Читать книгу The Art of Ballet - Mark Edward Perugini - Страница 12

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“In Spring,” we know, “the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” In the winter of life it would seem that an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the dances that his time-stiffened limbs can no more achieve with their earlier agility and grace, and he takes to—writing about them. For it is strange but true that some of the most entertaining volumes on the subject are those written on the history of the dance by “grave and reverend seigneurs”; who, one would imagine, had long foregone all thought of youthful pastimes and turned their minds to solemner affairs. Three such, at least, I can recall—Thoinot Arbeau, Bonnet, and Baron.

Over three centuries ago—nay, nearly four, we come upon a somewhat sage and elderly gentleman, Thoinot Arbeau, whose book with its strange title, Orchésographie, was published in 1588.

Was it shyness, or sheer fraud that made him write it under a false name, a nom de théâtre it would almost seem. For Thoinot Arbeau was not his name, but a sort of anagram on his real one, which was Jehan Tabourot. Moreover, he was sixty-seven when he wrote it, and was a Canon of the Church! He was born at Dijon in 1519, and was the son of one Estienne Tabourot, a King’s Counsellor! Think of it—born four hundred years ago, yet he speaks to our time, telling us, albeit in somewhat stiff and difficult French, of the dances that were in vogue in his dancing days.

As to the strange title of his work, its meaning will of course be apparent to all who know anything of the history of the subject, for they will remember that the Greek word for the dance was Orcheisthai (the Orchestra being the floor-space where the dancers performed); and so Orchésographie is merely a treatise on the writing of dances; that is, the setting of them down in such form that subsequent readers could study the dances therefrom.

The recording of the actual steps of dances has always been a problem, and other leading masters in France (such as Beauchamps, Pécourt, Feuillet) and in England (such as Weaver) had several more or less successful shots during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at inventing a sort of dance-shorthand.

The very first author to attempt such a thing with any real success was apparently our friend Arbeau; for earlier works, such as that of Caroso, are very poor. Into the full details of his system, however, I do not propose to enter now, for the matter is somewhat technical. The interest of Arbeau’s work, however, is by no means mainly technical.

The book, which was published at Lengres in 1588, is written in the form of a dialogue “by which everyone can easily learn and practise the honest exercise of the dances,” to give the quaint phraseology of the original, the two speakers being Arbeau the author, and Capriol, a youth who some few years earlier had left Lengres to go to Paris and Orleans and now, on his return, has sought out Arbeau to learn from him all that he can of dancing. Thoinot at first does not recognise him because, as he says, “You have grown so, and I believe that you have also enlarged your spirit by virtue and knowledge.” He asks the young man’s opinion of the study of Law, remarking that he was also once a law-student.

Capriol expresses his admiration for the law as a necessary institution, but complains that his neglect of the polite arts, while in the company of the Orleans law-students, has made him dull and wooden. He says that his knowledge of fencing and tennis makes him an acceptable companion with other youths, but he fails as a dancer to please the demoiselles, a point on which, it seems to him, depends the whole reputation of a young man who contemplates marriage. Then follows some sound advice, with curious details, from Arbeau, on the advantages of dancing as a matrimonial agent, and he acclaims the art as one necessary to social welfare.

Capriol agrees and expresses his disgust that the dance should have been so subject to bitter attacks, of which he quotes historic instances. Arbeau neatly responds that, “For one who has blamed, an infinity have esteemed and praised the art,” also following with quoted examples, saying, indeed, that “Le S. prophete royal dauid dāça au deuāt de l’arche de Dieu,” or, in other words, that “the holy prophet, King David, danced before the Ark of God.”

In the course of their conversation, Arbeau makes learned references to the derivation of the word “Dance,” mentioning others then in use that were allied to it, such as saulter (from the Latin saltare), caroler (hence our “carols,” or songs which, originally, accompanied certain religious dances), baler, and trepiner, Capriol remembers that the ancients had three kinds of dances: the sedate Emmeleia, the gay Kordax, and the mixed Sikinnis, the first of which Arbeau likens (quite unhistorically) to the pavanes and basse-dance of his own period; the second, to the gaillardes, voltas, corantos, gavottes (note that—a reference to the gavotte in 1588!) and branles (or, as Elizabethan Englishmen called them, “brawls”); while the third, he declares, must have been similar to the branles doubles and to “the dance which we call bouffons or matachins.”

Then, very wisely, he points out that most objections to dancing have been provoked not by decent but by—objectionable dancing! And as Capriol hastily assures his austere but kindly teacher that he wants none of that sort, but that he is anxious to teach his twelve-year-old sister what Arbeau is good enough to teach him, the old man proceeds on most polite and methodical lines.

