Crystal Pantomime - 12

hovers above him and remains stationary as a background to the
next dance. In the shadow of this wave-- some collapsed jelly-fish
are lying on the wet sand-- they gradually pick themselves up and
dance under the novering curve of the blue wave 'the dance of the
jelly fish' with their crystalline domes and floating colored
streamers depending from them-- they are all enticing the youth
when the wave subsides-- the jelly fish face away-- and on a calm
summer ocean appears the cortege of Venus in a snell drawn by
horses like the white china figures I collect. The youth leaps on-
to the shell shell of Venus to which she beckons him and she
points to the horizon-- but on the horizon the youth sees the blue
ribbon drifting-- and the scene fades.

The next scene is moonlight-- The youth has been lying
asleep on the moss-- and over him bends a dryad incorporated with
a tree-- the form of her ballet skirt repeats the form of the
tree's foliage. She emerges from the tree and as they are about
to embrace the blue ribbon floats in between them and the youth
dances away-- in his dance he is arrested on the point of

Crystal Pantomime - 14

in the rhythm of to-and-fro-- he darts towards the dragon-- the
dragon darts his head at him-- the dragon draws back its head--
The youth renews the attack-- he has an enormous yellow gilt
shielu (espinal yel) sword, helmet and winged sandals like Mercury.

At last he strikes the dragon-- The pinnacle of stairs falls
apart-- giving an amusing cubistic pattern of white oblongs in
the air at different angles to each other between the falling-
apart blocks. The maiden descends, floatingly, to earth while the
dragon falls apart to reveal nothing but the maiden's mother
holding up her lorgnette-- The maiden flies into the youth's arms--
and after embraces he takes her blue ribbon out of his
pocket-- The scene lades.

The maiden and the youth are seated on a white china
horse which gallops but never moves-- Behind them every imaginable
scenery passes in a brief space (cast by a magic lantern) They
are on their honeymoon-- The scene lades.

The crystal becomes clouded, only to light up again par-
tially for a moment, to reveal a crystalline baby tumbling over
and over itself swiftly out of the sky, while the blue ribbon, in

CRYSTAL PANTOMIME

Everything is a black background-- in front a beautiful slim maiden dances-- all very white-- tentatively towards a witch-all very hazy smoke grey-- who tot-titters away from and towards each other-- the witch enticingly-- the maiden doubtfully-- the witch holds in her hand a crystal globe.

High above them a tiny beam of light, supposed to be reflected from the moving crystal, plays fitfully on the black background-- as the dancing beam on a ceiling cast from a diamond or mirror reflecting the sun. And attracted to this dancing beam a ' creature' a homunculus with propellar like wings-- as much like a blue bottle or a striped wasp as possible-- bumps toward and away from the spot of light. This homunculus must be artificial, his wings wnriring just like a fly's, and the motion of quadrille imitating the to-and-fro darting of a summer morning house fly-- which is one of the finest rhythms observable.

The dance of the maiden and the witch ends by the maiden going to gaze into the crystal.

The crystal begins to grow larger and larger (the homunculus) until the round spotlight which has

Crystal Pantomime - 2A

culus disappears) until the round spotlight which has taken the
place of the crystal becomes the whole scene.

The scene is circular instead of square-- and represents
the interior of a crystal globe with its curved planes and depths.

The maiden is now to see her life in the crystal and it
is the story of the maiden's future which is to be portrayed by the
ballet. Only, as this maiden lived in the times when maidens
waited at home while the youths went out into the world, it is
rather the adventures of the young man that she will eventually
marry-- leading up to this, her future marriage, that the maiden
will see, in the crystal.

Her only appearances will be her meetings with him and
her waiting-- and at last her union with him.

