The healthful art of dancing

Preface

In "The Efficient Life" and "Mind and Work" I discuss the truth and importance of the optimistic point of view, and among other things urge more attention to judicious exercise and the wholesome expression of ^lappy feelings. In this little book I aim to give a constructive treatment of one of the resources for the expression of the joy of life, a resource that is related to health, vigour, and beauty — dancing.

Luther H. Gulick.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Point of View .... 3

Division I — Conduct

Introduction

When we ask those who have studied the history of our kind, to point out to us the time and place in which human Hfe has been most brilHant and full, with extraordinary unanimity they tell us that during eight hundred years the people of Greece lived lives of unexampled attainment, and left a record in literature, poetry, drama, legislation, sculpture, which has never yet been even approached by any other people in any other period. When we turn to the records of this people and search the wi'itings of her wise men, in the endeavour to find the answer to the question as to what form of education it was which produced these balanced and brilliant lives, we are told that one of the fundamental and essential elements was dancing; that

INTRODUCTION

dancing which united body and soul in the expression of high emotion; that dancing which represented in social form those virtues which it desired to stamp upon the soul. These sages say that through these cadenced rhythms, these expressions of strong and virtuous emotions, that poise — mental as well as physical — becomes wrought into the tissue of character.

I

CHILDREN have always danced. Dance games such as "All Around the Mulberry Bush" have contributed their share of happiness in the lives of the children of the world.

Young people have always danced. The Virginia Reel, for example, has added its share of wholesomeness in the social relations of young people, and has revived in the memories of the old recollections of happy youthful relationships expressed through this group dance.

The peoples of the world have always danced. The feelings of a tribe, a people, are expressed in the war dances of the Indians, in the wonderful funeral dance pageants of ancient Greece. Seasons and weather; birth, marriage, and death; trades and professions — all the vivid parts of life have been represented by each people in a particular dance form.

Dancing is the most universal of the arts. Practically every one possesses the capacity of learning to express feeling through the dance.

Dancing is not only the most universal of the arts, but the mother of all art. Out of the rhythm of body-movements has grown the sense of rhythm and balance that underlies art as portrayed in music, sculpture, architecture, painting.

Dancing is a language, particularly of the feelings. Like other forms of language, it is a means, not an end; a vehicle, not a load; a possibility, not a value. It may express that which is good or that which is bad, the pure or the impure. The value lies in the "worthwhileness" of that which is said.

In America we have so completely forgotten the deeper possibilities of the dance that the word in general use has come to have but one meaning, namely, a man and a woman holding each other and performing an exceedingly simple whirling movement to music set in four-four or three-four time.

While our American nation includes in it representatives from most of the peoples under the sun, we possess less of the folk music, the folk dances, folk lore, folk games, folk festivals of the world than do any of the peoples of which we are made. The reason lies partly in that these folk expressions are social inheritances carried by a community as a whole; when individuals migrate the social customs are lost. But, whatever be the cause of our poverty in these directions, our need of social customs is great, and the growing movement toward a restoration of them in forms suited to the present day is promising.

I believe that America is to be the land of the greatest, most potential, and perhaps the last blending of human stock and also of social inheritances. Hitherto we have welcomed the wholesome individual or family immigrant and have magnified his economic value to us and our economic value to him; but we have not understood, cared for, or even thought about the precious social heritage that the immigrant might give us — a heritage of art, of story, of music, of the dance.

We are in the midst of a great movement to resurrect the valuable parts of the race inheritances. As an illustration of the extent to which the movement has already taken practical form let me mention that in New York City selected folk dances are now being taught to girls in the public schools as a required part of the curriculum, and that such dances were taught last winter (1908-1909) to over thirty thousand girls in the elementary schools. It will take but a generation of work in this direction to bring us again in full possession of our own.

The spread of the folk dance is significant because of the effect that it has upon the two-step and waltz. All over America the society dances are being modified; they are being made more elaborate, more interesting.

This book aims to present criteria and standards regarding the place of folk dancing in every-day American life — in the school, on the playgrounds and in the home. It aims to interpret the movement, to show that which is good and why it is good, and to indicate for the purpose of introducing this element into American life practical measures that experience has proved successful.

