June AwouT the rites of ancient man grew ceremonials which required the rhythmic motion of the human body, the symbolic; representation of periodicity, Tite and death, of summer and winter, of abject sorrow and sublime happiness. This was the dance, something religious, something individual, always impressive and emotional, the forerunner of "music" and sculpture. To the ancient Greek, the dance was the highest form) of art, just as in Europe, perhaps just a little later, the dance was the centre of pagan religion. The Maypole of England is a vestige of these ancient dances, just as in Russia'
spring and autumn, the ants leap to glory in their mai vellously expressive dances, The dance became formal as became less a part of religious tual and more a matter of soe intercourse. But matter how formal 4 dull and [fixed li manners the dowagers of any period tried to keep it, dance always reflected the, ter of the age and the chology" of the dancers.
us. the Virgina reel was) lever the free and happy. dance jof the wealth of the South before the Civil War, which {blasted the hopes of. southern Jociety; while the minuet was the formalistic ritual. of a Europe certain of its serenity calm and. measured—and me cidentally on the verge of terrific revolt against all forms.
American art. when distinctively Americ revolt against Anglo-Saxon Jazz, the only tie "American. music, jis Negro-Hob in origi Te is the wailing of the negro siti composed by synagogue Cantor's sons like Irving Berlin, which The ballads of the of the West are Afro-Indian generation, the old dances were too round, so that one could; not do as he pleased: he had do as his ancients did, which utterly impossible in an age when the babies are older than their parents and the flappers know more about the _science of life than their grandmothers garnered in decades experience, So came a period of wild] dances, the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot, the Fox Trot, and finally, the Charleston. The Char-lesson is little less than the skipping, clog dance of the negro of {the plantations. Every American, who has lived among negroes, Jought to be able to do the Charleston, although when negro dances it, it is art; when the "whites" imitate them, it is often as horrible as a cabaret} dancer's burlesque of the To the negro the dance and music is life. Besides that, he knows little of form. There are no great negro painters or negro] sculptors, but the African can Jsing and dance. He needs no musical knowledge; he needs ho teachers. He dances as 4 Hawaiian swims, as _an Alpine climbs mountains. When he listens to jazzy music, he simply cannot make his feet behave and his pedal mations are ex sive, Charleston has captured n youth and perhaps; the youth of European countries fora while because of its perfect individualism and freedom. One does exactly as one pleases. One skips about, one jigs, one hops, the toes are turned in and' the heels out, the partner is whisked about in any old fashion"—it is the way they think in these days. In the Charleston anything is good enough and no one minds unless 8 few shins are scratched or an ankle broken. Nothing matters until the roof of the building comes down from too much! banging and trampling. Then there is a momentary' protest] against the care-free spirit of the imes—and on they go.
As the dances of the Greeks represented them, so the Cha lesson represents the times in which we live. Prohibition was} forerunner of the Charleston, but it is intellectually much of, the same stuff, for prohibition be viewed by the philosophic rian not as that minority Jaction which voted alcohol from, the American diet, but rather, that—individual " lawlessness, which turned every hip pocket! into a decanter and mad what used to be romantic} for lass and swain into lated orgies. Prohibition the petting parties] Is, who} leave the class-rooms to marry, only to repent before the lights]
out in the dormitories. Pr hibition is the Charleston of; the mind, just as much of the theological thinking of the South jand Middle West of the United States is a sort of emotional: Charleston based upon the fears for sins unborn. To Europeans, such an event as the Scopes di trial represents a curious effort, of society to prevent thought] for no one is more oppressive of rs than the extreme individualist, who will not conform formalities and yet derides the world which differs from him. The intellectual Charleston, which bases its faith, on ignorant e, which regards; all learning as the tool of the devil and which knows only the Bible of the Hebrews, forgetting everything, the cynic might be {tempted to say, but those things which the Ten Commandments prohibit.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.