Part 15

Now, the first thing to do is to have your ticket ready. You must have your name signed on the ticket, where it says "Signature of pupil." Turn the ticket over and read it through on both sides. Remember your class number and your individual number in the class. The success of our school depends largely upon the way the classes are organized and thereafter dominated. Much of the success of the work depends upon the lectures you hear in the classes. They are in the form of inspirational talks based on different subjects. You are required to read all of our literature. Get and read the booklet entitled "Your Career." Every month we issue a school paper, "The Ned Wayburn News," which tells of the activities of pupils of the school who are now appearing in New York, or out on the road, and which has many interesting articles and information monthly for students of the dance. Please get a copy and read all of our literature--because it gives you an idea of what the school and its present and graduate pupils are accomplishing.

It is a well established rule of the studio that pupils shall weigh themselves every Monday and keep a record of their weight from week to week. For this purpose use the scales in the main office of the studio, please. They are accurate. We have them tested and adjusted at intervals to be sure that they are right. You are requested and expected to come into my private office and talk with me once a week, and when you do so I shall ask you about your weight, and you must be prepared to tell me. I know just how much you ought to weigh, and am interested in hearing whether you are gaining or losing flesh in the proportion that you should. At the end of the four weeks' period I shall ask each of you individually in the class about the variation in your weights, and I am then able to tell who is faithfully following my instructions as to practice, diet, hours of sleep and the other simple and necessary requirements of our courses. For I know that if my regime is observed as I request that it be, you will show it, and if you neglect to follow my advice you will not have made the progress you should, and will show that. You cannot disguise the real facts from me.

I do not want any of you to overexert at these limbering and stretching exercises. They are scientifically constructed to do for you what no other known cultural movements of this kind will do. At first they will tire you, leave you "all in," I have no doubt. I expect that. You see, in these exercises you are putting into play a lot of muscles that have been lying dormant, perhaps never been used in the way you will use them in this class as preparation for health, comeliness and dancing strength. You need to use these muscles. It is to stir them up and make you strong, and at the same time supple and shapely, that I have devised this series of exercises. It was not made by guess, this plan of developing and conditioning, but as the result of years of study and proof.

These exercises will make you feel perfectly wonderful after a while. Nothing else will do you as much good. But do not, please, expect the perfected results to show in a day or two. It cannot be done so quickly. You have been several years getting the way you are, and if you can improve greatly in a few months you must consider yourself fortunate.

Let me say, as a word of caution, that if you have any organic trouble, or have been weakened by a serious operation or recent illness, I wish you would report the facts to your class instructor or to me before you take on this work. In any event, don't overdo at any time, neither here nor in your home practice. If you find it necessary, stop at any time and sit down in your chair a few minutes till you get your breath. But don't stay out of class tomorrow because you find your muscles are tired. Every other student's muscles will be sore tomorrow, as well as yours. If you remain absent you will be much slower in getting those sore muscles feeling right than if you come into class and work the soreness out.

If you are absent you may miss something you will want to know. There is something new taught every day--or there may be a special lecture which you cannot afford to miss.

I hope you are going to be patient. I hope you are not going to say: "This is too much for me!" No matter how tired you are this work will do you more good than any medicines. You are not to take medicines without telling me about it. You are not to eat between meals; you are not to take any liquids with your meals. Masticate your food carefully. Don't bolt your meals in a hurry. Take time to eat properly. Don't sleep more than eight hours. Don't dance half the night away. You must look out for your health while you are training. Some of you are underweight, because you are not properly regulated so far as your meals and living is concerned. You are eating things you should not eat. Others are eating in such a hurry that the food is not properly assimilated by the body. You should drink not less than forty-five ounces of water a day. That is about nine glasses. You should drink a glass of water before and after each meal, NOT during your meals--one about eleven o'clock in the morning, another about four o'clock in the afternoon, and one just before you go to bed at night. NOT ice water. Water not only flushes the system but it induces perspiration. And you must perspire freely in all of our work because you get rid of many impurities through the pores. I reduced my own weight, by diet, exercise, and dancing, from 262 pounds to 207 pounds. But you have got to be very patient in reducing or building up. If you take off or put on a pound a week you will be doing very well. But let me regulate that, please. Sometimes pupils who are underweight when they first come here begin to lose weight, and they get worried about it. But you shouldn't worry. That means that you are losing unhealthy tissue, which will be replaced in time by healthy muscular tissue. That doesn't mean that you will get big knots of muscle on your arms and legs, such as you see in pictures in some of the magazines. The new tissue will be evenly distributed over the body. It is my business to manufacture symmetrical bodies. I have manufactured hundreds of celebrated beauties since I began my theatrical career, sometimes through facial makeup, sometimes through exercises and diet, but always with dancing as the chief feature in health and beauty culture.