******

The first scene is the village green-- where little
girls are dancing skipping rope and little boys are playing marbles.
The whole of the ballet takes place in a transparent crystal world-
and the personnages partake of this crystalline appearance, par-
ticularly their clothes and their hair. This gives an impression

Crystal Pantomime - 2B

of ethereal beauty that cannot be equalled-- and the ballet takes
the spectators into an evanescent dream world so irreal and
tenuous that it will take their breath away. The crystal shuttle-
cocks of bright colors are enormously big and the curves of the
glittering skipping ropes are a great addition to the attitudes
of the dance.

The shuttlecocks afford color motion up in the air-- and
the equally enormous glass marbles of the playing boys, a balance

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Crystal Pantomime - 3

on the ground. The dance of the skipping ropes will be simul-
taneous to a leapfrog dance of the boys-- the circular motion of
the skipping ropes and the swift horizontal movements of the boys
-- who seem to fly across the stage when leapfrogging-- as
Nijensky did in the spirit of the rose, giving an interesting
modern rhythm. The subject of the ballet will appeal to every
one because, being so simple, the high-brows will enjoy it with
that humorous compassion they afford for the souvenir sentiments
and the general public will 'get' it without effort. It is rich
in possibilities as all simple eternal subjects are.

The maiden appears in this scene for she is the principal little girl with yellow glassy plaits tied with a blue ribbon.

The little girls and the little boys mock one another in their play. But the principal little boy takes a shy notice of the little girl. He snatches her blue glass hair ribbon and offers the little girl his marble. The little girl scoffs at his attentions and, chucking the marble into the hollow of a nearby tree, dances off jeeringly while all the children dance and disperse. That is the end of the childhood recollection. The

Crystal Pantomime - 4

little boy looks at the blue ribbon he is holding and stuffs it
into his pocket.

The scenes change while the crystal becomes cloudy. The
nearer scenery is constructed of a transparent material like glass
and the distant scenery is thrown onto the crystal planes by a
kind of magic lantern-- from the back in order not to reflect on
the dancers. The magic lantern scenery enhances the ethereal
effect of unreal beauty.

**********

The second scene is adolescence meeting at a country
fair. One or two booths with fancy trifles which lend themselves
particularly to bright glass colors-- very much exaggerated in
size-- and diminished in number to give a decided decorating ef-
fect of composition-- a little of the ridiculous that lends so
much charm to ancient art and the sufficiency of a symbol to ex-
press a more complex actuality. There is at this fair an arbour
of green glass trellis and climbing plant and in this arbour is
a round table at which can be partaken of enormous glasses of
vivid colored syrup.

Crystal Pantomime - 5

The maiden visits the country fair chaperoned by her
mother and grandmother. The grandmother is bent over a cane and
dances with faltering steps. She wears a dolman cloak and ballet-
dancer's legs. The mother wears a pork pie hat tipped over her
nose, carries a lorgnet and her ballet skirt is a draped bustle with
a tail of bunched drapery such as hung down the back of bustle
skirts-- but the skirt is absent-- the movements of her dance give
the poker-swan like effect of the period-- only her slim legs are
also in tights-- there is no skirt-- with her hanging draperies
she gives the effect of a gracefully slim legged bird with its
tail dragging.

There is a dance of ceremonies of meeting and intro-
duction. The youth invites the maiden and her maternal ascendants
to partake of monstrous syrups in the bower. This incident is
very brief-- the grandmother and mother dance off rigorously with
the maiden-- who glances back once-- and sees the youth contemplat-
ing the blue bow he stole from her when a child.

********

Later: Twilight falls-- the fair disappears. The
maiden steals out in the dusk and dances to the hollow tree on the

Crystal Pantomime - 7

against the tree gazing at it-- and gradually it evolves out of
itself 'the spirit of the marble'-- it is a slim, a lithe sprite
in all over tights, colored like the marble. He is almost in-
corporate with the marble. This dance must be danced by a very
fine acrobat contortionist who can curve and squirm round the orb,
push it with his pectoral muscles and when it rolls, remain with
it by throwing his body and legs over his head. He must stand
on his head on it, but otherwise his motion must identify itself
with the circular rolling of the orb. This dance, for the
maiden's eyes, expresses the personification of objects through
sentiment-- and that stirring of the imagination at dusk, that
apprehends some living entity in the phenomena of Nature that
please or arouse the dream-sense.

