AY," FOLLIES OF 1922]

THE ART OF STAGE DANCING

[Illustration: Overture]

A BIT OF ANCIENT HISTORY

Every age has had its ways of dancing; every people has expressed
itself in some form of rhythmic motion.

The dance originally was the natural expression of the simple emotions
of a primitive people. Triumph, defeat, war, love, hate, desire,
propitiation of the gods of nature, all were danced by the hero or the
tribe to the rhythm of beaten drums.

Over six thousand years ago Egypt made use of the dance in its
religious ritual. At a very early period the Hebrews gave dancing a
high place in their ceremony of worship. Moses bade the children of
Israel dance after the crossing of the Red Sea. David danced before
the Ark of the Covenant. The Bible is replete with instances showing
the place of the dance in the lives of the people of that time.

Greece in its palmy days was the greatest dancing nation the world has
ever known. Here it was protected by priesthood and state, practiced
by rich and poor, high and lowly born. One of the nine muses was
devoted to the fostering of this particular art. Great ballets
memorialized great events; simple rustic dances celebrated the coming
of the flowers and the gathering of the crops. Priestesses performed
the sacred numbers; eccentric comedy teams enlivened the streets of
Athens. Philosophers taught it to pupils for its salutary effect on
body and mind; it was employed to give soldiers poise, agility and
health.

The dance was undoubtedly among the causes of Greek vigor of mind and
body. Physicians prescribed its rhythmic exercise for many ailments.
Plato specifies dancing among the necessities for the ideal republic,
and Socrates urged it upon his pupils. The beauty of harmonized
movements of healthy bodies, engendered by dancing, had its effect on
the art of Greece.

Since the days of classic Greece, scenery, music and costume have
created effects then undreamed of, but notwithstanding the lack of
incidental factors, the greatness and frequency of municipal ballets,
the variety of motives that dancing was made to express, combine to
give Greece a rank never surpassed as a dancing nation.

The Greek stage of this age was rich in scope, and for its effects
drew upon poetry, music, dancing, grouping and posing.

Then came the Dark Ages of history, and in a degraded world dancing
was saved and taken under the protection of the Christian church,
where it remained f