Part 4

One of the most nice and difficult points of the art of dancing is, certainly, the management and display of the arms; the adapting their motion to the character of the dance. In this many are too arbitrary in forming rules to themselves, without consulting nature, which would not fail of suggesting to them the justest movements. For want of this appropriation of gesture and attitude, the movements fit for one character are indistinctly employed in the representation of another. And into this error those will be sure to fall, who deviate from the unerring principles of nature; which has for every character an appropriate strain of motion and gesture.

Nothing then has a worse effect, than any impropriety in the management of the arms: it gives to the eye, the same pain that discordance in music does to the ear.

There are some who move their arms with a tolerably natural grace, without knowing the true rules rising out of nature into art: but where the advantage of theory gives yet a greater security, consequently a greater ease and a nobler freedom to the motions of the performer; the performance cannot but meet with fuller approbation. And yet it may be as bad to show too much art, as to have too little. The point is to employ no more of art than just what serves to grace nature, but never to hide or obscure her.

Great is the difference between the antient and the modern dances. The antient ones were full of sublime simplicity. But that simplicity was far from excluding the delicate, the graceful, and even the brilliant. The moderns are so accustomed to those dances from which nature is banished, and false refinements substituted in her room, that it is to be questioned whether they would relish the returning in practice to the purer principles of the art. Myself knowing better, and sensible that the principles of nature are the only true ones, have been sometimes forced to yield to the torrent of fashion, and to adopt in practice those florishings of art, which in theory I despised; and justly, for surely the plainest imitation of nature must be the grounds from which alone the performance can be carried up to any degree of excellence. It is with our art, as in architecture, if the foundation is not right, the superstructure will be wrong.

This primitive source then must be studied, known, and well attended to; or we only follow the art blindly, and without certainty. Thence the common indifference of so many performers, who mind nothing more than a rote of the art, without tracing it to its origin, nature.

To succeed, we must abandon the false taste, and embrace the true; which is not only the best guide to perfection; but when rendered familiar, by much the most easy and the most delightful. It has all the advantages that truth has over falshood.

The greater the simplicity of steps in a dance, the more beautiful it is; and requires the more attention in the performer to exactness and delicacy; for slowness and neatness being in the character of simplicity, afford the spectator both leisure and distinctness for his examination: whereas dances of intricate evolutions, or quick motions, in their confusion and hurry, allow no clearness, or time for particular observation.

If the merit of a theatrical dancer were to consist, as many imagine, in nothing but in the motions of the legs, in cutting lively or brilliant capers, in surprizing steps, in the agility of the body, in vigorous springs, in vaulting, in a tolerable management of the arms, and especially in being well acquainted with those parts of the stage where the perspective gives him the greatest advantage; the art of dancing might be, as it is generally looked upon to be, an art easily acquired. Whereas, for the attaining to a just perfection in it, there are many other points required, but none so much as the close imitation of beautiful nature; and that especially in its greatest simplicity.

Nor should it be imagined that the simplicity I recommend, tends to save the composer of dances any trouble of invention: on the contrary, that sort of simplicity of execution intended to produce, by means of its adherence to nature, the greatest effect, will cost him more pains, more exertion of genius, than those dances of which the false brilliants of extravagant decoration, and of mere agility without meaning or expression, constitute the merit. It is with the composition of dances, as with that of music, the plainest and the most striking, are ever the most difficult to the composer.

The comic, or grottesque dancers, indeed are in possession of a branch of this art, in which they are dispensed from exhibiting the serious or pathetic; however, they may be otherwise as well acquainted with the fundamental principles of the art, as the best masters. But as their success depends chiefly on awakening the risible faculty, they commonly chuse to throw their whole powers of execution into those motions, gestures, grimaces, and contortions, which are fittest to give pleasure by the raising a laugh. And certainly this has its merit; but in no other proportion to the truth of the art, which consists in moving the nobler passions, than as farce is to tragedy or to genteel comedy. They are in this art of dancing, what Hemskirk and Teniers are in that of painting.

The painter, can only in his draught present one single unvaried attitude in each personage that he paints: but it is the duty of the dancer, to give, in his own person, a succession of attitudes, all like those of the painter, taken from nature.

Thus a painter who should paint Orestes agitated by the furies, can only give him one single expression of his countenance and posture: but a dancer, charged with the representation of that character, can, seconded by a well-adapted music, execute a succession of motions and attitudes, that will more strongly and surely with more liveliness, convey the idea of that character, with all its transports of fury and disorder.

It was in this light, that the antients required the union of the actor and of the dancer in the same person. They expected, on the theatre especially, dances of character, that should express to the eye the sensations of the soul: without which, they considered it as nothing but an art that had left nature behind it; a mere corpse without the animating spirit; or at the best, carrying with it a character of falsity or tastelessness. A thorough master of dancing, should, in every motion of every limb, convey some meaning; or rather be all expression or pantomime, to his very fingers ends.

How many requisites must concur to form an accomplished possession of this talent! It is not enough that the head should play on the shoulders with all the grace of a fine connection; nor that his countenance should be enlivened with significance and expression; that his eyes should give forth the just language of the passions belonging to the character he represents; that his shoulders have the easy fall they ought to have; let even the motions of his arms be true; let his elbows and wrists have that delicate turn of which the grace is so sensible; let the movement of the whole person be free, genteel, and easy; let the attitudes of the bending turn be agreeable; his chest be neither too full nor too narrow; his sides clean made, strong, and well turned; his knees well articulated, and supple; his legs neither too large, nor too small, but finely formed; his instep furnished with the strength necessary to execute and maintain the springs he makes; his feet in just proportion to the support of the whole frame; all these, accompanied with a regularity of motion; and yet all these, however essential, constitute but a small part of the talent. Towards the perfection of it, there is yet more, much more required, in that sensibility of soul, which has in it so much more of the gift of nature, than of the acquisition of art; and is perhaps in this, what it is in most other arts and sciences, if not genius itself, an indispensable foundation of genius. There is no executing well with the body, what is not duly felt by the soul: sentiment gives life to the execution, and propriety to the looks, motions and gestures.

