The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-11-22

dance, her legs, like her arms. Rieafnee long and bare, too. That was, to many spectators. I doubt not, a full value in entertainment, feel sure, too, that very many others thought only of her exceeding beauty of motion and not ai all of her nudity.
 If Anthony Comstock. Michael Angelo and Stanford White had sat side by side. they would have held three vio lently opposed yet all expert opinions; so wouldn't be brash to write out mine?
 You may ask me reasonably. though to say whether she enacts an operatic role by wordless motions. We'll, wrote play for Mr. Crane, years ago, and one of It's characters was assigned to m actor of suppressed yet intense emo. ton; who in his most heartfelt scenes sat behind a desk with his legs under it. The part of him that showed above the desk was in control, and the part that was out Of the audiences sight was visible to Crane. Did I please your the young man asked; how did 1t look from the frontT
 ITO speak frankly" I replied, you were too passive--you suppressed your emotion too much--you didn't act hard enough"
 'Too passivs--too suppressed---too inaetivew Crane interposed; "Greai Ceasar. you should have seen him writhe, wriggle and kick under the desk. He'll act himself to death with his legs in this play and nobody out there will suspect he has acted at all."
 Isadora Duncan may act her legs of in "Iphigenia in Aulis," and en- trance the spectators. but they won't have any reason to believe she has acted the opera at all.
 
 Next Alto FuJi-Ko. A geisha? That in Japan. is a singing and dancing girl mot necessarily a disreputable thing to be: but Alto hasn't been a girl either geisha or any other kind, for many year. She Is still proficient, how ever. in the bending, wabbling and trot- ting which the Japanese regard as dancing, although seemingly too fat to keep her mature joints pliant and mus oles Timber. Half an hour Is given up to her performance between usual plays at q new and handsome German theatre. She is not stingy in her de- but. Thirty skilled musicians play the peculiarly fascinating tunes of Japan for her to dance to, and the stage is set handsomely for the house of a Japan csc war Iord of high degree. Need sa ythat Japan's holy volcano, familiar on many fan and screen, is to be seen in the distance through the open door, way7 Down the mountainside come two lights, getting bigger and brighter as they descend, and anyone is excus able for thinking they are the lamps of touring motor car. What if, with the velocity and momentum of gravita- tion, 1t shouldn't turn aside for the fiimsy Jap house of bamboo and paper but should plunge straight through if across the stage, over the footlights and onto me in the middle of the front row7 Wouldn't be sent to hades in the midst of my sin of going to see a geieha dance wickediy? oh, my goshl Have I forgotten that the title of the play is The Vampire Cat" and oi course those lights are the hungry blazing eyes of that supernatural beast on its way to suck the blood of some being. Indeed, before the lift of the curtain in the darkened theatre. and while the orchestra. turned the Jap chords of oriental melody into weirdly lovely harmony, a solemn voice from an invisible speaker said that. ages ago, a voracious and otherwise awful demon cat lived on that sacred mountain and made vam- ptre raids o'nights on the dwellings in the valleys below; that this horrible creature had the power to take on the physical form Of the person 1t bled to death: that 1t thus became the sem blance of him and secondly drank his blood So runs an ancient Jap legend the voice declared and bade us watch the illustration of it by Mrs. Fuji-Ko. the war-lord would be something like SaIome dancing before Herod. but why hurry to be cynical? This is Japanese dramatic art.