The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-04-15
DANCING AND DRAMATIC ART.
MSS ST. DENIS'S HINDU DANCES
AND NINE. GUILBERTS SONGS.
Creek Choral Art and the Modern stage
Religious Dancing without Words,
and Tragic Dancing With Them-Native
Acrobatic Danclng-"Charley's Aunt"

The attempt 10 convince tnS pTeeenI
generation that thought and emotion can
10 artis.ically expressed by means Of arms.
logs and trunk Is not without Its dangers
Eosalind had no doublet and hose in her
disposition, but trousers and coattalls
nave cribbed and confined the soul OF the
modern man. high heels and straight fronts
he soul of the modern woman. The awful
PROPORTIONS OF the crinoline are forever
lurking just round fashions corner. h
modern mind is a whole world removed
from the mind Of the Greek, in which the
eye was the prehensile faculty, and the hui
ran form WAS divine. We see in the dance
at best an appeal to the f1eshly senses; but
to the Athenian the chorus embodied visu-
ally the inner purport Of the most austere
aad Hottest tragedy When Miss Duncan
undertook almost a decade ago to interpret
Omar Khayyam In plastic motion, one
hardy soul ventured the opinion that her
lines were better than Omar's, but the public
as a whole was bored, II not shocked. 1t Is
true that Miss Duncan later became a reign
i.g~ sensation in Germany. The philosophic
Teutonic mind, however, having thrown
"a the bonds Of space and time, Is at an
advantage in this matter Of corsets and
trousers. Yet the world does move, and
tbs very Lenten season has witnessed the
Triumph of two opponents Of artistic dane
ing.
The Hindu dances Of Miss Ruth st.
TENTS are, like the songs Of Mendelssohn,
without words; and they thus present the
Cne art Of dancing in its purest, which Is
TO say its absolute, form. 1t is no slight
testimony to their novelty and to the beauty
az their appeal that three times in as many
weeks they nave filed the SPACIOUS Hudson
theatre with highly intelligent audiences.
aiiss st. Denis is endowed with a personality
NJ ohaste and exquisite grace. Tall, slender
and 1.-the, she suggests the Vestal quite as
much as the artist in flesh and fibre. Her
face, poised firmly above her sinuous form,
has the delicacy Of a flower, and its beauty
as of the tryst of earth and eaven
Only once, as far as l could see, does the
pride Of ~virtuosity trench upon the SIM
plicity Of reverent art. In her first dance,
The Spirit Of the Incense" a slow, solemn
ritual Of the temrle, she has a gesture Of the
wrist and hand which is as light as a streamer
Of smoke waited in the breeze, but which is
impossible to any ONT of normal articula-
tons. 1t caught the eye with wonder, but
with a wonder that was the negation of
beauty. All around / heard women ex-
claim: SHE'S double jointed!" In her
second number, THE Snake Charmer,"
IN which she goes through the vigorous
vet languid motions Of coiling an m ginary
cobra about her body, such a gesture is
more fitting. Curiously enough, l do not
remember that she employed it here. II
size did, it was lost in the ensemble Of her
.i.-I;o a.a,o,,;on x-b;oh ny On or,oorn1I..
sinuous and serpentine that she seemed to
be the cobra itself, rather than its charmer.
1t is a dance-if one may call it 30
that admirably mingles the GOODNESS OF
blood with the languid, tropical venom
of the monster. 1t fascinates by making
you crawl with horror.
1t is in the dance of Radha that Miss st.
Denis shows the fulness Of her art, and
also it's limitation. The scene is a temple
interior, and she is disclosed as a seated
goddess, before whom priests are engaged
in worship. When the rites are ended
the spirit Of Radha enters the idol, and,
descending from the pede stall. performs a
mystic dance in two figures. The first
figure, the programme tells US. consists Of
five circles, eacn typifying one OF the senses.
The second figure portrays the %renuncia-
ton Of the senses in three stages-the de-
termination to be free, casting of the bond
age, the victory. The costume is, of course,
that of a Hindu idol-a long golden skirt
and a brief golden jacket, cut like the jacket
of a zouave. The legs are bare, or seem
to be, except for the light brown makeup,
and so is the torso. The steps are of ex-
~traordinary ease and variety, and at the
china xes Of the dance resemble for the
first time those of the dancers of our stage.
Their general effect is as large and
exalted as it is plastically graceful and free.
The spirit Of a ritual is preserved throughout
tn all reverence.
am not sure that | should nave known
what it was all about if it had not been for
tho programme. and even with this aid
I cannot Faithfully say that l found the
plastic doctrine altogether convin cling.
When Miss st. Denis dances | gladly re-
nounce scmc e the five senses-as, for in
stance, smelling, tasting and feeling, But
never will | %renounce seeing, and especially
seeing Miss st. Denis!
Hearing | had to %renounce. except for the
soft gliding sound Of her toes and the swish
Of her garments of cloth Of gold. But | am
strongly inclined to the opinion that the
effect would rave been firmer and more COM
polling il the dance had been accompanied
by-or rather the accompaniment ola
ritual song. 1t may be that our Puritanical
hiding Of the human form has, in the lapse
Of generations and centuries, dulled the eye
and rendered the mind insensible to merely
plastic Impressions; but the Greeks were
innocent Of trousers and crinoline, and with
them choral art was a blending Of dance with
musical words.
"The next song will be "a dance is a
famous Hibernian locution; but not a few Of
the Gallo songs Of Nine. Yvette Guilbert
nave a plastic accompaniment. On first
hearing her, six weeks ago, what impressed
me most was the variety and vivaoity Of her
facial mimicry-the eye that narrowed to a
shaft of fire or expanded to a beam Of gra-
cious fun; The circumfex accent Of the eye
brows and the accent dioH Of the tip Of her
nose; the ~loquacity Of her shoulders and the
garrulity OF her delicate hands. But there
Is more than this in her art, even in the case
Of the ohnnsons %crinoline. Her whole body
sways with the rhythm Of the music and
lends it plastic meaning.
Curiously enough. the song that most