1.THE STORY OF DANCING

When that promised and happy moment comes, when you put your best foot forward to the measures of the dance, you will be doing so in a stately company.

Down through the mist of ages the art of dancing comes weaving its graceful way to us, its cadence burdened with race-old emotions, now pagan, now religious, romantic, tribal, martial. For it is an art that has touched life at many points. In song, in story, in Holy Writ you will find it; you may find it between the lines of a doctor's prescription.

The story of dancing really begins for us in the gold and ivory days of Ancient Greece — the golden age of dancing.

It is not a far cry to say that the Greeks have dictated, with almost supreme authority, the elements of logic and a large measure of the thought-matter of every subsequent age and great race of men. To the end of time Ancient Greece will ever be a force in our intellectual life; her culture, with magical fingers, has woven her ineffaceable appeals into the very fiber of our mind and being. Since it is universal, her art is the greatest of arts; it is understood and accepted without the shadow of controversy by all people.

The Greek is the genius of the beautiful. He conceives and qualifies the ideality of man and nature with a marvelous vividness, and his inspiration begins and ends in the enthusiasm and love of movement in the living form. A thought of Greece is a thought of the epics of life, motion, and rhythm.

It is this movement that he lived, he knew, he felt, that he has idealized and made sacred to himself and to us. It is his religion, whose inner concept flashes forth with unsurpassed form in everything he has left to posterity. In all his arts he makes us conscious of this love of movement and rhythm. We feel it in the graceful lines of a vase, it is the motif of the designed figures thereon; we see it in the poise of his sculpture; we hear it in the paeans to the Gods and heroes — always life and motion; the instinctive exclamation of feeling made graphic; a gesture that becomes prose.

To his philosophy it seemed imperative that he strive to attain perfection in his own body, as well as in his arts; for the young man to be proficient in his sports was not enough, he must strive to attain the ideal that his mind beholds, and throughout his labors and diversions this idea is in the ascendant.

The Greek gymnasia, of which there were many, advocated the scientific exertions of the body, and these exertions were rarely, if ever, artificial. The dance was in great favor with them, as it offered so much to their temperament and purpose, and it became one of the essential courses of training.

In prehistoric days dancing had been merely emotional, but now it embodied a purpose; it was made to represent an idea—an idea to incite love or hatred, to arouse warlike instincts and give actual training for war; to express homage, worship, religion. It began in play and ended in discipline.

Later on pantomime was invented, but it was never so much an advanced art with the Greeks as with the Romans.

The Greeks ranked the dance with music and poetry; as a Greek expression has it, music and dancing were "the married pair"—a happily married pair evidently—for the Greeks were a cheerful people, whose sense of dignity was not disturbed with their dancing, as it was, for example, in the case of the Romans and Orientals, who bade their hired slaves do their dancing for them — and as long as their morality remained unshaken their dances retained their purity.

From Greek sculpture we get most of the history of the Greek dances. The Bracelet, The Bacchanalia, The Hymenaea, The Labyrinth, The Pyrrhic, these are but a few of the many. The Pyrrhic dance shows, in an excellent way, the twofold purpose of the Greeks. It was a warlike dance, which consisted chiefly in such adroit and supple turning of the body as represented an attempt to avoid the strokes of a foe in battle, and the motions gone through were considered a form of training for war.

It is an amazing thing to find how little the Greeks achieved in the musical arts. They seemed content with a paucity of musical notes, — some four in number, — a rather feeble vehicle it seems for those who applied the principle of voluntary rhythmic motion.

As far as we may go into antiquity, every dance, whether belonging to civilized or savage nations, was accompanied by some music or rhythm of a sort, even though it was but the beating of a drum, the clacking of shells, or the clapping of hands.

At the very earliest times, people seemed to have chanted and danced at the one time; afterward the custom was for some to dance while others sang, until eventually the invention of musical instruments took the place of the voice and musical accompaniment became an established thing.

It is only possible to list the dances of savage people in a general way. As in all folk dancing the social, warlike, and religious order obtains, and whatever differences appear seem to arise from a mere local significance — each locality insisting on interpreting itself.

But they all have a patent characteristic, that is the exacting nature of the performance and the absolute seriousness with which they go about their dancing. They make it a mighty serious business; the order of their dance is inviolable and it is usually a grave matter to make a mistake. Indeed among many tribes such offense would be punishable by death.

In all eastern countries, where the temperament appears phlegmatic, the dance is really a pantomime, a series of racial gestures, exaggerated postures, and weird mimicries. However, not infrequently we see some danseuse, having heard and heeded the call of the East, reviving the spirit of the exotic dances, with sometimes a reminiscence of the Bayaderes of India, or the HuIIas of the Sandwich Isles, or the Geishas of Japan.