The old marble has become an object of palpitating in-
terest to the maiden.

All this time the firefly quadrille continues as rhythmic
accompaniment.

The scene changes-- it is still dusk. There is a
narrow high arch in a wall-- through it one can see a fall of
feathery foliage by artificial light-- peculiarly beautiful green-

Crystal Pantomime - 8

There linger some gypsy-like crass glass colored light ladies--
beckoning to the youth-- He is still gazing at his blue ribbon--
The light ladies stroll up and down, pacing-- their feet gripping
the ground stealthily-- This has still the together and apart
rhythm of the insect quadille-- exactly as I have observed it out-
side a shady hotel in Paris. The youth, remaining remains ob-
livious-- It grows darker for the light through the archway is
extinguished and all that can be observed for a brief space is
the rhythm of the pacing, stealthy, half-aimless, half purpose-
ful legs-- Then they disappear.

The youth looks up from his ribbon which does not entirely satisfy him-- and out of the darkness where the light ladies have been a large, lashy, luminous eye winks at him and is extinguished-- The youth is decided-- He stuffs the blue ribbon, which symbolizes his conscience into his pocket and throws sentiment to the winds. He begins to dance in a defiant dis-tracted disjointed, whirling motion-- symbolizing the ebullition of youth-- and in every direction towards which he whirls, a gigantic wild oat springs up right in front of him, until he dances in a perfect forest of them that absolutely impedes his movements--

Crystal Pantomime - 9

The scene fades-- This is the dance of the wild oats.

Then follow the wild oats episodes.

The following scene is clear and gay-- and the youth is
dancing up to a quaint glass house-- with two doorways side by
side. From one doorway appears towards him a ravishing lady in
a (blue or pink) paper crinoline. The sun is shining and the youth
is about to clasp the lady when she pops back into the glass house
and with a sudden shower of rain, her husband with a (pink or blue)
umbrella emerges suddenly from the other door-- The youth darts
back-- The rain stops-- The husband disappears-- the ravishing
lady is again almost in his arms-- when the same incidents repeat
themselves. The youth, for his episode with a married lady, has
come upon the old-fashioned barometer couple who predict the
weather. Here we have again the to-and-fro movement in the dance
rhythm. After the alternation of rain and shine has taken place
a few brief times, the inevitable happens. So much sun and rain
have induced a rainbow. ΜΕΝΩΜΕΝΩΝ ΕΧΙΣΜΑΤΩΝ ΧΑΙΩΝ ΒΟΣΩΜΑΣ ΧΙΚΕ
ΧΑΜΒΧΑΙΝΒΑΝ. (The barometer house fades away and the youth is
attracted to the spirit of the rainbow) A beautiful creature,

Crystal Pantomime - 10

all colored like the rainbow. He is transported onto the rainbow--
and dances (the two figures are suspended from wires) tip toe--
A dance of wooing on the rainbow (which can consist of an arc of
projected colored lights. when he is about to take her in his arms the
(an enormous) blue ribbon wafts itself in between him and the
spirit of the rainbow-- and arrests the dance. The youth falls
off the rainbow onto the wet sand of the sea shore. But he has
been dyed in the colors of the rainbow-- and the mermaids mock at
him-- They sprinkle him with water to wash the rainbow stain away--
and now he is all dripping wet-- This effect he can attain by
having long strings of transparent sequins hidden in pockets of
his clothes which he can let out unnoticeably as he prepares to
dance the short staccato dance of shaking himself dry-- the drip-
ping will sparkle as he dances and he will manage, by unclasping
one clasp that hold them all together to let them fall to the
ground. He is now dry, and is free to turn his attention to the
wooing of a beautiful mermaid with long yellow glass hair, who
sits on a rock to comb it and he sits beside her, with her tail
curled round his legs.

