Dancing

Some Observations, Philosophical and Otherwise, on the Dance

ANDRE

JULIAN STREET

"DOCTOR," said General Bramble, "this morning I received from London two new fox-trots for my gramaphone."

Ever since the armistice had sent the Scotch regiment to the coast of Normandy, Lieutenant Dundas, aide-de-camp to General Bramble, had been giving dancing lessons to the staffofficers, even those with the most gold on their red caps.

The interpreter, Aurelle, emerged from his unfolded London "Times."

"Everything is going badly," he said. "The Germans are pulling themselves together; you are demobilizing; the Americans are sailing away; we are going to be left, the Italians and ourselves, in a chaotic Europe which-"

"Aurelle," said Colonel Parker, "take off your coat and come and learn the one-step. That's better than sitting there worrying all evening."

"You know, Colonel, that I don't dance."

"That'll never do," said Parker. "A man who doesn't dance is an enemy of society. The dancer and the bridge-player, being unable to live without partners, are of necessity sociable. But you—all you want is a book. You are a bad citizen."

The doctor, emptying his glass of brandy at one gulp, removed his coat and joined the colonel in his effort to convert the young Frenchman.

"A distinguished Irish naturalist, James Stephens," he said, "has observed that the love of dancing varies according to purity of heart. Children, lambs and dogs delight to dance. Policemen, notaries and fish dance very little because they are hard-hearted. Angle-worms and members of Parliament—who aside from their remarkable general culture have many points in common—dance rarely because they are already so jammed together. Frogs and young mountains, at least if one believes the scriptures-"

"Doctor," interrupted the general, "I put you in charge of the gramaphone. Maximum speed, please."

Dancing as a Sport

THE orderlies pushed the table into a corner, and the aide-de-camp, enfolding his general in a close embrace, promenaded him with respect, but in rhythm, around the room.

"One, two—one, two. It's a simple walk, sir, but sliding. Your feet mustn't touch the ground."

"Eh?" said the general.

"It's the rule. Now twinkle."

"Twinkle? What's that?"

"A sort of hesitation, sir. You advance the left foot, then bring it back abruptly beside the right and start over again with the right foot. Left, back, and quickly right. Perfect, sir!"

The general, always precise, asked how many steps he must count before twinkling again. The pink young ephebus explained that it didn't matter. You changed steps when you felt like it.

"But," said General Bramble, "how can my partner know when I am going to twinkle?"

"Ah" said the aide-de-camp, "you must hold your partner so closely that she can readily sense the very faintest movement of your body."

"Hough!" grunted the general; and after a moment's thought he added: "We might get up some balls here?"

From the depths of the armchair came Aurelle's enthusiastic approval.

"I have never been able to understand," said he, "what pleasure men find in dancing together. Dancing is a sentimental pantomime —a sort of language of the body which permits the expression of an understanding that souls dare not avow. What was it for the primitives? Nothing but a barbaric form of love."

"What a French idea!" put in Colonel Parker. "I should say, rather, that love is a barbaric form of dancing. Love is animal— dancing is human. It's more than an art. It's a sport."

"Yes," returned Aurelle, "since the British nation judges worthy of the "name of sport all exercise which is at once useless, fatiguing and dangerous, I willingly admit that dancing answers this definition at every point. And it is no less true that the savages-

"Aurelle, my boy, don't talk to me about savages," said" Parker. "You've never been out of your Europe. Now I have lived among native Australians and Malays. Their dances were not sentimental pantomimes, as you say, but warlike exercises for their young soldiers— taking the place of Swedish gymnastics and bayonet practice. Besides, it is only a short time since these attitudes of embrace have been adopted in our own countries. Your minuets and pavanes are respecters of persons; and the ancients had people to dance for them, but not with them. Dancing was beneath their dignity."

"That's easy to understand," said the doctor. "What did they want with dancing? The simplicity of their customs made such artificial devices for personal contact quite unnecessary. Only the severity of our Victorianism makes their rhythmic embraces so attractive. Puritan America willingly waggles her hips, and--"

"Doctor," said the general, "play the other side of the record, please. Set it at 24. It's a jazz."

Jazz as a Substitute for War

WHAT worries me," commenced Aurelle, deep in his paper again, "is that our great oracles take the theory of nationalities so seriously. As a matter of fact those things are elastic and adjustable, but in the case of the Jugo-Slavs-"

At this moment, started by the doctor, the gramaphone emitted such a frightful racket that the interpreter let his newspaper fall.

"Good God!" he cried. "Have you broken it, Doctor?"

"Broken it?" repeated the doctor, surprised.

"You don't mean to tell me that this concert of smashing pots and pans and alarm sirens could have been intentionally combined by a human brain?"

"You don't know what you're talking about," the doctor replied. "The negro music is admirable. The blacks are more artistic than we are. They alone can still experience the sacred delirium that put the first singers in the class with the gods." But his voice was drowned by the sinister racket of the jazz, reminiscent of a barrage of 420's during a storm.

"Jazz?" bellowed the general to his aide-decamp, "bostoning" majestically the while. "Jazz? Just what is jazz, Dundas?"

"Anything you like, sir," shouted back the pink ephebus—"you have only to follow the music."

"Hough!" grunted the astonished general.

"Doctor," said Aurelle, gravely, "we are perhaps participating in the last days of a civilization which, with all its faults, was at times rather nice. Don't you really think that, under the circumstances, there might be something better to do than to tango awkwardly to the din of an atrocious bamboula?"

"My boy," said the doctor, "what would you do if someone stuck a pin in your leg? Well, war and peace have driven more than one spike into the hide of humanity; and so, even while she howls with pain, she shimmies. It's a perfectly natural reflex. As a matter of fact they had a fox-trot epidemic just like this after the Black Plague of the Fourteenth Century. Only at that time they called it St. Vitus' dance."