Part 41

INSPIRATION

When you present yourself as a pupil it is to be inferred that you are already inspired with a desire to become a dancer of the first quality. That is good and as it should be. Without inspiration no one has ever accomplished anything worth while in any line of endeavor. Stage dancing is never a matter of luck or breeding; it is the direct result of hard work under competent instruction, with your being inspired to bring forth the very best that is in you.

All of us here at the Ned Wayburn Studios are inspired with a desire to create a career for you, if you desire one. Whether we succeed in our endeavor or not depends upon you. We will do our part faithfully, earnestly and joyfully, and furnish you such an opportunity as no other generation of aspirants for stage honors and success ever possessed. Our courses themselves, as well as our scientific method of developing you, are really inspiring to the new student with the primary inspiration of desiring a successful, honorable and profitable career.

As you approach the studio building from Broadway you note that its appearance is attractive. It is new, clean, impressive; and on the large second and third floor main windows, and on the Broadway and 60th Street corner windows, you note the signs, the lettering that stands out, to tell you that you have arrived at the haven of your dreams and hopes.

You step off Broadway and enter the corridor of the studio building through the main entrance on 60th Street, where elevators await you, to convey you the single flight up to the second floor, and you step directly into our main business office. Here is found further inspiration, for stage dancing is here treated as a business and in a business-like way, and our business office indicates that fact to the newcomer at the very first glance.

The prospective pupil approaches the long counter. She is greeted by Mrs. Wayburn, who acts as hostess, or chaperon, or it may be by some other principal or employee, whose business it is to welcome and greet the new arrivals who come to us daily. Your introduction of yourself is followed naturally by your questions as to this or that which you wish to know about our terms and methods, to confirm your own understanding of the matter. These are answered fully and courteously. Our greeters welcome your inquiries. Ask us just what you want to know, and their response will be politely given. Anyone behind the counter thoroughly understands dancing.

Are you from out of the city, and do you wish to be directed to a suitable hotel, boarding house, studio apartment or private residence for your domicile while here? We have a list of desirable and investigated places to suit all purses and all needs, and are glad to pass the information on to our students.

Your questions being answered to your satisfaction, you decide to enroll. The booking secretary invites you behind the counter, where an enrollment card and contract is made out and signed. This contract stipulates the number of lessons you are to receive and the kind of stage dancing you are to take. You take the work just as I have personally laid it out in the courses. The matter of tuition is arranged, and you, as one of us, are invited to accompany a guide to the various classrooms, studios, offices and other departments of the two large floors--and absorb inspiration for your future work from what you observe in the way of modern facilities and actual instruction being given to live classes.

There is nothing more inspiring to the new pupil than to see our various dancing classes in action. In fact, a view of our classes in progress of work is inspiring to anyone, professional or non-professional. The girls do their class work with a vim and snap that betokens their interest and their intention to make good. They are a smiling happy lot of young ladies that it does one good to look at. Especially is this true of the advanced classes; the beginners' classes are busy learning the A, B, C's of dancing, and these rudiments are absorbing. But to watch the beginners today, and then see the same pupils a few weeks later as they advance in ease of movement and in a completer understanding of their work, is most inspiring of all--inspiring to you who see them and to the progressing pupils themselves. If it were possible or practical to let the public in to look at our classes at work, our present large quarters would soon prove inadequate to give foot room to the great number of inspired ladies who would wish to enroll here and join in the gayeties. There is contagion in watching our best students at their "play."

Our new pupil is escorted also into my private office, there to be welcomed by me personally. A large and richly furnished room is this, its walls decorated with photographs of stage stars of universal fame who have been developed by me, and incidentally helped up the ladder of fame. Here is inspiration on every hand.

In her progress through the two floors of the studios our newcomer is absorbing inspiration continually. To enumerate some of the features that make an impression on her receptive mind as she proceeds from room to room:

There is the Call Board in the main office. Now in the theatre the Call Board is an established institution, placed handily to the stage door and inspected daily by all members of the company for such information as the management wishes to impart. Our Call Board serves a similar purpose, and we encourage its daily perusal by all the students. We post thereon press notices that our graduates send us of their own success as reported in the newspapers; also notices of my own producing activities in many cities; the date of the next makeup classes; information of every nature that concerns the studio or its clientele.

There is the Grand Ball Room, the most complete room for its purpose that was ever constructed; its floors clear-maple, its walls full-length mammoth mirrors; its windows large, its ventilation perfect and easily regulated; its double rows of practice bars; its clocks regulated and wound electrically by the Western Union Telegraph Co. every hour, striking to announce the opening and closing of the class instruction.

In this Grand Ball Room, the large Ballet studio, the various classroom and private instruction and rehearsal studios, the gymnasium, and especially in the Demi-Tasse Theatre, which is a corporate part of our studios,--in all these there is accumulated a fund of inspiration that suffices to start the new student with a hopeful and expectant spirit of future accomplishment that is a prime essential to her success.

