Читать книгу The Art of Ballet - Mark Edward Perugini - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The origin of the drama is hardly to be reckoned among the historic mysteries. By serious triflers debate might be held as to what should be considered the first dramatic representation and when it actually took place.

Some five centuries before the Christian era the first plays of which scholarship has taken note were performed at Athens, those of Thespis, forerunner of the first great dramatists of the world—Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

For convenience the origin of Western drama may be dated from Thespis because it seems first to have assumed then a definite form. That is not its actual origin any more than the origin of any human being is to be dated from its birth. As a possibility it may be said to have existed always. Even Chronology has its limitations, and preceding any given event there must have existed principles or tendencies.

When it is said, therefore, that the origin of the Drama is not an historic mystery it is because we are not very much in the dark as to when it began to assume a somewhat definite form; and, moreover, we can be fairly clear as to what must have preceded it. There seems rather more than a probability that the Drama derived its existence from the Poet, in his capacity as a Narrator.

For some hundreds of years the Drama has been chiefly a representation of character and events, whether real or fictitious. In its earliest forms it was mainly descriptive. It would seem to be the natural order of things that from mere description there should arise in time—possibly from a half-conscious feeling of the need of emphasis, of a desire to impress the hearers—the attempt to illustrate or to represent the scenes or actions described. The mere repetition of any story seems to tend towards that. Have we not observed that no “fish” story is ever quite complete—if not convincing—without histrionic illustrations?

Though in India and China, with their more ancient civilisation, the chronologic origin of the Drama might be more remotely placed, it is probable that in the Homeric bard and the Homeric audience, should be sought the true beginning of the Western theatre; while, all the world over, the evolution of the dramatic form has probably been much the same—namely, a gradual transition from poetic narration to imitative representation. Thus at the back of the Drama is probably the Poet. Beside the Poet, too, is often the Priest.

Greek tragedy is usually said to have had a purely “religious” origin, and certainly it was from early times employed for the purposes of, or in the service of, Religion; but it would, one feels, be rather truer to presume its actual origin to be purely secular, and to be found in the Poet making his appeal to an ordinary audience, in a word, to the People, while sometimes under the patronage of priestly and ruling classes.

When, however, we come to consider the origin of the Dance—first and most important of the “four elements” of Ballet—we are forced to the conclusion that, even though we are on more uncertain ground, it must, nevertheless, be far older than the Drama. Why this should be so, even though we have no approximate date to go upon as in the case of the Thespian theatre, is not difficult to see.

The Drama evolved from, and has always depended on, the faculty of speech, and on the growth of a language. A copious vocabulary and flexibility of verbal expression are not exactly characteristics of the primitive races; and, without both, the Drama, as we have known it for some centuries, could not have existed.

But the Dance (with mimicry, which has always followed close upon its heels) has no need of words, and is itself a kind of speech, in which the whole body is used as a means of expression.

We are none of us old enough to remember, and there is consequently no need to be dogmatic and assert that the Dance actually did precede speech; but it is far from improbable that it could have done; and while one shudders to think of the ardent danse tourbillon our Mother Earth must have danced from the moment of her birth, it is perhaps more amusing—and yet not wholly frivolous—to contemplate a possible origin of the Dance in the sport some Simian ancestors may have found in rhythmically swaying on the flexile branches of some primeval tree, before they had acquired a vocabulary sufficiently copious for the analysis of their sensations.

Seriously, however, and just because it has a rhythmic basis, dancing in some form is among the earliest instincts of mankind, even as it is of children. In all climes, at all periods, men and women have danced; and its origin is lost in the mists of prehistoric years. Non-civilised races still existent may offer evidence as to stages in its evolution; but even among the more primitive races, dancing seems to have some definiteness of form, marking a heritage of long practice.

From some earliest, uncouth leapings and gestures of savage or half savage tribes (the effect of mere exuberant physical energy) may have grown the idea of thus expressing joy and thankfulness; for joy, not sorrow, one feels must surely have been always the first inspirer of the Dance; and possibly a victory over an enemy, or gratitude for a full harvest may have come to be first the inspiration, and then the excuse for repeating such manifestations.

Repetition of an act tends to create a habit, and what may be at first apparently a spontaneous experiment grows by repetition into a cult, with set form and ritual.

The ritual of the Dance seems to be as ancient as the stars, in representing the movements of which, it is supposed by some to have had its origin in Egypt over two thousand years ago. Nowhere is it found without form. All must be done in a certain way, according to the traditions of the locality in which the dance is seen, or according to some wider tradition. Always it has a ritual of its own, but also with religious ritual the origin of the Dance—as also of the Drama—appears in some mysterious manner to be upbound.

Of all the records that we have of dancing, the earliest are, apparently, those of Egypt. Its origin is not there; it must be older; but we know at least that the Egyptians were among the first people with a civilisation that encouraged dancing.