There is a reason why this school has grown to its present proportions. It is because I have made a thorough study of anatomy and know how to make human bodies healthy and beautiful. I could tell you a very interesting story of Clan Calla, a little Irish princess who came to me with curvature of the spine to see if I could help her. She was very weak and hardly able to walk; they had to carry her to the studios from the subway. Now she is strong and well and dances beautifully.

Don't try to reduce too fast. I had two friends who died as a result of reducing with medicine. They took some sort of baths for reducing, and some kind of medicine to shrink themselves. That is why I became interested in reducing and began to practice on myself.

Now make up your minds to make this class a success. Don't make it necessary for your instructor to have to address any one of you personally. When your instructor gives an order execute it at once. Always get into your places promptly. Don't forget that you are going to be lame--but you must work it out.

You will begin with mild calisthenics--then, later on, you will learn several kinds of kicks--the side kick, the front kick, the hitch kick, etc. But before you can kick, you must have the strength necessary for kicking. You must practice the exercises in order to get this strength.

Now you are organized and you can accomplish real work. If there are any questions you would like to ask me, come to my private office at the end of the hall on the second floor--Broadway front. You will progress according to the way you practice. You must put in hours of faithful practice. If you take one hour of instruction a day at the studio, you should practice three hours a day at home. If you can possibly do so, always go through your Foundation Technique when you first get up in the morning. The lesson itself is not enough. Faithful practice means success, and without practice you won't succeed at all, and you won't get your weight off or you won't build up. Three times the length of a lesson is my rule for practice. Some practice from three to eight hours a day so as to gain dancing strength. You must have a lot of flexibility in order to dance in a professional manner.

Get the habit of deep breathing. Gradually you will increase your breathing capacity and deep breathing makes good blood. The oxygen you take into your lungs goes through the blood and takes off the impurities in the blood, and oxygen is necessary in properly assimilating your food.

Don't let anybody else advise you about diets. If a doctor has put you on a diet, let me know about it. My diets won't do you any good unless you are taking the limbering and stretching work along with them. You will enjoy them; you do not have to starve yourself.

Another thing let me warn you about! Don't bring or wear valuable jewelry to the studios. All of our employees are trustworthy, and besides, we investigate the pupils who come into our studios. We know all about them. If the wrong kind of person does get in, he or she doesn't stay more than an hour or two. We also have detectives in the classes. But don't take any chances. Don't bring valuable things into the place. Do not leave pocket-books in the dressing rooms; bring them into the class room.

We keep a strict record of the attendance and the progress of each individual pupil. We insist that you have the best that money can provide for you. If anything should happen at any time to which you could take exception, I hope you will report it to me. Our policy of giving you the very best to be had has appealed to a world of ambitious youth.

Be careful about giving advice to other girls. I don't want anybody in this class to presume to give advice to anybody else in the class. Many times a girl comes here to the school from clear across the continent. She comes with great hopes and aspirations, ready to work hard, and with all the enthusiasm in the world. Then, some girl in her class may tell her that she doesn't dance well--and her hopes will be shattered and she will become discouraged. Now none of you has any business to give advice or criticize other members of the class. If you can learn stage dancing anywhere, you can learn it in the Ned Wayburn Studios. Persistent practice will do wonders. Remember all I have said about this, and keep smiling.

NED WAYBURN'S MUSICAL COMEDY DANCING

This is one of the most useful as well as attractive types of stage dancing, and appeals strongly to all aspirants for theatrical honors and emoluments. I say "useful," for the reason that Musical Comedy dancing as I teach it supplies dancers with a repertoire of fancy steps and neat dance routines that should enable them to sell their services in the best theatrical markets of the world, which seems to me to be a pretty "useful" sort of a property for one to have in their permanent possession. If I here repeat that frequent practice on the part of the student is necessary for the correct acquirement of Musical Comedy dancing, I am merely stating what is right and necessary that all should understand who desire to make their services in this line of endeavor available for public approval and a corresponding cash return. And this applies to every other kind of dancing as well.

