Morning journal and courier., 1884-10-06
LIFE ON TIP-TOE.
Its Financial Value to the Stage Fair
 fes who Live it.

les who Live it.
 From the New York Journal Considering the trouble ballet-dancers have to learn their business, they are not we'll paid-hardly, if at all, better than a chorus-singer in comic opera. Anybody can become a chorus-singer, almost. That is to say, it needs no very extensive vocal ac- quirements and 8 practice of only few weeks, whereas to be a ballet-dancer of any ability whatever takes years of study and constant daily practice. Considering how hard they work and how much, it is marvel ous so few of them ever amount to enough to rise out of the corps de ballet to become CO., ryphees, secundas or premieres. The fact is that one must begin at @ very early age Most good premieres have had parents or rel atives in the business and they have usually studied ever since they could control the use of their legs. Considering all this the re ward is insufficient, because premiere may
 become celebrated at sixteen or seventeen, and she is done for at twenty-six or twenty
 seven-that is she has to descend to the sec ond rank Take season of forty weeks for ten years at about the utmost a premiere can make-say two hundred dollars week-and the total earnings of her prime are not more that eighty thousand dollars. This is the ut IQOSG, duu lb IS uOU IHuCn Wl10Il W6 Gul1h IudG it is spread over ten years.
 But the very great majority of even those who have studied all their lives make no such money as this They all seem to sink into obscurity or poverty after a few years unless they happen to make good marriage, which is seldom the case in this country, where the hard sense of the people is against such sentimental connections.
 The secundas at the theatres here paid an average of fifty dollars week. This is much more than they can earn in Europe. The coryphees require thirty dollars week at Niblos and about twenty-five dollars at the Star, and the corps de ballet anything they can get, the general price being from twelve to fifteen dollars week. This is the price of chorus-singer in every good comic opera company. But the work of the ballet dancer is infinitely the harder. If you fol- low the work of one of them during an even ing you are not amazed that they are ready to fall with fatigue when the performance is over. They must dance and march, and then must stand for hours looking on at the evo- lutions of the principals, whose dances do not last more than six minutes at a time
 But even this is nothing to the rush and haste that is made when the dances are over, and they have to get to the dressing rooms to change their costumes, which in 8 spectacle occurs five or six times ill the course of an evening, often more. There women in "Sieba" who have to change as often as ten times, in itself a work of no light conse- quence.
 fEBut,'' said the maitre de ballet to porter at Niblos one night between two of the scenes, himself in a torrid heat of per spiration after having watched and filed and sent out a couple of hundred women, closely following their gyrations, clapping his hands at every change of movement to guide them to new one, "but even for this hard life there is always greater supply than de- lo,, fN11 Hxra1 1,J1y, dred women in New York to-day who are out of an engagement, but who can dance pretty well. The public, you see, IS unsuitable for new faces. If it finds in ballet half doz-
 en faces with which it is familiar it is dissat- isfed, and accuses the management of foist- ing old pallets on it. That is why the sup ply must necessarily come from Europe, where the wages are even much smaller than here. Mere numbers on the stage do not count much if they do not know how to dance. It is better to have a small row of good dancers and pretty, well-formed women than a big row of people who do not know how to dance and who are not good looking Fill your stage well, but do not overcrowd it, for the effect is worse that way than to have no lady at all upon the stage"
 Most of these newly imported women live in cheap foreign boarding houses near the theatre, where the fare, however, at five and
 
 what would be obtained in an American boarding house at the same price. The bet ter-paid women live further uptown and in better class of houses, but it is not notice able that they are very economical and save as much of their money as they can. They come to America to save money, not to spend it. The conduct of the women is very good, and here, particularly, there is an absence of the stage-door mashing business, which
 would be in full blast if we were running comic opera or a burlesque company with English or Americans. It is not at all habit ual to find among ballet companies mainly formed of Italians the loyeliness that pre- vails among those named.
 The best dancers are divided between the merits of the Grande Ecole, which is that of Milan, and the Eeole Moderne, which is that of Paris and Vienna. The first adheres to the old-fashioned pas seul and pas de deux and groupings, with great bounds and diff cult pirouettes. The modern school seeks to
 be pretty, graceful and eccentric, and is now
 most in vogue, though not so legitimate