CHAPTER V

THE SKIRT DANCE

The discovery of a new medium has not infrequently infused a new vitality into a declining art. Certainly the nature of the medium has been almost as important a factor in determining style as the nature of the artist. One of the media through which the dance expresses itself is costume. It has been pointed out how the evolution of the _caleçon_ revolutionised the technique of the ballet. The rediscovery of the flowing skirt brought about a revolution in modern dancing.

The flowing skirt appears to us to be a natural appurtenance of the dance. But it must be remembered that the infinitesimal skirt of the ballet-dancer had become a cherished convention, and such is the tyranny of convention that it makes whatever is contrary to it appear to be unnatural. The development of the ballet had been largely due to the abandonment of the fulsome skirt of the early eighteenth century; it was felt that to adopt it once again would be to involve the dance in the swaddling-clothes of its infancy.

The introduction of the long skirt, however, provided an outlet from the impasse into which dancing had been driven. On the one hand was the classical school of the ballet, now in an unfortunate condition of decadence. It lacked all those elements which make of the ballet a living art. The public was sick and tired of it. On the other hand a more or less vulgar type of dancing, which had no relation to art, enjoyed a certain popularity on the music-hall stage. It consisted chiefly of the Clog Dance, believed originally to have come from the cotton mills of Lancashire, and various kinds of acrobatic dancing. In the race for popularity the ugly but energetic Step Dance was first, the classical ballet nowhere. Between the two there was no happy medium.

The Skirt Dance was essentially a compromise between the academical method of the ballet and the grotesque step-dancing which appealed to the popular taste of the time. It stood nearer perhaps to the more serious form of dancing, for in its elements, at least, it was modelled upon the method of the ballet. The exchange, the pirouette, the balance, all the first steps necessary to the ballet-dancer, are the same in both. But while retaining the academical steps as a foundation, it permitted the performer greater license in the use of them. Remembering the passionate dancing of Fanny Elssler, it would perhaps not be correct to say that it introduced more spirit into the dance; but its tendency was towards greater vividness and the play of temperament. The domination of the ballet had in some measure confined dancing to one particular method and, especially in the period of its decline, had exalted technical proficiency at the expense of the display of personality. The Skirt Dance broadened the scope of dancing. In itself never a performance of very great artistic merit, it had all the value of a revolt. It broke down the dominion of a tradition which had become too narrow. It opened up new vistas. It contained the seeds of future movements. In particular it recalled the forgotten dances of antiquity. Though essentially modern, and notably so in its lapses into vulgarity, it nevertheless suggested new possibilities in the grace of flowing drapery, the value of line, the simplicity and naturalness that were characteristic of Greek dance.

But the Skirt Dance was chiefly justified by its success, which can only be described as sensational. The utter absence of enthusiasm for the academic dance made it manifest that the time was ripe for the discovery of a new form of dancing. The wit to invent the novel mode that was to revolutionise theatrical dancing in England came from Mr John D’Auban, for many years ballet-master and director of the dances at Drury Lane. It was of him that “Punch” wrote the doggerel eulogy:

[Illustration: KATE VAUGHAN

_Photograph: W. & D. Downey_]

“Mr Johnny D’Auban, He’s so quick and nimble He’d dance on a thimble-- He’s more like an elf than a man.”

In a short sketch with the unpromising title, _Ain’t she very shy?_ in which he appeared with his sister, he first introduced the Skirt Dance to the public.

Perhaps the fortune of the Skirt Dance would have been different if it had not at once found an exponent who has no small claim to rank with the great dancers of the century. This was Kate Vaughan. She alone in the host of dancers who obtained a passing fame in this style of dancing possessed a touch of real genius. The fact that she satisfied the discriminating taste of two men of such artistic perception as Ruskin and Burne-Jones is enough to establish her reputation. Burne-Jones called her “Miriam Ariadne Salome Vaughan,” and his wife in her biography of her husband relates how he and Ruskin “fell into each other’s arms in rapture upon accidentally discovering that they both adored her.”

Kate Vaughan was the daughter of a musician named Candelon, who earned a meagre living by playing in the orchestra of the once famous Grecian Theatre. At the Grecian she studied dancing under Mrs Conquest, and it is significant that, unlike most other skirt-dancers, she was thoroughly grounded in the careful method of the ballet. One of her first successes as a dancer was in the _Ballet of the Furies_ at the old Holborn Amphitheatre in 1873. Dressed in a black skirt profusely trimmed with gold, she created a great sensation in the rôle of the Spirit of Darkness. After the contortions of the gymnastic dancers, whose popularity testifies to the lamentable condition of the dance at this time--the name of one of the favourites, “Wiry Sal,” is a sufficient commentary upon the school!--the exquisite grace of the new dancer, whose style was both precise and refined, was no less than a revelation.

