V. V. Rozanov Dances of Innocence (Isadora Duncan)
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I wrote it incorrectly, inaccurately - from timidity...
I should say - "The Dance of Innocence", but you are so afraid of this "Orthodox" waving of your hands, shouting: "what are you? where are you going?" - that you involuntarily bend your head, speak not in your own words, you want to miss your real thought even under someone else's sauces.
And since the reader is no longer afraid of the title "Dances of Innocence" - for, for example, the" dances "of the 4th grade institutes are, of course," innocent", and even every archpriest will agree with this - I can now, when the reader has not abandoned the newspaper issues from one" outrageous title", say that I want to talk not about" dancing " at all, but about dancing, jumping, jumping, which at the same time are deeply innocent, pure, natural, naive.
Of course, not in kind, but in the simulation.
Ie the nature of the person who does it can be "slutty" (this is a concession to the Archpriest), on Ms. Duncan's I know absolutely nothing - but what is it that mimics that raised it - pure, beautiful, innocent, albeit represents the running and jumping the women in that "innocent suit," which we assume only the figures and absolutely unacceptable nature, in vision in a living man.
And here Duncan was in front of a thousand men and women in a stuffy hall of the Maly Theater (St. Petersburg)... an extraordinary sight.
But I'll start from the beginning.
The name Duncan has already thundered all over the world, and there seems to be no magazine and newspaper that would not write about her, there is no writer and, especially, a painter who would not pronounce his judgment about her.
So, actually, "the topic is exhausted", but - in the sense of the results, merged into a generally intelligent rumor.
It seems to me that I will not repeat anything from this "rumor", since I looked at Duncan from my own special points of view, expressed in my many years of writing about gender and about those parts of human culture that are connected with gender, and since I considered Duncan and studied her dances exactly as if I had seen them for the first time, as if this spectacle had appeared for the first time.
True, I saw her three or four years ago, when she first appeared in St. Petersburg, but, due to the unbearably high prices, I was sitting somewhere in the twentieth rows of the huge hall of the Conservatory and, like 7/10 of the audience, I absolutely did not see anything except the silhouette of a woman rushing around the stage, not seeing all the details of the movement, not seeing in particular the face.
And, like these 7/10, I did not draw any conclusion about the spectacle and did not dare to object when a wave of rumor rolled in the huge mass that "antiquity has nothing to do with it, and the bait is in the naked body of a woman", for which "everyone runs" and pays a lot of money for it (a chair of 20 rows cost more than 7 rubles).
I think that this opinion was formed precisely in those 7/10 of the public who did not really see anything, and in that other audience, even more numerous, who did not see Mrs. Duncan at all, but already judged by rumors, in which the main and truthful part was that she "jumps" and that she is "half naked".
"Ah, we understand!
- the listeners twirled their moustaches and stroked their beards, they also, - we understand! "
And then the archpriests waved to them with their heads: - Do you understand?!
* * *
I was now sitting in the 2nd box of the 1st tier from the stage, and even without binoculars I could clearly see all the little things.
The hall was full: and I do not deny that among those who go to see Duncan for the first time, that is, who have not seen her at all and have no idea what she is doing, there is this motive - to see a half naked woman on the stage.
There were a lot of unintelligent, rude and flat faced people in the huge crowd that was beating around the ticket office, which was mostly rejected for lack of tickets.
But, I repeat, this is a crowd from the street, who fought in front of the theater and did not enter the theater.
These are "our crowd", "Russian crowd", before Duncan and without Duncan.
Since my subsequent arguments will be conducted from the point of view of the history of culture, it should be firmly noted that the impulse to "look at a naked woman" is precisely our impulse, the impulse of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Russia, maybe even Europe - the impulse and willingness to "pay anything" to look at a dancing woman in such a form, in such undressing, as "you will not see anywhere else and for cheaper".
- "I'll take a look.
And then I'll scold, I'll create a moral, "- the most Russian judgment, "a man on his own mind"; and, probably, it mainly raised and rolled the huge rumor about Duncan.
The audience was calm; young and in old age, half male and half female.
But I did not see at all those decrepit old men with a paunch and a drooping lower lip, such as you see at shows with the expected "nudity".
Binoculars and in general greed for the expected, this "my hidden greed", was not felt and was not in the hall.
I was there twice in a row; the first time, almost the entire first row of chairs, right in front of the ramp, was occupied for some reason almost exclusively by women a little over middle age, calm, educated, without "toilets".