Some of the material here presented has already been used elsewhere under the following titles:

"Exercise Must Be Interesting," being the Presidential address read at a meeting of the American Physical Education Association held December 26, 1906; "The Place and Limitations of Folk Dancing as an Agency in Physical Training," a paper read before the Second International Congress of School Hygiene, held in London, England, August, 1907; "Dancing as a Part of Education," appearing in The World's Work, October, 1907; "Neuromuscular Coordinations Having Educational Value," appearing in the New York Medical Journal of October 17, 1908; "TJie Girls' Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League of New York City," an article in the Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Congress held in New York City, Septeniber, 1908.

Some of the discussions in the book overlap in subject matter, but I have allowed them to stand as they are because each one presents the subject from a particular and a different point of view.

If we can enrich childhood by giving to our children dance games; if we can give young people wholesome, interesting, and beautiful group activities; if we can add to the social resources for the leisure time of adults — then this movement for the resurrection of the folk dance will be worth while, for it will help to make life more vivid, happy, and wholesome.

Division I CONDUCT

II Happy Results of Rhythmic Play by New York School Children

THE history of the movement for dancing in the public schools of New York is as simple as it is short. In 1905 an organization was formed for the purpose of providing for the schoolgirls of New York what the Public Schools Athletic League was already providing for one hundred thousand schoolboys of the city — interesting and helpful recreation that would have a real part in their lives outside of school hours. It set out to cope with one

♦ This article, written in collaboration with Harry J. Smith, appeared originally in The World's Work for October, 1907. It is a general consideration of the folk-dance movement as initiated and carried out by the Girls' Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League of New York City. Details as to organization, principles, methods and results will be found in Chapter IV.

of the biggest problems of this city of cliffdwellings.

Manhattan children — and this is true of the children of all congested cities — have almost no place in which to play except the streets; but of all the children in the world, city children have the greatest need for healthy play. It is a matter of the very first importance that they should have a chance to gain muscular control and bodily dexterity — for the ordinary conditions of their life do not provide that — to say nothing of the vigour and stimulation that comes with right exercise to all the functions of the body — the work of stomach and heart, lungs and brain.

Five hours a day in the schoolroom, and then the crowded, ill-ventilated tenement or apartment house, with perhaps a game of tag or hop-scotch or jump-rope in the midst of the hubbub and dirt of the street, make up the life of the average city child.

Some school buildings possess gymnasiums and playgrounds, but out of school hours they do nobody any good. Here was the opportunity, if only the right form of organization and alliance with the educational system of the city could be secured. Such an alliance had already been secured by the Public Schools Athletic League, and the Girls' Branch followed. Under suitable provisions for control and regulation, the school board granted it the privilege of utilizing the splendid new gymnasium equipment.

The next question was one of method — how to get the best results out of the opportunity. Experience has demonstrated over and over again that a hundred children cannot be turned loose on a tiny city playground or on the floor of a gymnasium with any assurance of all being benefited by it. The benefit is never equally distributed. The stronger and bigger children will inevitably take possession, monopolizing the floor space for their games and athletic "stunts," while the shyer, more retiring, and less developed children will stand uneasily about the edges, looking on or playing some quiet, inactive game in a corner. Yet these are the very children who most need the exercise.

Organized play of some sort, play under control, is the only possible solution, for organized play is freer than "free play."

We are only beginning to learn what freedom means. It is not the privilege of doing, irrespective of everybody else, what one wants to do. That would make the tramp the ideally free man. Freedom lies in the recognition and joyful acceptance of relationships. In organized play, where every child is a unit in a larger, mutually responsible, and mutually responsive whole, all reach a higher and more significant stage of individual freedom than is possible on the unorganized, free-for-all playground.

The problem to be worked out, then, was to find the form of organized play which would bring the greatest amount of good to each child. Careful tests have proved that it could not be found in gymnastics. There one has the element of control, but it's not play. Gymnastics have their place, and an important one, in the routine of the school day. They offset some of the unavoidable, bad effects of the schoolroom life — the constant bending over desks which tends to produce rounded shoulders and narrow chest, the enforced bodily inactivity, the imperfect ventilation; but gymnastic exercises are primarily for the body. Play is for the whole child — for his heart, mind, and imagination, as well as for his arms, legs, and chest.

Play is far more important than mere muscular activity. It is the most natural and the most potent expression of the child's personality. The future lies in it.

