REVIVAL OF "SOUND" DANCING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8942, 30 May 1907, Page 2

REVIVAL OF "SOUND" DANCING.

MR WILLIE WARDE ON MODERN TENDENCIES.

The gradual decline of skirt-dancing in th© musical-comedy theatres and the return, to dancing that can bo heard ac well as seen is one of the most noted features of the new lyrical plays of London. The public is now loudest with its applause for dances in which the beat of the feet is heard^ and it also likes dances with a singing accompaniment to the movements. Mr Willie Warde, one of the best authorities in London on dancing and dancers, thinks that it was the success of Dauatto, a one-legged Italian, who danced witn an immense long red silk cloak around him,' that suggested skirtdancing. Danatto's pirouetting, forty years ago, with a flying cloak whirling round him like a corkscrew, was in an elementary way like the elaborate silk waving that Miss Loie Fuller was to do later. Mr Willie Warde agrees that tho public wants to hear the beat of the dancer's feet. It is a return in eoine form to tho pleasure obtained from listening to the well-timed steps of the Lancashire clog dance. " These islands," eaid Mr Warde, " havo many original dances. America has none that it has not taken from the negro. Our English hornpipe, Lancashire clog dances, the Scotch reel, and the Irish jig are not imitations of anything, and the public welcome them back again now. Our clog dancing differs iroin the Dutch sabot dancing, which is a series of stamps with the feet, done without the single or double shuffle. The Dutch dance requires mo twist of knee or ankle, and is not done with a loose foot like ours. "Our publio, I think, will never care about the classical ballet dancing, but if it did we have the material here for as clever dancers of that sort as any in tho world. At present the demand is for grotesque dancing. All through my career I have noticed a love for grotesque movement, but with that now the public also wants character. You must act in dancing, try to depict something, and keep the facial expression in harmony with the movements of the arms and legs. " AIL our most effective English dances of to-day spring from the clogs. The jingle cf movement is made more attraativ© by the jingle of sound. The first faiily recent revival of this rhythm of sound in dancing occurred in ' A Country Girl. 3 There was a jig there for Miss Topsy Sinden.. and by my advice she had little wooden soles tacked on to her shoes, and tho dance went enormously every night for two years."