There were several military youth, several students; there were mothers with teenage daughters, and in general there were teenage students, obviously brought by their parents.
In the 2nd row of chairs, I saw the beautiful figure of Mr. Stanislavsky, and when I asked, they told me that he had attended all the performances of Mrs. Duncan, without missing a single one.
It seems to me that this alone is worth a lot: the founder of the Art Theater, of course, knew what to watch; of course, he is a man of thought and a high taste assessment.
But the whole audience was clearly smart and serious...
As you know, all dances are accompanied by music.
The first evening was accompanied - at least part of it - by ancient music, this slow string music, so beautiful, so special.
The fingers took the strings, and these waves of sounds that raced tactically through the hall somehow instantly transferred the soul to the ancient temples, to the ancient folk collection (Greek), where figures in chiton and togas moved, where the hairstyles were different, the hair was darker, the eyes darker than ours, the faces were more elegant, how much more elegant than ours!
With annoyance, I looked at the stage covered with gray or greenish cloth, thinking: why didnot you think to put a smoking altar somewhere?
I liked this first evening of "classical music" much more than the second evening of "new music", where Beethoven and Chopin were played, although they were still illustrated with classical dances.
And here comes Duncan.
In ballet, as it is and is accepted , the dancer always flies out of the wings already dancing and rushes around the stage dancing and dancing.
This is both tedious and monotonous, and somehow does not contain a thought.
Duncan appears somewhere to the side and at the very back of the stage and walks for a long time along the back wall of it, near the hanging cloth, separating little from it.
Something modest and sweet, not rushing to your eyes, not in a hurry to jump out.
Meanwhile, the music continues; and here is a given place of it, a given beat, from which everything "begins", and Isadora Duncan begins.
Yes, this is not "dancing"!
- the deepest heterogeneity!!
Both at balls and in ballet everywhere in our dance the main thing and almost everything belongs to the legs.
That "dance" is some kind of" exercise of the legs", there is a poetry of the movement of the legs and" legs", is an axiom; but, it turns out, only of our time, and this was shown by Duncan by the resurrection of an ancient dance.
With us, everything belongs to the legs and "legs" - the male heel that beats the beat, and the female sock, on which the ballerina rises or circles around.
"Ballerina" and "toe of a shoe" are inseparable concepts: it is impossible to imagine a ballerina without this "toe of a shoe", about which if you start thinking, you will definitely not come up with anything: a sock and a sock - nothing more, neither forward nor backward.
Further, Pushkin writes about the famous Istomina in " Onegin":
Then the camp will sow, then it will develop
And a quick leg beats a leg.
And a few earlier than these lines:
One foot touching the floor,
The other is slowly circling, -
And suddenly a jump, and suddenly flies,
It flies like fluff from the mouth of Aeolus.
These are two elements of ballet, that is, improved, virtuoso dance, which is not reached by "ordinary mortals" at balls.
One, it is a circling around the sock when the feet of a ballerina posed to one another at right angles, as the flattened two legs of a compass and the other element is the first case to direct fragile leg, and the back of the head to the toe ballerina legs raised figure of her is one horizontal line, put on another, the vertical, that is standing on the floor on the foot...
But, Oh, my God!
- what does all this mean?
That it is difficult we can agree with this: the big toe should be some kind of bone or turn into one piece of corn.
But what does all this mean or express?
It's amazing, but is it beautiful?
- even this is difficult to answer!
The audience is surprised by the difficulty of movements, the unnatural almost perverted positions of the body, because the body itself will never accept these positions, and the ballerina never accepts them for herself.
Alone and in an empty room, she will never start dancing like this!
This is all danced for the audience to occupy someone and surprise someone.
This is so not a natural dance, or rather, in this dance, nature has forgotten about itself to such an extent, so died in itself, that it is even surprising!
It is contrary to nature ascetic, this ballet; and at the same time - like everything ascetic sensual: for what can this leg raised to the height of the waist and even higher, which the slowly spinning ballerina turns with her toe to the audience, mean?
According to the choreography, maybe this means something, but the audience sees only a half reclining virgin nymph, who turns to them the most intimate places of her body!..
Nekrasov did not write about this moment for nothing: "take binoculars and look."
Although everything is hidden in a cloud of muslin and tulle...
Ballroom dancing is an eternal "pas".
The legs write patterns while the cavalier's hand covers the lady's waist, and the lady's elbow is placed on the cavalier's arm, on his forearm.