On the day in which instruction is to start, the pupil returns to the studio and is assigned to a dressing room. Here she finds expert maid service, the maids being on continuous duty during all instruction periods. She is accommodated with a locker, if one is required, with her individual key. She is introduced to the row of modern shower baths, and finds accompanying them every form of up-to-date sanitary appliances and fixtures. She is now "at home," a full-fledged member of the "happy family," and her education in her chosen art is about to commence.

She takes her seat in her first classroom. She finds herself surrounded by a number of other young ladies who, like her, have come here imbued with the laudable ambition to advance their interests in health, beauty, accomplishment of grace, and to fit themselves for an independent and lucrative career, not one of whom is any more advanced than she is. Her inspiration is furthered by this contact with those who are to become her fellow classmates. She takes note of the heavy felt floor-pads beneath her feet, the practice bars along the wall, etc., and is thus assured that every care is being taken here for her security from harm as well as for her comfort and advancement.

Her instructor, she finds, is a professional dancer of wide stage experience, who knows every one of the actual steps he is teaching, for he executes them before her, aiding her eyes by a living example, while he at the same time informs her understanding by telling her what each step and motion is and why it is done. His every word and action is inspirational. She feels now that she is on the highroad to success.

Presently, I enter the room and proceed to organize the class for service, following which I address them on matters concerned with their courses, seeking to instill into each prospective star an ambition to reach out for perfection. And from this hour the inspiration is enhanced with each new day's progress.

As I often say, in one of my class talks, "Inspiration plus perspiration equals one good dancer."

ATMOSPHERE

Atmosphere is something that one feels but cannot see. Atmosphere on the stage is created by means of stage settings, costumes, electrical lighting effects, music, orchestration, and certain stage decorations as properties, all combined into one complete whole.

Every attitude of the body that one assumes in front of an audience on the stage creates a certain dramatic atmosphere. Every gesture, every expression of the face, every move of the body aids to create atmosphere. Characteristic attitudes of the body, characteristic walks, characteristic dancing also creates atmosphere. In order that a solo and an ensemble dance may get over with an audience it must have atmosphere. This atmosphere must be figured out in a scientific way. It requires unusual creative faculties to produce anything original or atmospheric in the way of a solo or ensemble dance for the stage today. No novice without experience can properly create perfect atmosphere, for it requires a thorough knowledge of stage-craft and showmanship, as well as of stage dancing and the technique of the stage, to create an atmosphere in which a solo or ensemble dance, or a song number will live. Without atmosphere the dance becomes all perspiration and no sense. There must be a definite idea behind a dance or underneath it. Everything must be done to embellish the theme or general idea. No idea must be overproduced; just enough must be done in the way of creating atmosphere for a dance to allow it to get over properly. In other words, it must be fully realized and produced properly, in a skillful, artistic way.

The first step in creating atmosphere is the selection of proper music, which will give real inspiration. Without inspiration nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished in the way of stage dancing. Machine-like dancers never get over. One must learn to inject one's own personality into each dance, in order to radiate an atmosphere that will bring success. This important subject of atmosphere is taken up in all our courses, and practically and thoroughly demonstrated and taught. Great care must be exercised that a dance is not overproduced, because if the scenery, costumes, in other words, the background, is allowed to dominate the dance itself, the dance will fail. The pupil must always dominate the costume and the entire stage setting or surroundings in order to get the dance over. Lavish production and accessories of any kind sometimes will interfere with the success of the pupil, or dancer. In other words, a too lavish production will detract from the dance itself and from the one who is performing the dance. So it really takes a person of artistic perception, who has become practical through actual experience, to set a dance properly and surround it as it should be surrounded. Many a novice will have good ideas, perhaps, for atmosphere, but through lack of experience will not be able to get those ideas over on the stage. It takes, therefore, practical stage direction to realize all the possibilities of stage atmosphere in a practical way.

The subject of atmosphere as it relates to the future success of our students, is given proper attention in our courses. I personally present it before the classes in talks from time to time, and demonstrate its meaning and purpose practically, by use of settings, lights and properties on the stage of my own Demi-Tasse theatre, connected with the studios.

The recognition of atmosphere and its need in connection with stage performances is a mental process, an idealization that not every material mind is capable of grasping readily. Probably no pupil would think of enrolling in a course that had atmosphere for its sole subject; yet it is an important matter to all students of the stage, and my plan of introducing it incidentally in my classroom talks, and at the same time showing them by a practical stage demonstration just what it means to them personally, has put it before our pupils in such an interesting and material way that they cannot fail to absorb some knowledge of its benefits.

Every producing stage director must possess an innate or an acquired sense of what we designate as atmosphere, in order to put on a production in a perfect, pleasing and profitable way. My many unqualified stage successes demonstrate my possession of this essential element, which I try to unite with originality and artistic perception, as well as a sure conception of what a fickle public will welcome and approve by its patronage. Hence, my talks on atmosphere are of more than usual value.

DANCING CHILDREN

When you are teaching a child something that suggests play, and that at the same time is beneficial to health and beauty, and is also the real foundation for a future career, you are accomplishing much in an easy and pleasing way.