When the proposal was made to take up dancing in the schools as an exercise for girls, three things were said in its favour, and all were worth considering. The first was that in the limited space of the gymnasium, the roof playground, or the school basement, a larger number of children could be handled at once in a dance than in any other way. The second was that in a given space there was more real, allaround physical exercise in dancing than in gymnastics or any team game. And the last was that in the few instances where it had already been tried elsewhere, the children had become enthusiastic about it. That was a strong argument; for it must never be forgotten that the object of the undertaking was primarily to develop the play spirit. Anything perfunctory would therefore defeat its own ends.

So the experiment was made merely as an experiment. A teacher was secured who loved the work and who believed in it, and a few after-school classes for little girls in the lower grades and for those in the grammar schools were started. A number of New York women of influence and posi Ion gave it their support. It needed that 1 ind of backing — moral, social, and financial — and such women as Miss Grace Dodge, Miss Catherine Leverich, Mrs. Clarence Mackay, and Mrs. James Speyer deserve a large share of the credit for the success of the enterprise. It was a new departure, and it took real conviction and hard work to win a place for it and to get it under way.

Less than a year has passed, but already the number of classes has grown to 68, and between two and three thousand children are getting instruction. More than 175 teachers, all of them from the regular staff of the public schools, have voluntarily taken hold of the work, without pay, giving up hours of their scanty leisure to it — and a New York teacher's out-of-school leisure is a precious commodity.

These classes come after school. The roof playground, high above the chimneys and dangling clotheslines of the neighbourhood, is a favourite place for them, unless the weather forbids. There is a piano up there that can be rolled in and out, and clear open air and sunshine — good things in New York — are all about.

As soon as school is out, the children come trooping up, laughing and expectant. Books, lunch-boxes, and wraps are thrown gaily aside; some of the more ambitious girls, who want to do the thing properly, hustle into tennis shoes and deftly hop out of their skirts, standing forth in *'gym" bloomers, the admiration of all eyes. Then the line is formed, the teacher gives a few directions, and the piano strikes up. It would be hard to describe the dances themselves. One has to see them to get an idea of the kind of spell they possess for the children — how every muscle of their bodies responds accurately and eagerly to the exhilarating, well-cadenced rhythm of the music; how the dancers move back and forth, gliding, hopping, or tripping, crossing and recrossing, now fast, now slow, according to some intricate scheme at which an outsider can only stare in wonder; with how much zest and abandon all the mimicry of the Swedish and Russian folk-dances is entered into — the slaps on the face (that do not slap), the quaint cajolery, the dignified ceremoniousness, the whole gamut of mimic social life.

The music, too, is always appropriate. It is the music that has grown up with the dance and belongs to it — the strange harmonies and peculiar rhythm of a Slavic chardos; the spirited, sharply accented air, with the bagpipe drone imitated in the bass, of the "Highland Fling."

The fun does not last for more than twenty minutes, and another group of girls, waiting their turns, take up the places of the dancers. But the children have something to carry home with them — a really significant experience. The noisy, crowded street and the dingy tenement will be happier places because of the healthy, fullblooded rhythm that still pulsates through their bodies — and through their souls, too ; for it means that they have a new feeling about life: it is "the little white bird" that is going to keep on singing in their hearts.

At least that is what those of us who have watched developments closely are beginning to believe. And if this is true in New York, the very storm centre of our civilization, the place where our national ideals are most relentlessly brought to bay, where every fallacy is most pitilessly forced to light in the working out of a new social order, then it is certain that the movement will reach out to the children of other cities as well.

For all those who have interested themselves in this new movement, it has been a revelation. The school-teachers who first volunteered to give up an hour a week of their precious time to learning folk-dances and to teaching them to squads of children did so because they thought it would be a good thing for the girls. Many of them have since declared that the dancing-hour is the hour in the week to which they themselves most eagerly look forward; that it does them more good, and somehow means more to them than anything else they have undertaken.

The ancient Greeks understood the significance of these things better than we. In their eyes the body and the mind were a unity, inseparable, interdependent, to be developed and perfected together, and in no other way. In the education of every Athenian youth, music, athletic training, and dancing had a part. The theory is beautifully stated in one of Plato's dialogues: "Rhythm and harmony are made familiar to the souls of the youths, that they may grow more gentle and graceful and harmonious, and so be of service both in words and in deeds; for the whole life of man stands in need of grace and of harmony."