An embrace is not an embrace, but something similar; some kind of frozen, halted embrace that did not move further - while the legs are rushing in a dizzying "pa".
Started with the hands, but stopped because they are visible, and continued with the feet because they are not visible.
Everything is filled up with music, and even it is only essential in the dance: it "speaks" for the gentleman and the lady, transmits to each other their mutual excitement, quite significant.
There is a lot of movement and energy in the dance.
But pay attention: the upper half of the body, above the waist, both the gentleman and the lady - froze; the arms, chest, neck, head, the whole figure absolutely motionless, as if numb, and the face is often completely senseless, soulless, without imagination; all the energy has descended below the waist: there is a huge, impetuous movement ...
Everything is made up for by the indispensable cleavage of the lady - this alluring half closing, half opening of exciting, passionate, sensual parts of the body and figure.
Something, in general, everything annoying, unfinished, begun, torn off, not daring, wanting...
And it can not be said that these desires were pure.
All the "truly Christian pleasures" - both dancing and ballet! ...God, how could it be otherwise?
- because they have developed a civilization, the taste and tone of the ages, secret tastes and sophisticated taste utonchennaya Natur!
"So put the arm, the chest must be dekolirovaniya", "hands in gloves, at least to the elbow"; but where the hand is sensitive, i.e., above the elbow to the shoulder, and the shoulder and a white neck, the strong, chiseled - all of which should be open, all must breathe into the face of the man.
And a man should be tight fitting, so that his lithe, slender figure is visible to the whole woman; a woman is always more impressionable to a man's figure than to his face.
She only gets acquainted with the face, but then she feels the figure, compressed, firm, strong, domineering.
This is a tight fitting tailcoat, frock coat,uniform.
No more of those draping folds...
A European in a tailcoat.
And the ancient one went in a toga, where the figure is not visible at all!
* * *
And then Duncan comes out with bare feet.
She is not beautiful; although in portraits her face is beautiful, "classic", but in nature it is a typical, intelligent, intelligent Englishwoman, an American Saxon blood, from which how can classical features grow?!
No, an ordinary face with a German fold, without a single classical line in itself.
The hair lies well, with this Greek simplicity and Greek beauty.
When they are half lowered, it is also good; but this is a simple repetition of statues and drawings on vases and coins.
Everything is fine there.
The legs are really bare, and a translucent chiton of gray or sluggish yellow, rather dirty or ashy, makes it possible to see the leg up to the knees, even when it is motionless.
They are gnarled, thin, strong legs, with bad skin, not clean and not at all white.
Why didnot she powder or whiten them?
Cosmetics are so countless.
But, in fact, she did not put anything on them; and women are so ticklish about the beauty of their legs!
And the face is ugly, and the legs are not good at all: European, German legs, which earn their bread by ancient art.
Duncan is wearing the well - known chiton of "Artemis on the Hunt", i.e. an almost man's shirt tied with a strap to the knees, which splits into right and left halves above the waist, fitting the sides and part of the chest and back, but in such a way that two huge triangle cutouts leave a third of the back and a third of the chest completely naked.
The chiton itself is very light, made of cambric or something like that; but since it is pulled into folds to the belt, folded into folds, everything is generally closed and even opaque below the waist and up to the top of the hips (but only up to the top).
But only the torso is hidden and completely invisible, i.e. the entire abdominal and pelvic part of the figure.
Moreover, it was not hidden intentionally: but as the shirt was naturally wider at the bottom, and in general it was wide for Artemis, then everything fell by itself so that neither Artemis's dog, who helped her in night hunts, nor the audience in the Maly Theater could see anything.
But below the torso, the croup, even when motionless, the whole body, the hips almost to the stomach, completely shone through the chiton, giving you to see all the beauty of the beautiful human figure in general, the best figure in the universe!
With this, the fact that man was created "the most beautiful of everything on earth", and Filaret does not argue.
Duncan said, " Here, look at me, here is a man!"
Modest, with ugly legs, without makeup - she was good!
A handful of powder thrown on yourself and, it seems, everyone would have shouted at her: "You say that a person is beautiful in himself, and yet you have been sprinkled with flour."
Everyone would have turned away.
And now everyone was greedily looking "just at a person".
I did not immediately notice, but when I paid attention, I was surprised to see that the loose shirt forms something like a bag near her right and left breasts, or maybe the bag again "by itself" formed near Artemis ' small virgin breasts, and since she was running through the woods and did not see anyone, it naturally did not occur to her that someone could see not only her full breasts, in full outline, but also the nipple darkening through the fabric of the chiton.
