Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1900 — THE PALACE OF THE DANCE. [ARTICLE]

THE PALACE OF THE DANCE.

One es the Most Attractive Features of the Paris Exposition. One of the unique features of the World’s Fair at Paris is the Palace of the Dance, which is described and pictured by Jean and A. Castaigne in the Century, in the first of a series of papers on amusements at the. Exposition. It represents a sight which all, without regard to nationality, can enjoy. But as interesting as the idea itself is the manner of carrying it out. We are not given a reptition of the great chorographic spectacles that we can see in London or New York, nor a duplicate, necessarily inferior, of the artistic ballets of the Paris operahouse. with their quadrilles of dancers trained to the dance from the age of twelve, and their stars of princely income. No; at the Palace of the Dance the rare opportunity offered by the advent es an exposition has been seized upon to put before the public the dances of different countries and epochs. In the P;ilace of the Dance the Orient is revived in the bayaderes of India. Here the dances possess only a spectacular merit, and. like most of the Oriental dances, can be admitted on a European stage only after having been greatly modified. Clothed iu wide silken trousers of striped pattern that reach to the ankles, which are encircled by golden bracelets, and with the bodies cpvered with a mantle of soft and transparent texture that is drain'd alKiut them with great art, the bayaderes mimic, to the strains of slow and monotonous music, lovescenes, avowals, coquetry and refusals. The characteristic charm of the Hindu dances lies in the fact that the body alone has part In them, the head, arms and lower limbs having no share. England shows her well-known clowns and her adroit, quick jigs. Bussin, flat-faced dancers, who leap and pirouette, strike the floor with their heels, and, crouching run across ’the stage, while the rest of the troupe slug, utter screams, and, at times, raise their shoulders in a curious movement. Italy appears with the Tarantella of the happy borders of the Gulf of Naples, and with a rural dance, the l’ecoree, wherein figure shepherds stepping to the sound of.rustic pipes. Spain comes and triumphs. The crowd is never tired of gazing at Its well-known dances. The Fandango is shown with nil Its seductive grace; the Bolero is more noble, more reserved; a woman dances a Cachucha on a table; and there is given a Guarncha, to be seen now only on the stage. If America has not sent her negro dangers, at least she triumphs in Loie Fuller, with her inimitable Fire Dance. This is the boldest and most marvellous invention that has ever appeared iu spectacular dancing In any epoch. The splendor of tire “Arabian Nights’’ pales before the sumptuous magic of lids body about which beat innumerable waves of flame, unceasingly renewed. Between tho dreamworld nnd the reality, Loie Fuller peoples the darkness with never-to-be-forgotten apparitions.