Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-04-22
CHAT.

AoAh III SOLu6 scenes!
For instance there was that fat woman
with the minimum of clothing, capering,
plrouettelng, bounding, and tip-toeing
perfectly scandalous, and just considered
her odious to look at. But, asked, would
the exhibition have leaned more to the
side OF virtue if she had been lean?
Yes, think it would" she replied, "for
1t wouldn't seem so challengingly often
sIve, so-well, the very fat of wickedness.'
Poetry of motion, alack! Why that
obese gyrating creature fairly charged up
on every real and ideal impression about
dancing!
Gerome's vivid painting of the Alme
and Carpeaux's renowned statuesque group
had other inspirations than such pro-
nounced grossness.
While Modesto is talking turn to
fragment from Carlyle on the ballet, and
it makes good reading for her mood.
Here it is
THE very ballet girls, with their muslin
saucers round them, were perhaps little
short of miraculous, whirling and spinning
there IN strange mad vortexes, and then
suddenly fixing themselves motionless,
each upon her left or right
great toe, with the other leg stretched out
at an angle of ninety degrees, as if you had
suddenly pricked into the floor by one of
| their points, pair or rather a multitudin-
Gus cohort of mad, restlessly Jumping, and
| clipping scissors, aud so hidden them irest,
with open blades. and stand still in the
Devils name. truly notable motion
| marvellous, almost miraculous, were not
| the people so used to it; perhaps the ugliest
| and surely one of the most difficult ever
| taught female in this world. Nature
| abhors it; but art does at least admit it to
border on the impossible. One little
when 1 was there, went bounding
from the floor as if she had
been made of India rubber, or filed with
hydrogen gas, and inclined by positive
levity to bolt through the ceiling. Such
talent, and such martyrdom of training,
gathered from the four winds, was now
here to do its feats and to be paid for it
| regardless of expense, indeed. The purse
of Fortunatus seemed to have opened it.
self, and the divine art of musical sound
and Blythinic motion was welcomed with
an explosion of all the magniicences
which the other arts, fine and coarse,
could achieve. Alas! and of all these no.
| table and noticeable human talents, and
excellent perseverance,, and energies,
backed by mountains of wealth, and led
by the divine art of music and rythm,
vouchsafed by Heaven to them and to us,
and what was to be the issue here this
evening?
An hours amusement, not amusing eth
or, but wearisome and dreary. to a high
dizened select populace of male and fe-
male persons who seem to me not much
worth amusing.
Now Modesto would look delightedly at
Emma Abbotts acting in Paul and Virgin
la, and in Romeo and Juliet. But 1 tell
you the fat Coryphee of the Black Crook
was less pruriently suggestive, and less
harmful in some particulars. Was the
half draped fat dancing woman any more
of show than Hauk in Mignon, that ultra
fashionable night of Grand Italian ope-
raj" Who gagged then?
Had the advertising been the same as
for the Black Crooks first exhibition, men
alone would have filed the house.
Do you think that Annie Louise Cary, as
Siebel, in Faust, stout and clumsy postum
ing in purple tights was a more sdifying
spectacle than the fat dancing woman?
I guess not.
hot oh nd a.
with that wonderful dress designed by
some daring Bostonian, which is intended
TO simulate marble in statuesque outlines
aud undraped effects.
Yet everyone says Mary is a nice girl, and
what everyone says must be true.
She hath a watchful step-father-a very
Griffin of a man, who bluffs her suitors
and prosecutes her blackmailers
and still is-still about all
the hooking practices for the poor gud-
geons to whom they are such perilous bait
Mary, the Fair Kentuckisn, has given up
some play wherein she acted the part of
young man-conveying the moral that she
draws the line at mixing characters.
Emma Abbott will not sing La Traviata
in any version-for which sentient public
should be profoundly relieved-because
Camille sung and snivelled, has been
offered to st. Paul audiences with nauseous
frequency.
Rose Wood, Rose Eytinge, Fanny Daven-
port, Rhea, and many others lost in the
mazes of memory, clogged with conflicting
negatives of this pernicious personation-
have passed in review before US, and we
| murmur enough.
Enough truly,-for niched in recollection
are two transcendeHt figures of matchlsss
form-one in the play, the other in the
| opera, Matilda Heron and Gazzaniga who
evoked the ardent acclaim never given save
to imperial merit.
And, pray, what are all these other
people, down for the same part on osten-
tstious posters, and insinuating pro-
grammes?
Experimenters trying it on and trying
| the public at the same time.
You saw Frank Mayo as Hamlet and
George G.. Min as Hamlet and Anna
Dickinson as Hamlet, but you never saw
but one Hamlet on the American boards,
and wasn't Edwin Booth the man?