One of the finest among modern historians of the art, divides dancing, for convenience in tracing its evolution, into “sacred” and “profane”; that is, the Dance forming, as so often it did in ancient times, part of a religious ceremonial, and that which in any other of its forms was merely a pleasure of the people. For our purpose in tracing the growth of Ballet, however, it would seem advisable to divide the Dance yet further, into “sacred,” “secular,” and “theatrical.”

The Egyptians had no Ballet of the theatre, because they had no theatre. They had dances which seem to have been “representations ingenieuses,” and to that extent, as mimetic dances, partook of the nature of Ballet; but they were not organised as theatrical spectacles for private or public entertainment.

The Greeks had no Ballet of the theatre because, though they had the theatre, they, like the Egyptians, had merely mimetic dances, not Ballet.

But if Egypt had no popular theatre in which dancing was seen, it appears to have existed, nevertheless, in three distinct forms—as a pleasure of “the man in the street”—just as we see children dance to a barrel-organ in the London streets to-day; again, as an entertainment for the wealthy, just as a popular singer, dancer or other entertainer of to-day is engaged for an “at home” or dinner-party; and, finally, as an element of the elaborate and somewhat theatrical Egyptian religious ceremonial.

Monuments from Thebes and Beni Hassan show pictures of Egyptian dancers performing steps very similar to some we can see to-day. They appear to be performing them for the pleasure of onlookers as well as their own. This acquiring of an audience has, after all, been always of first importance, and without it the Drama could hardly have come into existence.

Most people are interested in seeing others do something they are unable to do themselves, and when they can see it well done, in a manner, that is, suggesting a difficult feat accomplished with ease, they will even pay for the exhibition. That is the popular (with managers the extremely popular) side of the theatrical arts, of which dancing is one. When there arises the desire to see the exhibition repeated frequently, then must follow the special place with special facilities and accessories for the performance, and the theatre, or something like it, thus comes into existence as an institution sustained by popular support. There is first the thing done for pleasure—which is art; then the exploitation of it for profit—which is commerce; that is the brief epitaph of any art as a fruit of civilisation.

The Egyptians did not reach the “theatre” stage. But dancing, essentially a popular art, received encouragement as an element in religious festivals and as an entertainment of the wealthy classes.

Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the “religious” dances of Egypt. Enthusiastic historians of dancing seem rather too prone to expand the little store of fact we possess, and some go to the length of speaking of the religious and popular “ballets” of the Egyptians. But it is certain that they had no regular theatrical spectacles in which dancing was of prime importance; and their popular dances, to any such extent as they could be described as “representations ingenieuses,” were primitive in comparison with any of later times.

Solo-dances and pas de deux were general enough, but the dancing of massed groups, and the dramatic representation of a story, appear to have been unknown, or have passed unrecorded if they were known. The nearest approach to them, though not of course performed as a theatrical spectacle, would seem to have been an “astronomical dance,” which was done by or under the direction of the priests of Apis, and is said to have been—appropriately enough!—a representation of the movements of the stars. It is probable that it was employed mainly as a means of education.

Holy Church in mediæval times took advantage of the popular craving for theatrical shows, and sought by the aid of “mystery plays,” and “moralities” to extend the knowledge of religious truths. It may be conjectured that the Egyptian hierarchy similarly had some such end in view, and that the priestly caste sought to utilise the popular taste for dancing as a means of influence, and that the actual performance of the dance served to fix more lastingly in the minds of novices the religious and astronomical truths it embodied.

An Egyptian Male Dancer

(From a Theban Fresco).

Egyptian Dancing Girls

(From a mural painting in the British Museum).

A Greek Funeral Dance

(From a coloured plaque in the Louvre).

In addition to the star-dance, the Egyptians are said to have had a “funeral” dance, but it is doubtful if this, the “Maneros”—of which Herodotus speaks—was a solemn dance. The fact is, however, that information both as to the religious and ceremonial uses of dancing among the Egyptians is very scant, and what little record we have of their dancing is mainly on its popular side and is to be gleaned from monuments.

One of the frescoes in the British Museum shows two girls performing, apparently before a select audience of women, one of whom is seen to be applauding, or perhaps marking the time with syncopated clapping, as negroes do to-day.

Another representation of dancing is on a fresco from Thebes showing three figures, the centre of whom is apparently performing an entrechat, as seen to-day, the step in which the dancer crosses feet in mid-air; while a fourth acts as orchestra with a couple of the curious curved maces which were beaten together to mark the rhythm in sonorous fashion.

Other Egyptian monuments also show dancers, one from Beni Hassan depicting several couples, apparently boys, performing a dance that obviously had certain set steps, and suggests that it was used mainly as a rhythmic athletic exercise, as were many of the Greek dances. And yet another monument shows men apparently in the act of performing a pirouette. About them all there is the air of decision, a suggestion of trained performance that in itself, remembering that these monuments are some four thousand years old, and depict steps similar to some performed to-day, is testimony to the antiquity of the art of dancing.