The Art of Stage Dancing

place in their ceremony of worship. Moses bade the children of Israel dance after the crossing of the Red Sea. David danced before the Ark of the Covenant. The Bible is replete with instances showing the place of the dance in the lives of the people of that time. Greece in its palmy days was the greatest dancing nation the world has ever known. Here it was protected by priesthood and state, practiced by rich and poor, high and lowly born. One of the nine muses was devoted to the fostering of this particular art. Great ballets memorialized great events; simple rustic dances celebrated the20 coming of the flowers and the gathering of the crops. Priestesses performed the sacred numbers; eccentric comedy teams enlivened the streets of Athens. Philosophers taught it to pupils for its salutary effect on body and mind; it was employed to give soldiers poise, agility and health. The dance was undoubtedly among the causes of Greek vigor of mind and body. Physicians prescribed its rhythmic exercise for many ailments. Plato specifies dancing among the necessities for the ideal republic, and Socrates urged it upon his pupils. The beauty of harmonized movements of healthy bodies, engendered by dancing, had its effect on the art of Greece. Since the days of classic Greece, scenery, music and costume have created effects then undreamed of, but notwithstanding the lack of incidental factors, the greatness and frequency of municipal ballets, the variety of motives that dancing was made to express, combine to give Greece a rank never surpassed as a dancing nation. The Greek stage of this age was rich in scope, and for its effects drew upon poetry, music, dancing, grouping and posing. Then came the Dark Ages of history, and in a degraded world dancing was saved and taken under the protection of the Christian church, where it remained for the greater part of a thousand years. The vehicle that carried the ballet through this period was known as the "spectacle." These sacred spectacles, in grouping, evolution, decoration and music, possessed qualities that entitle them to a respectable place in the annals of opera ballet. The steps were primitive, but they sufficed for the times. However, the organization of the first real opera ballet conforming to standards of modern excellence did not come till the latter part of the fifteenth century, when21 Cardinal Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, composed and staged a number of important ballet productions. But the greatest development of the modern type of ballet received its impetus under the reign of Louis XIV of France, who founded the national ballet academy at Paris in 1661, and often played prominent parts himself. Under this influence great performers began to appear, artists whose work, by grace of beauty alone, attested that perfection in ballet technique was approaching." - --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.