And when she didnot move very fast, those dark spots of nipples also moved slightly under the chiton.
"Well, full nature!"
I wondered from the box.
Not only ballerinas, but also any singers from any gardens will show anything, will let you feel anything; but for some reason, the nipple, exactly one of it, is never exposed for anything!
it must seem ugly - it's hard to explain otherwise.
For it is not "shyness" where all shyness is overstepped in general.
I donot know how to explain this law, a psychological law, I canot find it: because in general, after all, the infant's organ of nutrition, of course, cannot but be as sacred and pure as nutrition itself - it is completely equal to it.
Why, therefore, be ashamed?
The only possible explanation is that women themselves do not feel it beautiful, maybe they feel it repulsive, too physiological.
But Artemis did not reach these wisdoms, and Duncan, without exposing or hiding, did not hide either the ugliness of her legs or her virgin nipples.
But her breasts are not lush and not beautiful.
However, she is not ugly either.
As is usually the case with girls.
During the dance, she never touched the edge of her dress with her fingers.
Some dances she led in a chiton, others - in peplos.
This is a long, almost to the ground, very wide garment, although also made of the finest material - in everything, like the ancients, in their excessively hot climate
There, no thickening of the tissues was impossible for the sake of the sun.
So, she never took even a fold of clothing with her fingertips , and did not lead it to the side, did not pull it, did not lift it.
This "itching of the hands" around "her dress" and more often around "her skirts" - which is so inherent in a new woman in everyday life, on stage, everywhere she never showed up.
The dress lay on her almost as if thrown on a chair, motionless, not causing any attention to itself.
She did not feel her dress, and psychologically, it was as if she had no clothes at all: she had no positive or negative attitude towards it.
I didnot" deal "with it and didnot"do anything with it".
It's just that Greece is not yet Africa: matinees, especially in the mountains, in the forest, are cold; and she threw some clothes on her shoulders, or something like clothes, a rag, a piece; but as soon as the feeling of cold passed, she completely forgot why it passed, and simply did not pay attention that she was already wearing clothes, and continued to behave as if these clothes were not there.
And now the sun rises, the ancient Helios (the lamp in the front corner of the stage, draped so that only the pouring rays of light are visible) ...
This leads her to such delight that she begins to jump towards the rays, as if catching them with her hands and throwing her legs high, as if she wants to capture the ray into her very being with them.
"I love you, the Sun, and I swallow your rays, - the source of life in me," her dances prayed, which were both physiological and vaguely spiritual, unclear, unaccountable.
But the belief of the ancients, which went back to the Chaldeans, was clear that " someday some girl will get pregnant from the Sun."
To do this, they climbed to the top of their seven tiered temple and spent the night there, meeting the Sun in the morning.
Small cuts of Duncan's chiton flew apart, she precisely covered the rays with her legs, slightly rounding them in motion, and threw them very high, almost above her stomach.
Everything became rough, strong, with terrible energy - and the thighs, very beautiful, were exposed in their entirety, almost to the croup.
Well, in the forest as in the forest: the Chaldean women did not stand on ceremony in Babylon, nor the Greek women on Helicon.
But there was nothing "deliberate", everything was in relation to the Sun… .
And these dances of a woman, both without powder and without tights, due to the lack of intent and intention, remained so innocent and pure, although at the same time they were physiological, as a girl's lonely bathing remains innocent and in general the whole physiology is innocent without a spectator.
"It was so, it was so necessary."
But this is one dance, the morning dance, before Aurora, before the" Golden Haired Eos " of the Greeks: all other dances were no longer physiological.
What did they express?
"So the plant grew and grew."
The girl also grew up, and also grew up.
A whole nation also grew up, like their myrtles, like the cypresses and olives there.
And this growth, the very feeling of growth, was deeply blissful, physiologically blessed.
Well, after all, taking a breath of air in the early morning is better than looking at a drawing by Raphael.
There is a special grace of physics, no less than any spirituality - especially when it is the first, when it is early.
Then there will be fumes and turbidity, chills and heat.
But the first breath is just nature?!
Here - you will spin, you will spin alone, without camaraderie, without choirs.
You do not dance because you have "learned" to dance; but you dance yourself, you invent a dance.
