A Ballet in the Modernist Manner

An Ironic Comment on the Elaborate Ballets Invented To Interpret Ultra-Modern Music

ALDOUS HUXLEY

EDITOR'S NOTE: In this burlesque ballet, Mr. Huxley follows, with a gesture of absurdity, the familiar method created by the choreographers of the Russian Ballet, as in "Coq d' Or", by providing a narrative setting for some specific musical composition. Jean Cocteau's "Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel", which was first published in Vanity Fair a year ago was conceived in something the same way. Mr. Huxley here follows the same technique but, of course, enlarges his effects out of their normal proportion and reduces the whole to the level of satire.

THERE is no orchestra; but two and thirty players perform in unison upon as many harpsichords the most brilliant compositions of Domenico Scarlatti. The dry glitter of the instruments fills and exhilarates the air. It is a music that might cure phthisis.

The scene represents a flat and almost limitless plain, quite bare except for a few small Italian houses, miles away on the horizon, and a vast oak tree which rises a little to the right of the center and within a few feet of the back of the stage. There are no leaves on the tree. It is winter; and the grey, intense light of a northern day illumines the scene.

In the foreground and to the left, a company of vagabond actors are grouped around their hooded wagon. Here are Guarsetto and Mestolino in their linen coats and baggy trousers, their shovel hats stuck with parrrot's feathers, their goat's beards, and paper noses. Razullo in tights, tattered jerkin and page's cap plays on a guitar, the little belly and interminable long neck of which make it the very antithesis of Curcurucu, who carries—cautiously, carefully, tremulously, on a poor, thin, pair of legs—a great paunch, hunched shoulders, and a jutting rump. Fracischina and Signora Lucia are dressed in long flowing skirts, tight bodices, and sleeves like a bishop's fluttering ringlets.

Opposite, on the right of the stage, a group of ladies and gentlemen, gypsies, beggars, idiots, stand watching them. In the open space between, the actors step out and dance.

THEY dance, alone, in pairs and trios, in every variety of combination. Now it is Franca Trippa and Fratellino kicking up their heels St one another in a sly, low jig. Now Signora Lucia steps nobly and gracefully through a pavane, while Razullo postures over his guitar, showing off the elegance of his legs in a series of lunging steps. Curcurucu walks behind him, trying to imitate, as well as his belly and his feeble legs will allow, these heroical attitudes. They are followed by Fracischina and the two satyr-pantaloons. They dance as though intoxicated; not with wine or any of the grosser joys, but with some more rarefied poison. They dance as though they were philosophers who had succeeded at last in picking the lock of the Absolute's back door. They dance as though they had discovered, in a sudden flash, that life is what it is. The Pantaloons dance with their arms akimbo, their hands twisted back downwards, jutted rump answering to jutted belly—a bounding hornpipe. Arms upstretched and beating a tambourine above her head, Fracischina is all aspiring lines and vertical leaping. She is the living, leaping may-pole; and the pantaloons, Guarsetto and Mestolino, go leaping round her. They dance, they dance as though they would never stop.

In the midst of their dancing, across the dry and glittering music of the harpsichords, is heard, far off, the sound of drums beating a march. It grows louder and louder, till at last, at the back of the stage, there files in a company of pikemen. Behind the dancing philosophers, the soldiers manoeuvre. Their long pikes come together, fall apart, making arithmetical patterns against the sky. It is a grave Pythagorean dance of pure Number.

WHEN, panting, Fracischina and the Pantaloons have made an end, the leaders of this troop, redoubtable Captain Malagamba, redoubtable Buonavita, dressed, like all the other gentlemen, in the romantic uniform of Pussin-Boots, come striding forward. Theirs is a stamping dance of swashbucklers. The pikes manoeuvre against the colourless sky.

A scene of descriptive pantomime follows the dance. The Captains point up towards the branches of the oak tree; then, turning to their pikemen, make a signal of command. The ranks divide; we see a pinioned prisoner kneeling at the feet of a friar who holds aloft a crucifix and with choreographic gestures exhorts to repentance. The ranks close again.