Now you may think that you know just what Musical Comedy Dancing is, and perhaps you do, but the name of it hardly defines it so that it would be recognized for exactly what it is by one not thoroughly stage-wise. You see a pleasing ensemble or solo dance at some revue or musical show and, without seeking or desiring to classify this dance as this, that or the other kind, you are satisfied to realize in your inner consciousness that it is a pretty movement and well worth seeing. So exact is the execution that it arouses your wonder how the dancers ever manage to get so many intricate steps and rapid motions and pretty flings of their heels into a united and harmonious picture; all working in perfect unison, to a pleasing tempo, smiling the while and doing it all as a mere matter of course, with seeming unconcern, just as though the steps and kicks and posing and grouping were second nature to them all.

That is a Musical Comedy dance, and instead of growing on bushes to be gathered by every careless hand, it is actually the result of studious endeavor and persistent drilling on the part of the participants, and of careful and conscientious training by competent dancing instructors. It is well done and gratifying to the spectator because it is the finished product of qualified teaching, earnest endeavor, tireless energy, practice, rehearsing. Remember this, the next time you attend a show where dancing is a feature, and accord the dancers the credit that is their due.

True Musical Comedy dancing is in reality an exaggerated form of what was formerly styled "fancy dancing." It is a cross between the ballet and the Ned Wayburn type of tap and step or American specialty dancing. It combines pretty attitudes, poses, pirouettes and the several different types of kicking steps that are now so popular. Soft-shoe steps break into it here and there in unexpected ways and places, adding a pleasing variety to the menu. The tempo enhances and harmonizes the scene and the action. There is no monotony, no tiresome sameness; yet the varying forms of action blend into a perfect continuity. The dance is full of happy surprise steps, perhaps, or unexpected climaxes and variations that arouse the interest as they quickly flash by.

Often there is featured in Musical Comedy dancing a bit of so called "character" work, which may be anything--Bowery, Spanish, Dutch, eccentric, Hawaiian, or any of the countless other characteristic types. Also there are touches of dainty ballet work interspersed among the other features, at times. Yet to accomplish the ballet effects or the character representations exacts of the dancer no special development along strictly ballet or classical lines, when she obtains her Musical Comedy training here, for these features are given the required attention as part of the regular course in fitting the student for this branch of the stage dancing art, and thus our Musical Comedy graduates are qualified for all the variations of effort that naturally come under that head.

My foundation technique is a prime factor in the successful accomplishment of any type of dancing, and the scientific limbering and stretching exercises that constitute that work are indispensable in perfecting the pupil to handle every phase of the varied demands in Musical Comedy dancing. Hence my insistence that our foundation technique precede the entrance of the pupil into the classes of this or any of the other various types of stage dancing that we teach.

Two of my most famous pupils in Musical Comedy dancing are Fred and Adele Astaire, brother and sister. They came to me to study from Omaha, Nebraska, as little tots of about six and seven years of age. Adele was always fond of coming to her classes; but Fred says that he just "followed on" through brotherly association rather than from any preconceived ambition to become a professional dancer. Then, through reverses of family fortunes, the time came when they felt that they should be supporting themselves. They continued to study under me, and I was very happy to be able to place them in vaudeville in a singing and dancing act, which I had prepared for them. This started them on their career, which has led them to Europe and back again. They have appeared in "Over the Top," "The Passing Show of 1918," "Apple Blossoms," and in "The Love Letter." They then scored a sensational success in London in "Stop Flirting" (575 performances). Now they are starring in "Lady, Be Good," on tour after a long run in New York.

In this chapter I shall now describe in detail 32 bars of a simple musical comedy dance, a "soft shoe" routine, as we call it, to give you some understanding of how modern stage dances are developed at the Ned Wayburn Studios.

MUSICAL COMEDY ROUTINE--4/4 TEMPO

Tune: "Way Down Upon the Swanee River."