Drawing Room Dances 1847 XIX

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XIX.
LAST OBSERVATIONS UPON THE BALL-ROOM,
ORCHESTRA, ETC.

I shall conclude this volume by a few observations on certain details relative to dancing-parties, and which being immediately connected with the exercise of dancing and waltzing, come fairly within my competence. In these last remarks the reader will have the goodness to see nothing more than an address by a professor of the art to those who give balls, and must assuredly desire that the dancers and waltzers should appear with all their advantages.

Above all things I would recommend care in the choice of the orchestra, which can not be neglected without in a great measure destroying the effect of the new dances. This is of much less importance for the French country-dance, which readily enough accommodates itself to any sort of time, provided it does not actually oppose the execution of the steps. But it is not the same with the mazurka, the waltze à deux temps, nor even the polka, the success of which often depends upon the impulse given to the dancers by the orchestra. A waltze played too slowly or too quickly, or a mazurka badly emphasized, lose all their fascination, whatever may be the zeal or the talent of the dancers.

A ball-room orchestra is intended not to exhibit itself, but the talents of the waltzers. If the musician suffers himself in the least to be carried away by the movement of his own waltzes, he destroys all the harmony of a ball.

Another care, which may seem over-minute to those who have not been addicted to the practice of the waltze, and which yet should not be neglected, is the state of the ball-room floor. The waltze à deux temps requires a floor rather slippery, which seconds the movements of the steps, and permits the waltzers to execute their course without the least obstacle. The mazurka, on the contrary, should not be attempted on a too slippery surface; if the dancers are placed on a floor recently waxed, they run the risk of losing their equilibrium, and can not in any case display the precision and the vivacity demanded by the character of the dance. The best way is to give the dancers a floor that, without being waxed, should at least be perfectly even, which reconciles at the same time the demands of the waltze and mazurka, and present a sort of neutral ground whereon either dance may be freely executed.

I have often known certain of my pupils pass for skilful waltzers in the room of my academy, and execute with facility the greater part of the evolution of the waltze and other dances, yet when they wished to exhibit their talents to the world, feel themselves disconcerted, lose in part their self possession, and in fine prove as much pupils at their first debut. This deception has depended not merely on the difficulties growing out of public assemblies, on the crowd, on the mingling of couples, on the management of strange partners, but frequently also upon those peculiar obstacles, that I have thought it right to point out here, as the result of my professional experience. A floor too much, or too little, polished, an orchestra too slow or too rapid, are sufficient in part to paralyze a waltzer already skilful, and are injurious even to the most experienced. Hence I have felt myself authorised to make these two points the subject of particular recommendation.

Finally,—and always with the same view to the advance of the art—I will venture to express another with frankness, and even in all simplicity, and that is for the enlargement of ball-rooms. Those new dances, of which I have been endeavouring to detail the character,—what do they become when they are closed up in the narrow space so often allotted to dancers and waltzers? The French country-dance has perished above all for want of room; the other dances are destined to the same fate, unless arrangements are made to allot them at least a portion of the required space.

In forming this wish for the enlargement of the ballrooms, I assuredly do not expect that Parisian drawing-rooms will on the sudden assume the new dimensions; but is there not a simple mode of giving greater extent to the ball-rooms by resolving not to admit more dancers than they can reasonably contain?

I have been assured that in many large foreign cities,—Vienna and Milan amongst others—it is the custom at every ball to nominate a conductor, charged with the regulating and organizing of every relative to the execution of the dances; for example, to prevent the couples from crowding together in the same room, when the other rooms of an apartment remain deserted—to take care that the space reserved for the waltzes is not encroached upon—to prevent a strange couple from mingling in a mazurka already prepared, and necessarily limited to a certain number of dancers—and many other details, which can be confided only to a person especially charged with the discipline of the dances.

Is it not desirable that a similar custom should be introduced into France? It would perhaps be the only means of putting an end to that monstrous fashion of dancing-mobs. A ball would no longer—so to say—be left to itself; it would be regulated by a person charged with a particular responsibility, and who would have to establish that order which is so essential to the comfort of every one.

These observations have been made to me by several of my pupils, who have been the first to feel the necessity of introducing such reforms into the generality of balls. I do no more than speak in their name, and present on their part a sort of collective protest. May then some persons of fashion patronize the remarks that I have ventured to make. Their adoption would profit all, not only the dancers and waltzers themselves, but also the professor of dancing, who would no longer dread seeing his work destroyed at parties, from the time that his pupils did not find themselves placed in public upon a more disadvantageous ground than on the humble floor of an academy.

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