The San Francisco call., 1910-10-10
Violet Romer Has True
Artists Understanding
OF Music S Soul
By WALTER ANTHONY

Violet Romer is blest with youth,
lowered with beauty. and gifted with
unconscious grace Her girlishness is
crowned with modesty. If classic
dancing" is to find permanent place in
the wonderful world of expression it will
be such as she who will establish the
mixed art, for she has a delightful gift
for music. with an instructive feeling
for its 1ythms and a comprehending
spirit for its soul. In a program which
showed the limitations as well as the
possibilities of interpretive dancing, she
won, yesterday afternoon, the praise of
a fashionable audience at the Columbia
theater. and the Papyrus club which
fostere the recital and went sponsor
for it, may we'll feel satisfied with the
performance of Miss Shawhan, who for
! the professional career that beckons
her, has taken her given and her
mothers maiden names, Violet Romer.
| She does not disclose the years that
make Maud Allan's impersonation of
youthful spirit a mere impersonation,
and she is prettier of form and much
more graceful. Her dancing is real
! dancing. There is a wider variety of
steps; a sweet wholesome spirit
! illumines her and neither the morbid
nor the suggestive are postured or
1 pictured. ttOlIOES dnG lnQeCe1CleS are
| as far from Miss Romer's art as eyinced
yesterday as Salome is distant from
Miriam. She was not always success
| full in interpreting the music, but she
/ paralleled it. Instead of interpreting
music she abandoned herself to it. Her
steps followed. They did not lead. The
path she opened was frequently rose
/ lined; the air was full of butterflies and
nodding blossoms. She was youth thrust
out into a. bright sunshine or the naiad
of some enchanted grot laughing back
at the ripples of runaway brook.
1t was, indeed, in her interpretations
# the spirit of emotion rather than the
| episode of program music that Miss
Romer was best. She is too much like
music itself TO tell a story, but is ex-
ceiling as the hamadryad, which she
| danced with exquisite mockery to Nc
Coy's beautiful music; or as the but
terfly which quivered in multi-colored
! lights to Griegs "The Butterfly" or to
Mendelssohn's Spring Song" When
she entered from behind plush curtains
her personation OF spring was the pref
l tiest picture / have ever seen ami
| mated. With garlands of roses and
| fiinging pink blossoms over her head
she matched their fall with steps as
| light as the thistle downs touch. An
| involuntary "ah'' went up from the au-
dience. The Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody
the familiar No was not so sue
cessful. It's story could not be read by
/ the watchers because of the darkened
auditorium, and the beauty of the music
was thus rendered obscure by the
operation Of other nerves than musical
ones. The tragedy of the Hungarian
| shepherd with his synbolically
manacled hands was not in the music
or the dancing for me, but only the
| wild beauty of the czardas. with its
back turning. lodging, Sleaping meas
ures. Likewise Miss Romer touched
| fields beyond the light of music in the
Psyche Myth" which tells with labor
Gus painfulness-like The Battle of
free born music should not be cufred
! or chained.
Miss Romer has wonderful hands and
remarkable manner of indicating the
accents of the music she dances I'm
dulations of her arms seem like rip
| pies on lake and fall noiselessly from
mimet.c finger tips. The effect is quite
indescribable. 1t is as though her soul
| felt the rythm of the music and that
her being vibrated in sympathy. She
| would make splendid orchestral di-
rector for she feels the pulse of music
not as one apart from it like the doctor
| with his fingers on the wrist, but as the
swelling arteries themselves.
This is not exaggerated praise The
men in the orchestra paid heed and
missed the beat sometimes with
watching of the pretty dancer. When
Luis Pamies played the Grieg Butter
| fly music on the piano the orchestra
/ became one with the audience in listen
! ing to the music and watching the fut-
tering fingers. which were as light and
/ immateriaI as the wings of the pretty
! creature which danced through the bars
| of Grieg's S composition. PaInies' play
| ing was no less light of touch than
| Miss Romer's dancing.
In this pictorial exhibition of pic
torial music Miss Romer makes music
| and dancing, what Lucian said they
were-a married pair. The deeper.
spiritual Significance OF Chopin,
Tschaikowsky and Wagner, remain uA-
developedIin the art room Of even Miss
Romer's pure dancing.