Arbeau, truly remarking that rhythm is the basis of the dance, as it was always of all military marching and evolutions, then goes on to give a wonderful disquisition on that glorious instrument, the drum, and a masterly analysis of its rhythmic possibilities, both as an inspirer of soldiers on the march and as a stimulus to the dance.

The old man’s enthusiasm for an instrument that has never really received its due homage is truly fine, and he gives no less than seventy-six examples of drum-beat on a common-time basis. He follows this with an exposition of fife-playing (with musical examples); his earnest plea for this study of drum (tambour) and fife being only preparatory to a study of the basse-dances, which were properly accompanied by both instruments.

As several of these dances of three centuries agone have been revived in our time, it is of interest to consider them in some detail, more especially as they formed the choregraphic basis of all the ballets subsequently for some two centuries. Arbeau informs us that most of what he calls the “recreative” dances (or as we might say “social,” as opposed to the more ceremonial affairs necessitating an orchestra) were performed in his forebears’ time to the music of the flute and little drum.

Capriol asks: “Tell me, what are these dances and how are they done?”

To which Arbeau replies that they danced, in his father’s days, “pavanes, basse-dances, branles and courantes, which have been in use some forty or fifty years.”

Capriol asks: “How did our fathers dance the basse-dance?”

Arbeau replied that they had two sorts, the one common and regular, the other irregular, the former being danced to “chansons régulieres,” and the latter to “chansons irrégulieres,” and proceeds to explain that, for the former songs, there were sixteen bars which were repeated, making thirty-two to commence with; then a middle part of sixteen bars; and a close of sixteen, repeated; making eighty bars in all. If the air of the song was longer than this, the basse-dance played on it was termed “irregular.” He then explains that the basse-dance proper was in three parts, the term being really only applied to the first; the second being called “retour de la basse-dance,” and the third and last being termed “tordion.”

Then comes the following:

“Memoire des mouvements pour la basse-dance.

R b ss d r d r b ss ddd r d

r b ss d r b c.”

Not unnaturally Capriol, who is for ever asking quite intelligent questions, wants a translation of this cryptic-looking array of letters. It is better understood when one hears that “R” stands for reverence, “b” for a branle, “ss” for deux simples, “d” for a double (or three “ddd” for three “doubles”); the small “r” stands for a réprise, and “c” for congé; all of which are terms understood by dancers of to-day.

He gives very careful directions not only for performing the “reverence,” the “simple,” the “double,” the “réprise,” and the “congé,” but for performing the various movements of the basse-dance, the retour, and the tordion; as, for instance, when he remarks that “You begin the dance of the tordion, which is in triple time, just like the basse-dance: but it is (to give his own words) plus legiere and concitée.”

He describes the Pavane as “easy” to dance, and gives details of its performance, together with the music of that famous and lovely example, “Belle qui tiens ma vie captive,” the words being given in full, for four voices and tambour accompaniment.

The Gaillarde, he says, is so-called “parce qu’il fault estre gaillard and dispos pour la dancer,” and with much detail as to its performance explains that while danced somewhat like the tordion the latter is done “plus doulcement and avec actions and gestes moings violents.”

He gives nearly a dozen musical examples for the gaillarde, one called “La traditors my fa morire”; another “Anthoinette”; another, with the charming title “Baisons nous belle”; another, “Si j’ayme ou non.”

Capriol, by the way, remarks apropos after the second-named, that “At Orleans when we give Aubades we always play on our lutes and guiternes a gaillarde called ‘La Romanesque,’” but that it seemed so hackneyed and trivial that he and his companions took to “Anthoinette” as being livelier and having a better rhythm.

The Gaillarde was in triple time, and was made up of five steps (or four steps and a leap) and one “position”; the term cinq pas also being alternatively applied to it, hence the Shakespearean “cinque-pace” and “sink-a-pace.”

The Volte, from which is derived the modern valse, was described by Arbeau as “a species of gaillarde familiar to the Provençals,” danced, like the tordion, in triple time, and consisting of two steps and a leap. The Volte, or Volta, as it was as often called, was popular in England, as was the Gaillarde, and references to it are found in Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida) and in the one really great work on the Dance in English literature, namely, Sir John Davies’ richly imaginative and finely musical poem, Orchestra, or a Poeme on Daunciny, which was published in 1596, only eight years after Arbeau’s Orchésographie.

The Courante, Arbeau describes as very different from the Volte. It is also (in contrast to the Pavanes and Basse-dances) a danse sautée, but in twelve time, with running steps, requiring from time to time not the quick, light leaping of a volte, but the sort of slow soaring for which Vestris was famous in the eighteenth century and Volinin and Bohn can perform so superbly to-day.