Rhythm is a fundamental principle of life, perhaps the most fundamental. The stars swing through heaven in rhythmical relations with one another; the sea rises and falls in rhythm; the human heart keeps its measured pulsations in the very centre of our being. All our normal bodily functions work best in rhythm. In poetry, in music, in everything that man knows that

Courtesy of Miss Hinman Photog-raph by Florence Stevens

game: keys of Canterbury action: "o, sir, i will accept of you a

BROIDERED GOWN"

Courtesy of Miss Hinman Photograph by Fior/nce Stc

game: keys of canterbury action: "walking round holding up gown'

is highest and most beautiful, in all the supreme products of his imagination, there is still to be found some expression of this eternal principle.

Yet it is not the intellect, the part of us that understands, so much as it is the body, the part of us that feels, which responds and vibrates in the most vivid unison with this principle. And it is the body which has always first sought to show it forth, to make assertion of it, to put itself actively into sympathy with it.

Dancing is an expression of this desire. It is the most primitive of the arts. The rudest savages practise it, making it an essential element in every religious observance, in every festival of the tribe. Their emotions inevitably take form — give themselves concreteness and actuality — through the dance. Marriage, death, harvest, spring, rain, every stirring event of tribal existence is so celebrated. It is a universal language.

Now it is a commonplace of psychology that, after a fashion, every child repeats in his own individual development the long history of the development of the human race. He is the human race in miniature.

Logic would lead us to expect that the emotional life of the child would seek to embody itself in some of the same forms that are normal and instinctive to uncivilized peoples. And this is exactly what we find to be true.

Childhood is the time when the physical nature is most sensitive to rhythmical movement. Children love even the meaningless swing of

The words which the Australian uses in his tribal dances, so anthropologists tell us, often make no coherent sense at all; for everything has been sacrificed to the rhythmic accent.

Our modern little folk, so hilariously singing :

*'A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket,"

have no idea what those magic words may portend, or what they have to do with sending "a letter to my love. " That does not matter at all.

They can never keep still when the handorgan man comes around. It is a pretty sight to see a crowd of happy youngsters on the city street, dancing and skipping for joy about the hurdy-gurdy. And they invent dancing games and songs for themselves, this small race of poets and mimics, never minding what the sense may be, if only they get a chance for active rhythmical expression.

Surely this is the golden time in a man's life, if there ever is one, for the cultivation and development of this wonderful sense — a sense which, if it is once given its due, opens up many avenues into what is beautiful and noble.

So far the scheme has been formally adopted in New York only for girls. Whether, under present conditions, equally good results could be obtained in classes for boys is not altogether clear, though some of the more vigorous hornpipes and flings have been tried with them with great success. But there is the right moment for the beginning of any new movement. At present the schoolboys of New York have a highly organized system of athletic games which is bringing splendid results, both for those who are naturally athletic and for those who would keep altogether on the outside. An innovation may not be desirable at this time.

Neither is it yet certain just what dances will prove the best suited for our American conditions. Some of the spirited and chari

^g t vJH

Courtesy of Miss Hinman Photograph by Florence Stevens

game: keys of canterbury action: "and walk along with me anywhere"

Courtesy of Miss Hiinnan Plioto^rraph by Florence Stevens

game: three dukes a-riding action: "you're all too black and dirty"

acteristic folk-dances of Sweden and Russia have so far seemed to make the very greatest appeal to the children. Great care is always taken to have the accompanying music appropriate and distinctive, for the music and the dance are organically related.

Adaptations and changes there must of course be. The dances are intended to meet the needs of American children; they must relate themselves to American conditions; and much of their value would be lost through too strict an adherence to the traditional letter of the performance.

Our national temperament, enthusiastic and spontaneous, needs just such an outlet for its surplus emotional energy. But one thing is certain: any such growth must be from within. There would be small use in instituting a festival if there were no inner festival spirit. In the New Orleans Mardi Gras, in the Harvest Homes of some Western cities, with their pageants and ceremonies.

in the Carnival at Quebec, in the vividly remembered Dewey Reception in New York, in the religious and national observances of all European countries, we see rational and appropriate expression of this spirit.

There is every reason for believing that a country in which the children had been given a chance to develop their natural instinct for rhythmical and harmonious activity would have a national life far richer, deeper, and more beautiful than one where the main emphasis in education was upon bare intellectual training for the purposes of "practical success." It is at least worth thinking about.

