The chief characteristics of the American mind are to condense
expressions and ideas into their shortest forms. This is most evident
in the syncopated style of its music, in its language and in its
architecture. Like the American ‘ragtime’ tune, an American skyscraper
is the result of an impressionistic imagination. Both are crude in
their present form, yet they speak a language of an un-ethnographic
race and form the foundation of a new art. Instead of having a
floating, graceful and, so to speak, a horizontal tendency like the
æsthetic images of the Old World, the American beauty is dynamic,
impressionistic and perpendicular. It shoots directly upwards and
denies every tradition. The underlying motives of such a tendency are
not democratic but cosmic. While a nationalistic art is always based on
something traditional, something that belongs to the past evolution of
a race, the cosmic art strives to unite the emotions of all humanity.
The task of the latter is very much more difficult. It requires a
universal mind to grasp and express what appeals to the whole world.
It requires a Titanic genius to condense the æsthetic images so that
in their shortest form they may say what the others would express in
roundabout ways. This gives to beauty a dynamic vigor and makes it so
much more universal than the art of any nation or age could be. But
this requires the use of symbols, and tends to subjectivism. However,
the symbols employed in this case are fundamentally different from
those employed by the Orientals. Since the earliest ages the Orient has
made use of symbols in art and religion. But the Oriental symbols have
been mystic or philosophic in their nature. The American symbols will
either be purely intellectual or they will be poetic.
The future of the art of dancing belongs to America, the country of
the cosmic ideals. This is evident from its evolution since Isadora
Duncan’s début. The Russian New Ballet (of Diaghileff’s group) is the
best proof that the traditional racial plasticism is being transformed
into a cosmic one. Compare the steps and gestures of Karsavina and
Nijinsky with those of Pavlova and Volinin. Where the former have
become realistically dramatic, the latter remain acrobatically
academic. There is more symbolism in Karsavina’s and Nijinsky’s art
than in that of Pavlova and the followers of the old ballet. But the
plastic symbols of Lada are far more condensed than those of Karsavina.
This is what we have termed the essential of a cosmic choreography.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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