Those who would make any considerable progress in this art, should, above all things, study justness of action. They cannot therefore too closely attend to the representation of nature, either upon the stage, or in life. I cannot too often repeat it; those who keep most the great original, Nature, in view, will ever be the greatest masters of this art.

As to the different characters of dances, there are, properly speaking, four divisions of the characters of dances: the serious, the half serious, the comic, and the grottesque; but for executing any of them with grace, the artist should be well grounded in the principles of the serious dance, which will give him what may be called a delicacy of manner in all the rest.

But as one of these divisions may be more adapted to the humor, genius, or powers of an artist, than another, he should, if he aims at excellence, examine carefully for which it is that he is the most fit.

After determining which, whatever imperfections he may have from nature, he must set about correcting, as well as he can, by art. Nothing will hardly be found impossible for him to subdue, by an unshaken resolution, and an intense application.

Happy indeed is that artist, in whom both the requisites of nature and art are united: but where the first is not grossly deficient, it may be supplemented by the second. However well a beginner may be qualified for this profession by nature, if he does not cultivate the talent duly, he will be surpassed by another, inferior to him in natural endowments, but who shall have taken pains to acquire what was wanting to him, or to improve where deficient. The experience of all ages attests this.

The helps of a lively imagination, joined to great and assiduous practice, carry the art to the highest perfection. But practice will give no eminent distinction without study. Whoever shall flatter himself with forming himself by practice alone, without the true principles and sufficient grounds of the art, can only proceed upon a rote of tradition, which may appear infallible to him. But this adoption of unexamined rules, and this plodding on in a beaten track, will never lead to any thing great or eminent. It carries with it always something of the stiffness of a copy, without any thing of the graceful boldness of originality, or of the strokes of genius.

Vanity should never mislead a man in the judgment he forms of his own talents: much less should an artist resort to the meanness of depending in the support of cabals: it must be the general approbation that must seal his patent of merit.

I have before observed that the grave or serious stile of dancing, is the great ground-work of the art. It is also the most difficult. Firmness of step, a graceful and regular motion of all the parts, suppleness, easy bendings and risings, the whole accompanied with a good air, and managed with the greatest ease of expertness and dexterity, constitute the merit of this kind of dancing. The soul itself should be seen in every motion of the body, and express something naturally noble, and even heroic. Every step should have its beauty.

The painter draws, or ought to draw his copy, the actor his action, and the statuary his model, all from the truth of nature. They are all respectively professors of imitative arts; and the dancer may well presume to take rank among them, since the imitation of nature is not less his duty than theirs; with this difference, that they have some advantages of which the dancer is destitute. The Painter has time to settle and correct his attitudes, but the dancer must be exactly bound to the time of the music. The actor has the assistance of speech, and the statuary has all the time requisite to model his work. The dancer's effect is not only that of a moment, but he must every moment represent a succession of motions and attitudes, adapted to his character, whether his subject be heroic or pastoral, or in whatever kind of dancing he exhibits himself. He is by the expressiveness of his dumb show to supplement the want of speech, and that with clearness; that whatever he aims at representing may be instantaneously apprehended by the spectator, who must not be perplexed with hammering out to himself the meaning of one step, while the dancer shall have already begun another.

In the half-serious stile we observe vigor, lightness, agility, brilliant springs, with a steadiness and command of the body. It is the best kind of dancing for expressing the more general theatrical subjects. It also pleases more generally.

The grand pathetic of the serious stile of dancing is not what every one enters into. But all are pleased with a brilliant execution, in the quick motion of the legs, and the high springs of the body. A pastoral dance, represented in all the pantomime art, will be commonly preferred to the more serious stile, though this last requires doubtless the greatest excellence: but it is an excellence of which few but the connoisseurs are judges; who are rarely numerous enough to encourage the composer of dances to form them entirely in that stile. All that he can do is to take a great part of his attitudes from the serious stile, but to give them another turn and air in the composition; that he may avoid confounding the two different stiles of serious and half-serious. For this last, it is impossible to have too much agility and briskness.

The comic dancer is not tied up to the same rules or observations as are necessary to the serious and half serious stiles. He is not so much obliged to study what may be called nature in high life. The rural sports, and exercises; the gestures of various mechanics or artificers will supply him with ideas for the execution of charracters in this branch. The more his motions, steps, and attitudes are taken from nature, the more they will be sure to please.

The comic dance has for object the exciting mirth; whereas, on the contrary, the serious stile aims more at soothing and captivating by the harmony and justness of its movements; by the grace and dignity of its steps; by the pathos of the execution.

The comic stile, however its aim may be laughter, requires taste, delicacy, and invention; and that the mirth it creates should not even be without wit. This depends not only upon the execution, but on the choice of the subject. It is not enough to value oneself upon a close imitation of nature, if the subject chosen for imitation is not worth imitating, or improper to represent; that is to say, either trivial, indifferent, consequently uninteresting; or disgustful and unpleasing. The one tires, the other shocks. Even in the lowest classes of life, the composer must seize only what is the fittest to give satisfaction; and omit whatever can excite disagreeable ideas. It is from the animal joy of mechanics or peasants in their cessations from labor, or from their celebration of festivals, that the artist will select his matter of composition; not from any circumstances of unjoyous poverty or loathsome distress. He must cull the flowers of life, not present the roots with the soil and dirt sticking to them.