The Art of Stage Dancing Part 28

WAYBURN (AT WINDOW)]

PRIVATE INSTRUCTION

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Usually our beginner pupils at the studios enter themselves in a cla.s.s, of either one or another of the types of stage dancing that are so popular, and proceed regularly along the lines of cla.s.s instruction.

Then, in nearly every cla.s.s, there will be those who "eat up" the work, who advance rapidly and get ahead of the others, because of special capability or unusual capacity along the line they are studying.

Others go along at a natural pace, developing at the average rate, and in the end come out as well schooled as their speedier companions. For them the regular routine of cla.s.s instruction is sufficient and effective. Their progress is safe and sane.

Still others lag. This condition is present in every walk of life, in every school, profession, trade. Some always get behind, fail to grasp the meaning of their teacher's talk, are deficient in initiative ability and so may not interpret his steps in their own actions. I do not like to think or say that any of our pupils are lazy or indifferent; ours is no place for either laziness or indifference. But whatever the reason, the fact persists, a certain small proportion of nearly every cla.s.s in our studios fails to advance as rapidly as their sister mates are doing.

If this element will recognize its own shortcomings and is sufficiently ambitious to desire to succeed, the remedy lies in the direction of private instruction.

So, too, in the case of the fast learners, those who are really getting ahead of the majority of their mates; they will profit measurably by taking our private instruction.

We have special studios and special instructors for just this purpose.

Professionals come to us without solicitation, for new steps, new tricks, or new touches to old dances, and a few private lessons here sends them out with new stuff to please their public. The student who has come to an impa.s.se, who finds she is not progressing in cla.s.s as she wishes to, and the student who is very facile at her work and her learning, and knows herself capable of going ahead more rapidly than cla.s.s routine permits--these are the two who will do well to consider the taking of private lessons. The average pupil may well be content with her cla.s.s work if she is going along in good fashion, and for her, private instruction is not so essential. She may wish it later on as conditions change, but at present the ensemble instruction, with its unison work and the gentle compet.i.tions of fellow-students doing the same stunts, may be all that she requires.

Ask your instructor if he thinks you will best remain in cla.s.s, or take private lessons, or do both. And ask me. Both the teacher and I will be perfectly frank with you and advise you for your own best interest.

At the desk in the main office you will learn what hours are available for private lessons, and you will be a.s.signed an hour, an instructor and a private studio, if you and I decide that you will benefit by this course.

EXPERIENCE

[Ill.u.s.tration]

If I hadn't had many years of stage experience myself, I'd not be competent to instruct any one on the subject. I am not only a teacher of dancing, I am also a dancer, and can do all the steps as well as tell you how to do them. My experience as a stage dancer began in a store bas.e.m.e.nt in Chicago, where I tried to imitate the best dancers I had seen at a Variety show. I put on wooden shoes and whistled my own clogs and jigs for hours at a time, till I brought myself by main strength, and no personal instruction, to a point where I could exhibit my home-made steps to a professional dancer. That is a hard way to get experience. You are more fortunate than you may realize in having everything that you have to do to become a dancer all worked out systematically for you, and told you and shown you by a simple method which anyone can learn, with perfect music and everything else that modern science can devise to aid you.

In the old days the beginner in dancing went direct to the stage door and stated his or her desire to become a dancer. The applicant was sometimes accorded a tryout. If he or she appeared awkward or was slow to catch the tempo, or not physically developed to please the eye, that was the end of it. There was no time to waste in helping to overcome minor defects, no personal interest shown whatever. He or she was dismissed summarily without any advice of a helpful nature.

If the candidate exhibited qualities that recommended her or him to the producer, he or she was given a stage training in chorus work following a tryout. The training was obtained in rehearsals, conducted for weeks, without compensation. The instructor might become impatient at any evidence of slowness of comprehension or execution; he might resent tardiness, absence, or slight infringement of stringent rules, and in such cases dismissal was the usual penalty.

The young lady or gentleman aspiring to become a stage dancer in that day and age paid a considerable price for the experience, as you may readily imagine.

Contrast then with now. You are acquiring this needed preliminary experience to fit you for a stage career in our courses under conditions that recommend them to ladies and gentlemen. There are no subordinates in our courses. All are equal. There is discipline, of course. You will find discipline on the stage when you advance that far. But discipline won't hurt you, not our kind. We ask for silence, attention, practice, and the conduct that ladies and gentlemen naturally observe. If you are a lady of social prominence, studying for the grace and beauty and health that our lessons impart, and not intending to favor the stage with your presence, you are accorded the same treatment that all others receive. This is a pure democracy if ever there was one.

By the old way of obtaining training and stage experience a young lady was kept for years in a subordinate place, and if she at last worked her way up out of the chorus into solo dancing, it was by "main strength," a vivid personality, aggressiveness and untiring effort.

Our first and primary instruction in the courses takes the place of the years of disappointing hard work that formerly prevailed. You are not held down. Your personality is encouraged and developed. You have to do your part, of course; we are not going to make stars of you if you don't help us do it. But the experience you must have is ready and waiting, and is based on a knowledge of things theatrical, gleaned and gathered through a series of years of personal experience exclusively in that field.

So much for the easier preliminary experience.

Now you have pa.s.sed the portals of our studio, fitted and trained, a solo dancer, worthy of entertaining a public who waits to pay for the pleasure of seeing you do your turn. On the way through the courses you have had some small samples of what an audience is like. There have been the visitors' days when your work was on exhibition, and a Frolic before your fellow students in our own Demi-Ta.s.se Theatre, or perhaps some neighborhood or church entertainments near your home.

Those have all been good experience for you.

Now, as you enter upon a professional career, you must be content with a moderate start. I know how far you have advanced and what you may reasonably expect to do in your first, your starting engagement. Come to me before you commit yourself to any manager's care, if you possibly can arrange to do so.

