The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-05-03
THE BALLET.
COncernins Nudity and Indeccncy.

ln0eCeuCv.
We copy the following from recent article in
4 BldCk7DOOd:- "
1t cannot be asserted by the seyerest moraIist
. that the ballet though it partakes of the char
acter oil pagan festival, is of necessity indecent
or immodest, and that il may not be made The
source of much innocent and refined eniovment
n IL Is mistake, too, to suppose that the ballet
has exclusive attractions for men. Educated
md accomplished women, both young and old,
owe to see handsome girl handsomely dressed
f pr draped, displaying herself i'm the graceful
*igures and movements of the dance upon the
aRsame principle that they admire picture
III poem, Hover, tree, landscape or any
8 thing in the works of God or man that appeals
the sense of beauty proportion and har-
mOny.. And if one such young woman is
a beautiful sight, fifty hundred or more of
z such women dressed alike, or slightly differing
Tor the contrast of color are pdri pdssL beau
tul spectacle, when they perform their gyra-
= tons and evolutions upon the stage, and neither
by gesture, nor sign, nor suggestion convey, or
N seek to convey, to the mind of the beholder
any impression but that which springs from the
&r1egitimate exercise of their art. The scanty
drapery of the ballet girls, when not carried to
the extreme that suggests-not dancing, or the
ease and grace of dancing, but something else
"A lis no ottense either against modesty or good
manners. Yet ever since the days of Martial
s. and perhaps long before, the prudes, Puritans
n and sterner morasts of society have seen in the
il public dance means for the corruption of pub
II lie manners through the eye, which they have
n never wearied in denouncing Addison in the
4 k;Ttcle in the Spectator from which extract has
I already been made, has good-natured fling at
the stage dancers of his day. when ballet was as
Il yet unknown. II" he says, "who know nothing
4 EOf women but from seeing plays, can give great
H. guesses at the whole structure of the fair sex by
: being innocently placed in the pit, and insulted
"a Oy the petticoats of the dancers-the advantages
& of whose pretty persons great help to a dull
play" The costume of the modern ballet of
thirty years ago, when Taglioni's graceful skirts
"a barely displayed the knee, was objected to by
4l,or ,rtrIn Of hntG o,,;tn
ii objections, gOod-natured and otherwise the bal
n let has continued to grow in popularity, and the
skirts of the dancers to grow less and such en-
II tertainments have spread from the Italian opera
houses to the great, and afterwards to the minor
theatres, and, finally, have invaded and taken
possession of the music halls
Baileys lovely statue of "Eve at the Foun-
tain" in which there is not the slightest pre-
tense of drapery or concealment of the divine
form fresh from the hands of the Creator, is
purity itself: and any one who sees impurity in
II has the impurity in his own heart. In the
i same manner there is no indelicacy in the dis
play of the pretty bare legs of little maidens of
from four or five years old, or in the bare feet
and ankles of the bonny Scotch lasses, inno-
cent alike of shoes and stockings and of evil
I intent, though there would be indecency in the
display of a naked leg and foot in the streets
j of London Edinburgh by full-grown dam
sels who made the display for meretricious
purpose There are statues and statuettes
/ to be seen all over Europe in which nudity is
as complete as it is beautiful; but when such
statues or statuettes are initiated by purveyors
of obscenity and crowned with u modern bon
net, wrapped in modern shawl, and encased
in modern stockings and nothing else, their
vile intention becomes apparent, and they fall
properly under the cognizance of the police.
i The display is not indecent per Sc, as when
an actress of high attainments and genius, in
default of an actor of truthfulness and talent
enough to undertake the part, appears rs
"Romeo," any more than it is indeicate OF
improper for man to hide the form by appear
ing in petticoats to play the part of one of the
witches in Macbeth. The intention is every
thing, just as it is in killing. If you intend to
kill, you are murderer, and deserve the muir
derer's fate. If you kill in self-defense and in
a lust and patriotic cause.-The n sOldier-yOu
are not blamable, but virtuous. In like manner,
the scanty drapery of the ballet for the purposes
of art, and art alone, is no offense against good
taste or good manners; but if the ballet girl-no
for the sake of art but for the sake of attracting
lewd attention-overdoes the scantiness and be-
trays the immodesty of her mind by her motions
4 or gestures, she commits an oftense, and ough
to be Missed from the stage which she disgraces
If at any place of public entertainment the
undress of women is of a character to deter mel
| from introducing their pure-minded mothers
wives, sisters, or daughters to witness the per
formance, such place of entertainment i
doomed to bankruptcy. 1t may drag on pre-
carious existence for awhile, by keeping within
hair's-breadth of the penalties of the law tina
prohibits the immodest exposure of the person
but the world and the worlds opinion are agains
and offenses against the public conscience. Blu
let us not, in the outcry against short pettcoats
commit treason against an art that ministers
like other arts, to the qualification of the sens
of beauty. All art is like music-it cannot be in
decent or improper in itself, and is only mad
so by the eXtraneous association of words an
: thoughts that come out of the mind of the OF
server, and not out of the things observed
"To the pure all things are pure" I'm dancing,
says Sir Richard Steele, ''all the charm
of an agreeable person are in their highest exel
else; every limb and feature appears with its re
fective grace AS all art is an imitation of ma
ture, so this is an imitation of nature in il
highest excellence. The business of dancing
to display beauty; and for that reason all disto
ton and mimicries, as such, are what raise avel
sion instead of pleasure. The dancer
on our stage are very faulty in this kind; an
what they mean by writhing themselves int
such postures as it would be pain for any
the spectators to stand in, and yet hope to plea.
those spectators, is unintelligible." And 1t is
this respect that reform is, in our day, still moi
8 needful than il was in the days when Addiso
and Steele were the arbters of taste and the hig
priests of criticism.