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Page 32
The ballet at the present time is in a state of chaos owing to
this double origin. Its external motives--the expression of love
and fear, etc.--are too material and naive for the abstract ideas
of the future. In the search for more subtle expression, our
modern reformers have looked to the past for help. Isadora Duncan
has forged a link between the Greek dancing and that of the
future. In this she is working on parallel lines to the painters
who are looking for inspiration from the primitives.
[Footnote: Kandinsky's example of Isadora Duncan is not perhaps
perfectly chosen. This famous dancer founds her art mainly upon a
study of Greek vases and not necessarily of the primitive period.
Her aims are distinctly towards what Kandinsky calls
"conventional beauty," and what is perhaps more important, her
movements are not dictated solely by the "inner harmony," but
largely by conscious outward imitation of Greek attitudes. Either
Nijinsky's later ballets: Le Sacre du Printemps, L'Apres-midi
d'un Faune, Jeux, or the idea actuating the Jacques Dalcroze
system of Eurhythmics seem to fall more into line with
Kandinsky's artistic forecast. In the first case "conventional
beauty" has been abandoned, to the dismay of numbers of writers
and spectators, and a definite return has been made to primitive
angles and abruptness. In the second case motion and dance are
brought out of the souls of the pupils, truly spontaneous, at.
the call of the "inner harmony." Indeed a comparison between
Isadora Duncan and M. Dalcroze is a comparison between the
"naturalist" and "symbolist" ideals in art which were outlined in
the introduction to this book.--M.T.H.S.]
In dance as in painting this is only a stage of transition. In
dancing as in painting we are on the threshold of the art of the
future. The same rules must be applied in both cases.
Conventional beauty must go by the board and the literary element
of "story-telling" or "anecdote" must be abandoned as useless.
Both arts must learn from music that every harmony and every
discord which springs from the inner spirit is beautiful, but
that it is essential that they should spring from the inner
spirit and from that alone.
The achievement of the dance-art of the future will make possible
the first ebullition of the art of spiritual harmony--the true
stage-composition.
The composition for the new theatre will consist of these three
elements:
(1) Musical movement
(2) Pictorial movement
(3) Physical movement
and these three, properly combined, make up the spiritual
movement, which is the working of the inner harmony. They will be
interwoven in harmony and discord as are the two chief elements
of painting, form and colour.
Scriabin's attempt to intensify musical tone by corresponding use
of colour is necessarily tentative. In the perfected stage-
composition the two elements are increased by the third, and
endless possibilities of combination and individual use are
opened up. Further, the external can be combined with the
internal harmony, as Schonberg has attempted in his quartettes.
It is impossible here to go further into the developments of this
idea. The reader must apply the principles of painting already
stated to the problem of stage-composition, and outline for
himself the possibilities of the theatre of the future, founded
on the immovable principle of the inner need.
From what has been said of the combination of colour and form,
the way to the new art can be traced. This way lies today between
two dangers. On the one hand is the totally arbitrary application
of colour to geometrical form--pure patterning. On the other hand
is the more naturalistic use of colour in bodily form--pure
phantasy. Either of these alternatives may in their turn be
exaggerated. Everything is at the artist's disposal, and the
freedom of today has at once its dangers and its possibilities.
We may be present at the conception of a new great epoch, or we
may see the opportunity squandered in aimless extravagance.
[Footnote: On this question see my article "Uber die Formfrage"--
in "Der Blaue Reiter" (Piper-Verlag, 1912). Taking the work of
Henri Rousseau as a starting point, I go on to prove that the new
naturalism will not only be equivalent to but even identical with
abstraction.]
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