Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-04-07
BY FREDERICK oEcHsNER.

From background of generations Of
polite audiences who have sat, well
dined and handsomely CARRIED, applaud
ing with feeble and innocuous enthu-
siasm the movement Of the human body
to sweet musical rhythms has recently
emerged a group Of audacious young
things who threaten to do with the
dance what others have done with
painting and music; to use it to make
! people think
1t is part and parcel of this ruthless
age that people are not to be allowed
any longer to simply sit and enjoy their
theater, their concert and their book
That most intolerable of all burdens
has been thrust upon them-they are
expected to use their brains
What charity has spared Washington
this savage demand cannot be told in
a word, at least as regards dancing In
music we have had our Honegger. our
Schonberg. our Prokofieff: in drama
Strange Interlude," as single ex-
! ample. has offered its curiously involved
self; but in the dance only one, that
unusual young woman, Angina Enters,
has displayed provocative new spirit,
| and the audience which witnessed her
recital was far from sure what to think
| of her. New York, however, and the
European capitals fairly bristle with ex-
perimentalists "a number of whom the
| writer has seem who have set up no
unmistakable furry among the CLASH
cistS.
Dancing has been, as a matter Of
fact, comparatively tardy in feeling and
expressing the restlessness which has
affected the other arts. It is extremely
ffV1rv frN x,tA 4f AIn kTfn
rather passive state of classic dancing
to note this introduction of more sub
| tie influences. People have, for so
! long, seen and been satisfied with the
| suave phantaSy of such things as Cop
pelia" that the presentation Of radical
| ly different, more intellectual forms
meets not only surprise, but antagoniSm.
Perhaps it is misnomer to call the
advanced mode new" thing, since
nothing is new under the sun; it would
be more correct to call at joinder of
several different media Of expression.
Dance plus music has additionally
made up the best known form; here
We have dance plus (or without muse.
! plus pantomine, plus drama, plus phi
| loSophy, and the result has probably
caused more critics to use more re-
! sounding phrases in shorter space Of
! time than any inspiration since cubism.
Suffice it for one humble commentator
| to say that it is as far removed from
the placid and ingratiating rhythm Of
! the Russian and French ballet as
| Hindemith Is removed from Mozart.
! 1t is likely. after all, that the sub
| jective style of dancing 0f one might
! call 1t that does not come upon pub
1 lie entirely unprepared. The ground has
been laid by the increasingly imaginative
style of interpretative work in which
| the thought or impression to be ex-
pressed has been merely transferred
| from one medium to another, or oper-
| ates in conjunction with another me-
dunn, as in the case of programmatic
music. The disposition of the body
| through series of graceful patterns
intended to suggest narrative or in
cident to appropriately rhythmed music
was in itself a change from the more
purely classic form of simply moving
to the tempo of music without the in
tention, or effort to tell story. The
! finest artists of the classic and of the
interpretative school-Nijinsky, Pavlowa,
Isadora Duncan, Karsavina, Mordkin
Bolm. Fokine and Fokina, the Diaghi-
lief group and others-were the means
of presenting dance ideas in refined
studied forms, but still effectively, Still
Realistically, still romantically.
1t was inevitable that something
should evolve from that merely graceful
merely symbolic school more fitting t.
the nervousness and query Of today
Now comes, in fact, variously in New
York, Paris, Berlin, Moscow. a harder
more mordant. more brilliant projection
Of the dance form, one which has the
discomfting habit Of refusing to COM
promise with sentimentalities. which
Knocks sentimentalities, which avails it.