Duncan also showed these first dances, early as the morning, "first" as food and drink, "not invented" - also as drink and food, but started by themselves, from the physiology of man, from the self perception of man!
But where is the center of this sense of self?
The new dance places it, or, more precisely, indicates it, in the lower half of the human figure: the legs, hips, and pelvis are dancing, although draped.
But why is this so?
The self perception of even physiological happiness nevertheless occurs in the brain, in the soul.
"The chest rises" with happiness, "hands splash" with good news, eyes shine, or they also express horror, sadness, anger.
All expressions, all sensations occur in the upper half of the figure.
Accordingly, as we see on the countless remains of ancient vase paintings, on the bas reliefs of ancient sarcophagi, on ancient coins, the ancient dance was more a dance of the hands, neck, head, chest - the upper, not the lower person - than the legs: the legs only moved this dancing figure, almost as the wheels would move an actor - a little more, slightly more.
Hence, in the Duncan dance, there is a complete absence of our "pa", this all consuming "pa"; music and its beat are obeyed not by Duncan's legs, but by the whole Duncan, this dancing girl; most of all, her sensitive musical body, a line from the waist to the crown, follows the music.
That's what dances: the shoulders, chest, neck , - very much the neck, - and the head, in its light declensions and reclines.
The spirit of man, the ancient "psyche" of Hellas, is dancing.
Just as in a new dance, the legs do not remain calm for a minute - the anxiety is in the hips, in the foot of the leg - so Duncan's hands do not remain in the same position for two minutes: they are in a constant graceful movement, always in a pose, they dance, - mainly they!
And only when the girl's sense of self turns into a stormy delight , she throws up her legs, as in a meadow, as in a forest, wildly and innocently, until they are completely exposed, and, however, completely innocent!
It's beautiful and noble.
Nature is dancing - not fallen, primordial nature.
So the doe jumps around Diana.
So Duncan jumped in front of the Sun.
Why is it that her thighs are visible, that her nipples darken through the tulle?
It also does not confuse and does not worry, does not attract and does not repel, like a glacier crawling down a mountain.
Eternal and natural.
"Blessed is the God who created nature," you whisper to yourself.
And that's all.
And nothing else.
* * *
As a former teacher, the thought immediately flashed through my mind that all schools should be brought here, - making Duncan's dancing then the subject of scheduled explanations.
What does it mean to "explain the ancient world" without showing a single piece of the living ancient world?
Senselessly.
"In German" to the point of stupidity.
Duncan, through a happy thought, a happy guess, and then through painstaking and, obviously, long - term studies finally, through persistent exercises "in the English character", brought into the light of God to some extent the "focus" of ancient life, this dance of hers, in which, after all, the whole person is reflected, the whole civilization lives, its plastic, its music, its lines, its soul, its - everything!
She showed it, and it is impossible not to admire it.
Through the eye, through "experience", in "true English taste" and with the "English method", she made more than a hundred Kuehners, moved the matter of "classical education" more than all the Tolstoy, Leontiev and Katkov: for it is a big difference to read "about classical dances" in Lubker's "Dictionary of Classical Antiquities" and - see at least a cloth - covered stage, i.e. something disturbing, superfluous, and on it, after all, a Greek girl, a fan of Zeus and Artemis, who then, pulling a bow, he shoots arrows, then fights with the enemy like an Amazon, then just frolics in the meadow with an inexpressible grace of movements.
These beautiful raised hands imitating playing the flute, playing the strings (unfortunately, maybe with a mistake, Duncan imitated it without instruments in her hands), these hands splashing in the air, this long strong neck (the only beautiful part of Duncan), in her lance like bend I wanted to bow to all this with a lively classical worship!
Nothing muddy - everything is so transparent!
Nothing sinful - everything is so innocent!
Here's Duncan and the job she did!
Her personality and her school will play a big role in the struggle of the ideas of the new civilization.
How characteristic that it appeared at the moment of what can be called the "great revolution", moving from China to the Pyrenees, and the essence of which lies in some great dying of everything that was before, in the great birth of something new.
In the great round dance of peoples and individuals, parties of literature, which is conducted by one guiding star - " return to nature!
return to the natural! " - this brave girl goes unnoticed, a small figure, but necessary.
one thousand nine hundred nine
First published: "Russian Word".
1909.
The 21st of April.
№ 90.
Russian Russian philosopher Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (1856 - 1919) was a Russian religious philosopher, literary critic and publicist, one of the most controversial Russian philosophers of the XX century.
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