DANCE IS LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 3 January 1930, Page 13

DANCE IS LIFE.

Modern Dancing And Its Future.

(Written for the “ Star ” by

ANNA PAVLOVA.)

I know the whole world, and I do not think there is one capital on earth where I have not danced at one time or another. But I love my native land Russia, and sometimes it gives me a pang when I think that I cannot revisit it. But I am used to my nomadic life, and so I travel unceasingly from one country to another. I began my career a few months before the war. By that I imply my career in foreign countries, becau.se, as it happened, my first tour abroad, took place at that time. The Russian Ballet, and the trend of modernism in the ballroom had fired the imagination of the period, and many will remember the enthusiasm evoked by the Russian dancers in Paris directed by Serge Diaghileff, who died recently. It was a revolution in the old traditional ethics of dancing that had held sway for so long. The Russian Ballet became popular from then. Diaghileff gained his first greatest victories in his Paris productions. Certain rumours have circulated from time to time recently to the effect that from now onwards I only intend to devote myself to the theory of dancing. This is entirely without foundation, for on the contrary I have made interesting plans of activity which I hope to realise. I do not intend to abandon the theatre, and though I have published some of my memoirs, a few slight episodes of my life, those collected incidents cannot be termed my whole memoirs. They are so incomplete. I still have a long time to live, and I believe I shall yet gather many more souvenirs on the way that will be worth recording when I sit down to write the true story of my life. The Future of Modern Art. It is not very easy to solve problems regarding the future of modern art. I think two widely divergent opinions pxist in this connection. There are two aspects; two points of view. The first is the artists’, the second is that of the public. Those two viewpoints spring from opposing poles, as it were. There are artists and members of the public who have great aversion against all modernism; whereas another school of thought only wants modernity in all forms of art. Modernism and antimodernism can only be understood by analysis, though even that process has yet to bring divergent ideas closer together. But at least the cause and effect of them can be investigated in the hopes of obtaining one gleam of light here and there, even if the whole situation cannot be made clear at once. Experience is one of the most important things that develop an art. Art follows the trend of life. As a mandeveloped world progresses according to invariable laws of evolution, progress in the arts evolves on the same lines. When an artistic experiment gains the public’s sympathy and approbation it can be called a success. It was worth attempting, because general sympathetic approal is one of the strongest powers to keep form alive; artistic tendencies arising to satisfy the cultural need of a few can only survive with its support. Should an experiment fail in its object and remain an isolated example, then that channel should be abandoned and another adopted. Consequently, I do not believe experimental attemnf.R in new forme anH internrota.

tions can possibly be harmful to art as a whole. On the contrary. We profit by our mistakes. One must try this and that until one attains a result that gives ultimately satisfaction. This problem of experimentation is a burning actuality, and never in the history of arts has a crisis, revolution turning-point—call it what you will—created such widespread preoccupation as to-day. The First of the Arts. The first step, life in its beginnings, was movement—gesture. Dance was the original, primitive movement, the first of the arts, unconscious of itself as it came to life. Dance is the foundation, the beginning of all the other arts, and so dancing of to-day is said to be affected by the crisis of our times. There are difficulties; it is inevitable. But there is no actual crisis in choreographic art. In fact, I believe the crisis in the other arts is much exaggerated. The explanation for much confusion is that we are living in a revolutionary epoch full of effervescence, when the tastes of men change from one day to the other. So it follows as quite a natural and logical sequence that everyone desires to satisfy those changing tastes. That is perhaps why so many people discount the art of bygone times saying it was no better than the art of the present day. A Wide Appeal. But creative art follows immutable laws, and what was an artistic production five thousand years ago remains so to-day. Possibly the said work may not awaken the same sentiments that it did at the time of its production, but that only constitutes a slight change which does not modify in any way the principal fact. Dancing appeals to all, which is easy to understand when one considers its origin. Like the cinema it is a form of democratic art and for that reason has a great future ahead of it. We must remember that we live in an age of tremendous activity. Our times have lost the tranquility of past epochs, and following the general trend our contemporaries develop a taste for movement, and rapid change. Art wifi not remain at a standstill. More and more will it incline to new form, new movement, new experiments It is a mirror of contemparary life, and our modern dancing is a lovely, vivid thing in its state of flux, in its rhythm, reforms, and novel experiments and it will express the whole life of our century. (Anglo-American N.S. Copyright.)