Of course having once found the body's natural freedom, the variety
of motions is as great as the variety of musical sounds and
combinations possible to an instrument which will respond to every
tone in the musical scale. It is in opening the way for this natural
motion that the exquisite possibilities in motion purely artistic
dawn upon us with ever-increasing light. And as in music it is the
sonata, the waltz, or the nocturne we must feel, not the mechanical
process of our own performance,--so in moving, it is the beautiful,
natural harmonies of the muscles, from the big rhythms to all the
smaller ones, that we must feel and make others feel, and not the
mere mechanical grace of our bodies; and we can move a sonata from
the first to the last, changing the time and holding the theme so
that the soul will be touched through the eye, as it is through the
ear now in music. But, according to the present state of the human
body, more than one generation will pass before we reach, or know
the beginning of, the highest artistic power of motion. If art is
Nature illuminated, one must have some slight appreciation and
experience of Nature before attempting her illumination.
The set of motions mentioned can be only very inadequately described
in print. But although they are graceful, because they are natural,
the first idea in practising them is that they are a means to an
end, not an end in themselves. For in the big and little rhythms and
the springing motions, in practising them over and over again we are
establishing the habit of natural motion, and will carry it more and
more into everything we do.
If the work of the brain in muscular exercise were reduced to its
minimum, the consequent benefit from all exercise would greatly
increase.
A new movement can be learned with facility in proportion to the
power for dropping at the time all impressions of previous
movements. In training to take every motion easily, after a time the
brain-work is relieved, for we move with ease,--that is, with a
natural co-ordination of muscles, automatically,--in every known
motion; and we lessen very greatly the mental strain, in learning a
new movement, by gaining the power to relax entirely at first, and
then, out of a free body, choose the muscles needed, and so avoid
the nervous strain of useless muscular experiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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