The old Gaiety Theatre was at this time just entering upon its career of phenomenal popularity, and its ingenious manager, Mr John Hollingshead, was not slow to perceive that the new dance would quickly oust the step-dancer and the contortionist from their place in the popular favour. He was among the first to recognise the genius of Kate Vaughan, and he had the means of presenting her to the public to the greatest advantage. From the day in which she appeared in the famous Gaiety Quartet, in _Little Don Caesar de Bazan_, her success was established. She was as supreme in her time as Taglioni, Elssler, Grisi and Cerito had been in theirs. Not only was she the popular idol of her generation, but in spite of the tawdry glitter of the Gaiety stage she was able to engage the interest of serious artists.

Her career is full of pathos if not tragedy. Although she possessed the born instincts of a dancer she had an ambition to excel as an actress. She left the Gaiety and spent most of her life with touring companies. She lived long enough to outstay her welcome. London tired of her; only the provinces remained faithful. Ill-health rendered her performances more and more painful. Her dancing became a torture to her, yet she had the resolution to go through with it even although she frequently had to be carried off the stage for very weakness and pain. Worn out with failure and illness, she left England for South Africa, where she hoped that her fame as a dancer would make her season a success. But her name had no magic for the younger generation that had sprung up in the colony. Neither as a _comédienne_ nor as a dancer was she received with any degree of enthusiasm. Almost broken-hearted, she fell ill, and died in great loneliness and distress in Johannesburg in 1903.

In spite of her adoption of a new mode of dancing, Kate Vaughan belonged primarily to the school of Taglioni. Although of course she never reached the perfection of her predecessor, it was to her careful training in the school of the ballet that she owed the ease and grace of her movements and the wonderful effect of spontaneity with which she accomplished even the most difficult steps. She danced not only with her feet, but with every limb of her frail body. She depended not merely upon the manipulation of the skirt for her effect, but upon her facility of balance and the skilful use of arms and hands. Her _andante_ movements in particular were a glorious union of majesty and grace. It is true that she

[Illustration: KATE VAUGHAN

IN TURKISH COSTUME

_Photograph: W. & D. Downey_]

condescended at times to introduce into her dance some of those hideous steps which vulgarised the dancing of the period--in particular that known as the “high kick”; but even this unpleasant step she accomplished with a certain sense of elegance and refinement which disguised its essential ugliness and suggestion of contortion. She danced with a distinct inspiration, and upon her style was built up all that was best in the dancing of her time.

The followers of Kate Vaughan were legion. Most of them were not dancers at all in the proper sense of the word. They devoted themselves to the Skirt Dance merely because it was the fashion of the hour, but of every other branch of dancing they were almost wholly ignorant. But there were three dancers who were something more than imitators of Kate Vaughan--Letty Lind, Alice Lethbridge and Sylvia Grey. It is notable that all of them were originally trained for the ballet. Alice Lethbridge showed that she was no revolutionary in her view of what she regarded as the foundation of all technical excellence in dancing, when she said: “As long as dancing continues, the special movements of the older ballet, its entrechats, pirouettes, and countless other steps, must also exist, for they are but the great groundwork of it all.”

It was she who developed the Skirt Dance by introducing a revolving motion, to which she gave the rather vague name of the “waltz movement.” While dancing the ordinary waltz, she bent her body backwards until it was almost horizontal, and in this position, still making all the correct steps of the dance, she rotated the body around its own axis and at the same time described a large circle round the stage. The swaying of the body in slow time to the rapid movements of the feet and the graceful waving of the skirts produced a curious and pleasing effect which won for her an enormous celebrity. Her other most famous performances were her Marionette Dance, her Fire Dance and some clever shadow dances, which depended for their effect chiefly upon the skilful use of reflected lights. Her dancing was characterised by an extreme vivacity, by the lightnings of eye and hand, which were nevertheless always subdued to the rhythm of the music.

Letty Lind was a dancer almost by accident. When still quite unknown she was somewhat embarrassed by having a song given her in one of her plays. She knew the limitations of her voice and asked if she might be allowed to do a dance instead. Her performance was an astonishing success, and from that moment her career was made. She devoted herself to musical comedy, which was then coming into vogue, realising that there is always room on the lighter operatic stage for an actress who is also an accomplished dancer. For some years she was one of the principal “stars” at Daly’s Theatre, but her reputation was always based chiefly upon her dancing. As a skirt-dancer she never reached the perfection of Kate Vaughan, but she always showed herself a dainty and finished artist.