The Renaissance saw the revival of dancing as an art, as it beheld the awakening of so many other arts. Catherine de' Medici, bringing the dance from Italy, introduced it in France sometime in the fifteenth century. And it is interesting to note that since that time France has been preeminent in the refinements of the dance and the quality of their performers. She has adopted many alien dances and each and all show her benign influence; each has been immeasurably increased in value. Of all nations the modern dance owes most to France.

History tells us of the gorgeous court spectacles and ballets given by the resplendent Richelieu to Louis XIII — himself a kingly enthusiast who founded the Academy of the Dance.

These court dances gave to the world some of its most magnificent musical compositions. In fact the assemblies were often held for the music alone — were essentially musicales. And to this custom we owe the musical suites of Bach, Handel, and Corelli.

Our extremely elaborate Cotillion is merely a development of the antique French Cotilon, in vogue during the reign of Charles X.

Then there was the German Galop, modified and refined by the French, but the Quadrille is probably the oldest of our modern and popular dances. There seems to have been an analogy of it in England as early as Wil- liam the Conqueror. At that time it was supposed to have some significance in con- nection with a game of cards then in vogue.

We hear of the waltz as early as 1795 and the landers and polka and schottische following in a half century. The waltz was danced by Henry III of France as the volte but it failed of popularity until the nineteenth century.

It is difficult to determine the accuracy of its origin; it is variously claimed as of French, Italian, and Bavarian source; but since it is unquestionably a development of the French volte its origin seems self-evident.

The two-step was an ail-American production and was introduced in the writer's recollection, say, about 1890. No history of modern dancing would be complete without an honorable mention, at least, of those peerless artists of our day who strove so earnestly and so successfully to revive the almost forgotten traditions of classic dancing, and memory will long cherish such names as Isadore Duncan, Maud Alan, Adeline Genee, Ruth St. Denis — and the wonderful Pavlowa, of the Russian Imperial School of Dancing, whose organization did so much to revolutionize and uplift the histrionic stage.

Among the first manifestations of ragtime music and ragtime dancing, sometimes called the "negroid dances," was the Turkey Trot. The Mrs. Grundies opened their eyes in wonder, but since the wonder was only of the nine day variety, the Mrs. Grundies tarried — and joined in. It was the "something different" that hits the pulse of popularity; it was the something the people had wanted and it gave them an outlet to that abandon that had been pent up so long.  But even with this new promise of allure- ments the people had a peculiar appetite and one that was difficult to satisfy. Dancing connoisseurs busied themselves to cater to it, and as a consequence the whole world seemed to be combed for what it had to offer in the way of diversions. "Something to startle," seemed to be the way the order was interpreted — "and different"; it must be different. With the Turkey Trot opening a way it behooved these arbiters to follow such a successful lead, and they did according to their lights, but like the Foolish Virgins, they waited not to trim their lamps.

The Argentine was pirated, and the importation satisfied for a time. Then the Apache dance, a primitive affair, lifted bodily from the elemental people of the Paris underworld. Then on to Brazil, where  the product proved to be a distinct improvement, marking about the best of these days. The Brazilian Maxixe was appropriated and for quite a while, it was considered a fashionable virtue to know it. It has gone now, but it may be that sometime again we may have a reminiscence of it, a revival of a past.

Dances are like this, they seem to live over again, or at least part of them, and many things about the Brazilian Maxixe deserve salvage.

It was about this period that Father and Mother began to take notice, for dancing had now become a diversion for all ages, the young, the not-so-young, the old. The writer recalls many amusing instances of these days and they seem to be of the one character, arising in most cases from confusion in teaching. Instructors, catching the infection of abandon, no doubt, exhibited a charming freedom in compiling the figures of the dances. For instance: The Tired Business Man "to put something over" on his wife would put himself under the direction of some recommended teacher and so get in step with the times and incidentally learn the new fandangoes. And the wife, in turn, not being overly communicative with the husband would meanwhile drop in on her favorite teacher, with the same idea in mind. Their enjoyment of this seemed to be entirely in anticipating one another. When they essayed to dance together at the The Dansant, or dinner dance to their mutual amazement they found they had been instructed differently. Their chagrin and other feelings may be appreciated.

Another case that was a contributing cause to the confusion: after several attempts to dance with his partner, a young man was observed to lead the young lady over to the corner of the studio and endeavor with great earnestness to teach her the figure he knew.

