The action in the dance is drama. The bailarina moves in a tiny square. She draws intensity from subtle signals of torso, shoulder, limb, hand: this intensity she transposes to an undulous swing carrying her now far about the platform. She is horizontal and relaxed. She turns her naked shoulders forward; the castanets click almost silently beside her hips that roll in a slow ruminance. She faces about; her caress comes full and forward. The music tears with its down cadence against this mellow mother. Plaint and passion weave a subtle net that draws her forward (the castanets are still). Suddenly, she is held in rigor. The fertile mother of the south is sacrificed to the harsh north. The gorgeous breast, the hips, the arms like songs of love, are tortured in a vise of passionate control. She is the drama of women giving up their sons to the Reconquest, giving the man of their marriage bed to battle with the Moor.... But the mood does not last. Castanets trip lightly. She dances fluidly, widely; her heels strike high; her golden skirt rises and frees her legs. The castanets are become as the chatter of children. From the new relaxation of delight wells more energy, and comes again the tragic transformation. With the emotion, rises the ruthless will locking at last this pleasaunce in its hostile grip. The music is now a battle. Song, body, castanets fuse in the war of passion and will, of nature and of reason breaking on each other. And above this symphony, the dancer’s face is silence. So do all the motions of this drama converge into a plastic movelessness. The dance itself is not drama; is less kin to the dances of Europe than to the sculpture of Egypt. One thinks of the stones of the Nile in whose unsubtle substance live flame and intricate vision. One thinks of the Maya reliefs of Yucatan whose myriad planes twine to harmonious flatness. * * * * * Since the dance is a true classic art, the need of personal genius to express it is reduced. The true genius here is the tradition. Spain dances. Unlike the other dances of modern Europe, the dance of Andalusia is a norm: and the true dancer is a normal woman. The good bailarina conforms strictly to the type of the good _andaluza_. She is handsomely stout, with broad pelvis, full-developed breast, strong, regular features. She lacks sensual erethism. She is indeed the matron, rather than the prostitute. And the matron is fitted for the classic dance, precisely because of its normality, because it has been purged of the romantic, the brilliant, the superficially sensual--the accidental. A “romantic” Andalusian dance is nonsense.[9]