In a small vaudeville act you may be able to command $40 to $50 a week as a beginner doing a specialty. You may have a year of doing three or four shows a day on "small-time," as it is called, which is splendid experience for you. Then you may advance to bigger time, playing two shows a day with bigger pay, and then, having improved yourself and your act as you go along, you are in line for the still higher grade theatres, where your work will get the eye of some production manager who will offer you a really worthwhile engagement in a production, as a Broadway show is called.

You cannot become a star in three or four months. It is only the foolish ones who dream of such a possibility. It takes time and experience to get on at a big time house like the Palace Theatre in New York City, which is recognized as Broadway's best showroom for the vaudeville artist. Look at the history of the stars you know. Evelyn Law worked four years before she reached her present Broadway fame.

Ann Pennington has been working fifteen years, Fred and Adele Astaire nearly fourteen years--and I can name all the stars on Broadway and tell you exactly how long it took them to reach the pinnacle of their present success. So expect for yourself a moderate position on the start until experience has developed you and the public learned to like you, and then your advancement should be rapid and easy.

Do you know that as the result of my years of experience I originated all the solo and ensemble dances taught in my courses? Because of the same experience I conceive and create all of the novelties, settings, costumes, ideas and theatrical effects that are used in all the productions, professional and amateur, that I stage. There is no other school that can duplicate our service, since there is no other producing director of any standing in the theatrical world connected with such an organization as mine.

You are invited to benefit by my experience in every way. It is a part of your education here that you are not asked to pay for. I tender it freely to all who become members of my family of pupils. Not only are you dancing routines of my own constructing, and listening or reading at times to my cla.s.s room talks on subjects bearing oh stage-craft and showmanship, but also you are earnestly invited to consult with me about your personal ambitions and desires.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARION DAVIES]

I have literally helped thousands of good girls and boys to make millions of dollars for themselves, in the aggregate, and have brought a lot of happy hours to many million people who have willingly paid their good money to see my pupils in their perfect work on the stage.

Profit by my experience; let me help you with my knowledge. This will make your experience easier for you, and the more quickly fit you for the lofty position that a perfectly worthy ambition prompts you to seek.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NW]

INSPIRATION

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When you present yourself as a pupil it is to be inferred that you are already inspired with a desire to become a dancer of the first quality. That is good and as it should be. Without inspiration no one has ever accomplished anything worth while in any line of endeavor.

Stage dancing is never a matter of luck or breeding; it is the direct result of hard work under competent instruction, with your being inspired to bring forth the very best that is in you.

All of us here at the Ned Wayburn Studios are inspired with a desire to create a career for you, if you desire one. Whether we succeed in our endeavor or not depends upon you. We will do our part faithfully, earnestly and joyfully, and furnish you such an opportunity as no other generation of aspirants for stage honors and success ever possessed. Our courses themselves, as well as our scientific method of developing you, are really inspiring to the new student with the primary inspiration of desiring a successful, honorable and profitable career.

As you approach the studio building from Broadway you note that its appearance is attractive. It is new, clean, impressive; and on the large second and third floor main windows, and on the Broadway and 60th Street corner windows, you note the signs, the lettering that stands out, to tell you that you have arrived at the haven of your dreams and hopes.

You step off Broadway and enter the corridor of the studio building through the main entrance on 60th Street, where elevators await you, to convey you the single flight up to the second floor, and you step directly into our main business office. Here is found further inspiration, for stage dancing is here treated as a business and in a business-like way, and our business office indicates that fact to the newcomer at the very first glance.

The prospective pupil approaches the long counter. She is greeted by Mrs. Wayburn, who acts as hostess, or chaperon, or it may be by some other princ.i.p.al or employee, whose business it is to welcome and greet the new arrivals who come to us daily. Your introduction of yourself is followed naturally by your questions as to this or that which you wish to know about our terms and methods, to confirm your own understanding of the matter. These are answered fully and courteously.

Our greeters welcome your inquiries. Ask us just what you want to know, and their response will be politely given. Anyone behind the counter thoroughly understands dancing.

Are you from out of the city, and do you wish to be directed to a suitable hotel, boarding house, studio apartment or private residence for your domicile while here? We have a list of desirable and investigated places to suit all purses and all needs, and are glad to pa.s.s the information on to our students.

Your questions being answered to your satisfaction, you decide to enroll. The booking secretary invites you behind the counter, where an enrollment card and contract is made out and signed. This contract stipulates the number of lessons you are to receive and the kind of stage dancing you are to take. You take the work just as I have personally laid it out in the courses. The matter of tuition is arranged, and you, as one of us, are invited to accompany a guide to the various cla.s.srooms, studios, offices and other departments of the two large floors--and absorb inspiration for your future work from what you observe in the way of modern facilities and actual instruction being given to live cla.s.ses.

There is nothing more inspiring to the new pupil than to see our various dancing cla.s.ses in action. In fact, a view of our cla.s.ses in progress of work is inspiring to anyone, professional or non-professional. The girls do their cla.s.s work with a vim and snap that betokens their interest and their intention to make good. They are a smiling happy lot of young ladies that it does one good to look at. Especially is this true of the advanced cla.s.ses; the beginners'

cla.s.ses are busy learning the A, B, C's of dancing, and these rudiments are absorbing. But to watch the beginners today, and then see the same pupils a few weeks later as they advance in ease of movement and in a completer understanding of their work, is most inspiring of all--inspiring to you who see them and to the progressing pupils themselves. If it were possible or practical to let the public in to look at our cla.s.ses at work, our present large quarters would soon prove inadequate to give foot room to the great number of inspired ladies who would wish to enroll here and join in the gayeties. There is contagion in watching our best students at their "play."