Arbeau says that in his youth the dance was given as a kind of “ballet,” by three young men and three girls, with grace and dignity and he bewails its subsequent decadence. The old English term was “current traverse.” In Sir John Davies’ Orchestra one finds the following reference:

“What shall I name those currant travases

That on a triple dactyl foot do run

Close by the ground in sliding passages?”

In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, too, is the following:

“Bourbon: They bid us to the English dancing-schools

And teach lavoltas high and swift corantos;”

and Sir Toby Belch, it will be recalled, asks: “Why dost thou go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig ... sink-a-pace.”

There seems, however, considerable ground for question as to what the courante, or coranto, really was, whether a slow or quick dance. Arbeau’s directions are, for once, not quite clear. He speaks of it being a more graceful affair in his younger days; and he was an old man at the time his Orchésographie was published. In England it certainly seems to have become a fairly lively dance, of which the main feature was its “running” steps.

In France that characteristic seems to have been the same though the tempo may have been slower. Certainly it became slower there, for the courante under Louis Quatorze was considered a dull dance, disappearing in favour of newer types requiring a more developed and quicker technique.

However, dances alter in character, like everything else, in the course of time. The waltz or valse has considerably altered since it was first introduced into London drawing-rooms—and considered shocking!—in the first decade of the nineteenth century; and even to-day there is considerable difference between the valse as danced by Swiss or German peasants, and as seen in the London ball-room. It is probable that the courante of Arbeau’s day was as varied in performance as the tango of our later time.

Let us return, however, to his description of other dances of the period. The Allemande, he explains, “est une dance plaine de mediocre gravité, familiere aux Allemâds, et croy qu’elle soit de noz plus anciennes car nous sommes desendus des Allemandes.” But his authority for the latter statement he does not give! It was danced by two or more people, in twelve time, and later was a very popular dance with Louis the Thirteenth.

A lengthy description follows of the Branle, which is also sometimes spelt Bransle, and from which comes our English word Brawl, the meaning of which has sadly degenerated from its original significance.

Saying that, “since you know how to dance the Pavane and the Basse-dance, it will be easy for you to dance the branles,” he then proceeds to give account of over a score, including two which seem later to have assumed a right to be considered as separate dances, namely, the Triory de Bretagne (or simply, the Triory) and the Branle de la Haye, sometimes called merely the Haye, Hay, or Hey, which was an interlacing chain-dance.

Among the examples he gives is a Branle d’Escosse, of which he says: “Les branles d’Escosse estoient en vogue y a environ vingt ans,” and it is much like the customary Scotch reel. The Branles des Lavandières, he explains, is so-called because the dancers make a noise by clapping their hands to represent that made by the washerwomen who wash their clothes on the banks of the Seine. Another, the Branle du Chandelier, was danced with lighted candles.

A description of the Gavotte follows, and it is interesting to note that this dance which is still seen on the stage sometimes to-day, was an established favourite as far back as 1588. Then comes an account of the “Morisque” dance, the origin of which Arbeau places in the Saturnalia of the ancient world, not without reason, one fancies; and then he gives account of the Canaries, which, he says, some say takes its name from the Canary Isles, while others derive it “from a ballet composed for a masquerade in which the dancers were dressed as kings and queens of Mauretania, or even as savages therefrom, with headdress of varied plumage.” The last chapter is devoted to the dance of Bouffons, a dance with sword and buckler supposedly derived from ancient Rome and a never-failing source of delight to French playgoers and opera-lovers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Before the “Dialogue” actually closes, young Capriol politely thanks Monsieur Arbeau for the trouble he has taken to teach him dancing, and Arbeau responds by promising a second volume (alas! never written) dealing with the ballets of the masquerades “made” at Lengres. He urges him meanwhile to practise “les dances honnestement,” and so become a worthy comrade of the planets “qui dancent naturellement”: and he closes his discourse very prettily with the words, “Je prie Dieu vous en donne la grace.”

We have lingered somewhat over this old manual of dancing, but there are some half-dozen points in the history of ballet that it is of vital importance to emphasise, and Arbeau’s book is one of them.

Dancing itself of course had continued to exist through all time. But from the decadence of Rome until fairly late in the fifteenth century, ballet had only a precarious sporadic existence; and the production of Beaujoyeux’s volume of the Ballet Comique de la Royne in 1582, and Arbeau’s Orchésographie in 1588, made a turning-point in the history of ballet—the point where a popular amusement was once again taken up by men of intellect and given a new form and a new spirit. Beaujoyeux created an interest in ballet, Arbeau assisted an advance in the technique of one of the chief elements of the art, namely, dancing; and there can be little doubt that both men were largely instrumental in forwarding that movement towards popular delight in the theatrical masque and ballet which were to become an outstanding feature of the next two centuries, the seventeenth and the eighteenth.