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Show What Of The Russian Dancers SOME people who saw Pavlowa and Mordkin here last week complain that the first half of the performance was too suggestive, and do not stop to think that partially in that lay the fact that the theatre was filled with people. Theatre people keep their fingers always on the public pulse, and their struggle is always to provide something that will be sure to draw audiences. The shows in the theatres are what the people make them. Advertise that the "Messiah" "Mes-siah" is to be sung on a certain day, sung by five hundred trained singers, accompanied by the full complement of musical instruments, and that because of the great expense of preparation the admission will be $3, and we suspect that not two hundred people would be present. What was seen when the Russian dancers were here, was originated, we presume, in ancient Greece perhaps per-haps twenty-five hundred years ago, when deformed de-formed children were not permitted to live, and when the race in physical perfection was never approximated to, and when art was the one thing worshipped. Kingsley gives an idea of it in his description of Plelagia's dance before Orestes and the thousands thou-sands in the great amphitheatre. He tells how the snow white elephant marched around the stage. "Then a choir of nymphs swung round him hand in hand and sang as they danced along the conquering might of beauty, the tamer of beasts and men and deities." Then the rising of Plelagia from the shell on the back of the elephant is thus described: "Yes; whi than the snow white elephant more rosy than the pink-tipped shell in which she lay, among crimson cushions and silver gauzes, there shone the goddess, thrilling thrill-ing all hearts with those delicious smiles and glances of the bashful, playful eyes and grateful waving of the tiny hands as the whole theatre rose with one accord and ten thousand eyes were concentrated on the unequaled lov"Mness beneath them." Then the description increases in loveliness as it portrays Aphrodite rising to her full height from the shell, "the mystic cestus glittering round her waist in deep festoons of emeralds and pearls, and stepped forward upon the marble sea-floor, wringing the dropping perfume from her locks as Aphrodite rose of old." Then her dance is described as "a miracle of art such as was only possible among a people of the free and exquisite physical training and the delicate aesthetic aes-thetic perception of those old Greeks even in their most fallen days." That same spirit was invoked when those! Russian .girls were trained, for the same effect was sought for that ruled in Greece, the effect! that perfect physical beauty linked with exquisite: art always has and always will cast a spell around savage and civilized man alike. There were people in the theatre' watching those dancers and listening to the wonderful music who never once thought the scene suggestive, so perfect was the beauty and the art. There were others who ought not to have been there, neltner tney nor their descendants for the next seven hundred years. |