[Footnote: Kandinsky's example of Isadora Duncan is not perhaps
perfectly chosen. This famous dancer founds her art mainly upon a
study of Greek vases and not necessarily of the primitive period.
Her aims are distinctly towards what Kandinsky calls
"conventional beauty," and what is perhaps more important, her
movements are not dictated solely by the "inner harmony," but
largely by conscious outward imitation of Greek attitudes. Either
Nijinsky's later ballets: Le Sacre du Printemps, L'Apres-midi
d'un Faune, Jeux, or the idea actuating the Jacques Dalcroze
system of Eurhythmics seem to fall more into line with
Kandinsky's artistic forecast. In the first case "conventional
beauty" has been abandoned, to the dismay of numbers of writers
and spectators, and a definite return has been made to primitive
angles and abruptness. In the second case motion and dance are
brought out of the souls of the pupils, truly spontaneous, at
the call of the "inner harmony." Indeed a comparison between
Isadora Duncan and M. Dalcroze is a comparison between the
"naturalist" and "symbolist" ideals in art which were outlined in
the introduction to this book.--M.T.H.S.]
In dance as in painting this is only a stage of transition. In
dancing as in painting we are on the threshold of the art of the
future. The same rules must be applied in both cases.
Conventional beauty must go by the board and the literary element
of "story-telling" or "anecdote" must be abandoned as useless.
Both arts must learn from music that every harmony and every
discord which springs from the inner spirit is beautiful, but
that it is essential that they should spring from the inner
spirit and from that alone.
The achievement of the dance-art of the future will make possible
the first ebullition of the art of spiritual harmony--the true
stage-composition.
The composition for the new theatre will consist of these three
elements:
(1) Musical movement
(2) Pictorial movement
(3) Physical movement
and these three, properly combined, make up the spiritual
movement, which is the working of the inner harmony. They will be
interwoven in harmony and discord as are the two chief elements
of painting, form and colour.
Scriabin's attempt to intensify musical tone by corresponding use of
colour is necessarily tentative. In the perfected stage-composition the
two elements are increased by the third, and endless possibilities of
combination and individual use are opened up. Further, the external can
be combined with the internal harmony, as Schonberg has attempted in his
quartettes. It is impossible here to go further into the developments of
this idea. The reader must apply the principles of painting already
stated to the problem of stage-composition, and outline for himself the
possibilities of the theatre of the future, founded on the immovable
principle of the inner need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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