Southern sentinel. [volume] (Plaquemine, Parish of Iberville [La.]) 1848-1858, 1857-03-28
FenrfnI Performance,

The most curious exhibition at the great
Paris circus is what the programme calls "the
exercise of dislocation." The journalists try
to initiate it by twisting the French language
into oil sorts of complimentary shapes in
describing it. "lmagine," says one OF them,
"a slender female, a brunette, with flashing
eyes, hollow cheeks, black tresses streaked
with blush tints, of that exotic ugliness which
must be o beauty somewhere far away, under
the tent or in the pagoda. She comes dancing
and floating in a loose robe with red stripes.
She throws herself down on a carpet spread
out in the center of the circus, and 10. she
begins her chimerical exercises. She tears
Herself to pieces-unbones herself. She passes
her leg, like a shoulder belt, over her neck /;
she undoes, like hooks, the coIlar-bones of
her shoulders and throws behind her back her
arms, bent backwards. The strangest of all
is the haggard look inspired, almost prophet.
cal, with which she accomplishes this trightful
pantomime. 1t is not a mountebank al work !;
il is the convulsive devotee of some exGraya.
gant religion celebrating the rights Of some
cruel god, who delights in seeing his worship
pers suffer. Her eyes supplicate, her gestures
attest and her lips trace a distressing smile.
You are reminded of those Indian dancing girls
who writhe before idols of those Annals,
stuck through and through with poignards,
that you see in Persian miniatures dancing on
their heads before some pens;ye Shah, squatted
on piles of cushions, and carressing his braided
beard with a hand covered with rings. Nor is
this all. A glass case is brought fur y ard
which would scarcely hold q robe carefully
folded. She leaps on the edges of the fragile
casket, twists, dislocates herself, recommences
her gestures and mysterious appeals; then,
suddenly, you see the body articulated appa~
realty sink down like q tissue of which the
tie is unIoosened and fold itself up in d
tumble at the bottom Of The box. It is no
longer a body, no longer a form, no longer
something organic and articulated. 1t IL q
packet of limbs, loose, scattered, unboied,
between which vegetables a tuft of dead hairs,
like a handful of sea~weed on the spongy seq
ments Of a mallusk Cor, as Dr.. Holmes says,
''like sea-wesds round a clam.") You might
believe that yeu see again that mysterious
Golfer Of the " Thousand and One Nights"
drawn from the depths of the Tiber by a
fisherman, beneath the eyes Of Haroun all
Raschid, and in which the Caliph perceived
with horror the body of a young woman, cut
in pieces. "Wreth," he exclaimed to Giaffsr,
his faithful V;zier, sis it thus You watch over
the actions of my people, and that you let my
subjects be thrown into the Tiger, in order
that they may cry vengeance against me on
the day Of judgment? If you do not prompt
ly avenge the death Of this womah by the
death of her murderer, / swear by the holy
name of God that I'll have you huns you and
forty Of your relatives!" Then, aa quickly as
she took herself to pieces she puts herself
together again, re-arranges herself, and lifts
herself up at once entirely, like the puppet Of
q snuff-box with a secret spring, The name
Of this astonishing acrobate is Mime Poul-
marche,