Crystal Pantomime - 11

They enjoy a surprising spectacle-- in the surf of the waves the mermaids are dancing-- they are the genus of mermaids that have double tails-- and on these tails they dance the trick dances that human beings dance with their legs-- These dances must also be suspended on wires in order to be able to move the tails with their legs inside them, the tails being much longer than their legs-- This dance will be enchanting. The mermaids can stand on the tip of the one tail and twirl the other tail round it in pirouette. They will dance the Russian dance, their arms folded with one tail curved under them and the other tail flung violently out. The composition of the row of mermaids dancing in different attitudes on their double tails in their amusing curves will be most original.

The wooing of the beautiful mermaid is getting on finely. She coquettishly takes out her comb to comb her hair (the comb is enormous) when the youth, who is just about to embrace her, beholds the symbolical blue ribbon twisting in an out of the prongs of the comb. He leaps from the rock-- all the mermaids fade away-- and a huge blue wave with a crest of dripping foam

Crystal Pantomime - 12

hovers above him and remains stationary as a background to the
next dance. In the shadow of this wave-- some collapsed jelly-fish
are lying on the wet sand-- they gradually pick themselves up and
dance under the hovering curve of the blue wave 'the dance of the
jelly fish' with their crystalline domes along floating colored
streamers depending from them-- they are all enticing the youth
when the wave subsides-- the jelly fish face away-- and on a calm
summer ocean appears the cortege of Venus in a shell drawn by
horses like the white china figures I collect. The youth leaps on-
to the shell of Venus to which she beckons him and she
points to the horizon-- but on the horizon the youth sees the blue
ribbon drifting-- and the scene fades.

Crystal Pantomime - 13

tripping over something at his feet-- it is the fairy ring-- under
a clump of white thorn bushes, through which the wires can be mamb-
pulated by a sitting figure, a group of exquisite marionettes dance
beside a black glass pool surrounded by very luminous arum lilies--
while the youth and the dryad dance a slow dance of admiration--
The fairy queen is riding a fairy tiger reined with a daisy chain--
when she sees the youth she descends from the tiger and dances to
the youth and at last fly flies into his arms-- and gets all wrapped
up in the blue ribbon-- The scene fades.

The youth is confronted by a towering column of narrow
glass steps-- and on summit is a maiden bound-- and round her
feet curves the first curve of a dragon, with flames-- tiny flames--
darting from its tongue-- The rest of the serpent-like dragon
curves all down round the pinnacle of stairs-- On either side of
the maiden the sun and moon shed rays accompanied by stars-- as
in the old prints. The sun and moon with human faces. The scene
is terrifically cold and pure in line and whiteness-- even the
flames of the dragon's mouth are blue like low burning gas jets.
The youth dances a magnificent dance of courageous attack-- always

Crystal Pantomime - 14

in the rhythm of to-and-fro-- he darts towards the dragon-- the
dragon darts his head at him-- the dragon draws back its head--
The youth renews the attack-- he has an enormous yellow gilt
shield (espinal yel) sword, helmet and winged sandals like Mercury.

At last he strikes the dragon-- The pinnacle of stairs falls
apart-- giving an amusing cubistic pattern of white oblongs in
the air at different angles to each other between the falling-
apart blocks. The maiden descends, floatingly, to earth while the
dragon falls apart to reveal nothing but the maiden's mother
holding up her lorgnette-- The maiden flies into the youth's arms--
and after embraces he takes her blue ribbon out of his
pocket-- The scene fades.

The maiden and the youth are seated on a white china
horse which gallops but never moves-- Behind them every imaginable
scenery passes in a brief space (cast by a magic lantern) They
are on their honeymoon-- The scene fades.

Crystal Pantomime - 15

momentous curves, with, as in old story books, "The End" written
upon it rises up to receive the baby as it falls

On a wire a stiff figure, like the ones in 'Cartesian'
bottles, only carrying a bunch of colored air balloons-- symbolizing
desire-- whirls round and round in the crystal ball with a small
child after him-- only for a brief moment-- The first scene
evolves.