Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and PoetsHartley, Marsden
History
Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets
Hartley, Marsden
Art; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism; Vaudeville
A glimpse of the buffalo dance alone will furnish proof sufficient to
you of the sense of symbolic significances in the redman that is
unsurpassed. The redman is a genius in his gift of masquerade alone.
He is a genius in detail, and in ensemble, and the producer of today
might learn far more from him than he can be aware of except by
visiting his unique performances. The redman's notion of the theatric
does not depend upon artificial appliances. He relies entirely upon
the sun with its so clear light of the west and southwest to do his
profiling and silhouetting for him, and he knows the sun will
cooperate with every one of his intentions. He allows for the sense of
mass and of detail with proper proportion, allows also for the
interval of escape in mood, crediting the value of the pause with the
ability to do its prescribed work for the eye and ear perfectly, and
when he is finished he retires from the scene carefully to the beating
of the drums, leaving the emotion to round itself out gradually until
he disappears, and silence completes the picture for the eye and the
brain. His staging is of the simplest, and therefore, the most
natural. Since he is sure of his rhythms, in every other dancer as
well as himself, he is certain of his ensemble, and is likewise sure
there will be no dead spots either in the scenario or in the
presentation. His production is not a show for the amusement of the
onlooker; it is a pageant for the edification of his own soul. Each
man is therefore concerned with the staging of the idea, because it is
his own spiritual drama in a state of enaction, and each is in his own
way manager of the scene, and of the duos, trios, and ensembles, or
whatever form the dances may require. It is therefore of a piece with
his conception of nature and the struggle for realism is not
necessary, since he is at all times the natural actor, the natural
expresser of the indications and suggestions derived from the great
theme of nature which occupies his mind, and body, and soul. His
acting is invented by himself for purposes of his own, and it is
nature that gives him the sign and symbol for the expression of life
as a synthesis. He is a genius in plastic expression, and every
movement of his is sure to register in the unity of the theme, because
he himself is a powerful unit of the group in which he may be
performing. He is esthetically a responsible factor, since it concerns
him as part of the great idea. He is leading soloist and auxiliary in
one. He is the significant instrument in the orchestration of the
theme at hand, and knows his body will respond to every requirement of
phrasing. You will find the infants, of two and three years of age
even, responding in terms of play to the exacting rhythms of the
dance, just as with orientals it was the children often who wove the
loveliest patterns in their rugs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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