It is a little matter of hanging.

The company applauds: Bravissimo. Then in a ring, actors, idiots, gentry, beggars and gypsies—all hand in hand dance round the two Captains, who blow kisses and bow their appreciation of the compliment.

The ring breaks up. Six acrobats enter with a long ladder and a rope. They balance the ladder on end, climb up, slide down. All the tricks that one can do with a ladder are done. It is set up at last against the tree and the rope is fastened to the principal branch, so that the noose hangs at a point immediately above the center of the stage.

The ranks reopen. Slowly the prisoner and the gesticulating friar advance. All crowd forward, turning their backs on the audienoe, to witness the spectacle. Captain Malagamba takes the opportunity to embrace the Signora Lucia. She, at the imminence of his amorous whiskers, starts away fronrhim. Malagamba follows; there is a brief dance of retreat and pursuit. The Captain has driven her into a corner, between the shafts of the wagon, and is about to ravish an embracement in good earnest, when Razullo, happening to look around, sees what is going on. Brandishing his long-necked guitar, he bounds across the stage and with one magistral blow lays out the Captain along the floor. Then, pirouetting, he skips off with the delivered Signora. Meanwhile the prisoner has been led forward to the foot of the ladder, on the rungs of which, like a troop of longlimbed monkeys, gambol the playful acrobats. The spectators have eyes for nothing else.

One of the village idiots, who lacks the wit to appreciate the charms of the spectacle, sees as he gapes vacantly about him the prostrate carcass of Malagamba, approaches and bends over it in imbecile sympathy. Malagamba utters a groan; someone in the crowd looks round, calls the attention of the rest. There is a rush. The imbecile is seized, Malagamba raised to his feet, plied with strong waters from a bottle. Buonavita interrogates the idiot, who is held, smiling and drivelling, between two arquebusiers.

While, in the foreground, The descriptive pantomime of the idiot's examination, trial and condemnation is being danced through, behind and above the heads of the spectators, the acrobats are hauling the prisoner up the ladder; they have slipped the noose over his head, they have turned him off. His feet dance a double shuffle on the wind, then gradually are still.

Captain Buonavita has by this time duly sentenced the idiot to execution. Still smiling, he is led down stage towards the foot of the ladder. The friar proffers him the crucifix.

EVERYBODY dances. Malagamba has by this time sufficiently recovered to seize the vaulting Fracischina by the waist and toss her up into the air. The beggars, the Puss-in-Boots gentlemen, the actors, the idiots even—each seizes a partner, throws her up, brings her floating slowly down, as though reluctant to come to earth again. Fratellino and Franca Trippa jig in and out among the couples, slapping at them with their wooden swords. And the two pantaloons, who know that the world is what it is and are intoxicated with a truth that is fortythree per cent above proof, go leaping and leaping, back and forth, across the front of the stage.

Still smiling, the idiot is coaxed up the rungs of the ladder. Like the most debonair of black spider-monkeys, the acrobats frisk around him; and in the extreme background the moving pikes come together, break apart, asserting unanswerably that two and two make four and that five over blue beans is the number of blue beans that make five.

As the spider-monkeys drop the noose over the idiot's head there is a long commanding roll of drums. All turn round towards the ladder, forming up in an ordered line across the stage; they stand quite still. Only the two Pantaloons, intent on their hornpipe, dance on to the glittering phrases of the harpsichords.

The drums roll on. The noose is tightened. For the last time the Friar raises his crucifix towards the idiot's lips; the idiot roars with laughter. Then the whole fantastic troupe move off.

The Puss-in-Boots captains and the gentlemen, the actors, the beggars, the gipsies and the idiots stare after the retreating procession in an open-mouthed astonishment. And well they may; for the impresario has made an absurd mistake. The music belongs, strange as it may seem, to an entirely different ballet.