MODERN DANCING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22356, 29 February 1936, Page 21

MODERN DANCING

PASSING OF THE BALLET

"QUICK-STEPPING RHYTHM "

ENGLISH TEACHER'S VIEWS

"It seems, a pity that there is not more encouragement for dancers of the true ballet," said Miss Mavis Stirling, a prominent teacher and exponent of dancing in London, who arrived yesterday by the Wanganella from Sydney, where she bus been very interested in visiting some of the better-known teachers of dancing at their studios. She is on an eight months' vacation. Although she has not taken part in public performances for three years, Miss Stirling, with 29 years of dancing experience, has appeared at most of thi well-known London theatres. Commencing dancing lessons at the age of seven and finding herself particularly successful in competitions, she decided to make dancing her career. Although she teaches all forms of dancing, including the most modern ballroom steps, Miss Stirling has always specialised in true ballet and what she terms expression" dances. Classical Dancing Not Popular Miss Stirling said she regretted the fact that so called classical dancing was becoming every year less popular all over the world. The modern trend, influenced by modern music and by the present-day attitude to and outlook upon things in general was toward quick-stepping rhythm rather than grace. There was* a definite touch of the bizarre and an exaggeration in all modern forms of dancing, both in tho ballroom and on the stage. The interest taken by the general public in the classical ballet, with its floating delicate grace and expression, was growing noticeably less, and, in spite of the endeavours being made by a number of prominent people in London to keep alivo tho true art of dancing, it would require some outstanding personality to revive the former interest taken in classical dancing. "What we need is actually another Pavlova," Miss Stirling said. "A dancer of her great charm, intelligence and, above all, her infinite grace and poetry of movement, could not but reawaken the popular love of good dancing." To one who had seen Pavlova at the height of her career interpret the beautiful "swan" dance, the modern tap dancing was a mere travesty of dancing, Miss Stirling said. Tho tap dance had rhythm and a strangely exhilarating effect, but whatever one did with it one could not possibly introduce to it any semblance of the grace that was the true essential of dancing. Even the native dances of the most unenlightened coloured peoples of the world expressed some feeling or emotion and carried with their execution some atmosphere of primitive grace, and at least those dances did mean something definite to the people. They carried a message that no tap dance could ever carry. Overcrowded Ballrooms Modern ballroom dancing was not, in Miss Stirling's opinion, as graceful as it could be. That, however, was the fault of the overcrowded ballrooms rather than of the dancers. She said that, properly executed, the tangos, slow, waltzes and "blues" of the modern ballroom could be as beautiful as the old quadrilles. The criticism that they were just a method of "walking to music" was unfair, because the better class of modern dancing required an oven nicer timing and ear for music, together with more natural grace, than the older dances.

In London, Vienna and Paris, she continued, true ballet and "scenas" were more popular than in other parts of the world. Russia to-day had lost much of her former enthusiastic interest in dancing, while the United States was almost indifferent to it in its higher forms. The day when people watched breathlessly a too dancer's 16, 20 or 25 perfect pirouettes had given way to a day when their feet kept time to a rapid clog-like tap. The expression of the ballet, with its dozens of dancers in floating, spirited and graceful precision, had been superseded by the highkicks and less beautiful costumes of the chorus.

Miss Stirling left last evening for the South, and will be the guest of Mrs. L. S. Buchanan, of Heretaunga, whom she met recently in London'. After a brief stay in Wellington Miss Stirling plans a rapid tour of New Zealand before returning to England.