am supplying you with have had years of professional ballet training and experience both abroad and in this country, as I am sure you all know. Furthermore, they are not only remarkable dancers, but also very competent as teachers. So if you give attention to their instruction and watch them as they ill.u.s.trate the various elements that const.i.tute the complete ballet technique, and learn the several basic positions and the graceful movements and att.i.tudes and kicks that go to make up the complete whole, you may expect to become expert in this beautiful art yourselves. But you must practice, practice at home, every day, many hours a day, and keep it up right along. There is no other way to succeed in any dancing, and especially in ballet work.

You have been told in your former cla.s.ses in this studio about keeping yourselves fit and healthy and charming by consuming nine gla.s.ses of water daily, aided by deep breathing, correct and careful diet and eight hours' sleep. Continue to observe these simple laws of health and beauty, if you value your present opportunities and your future success, as I am certain you do. Form regular habits now, treat your bodies well. The recompense is so great if you do, you cannot afford to be careless in any respect.

Feel free to come to my private office any time, or write me, and discuss with me personally any matters that concern yourself in relation to your health or prospects for the future. We are both, you and I, interested in and working steadily for your future. This is a forward-looking establishment where futures are made to order. Your future, and that of the hundreds of young pupils who favor us here with their presence, may depend in large measure upon your energy and studiousness while you are with us and under our tutelage. Let us help you. Let me help you. It is my mission in life to direct folks straight along the pleasant paths of health, beauty and financial independence, and I feel sure I can be of aid to you and your future if you will give me the opportunity to do so.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: VIRGINIA BACON]

NED WAYBURN'S TOE DANCING

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All forms of modern toe dancing--and there are several--are based upon the ballet technique, of which a synopsis of my own Americanized form appears in a preceding chapter.

There is toe dancing of the really cla.s.sical school in the perfected ballet. That is the kind with which we are most familiar. When a mother says, "I want my child to be taught toe dancing," she usually expects to be understood as referring to the ballet in its entirety, of which dancing on the toes seems symbolical.

But of later years there has developed in the terpsich.o.r.ean art other forms and combinations of toe dancing besides the strictly cla.s.sical, as for instance, the eccentric toe dance and the acrobatic toe dance.

As to the cla.s.sical form, reference to the ballet chapter will find its present development duly set forth.

The eccentric toe dance and its fellow, the acrobatic toe dance, both have their beginnings in the fundamental ballet technique, in which one must be well and properly schooled before expecting to succeed in the more advanced work of these laterday favorites.

For they are favorites, as an hour at any modern playhouse where the newer dances are featured, will demonstrate.

It is at the behest of the great American audience that these newer toe dances are with us. You and the rest of the public that const.i.tute our audiences demand action, tricks--or at least tricky and novel touches here and there--in your dancing entertainment. The old stuff doesn't "get over" with you any more. So we invent new things that present what you are bound to like, and the eccentric and acrobatic toe dances are the result.

It may be jumping down a flight of steps on the toes, or a continued hopping on one toe for 16 counts to music, or a swinging of one leg back and forth, like a pendulum, in an acrobatic way while the dancer hops on one toe--such stunts as these are the applause-getters nowadays, and they are well worth applauding, too, for they are pleasing demonstrations of real skill, and are acquired by the dancer only after long and continued effort and practice. Few if any, I am sure, fully appreciate the time and labor it takes to make a modern toe dancer, one who shall be able to perform something new and catchy in a clever way,--a real feat nowadays, and one that theatrical producers are quick to see and seize when it appears.