The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-11-10

Ernest Newman in Musical America.
S the most purely physical form of
~ self-expression, dancing is almost
as ancient as humanity itself; 1t
almost seems. indeed. as If certain ami
mails indulge in a rudimentary kind of
dancing. And as in all cases in which
the medium expression is limited. the
dance, in primitive times. was made to
fulfil of itself number of functions
that In later days became separate. 1t
Is we'll known that races that have not
developed a system of harmony cultiva-
tive melody with the more thoroughness
and project 1t into forms far more
richly floreate than those harmonic mu-
sic needs to USE Similarly, when ryhthm
pure and simple Is the main outlet for
feeling 1t is put to uses of which civilized
man, with his specializing habits, has
little notion Any ordinary citizen would
find IL very hard for example, to ex-
press his grief by means of a dance; the
expression of emotion of this kind has
become specialized for us in words or
music. But in more primitive times the
dance covered a far wider arc of human
life. Like all the arts in the process of
the ages it has ceased to be utilitaran,
and indeed the loss in direct utility has
been a necessary condition or purely
esthetic progress. Only when beauty is
worshiped for its own sake does 1t come
to Its perfect flower.
Architecture may at first sight seem TO
be a contradiction of this. But the purely
utilitarian function of a building-the
keeping out of bad weather and the pro-
vision of storing spaces for food and
clothes and furniture-would be as well
performed by four bare walls and a roof
as by the divinest of our c5-hedrals or
the most sumptuously decorative of our
places. All over and above this that
man layishes upon his buildings is simply
the rapturous cry of his heart for beauty
for her own sake.
Today we meet in our concert rooms
and theaters to share In a purely ideal
sense in the evolutions Of the dance or
the joys and sorrows of our kind. The
actual dance too has become an idealized
form of activity. in that We pursue 1t
only for the pure joy 1t can give us. But
for primitive man the dance was for long
a serviceable, rather than an ideal thing.
In the days before either speech or music
had attaine dany great range or freedom
it was In the dance that man strove to
make himself articulate to his fellow men
and to the gods Many dances has their
origin in what modern anthropologists
call sympathetic magic; the savage hopes
to induce a desired event-such as the
death of an enemy or the coming of the
harvest--by a mimetic representation of
It, Even the religious dance must have
been originally utiltarian: its purpose
was to cajole the great spirit into grant,
ing favor or Withholding an injury.
1T was because the dance was first used
for practical purposes that it assumed
among savages such a great variety of
forms. War dances, vegetation dances,
funeral dances, resurrection dances, devil
dances, Reconciliation dances, initiatory
dances, rain dances, sun dances--these
are but q tithet of the forms that the
dance takes among the most primitive
races.
BY the time we reached the religious or
ritual dances OF civilized antiquity we are
we'll on the way tOWuTu tne ilDeTAtlOu OIL
the dance from unitarian servitude. For
however deeply the priests and assistants
may have been conscious of the religious
symbolism underlying the dance the DOM
inant feeling, one thinks, must have been
one of delight in the dance as dance
just as the singer or the orchestral player
of today is less intent upon the religious
hearings of sacred music inan upon the
beauty of 1t purely as music. And so in
process of time the dance ceases to serve
any purpose other than that of making
glad the heart OF man by the sheer
beauty of It's evolutions and the pure joy
of the outpouring of physical energy.
The old religious dance apparently sur-
Wives nowhere now In Europe except in
| the cathedral of Seville. 1t is pity, in
many ways, that the Christian church
| In general. in the middle ages. came to
adopt a more and more. hostile attitude
toward dancing. partly because of the ex-
cesses 1t often led to among the people.
For the religious dance of Christianity
could have been made as divinely beautl-
| full as the religious dances of ancient
! Greece-a sincere and beautiful express