The Skirt Dance, with its swift rushes and billowy undulations of flowing drapery, was at most a charming but trivial dance, of no great pretension or particular significance. It demanded only an average ability on the part of the performer, and no previous training in the intricacies of the dance. It came at a time when, apart from the ballet proper, the usual style of dancing was a kind of energetic double-shuffling and step-dance, generally performed by ponderous principal “boys” in vividly-coloured tights. Kate Vaughan brought to it a personality which would have given distinction to a dance far less artistic, and a daintiness of peculiar fascination. If it had followed more closely the Greek models, with which it had some remote connection, it might have evolved into a dance of greater artistic importance; but its development was in the contrary direction. It degenerated into a romp; it lost whatever precision of technique it had once demanded; and as the width of the skirt grew to larger and larger dimensions, the dancer gradually disappeared in the extravagance of her costume.

The original exponents of the Skirt Dance, as we have seen, were ballet-dancers, whose novelty consisted rather in their costume than in their methods. They adapted the steps of the ballet to the new style without great modification. They brought to the dance that culture of the whole body and not merely of the legs, which is proper to the well-trained ballet-dancer as distinguished from the mere step-dancer. But the misfortune of the

[Illustration: ALICE LETHBRIDGE

_Photograph: Ellis & Walery_]

Skirt Dance was that it afforded a convenient concealment to the incompetent dancer. Less eminent artists were not slow to perceive that the instruction which had failed to give them distinction in the academic style was quite sufficient to make them resplendent as skirt-dancers. There is a menace that always threatens the dance, no less than the theatre, and that is the incursion of the incompetent professional beauty. The generous public is willing to pardon a multitude of sins for the sake of a pretty face. Now was the signal opportunity for the unintelligent beauty to masquerade as a dancer. Amateurs vied with professionals in seeking success in the simple intricacies of the Skirt Dance. By performing it in a London theatre at a charity matinée, the Countess Russell and her sister gave the dance the sanction of the social world. Philanthropy became the hobby of the fashionable skirt-dancer. A wit remarked that “charity uncovered a multitude of shins.”

In a criticism of the period, Mr G. Bernard Shaw ridiculed this cult of good looks and incompetence for which the Skirt Dance was responsible. “Thanks to it,” he said, “we soon had young ladies carefully trained on an athletic diet of tea, soda-water, rashers, brandy, ice-pudding, champagne and sponge-cake, laboriously hopping and flopping, twirling and staggering, as nuclei for a sort of bouquet of petticoats of many colours, until finally, being quite unable to perform the elementary feat, indispensable to a curtsey, of lowering and raising the body by flexing and straightening the knee, they frankly sat down panting on their heels, and looked piteously at the audience, half begging for an encore, half wondering how they would ever be able to get through one. The public on such occasions behaved with its usual weakness.... It was mean enough to ape a taste for the poor girls’ pitiful sham dancing, when it was really gloating over their variegated underclothing. Who has not seen a musical comedy or comic farce interrupted for five minutes, whilst a young woman without muscle or practice enough to stand safely on one foot--one who, after a volley of kicks with the right leg has, on turning to the other side of the stage, had to confess herself ignominiously unable to get beyond a stumble with her left, and, in short, could not, one would think, be mistaken by her most infatuated adorer for anything but an object-lesson in saltatory incompetence--clumsily waves the inevitable petticoats at the public as silken censers of that _odor di femina_ which is the real staple of five-sixths of our theatrical commerce?” For his part, he continues, “the young lady who can do no more than the first sufficiently brazen girl in the street could, may shake all the silk at Marshall and Snelgrove’s at me in vain.”

It was possibly this fatal facility of the Skirt Dance that gave it its unparalleled vogue. For a time everybody skirt-danced. There has probably been no such sudden craze for any style of dancing as that which seized England at the time of the famous _Pas de Quatre_ in _Faust up to Date_. The schottische-like melody composed for the dance by Meyer Lutz, the Gaiety conductor, was performed to satiety upon every orchestra in the country. In a mild form the dance was introduced into the ball-room, while certainly for years no pantomime was complete without the inevitable four girls in short accordion-pleated skirts, standing in a row behind one another, kicking out first one leg and then the other in time to the jerky music.

The grace of Kate Vaughan had given an extraordinary vitality to the Skirt Dance; her imitators’ lack of grace killed it. Because Kate Vaughan danced in the moonlight--or the livid hue which then passed for moonlight on the stage--every dancer had the lights turned down, with a special ray from the wings upon her whirling petticoats. Moreover the performers of the step-dance from the halls, the only dance really popular with the public before this time, took up the new fashion with alacrity and threw into it more than all their ancient energy. The dance became more and more violent. It was burlesqued out of recognition. The prettiness of the Skirt Dance as it was danced by Kate Vaughan perished in the contortions that were introduced from the Moulin Rouge and popularised in England by Lottie Collins.

[Illustration: LETTY LIND

IN A SKIRT DANCE

_Photograph: Ellis & Walery_]