The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1921-02-09
SWEDISH BALLET
HORRIFIES LONDON
Audience Streams Out in Silence
After Realistic Presentment of
BorIin's aMadhouse".
By MARGARET WALTER

LONDON, Feb. 8.-There's no good
in telling people how cruel and stupid
and ugly they are unless you have a
way of saying things that makes them
tolerable even when they are unpleas-
ant Also, If you want people to stand
YOU when you are unkind and brutal
you have to be ravishingly lovely to
look at.
The Swedish dancers made two mis-
takes in putting on NJ. Jean Borlin's
'Madhouse" in London the other eve
ming. In the first place they are not
pretty to look at. And they haven't
the way Of doing things that the Rus
rians have. People flocked to the first
performance in spitesof the name be-
cause the Russian ballet taught Lon
don to believe that whatever a ballet
does is beautiful, anything expressed
choreographically diverting, that you
have nothing to do but just sit still
and enjoy yourself to the full and rest
your brain.
"The Madhouse" reversas this idea
completely. First 1t revolts against
little stage superstitions such as the
unluckiness of opening broken UNI
brellas and allowing performers to
step across a grave. Little things like
that start an audience off wrong. The
music further irritated..
If !. the women had been beautiful
all might still have gone well. But
Swedish women have thick ankles,
just as most of us have. high cheek
bones as we. wispy hair that strag-
giles round their faces on the slight
est provocation and their heads are
too large for artistic posing. The men
are fine specimens, but they are broad
hipped and self conscious compared
with the Russians, they dance as if
they were blowing, so many up, SO
many down and turn again.
The same ingenuousness which
makes their country dances and their
national fetes SO refreshing to sophist-
icated people terrifies and bewilders
when with stolid and unflinching force
it meets madness and crazy passion
and death itself.
1.-The Madhouse" is the story of the
chance invasion of a lunatic asylum by
little girl on her way home from her
first communion in white dress and
VEIL
The mad house represents the world,
the inmates are everyday types,-our-
selves-the poet, the musician. the
vain woman. the widow, her connpan-
ion, the bully and so on. The white
clad first communion girl stands for
innocence. There is no place for her
in the worlds madhouse. She tries
to join the crazy gang, is terrified by
their gestures, then repels the luna
tics by her GOODNESS, her aloofness
They crowd away from her. She sinks
down by messy grave and is found
weeping by the prince. a cardboard
prince, who first makes love to her
and then strangles her, "to prove his
own power to himself--is he not a
primer"
All this to strident discords, to cat
calls and ear splitting whistles. and
ominous muffled drumming.
Nothing could exceed the gloom of
the performance nothing could be fur
Their from grace than the crazy cavort-
ing of the lunatics. each one of whom
is too near to being real life to be
pleasant to look at, each one of whom
is ugly in the way we are an ugly
when we are at our worst.
There is no happy ending, no re-
lief. not even a question. The clamor
just stops on a shrill falsetto. Inno-
cence lies huddled grotesquely after
neT Dtino anu StupiV pioteS'deiois' hei
cheap finery draggled, her pasty face
stark The cardboard prince stalks off
proud of his deed, the others stink
away, each intent upon his own mad
ness. A hideous writhing giant paint
ed on the black cloth seems to smile
a green and Shiny smile as the cur
tain drops.
The audience applauded politely,
(the courtesy of London audiences is
proverbiaD and then absent mindedly
the people streamed out into the dark
leaving the second half of the per-
formance to empty seats. There Were
mo Misses, no protests, just the bored
expression of life-weary men and
women, fed up.