The young lady attended patiently while he achieved this most desirable thing to his satisfaction, and then felt it should be her turn as instructor, and she forthwith started to teach a figure that she saw Mrs. Vernon Castle do.

The dancers themselves realized this con- dition of affairs; they knew they were at a veritable Tower of Babel; where to the con- fusion of tongues was added the mixing of feet. The dancing teachers tried to legislate among their various organizations to alleviate this condition by standardizing the dances, but without avail; the dawn of understanding and concord had not come, and, like every fad and fancy, these dances were destined to run their courses and so remained in favor for, comparatively, a long time.

But no history of these dances would be complete without a hearty acknowledgment of the stimulating influence they had on dancing in general. They brought dancing back to its place as an indubitable accom- plishment and to an extreme in which the world seemed dancing mad. The whist clubs, the sewing circles, the gentlemen's clubs, were vacant but for their stewards, and even these wore the well-known preoccupied air.

The dancing germ had infected generally; it had become epidemic.

The Tango and Maxixe and other dances have succumbed to the antidote of the more sensible and easier taught dance, the Fox Trot. While I have heard many versions of its origin, have listened to many of its self-styled originators, I have credited Captain Vernon Castle as its originator and preceptor. The story has it that on one of his quests for innovations his attention was called to a certain exclusive colored club. At the time he attended, the members were dancing the Fox Trot, even at that time so-called, and he became enthusiastic over it and determined to bring it out for a little fun for a few, hardly realizing that the dance was to win for itself a high place in the favor of the many.

But this fox that Mr. Castle cornered was a mighty wild one indeed. The writer confesses to being one who predicted its early demise. It was one continuous romp from beginning to end and he felt that it would hardly survive a hard summer and be with us when he returned to his classes in the fall. One never can tell; it did, it was, it will be!

To the Philadelphia dancing teachers, I believe, should go the credit of taming Reynard and breaking him to the ways of polite people.

When the fox was running at large, the musician did not have music for him, so they played some of the old numbers like "Dancing in the Barn" and such, and now, to-day, there is more fox trot music, than any other to serve its insatiable demands.

Watching the turn of current events, dancing does not change with the seasons, as, for instance, the fashion in clothes. When the studios open in the fall the devotees of the dance rather expect to see some change in the established order.

There was never anything to refute this idea more decisively than the Fox Trot. It came in the off-season and at a time when least expected; in fact before any music had been prepared for it. But the music writers were alert and soon got busy, with the result that the best of music was provided and the Fox trot took everything before it. In fact the dancers were disposed to dance it all the while.

Things began to move quickly. Along came another change in the way of music, "the jazz," and from our orchestras issued a pandemonium of noises; a complete din of sounds. But it appeared to be agreeable to the vein the people were in; the dancers adopted it at once; they wanted to "jazz" their steps which immediately gave the dancing a change in character, of course, so that the dance is as distorted as the music. They insisted on the "jazzy" music because it had the "pep." Throughout the strains of the jazz music flow the "blue" notes that instantly caught the whim of popularity.

The people who like dancing will have quite a time to repair the ravages on their traditions made by the raids of the Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, Texas Tommy, Gaby Glide, and all those other fearsome things.

Regarding the one-step. You may rest assured that the one-step will long be a favorite because it is practical, just as the waltz is practical. In the waltz you take one, two, three steps each way; in the two-step you take two and in the one-step, one, just as their names imply. That is the time or tempo, and the thing that makes dancing is tempo.

There are many theories as from whence the one-step came; some contend it hails from the Barbary Coast, but others believe it to have been mothered by the Turkey Trot and argue that claim. Its derivation aside, it is a great dance, if you care to make it so, and we should be truly grateful to it, for it has, more than any other one thing, done more to break down the barrier of that mnother-at-home-and-father-at-the-club condition. It opened a new world to them and they entered it together. They realized at once how easy this dance was to learn and how worth while its benefits were.

Husband and wife became better acquainted at last and life seems real and full of charm. The man, and the woman too, of too generous girth frequented the Turkish bath and masseur no more; the ideal reducer was at hand. In one particular case I have in mind the wife of a prominent lawyer, who took lessons from me. She weighed 220 pounds at the time and began at a summer resort where I happened to be. She took a half-hour lesson each day, and, because she liked it, danced in the evening. On her return home, in the fall, she turned her card party into a dancing class, and in a short while she had reduced to one hundred and sixty-five, and better yet, she was in the very best health imaginable. Think of that! I vouch for this case; I could vouch for a countless number of other cases of similar import, but since this is not a patent medicine series I will withhold the testimonials.

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