The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-07-26

New York. July alphabetically. the
town has gone dancing mad. Three
causes have concentrated in one de-
lirious effect A wildly popular Lon
don music hall reproduction of Sa-
lome's dance before Herod, taken with
the promise of sumptuous presenta-
tions of II in grand opera here next
winter. is the first incentive; the re-
cent agitation of Broadway by Adeline
(xnee, a noted English gymnastic
dnseuse, Is the second; and the en-
during cnarm of the Merry Widow
waltz is the third. Terpsichore, Is
she still the goddess Of gyration? Yes?
All right. The news of her is that,
= like the negro who sings in the old
ditty. Den take off youah coat, an
roll up youah sleeves, To- Jordan am
had road to trabble ] believe she
has stripped herself for the arduous
work OF active merriment in the mid
summer of 1908.
So forward is Terpy in her new
demonstrations that the people have
had TO go TO law to put her out of
sight where they don't wish TO see
her. That's a positive fact. On the
unbuilt square at the northeast corner
of Central park, where Fifth avenue
ceases suddenly to be a residential
street of millionaires, and strikes right
into a packed section of poverty, the
Paradise of Pleasures opened its gates
TO the populace. A high board fence
shut in its ground level sights from
those who couldn't, or wouldn't, pay
nickels to get in where they might
spend further coins for admission to
encircling rows of side shows. In the
center were two tall poles with a rope
stretched between their tops. Thereon
q woman danced, with long balanc-
ing pole in her hands, and no skirts at
tached to her skin-tight investure. She
was a free sight every afternoon and
two more in the evening. She posed
Il rest between her spells of dancing.
and all the while was a sight visible
10 the whole neighborhoOd. big
public school house overlooked ths
Paradise of Pleasure, and the teachers
couldn't hold the pupils attention
against the outside educational exhibit
in physical anatomy. 1t was observed
that, when the little girls of the neigh
borhood danced in the early evenings
on the sidewalks to the music of the
hand organ, they were no longer con-
tent with the simple forms of the ex
ercise but undertook strange stunts in
tip-toe ard high-lkick. The small boys
took TO stretching clothes lines from
area rails to lamp posts and attempted
feats in balancing, always with their
trousers rolled up to their hips SO II
came ABOUT IldI lile SCHOOL COliliillS-
sioners and the section pastors united
in a mandamus against the Paradise
of Pleasure and the attractiveness of
kits mid-air danseuse proved its down.
Summer time is lazy time, though,
and the purists who stick pins into the
inert police when the weather is cool
are now doing in the shaded ham
nocks of cleepy hollows and somnitic
mountains. The exceptional New York
place of wakeful watch this summer
is Coney Island, which the police have
set out 10 keep reasonably decOrous;
and down there an Oriental show. in
which hootchie-kootchie dancers were
the main thing. was shut up with a
big bang. and the Bible House. "a the
atre for the exposition and illustration
of scriptural history"-as the barker
yelped twas closed because the story
o. Herod and SalOme was the subject
OF its stage performance, with the
maids prototype of the modern wig
gle-dance as its principal episode.
mention that laudable inhibition be-
cause two of the theatrical disclosures
of the week compel me TO describe, so
far as a modest pen may, two unhin-
dered SalOme dances of the most art
fully immoral sort conceivable. The
once easily popular roof garden of
with, and things positive must be done
- draw people to those that survive.
10 Salome dances have broken out
kfresh.
The two young women who are de-
voting themselves 20 Salomic nudity
are La Sylphe and Gertrude Hoff-
mann. The extent 10 which they strip
themselves, really and in make-believe,
goes beyond anything within my recol-
lection. La Sylphe is an imported
dancer. trained for her work since
childhood. In figure she is short
wasted long-legged and slim like the
aristocratic types of English girls in
Du Maurier's Punch cartoons and she
doesn't kick above her head with those
uncommon limbs, but slowly, steadily,
and with seeming ease lifts either OF
them as high as it Will reach, before
her, behind her or beside her. and
holds it there as long as she pleases.
THAT is a gift of whimsical nature, and
he has brought il to a wonderful
State of graceful limberness. A full
half hour is accorded to her. The first
third of the time she devotes to con-
ventional balletrina movement, and
the second to the quaint whirls and
pastures of an East Indian nautch girl
Next comes a compression of Oscar
Wildes "Salome." which was short
originally with its representations OF
Saint Johns denunciation of He
rodias' sins. her vengeful anger, anc
the dance of her daughter before
Herod to get the Baptists head cut
off Wilde wallowed in his subject
making the truth clear that Salome'
dance before her step-father was sym
bolic of her surrender to his leachery
of which the wife and mother took ad
vantage 10 encompass Johns death
It was Wilde's dreadful play thai
served as a libretto for the opera pre-
scented by Conried at the Metropolitan
last winter. against the wish OF the
trustees, who have forbidden its repeti'
tion In their house, and which Ham
merstein will bring out at the Manhat'
tan next winter.
Its not my costumer who's both
cred" said Mary Garden. the prima
donna who is to be the Salome then
''but my jeweler."
Mary will find it hard, however, e
undo herself more boldly than Ii
Sylphe and the Hoffman, for the role
In the case of the Sylphe, the other &C
IL Co hav