LA MERI’S IDEAS ON THE DANCE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 255, 24 July 1936, Page 16

LA MERI’S IDEAS ON THE DANCE

TIT ADAME LA MERI. the international X '" L dancer, who is at present in Wellington, has many interests, and with her well-balanced outlook on life she should not find it hard to find life good anywhere. She does not diet; she practises for at least two hours, but likes four or live hours a day. Born an American, she has studied in America with a Russian ballet-master Terasoff, in Paris with Vollunine. and in Spain with Dtero; and her enthusiasm for all the forms of the dance founded on tradition, but not encased in it, is based on a highly artistic insight into their place in the life of the people whose national possession they are. In Spanish dancing she finds great inspiration: “The Spanish dances are. akin to the traditional ballet in that every step is named and every development of the movements has its origin in history,” she said yesterday. “Even the dressing is settled for you. If you wear a blue costume with white dots, then the scarf must be red; if white with blue dots, the scarf must be blue. No Spanish audience could bear - you to do otherwise. But within its limits there is the colour of the Oriental dances that came through the Moors from the Arabs, the glitter of gipsy costuming and wayward steps, the quaint beauty of the Andalusian folk dances. “The Spanish dancer does not express herself in great bounds as does the Russian. Rather the more classic moods engendered' by the music, the half Oriental rhythm, produce an internal emotion which boils over in a tightly controlled intensity.” La Meri is one of the last people who spoke with Anna Pavlova. At Oslo they met at the board of a Sweden citizen who desired to honour their art. Anna Pavlova, sincere and simple in her art, leaned across to La Meri and asked: “What do you think of my Mexican dance?” “She was big enough to invite a much younger, much less known woman’s criticism,” said La Meri, “And as we parted she expressed the wish—‘May we meet again in 10 years and both be still dancing.’ ” A few days later La Meri heard of Pavlova’s death. ‘‘The finest critics are in Berlin. The best audience I have ever met was in Vienna,” she declares. “The French love anything new; London wants what it is sure of.” “And what kind of audience do you like?” she was asked. “One which lets me know how it feels, one that isn’t conscious of its white kid gloves, one that isn’t merely bored.” Madame La Meri is opposed to the training of children in ballet work in extreme v youth. “The child is hardly a thinking human being before 10 or 11 years, and its artistic side has not developed,” she says. “Don't force the mind, or the muscles either. Let the young children dance by all means, but don’t force them to a choice of style, too soon.” /