Ill

THE PRACTICAL CONDUCT OF FOLK DANCING

AS A RECREATIVE MEASURE IN

A GREAT CITY

IN THE previous chapter a general account has been given of the work of the Girls' Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League of New York City. The subject is now to be discussed in a more technical and detailed manner. Folk dancing is here considered from the standpoint of a special set of conditions, namely, those surrounding the exercise and recreation of girls in the public schools of New York City.

When the subject is considered from other standpoints, for instance from the social standpoint, other dances than those indicated here will obviously be needed.

The Virginia Reel, while it possesses small value as exercise, does possess high social utility.

THE girls' branch OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ATHLETIC LEAGUE*

The problems involved in athletics for girls are far more difficult than are those that are involved in athletics for boys, because in connection with the latter there is a long history of experimentation which has demonstrated conclusively many important facts. Athletics for girls rest upon a relatively new and as yet to a large extent experimental basis.

The emphasis in the girls' athletic exercises is now chiefly placed upon those events in which classes or groups as a whole compete. The exploitation of the individual is generally avoided, both in dancing and

♦Prepared for the Second Congress of the Playground Association of America.

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1 1 k ^ in the athletics. Throwing the basket ball for instance is the only event in which the individual appears as such. It is believed by the ladies who are directing the work of the Girls' Branch that one of the most important lessons which girls need to learn — and one for which but small opportunity is afforded them for learning — relates to the nature and advantage of cooperation, of team work.

During practically all of woman's history she has been primarily identified with the home, rather than with the community. Her identification with the community has come through her husband and her children. Hence it has been both necessary and inevitable that those qualities which depend upon such individualistic action should have been most developed. But in the new era, which is already upon us, the same demands with reference to the larger movements of the community are being made upon women as have been made upon men; yet the same opportunities are not being given to women for learning the lessons of cooperation. Boys have their team games, their gangs, whereby in rough though effective way they learn the laws of united action in ways which hitherto have been closed to girls. The simple games advocated by the Girls' Branch depend upon the cooperative endeavours of a group of individuals and they are thus indicative of the newer movement that belongs to our century. The necessity for this work does not merely or mainly rest upon a demand for physical vigour, quickness, health, and skill developed by the exercises; it rests fully as much upon the moral qualities involved in the team play. The social aim is thus quite as prominent as is the physical one.

The contests are arranged between classes in schools. They are not performed in public, but are carried on either in private or before an audience of the school, consisting of the parents and friends of the contestants. In the development of athletics for boys public competition has been a large factor. Whether or not it will ultimately become equally a factor in athletics for girls it is as yet too early to say, but the conviction is very strong among the Board of Directors of the Girls' Branch that the time has not yet arrived for the general public display of competitive athletic sports. Exception was made in such a case as the exhibition for the playground congress, because in no other way did it seem possible to adequately propagate the idea which is back of the movement. But even there school was not pitted against school. The intense rivalries and jealousies which are so often aroused by such competitions, the exceeding exaltation of victory and the bitterness of public defeat were avoided. In the athletic sports of the girls, as well as in the folk dances which are characteristic of all the work done by the Girls' Branch, there are certain fundamental principles of selection. These are:

1. All the individuals shall take part.

2. No one individual shall be placed in a position which is so important as to render other individuals relatively subordinate.

3. The exercises shall be of a measurably all-round character, involving not merely all parts of the body, but they shall develop the qualities of skill, quickness of perception, readiness to meet emergencies, and the like.

During the early days of the Girls' Branch experimental work was carried on along three lines — athletics, gymnastics, folk dancing; and a careful record was kept as to their utility. It soon became evident that of these three, folk dancing was the most interesting; that by a judicious selection of dances a larger number of children could secure exercise in limited space and time than in either of the other forms of exercise; and that the folk dances afforded opportunity for cooperation with other activities of school and home in a way not afforded by either pf the other activities.

Gymnastics as compared with athletics showed similar differences, except when in the hands of teachers having exceptional skill and enthusiasm. The athletics proved to be the more interesting. The daily gymnastics of the children in the schoolroom seemed to be measurably adequate for the'accomplishment of the ends for which school gymnastics primarily exist, which are: to combat the effects of the sedentary life of the child and the effects upon posture of the school desk. Athletics, while they do not have in them those exercises that tend to correct tl^e effects of the school desk, do primarily affect the vital functions of respiration, circulation, and digestion in a way that is most benejScial. Accordingly the work of the Girls' Branch has centred upon athletics and folk dancing.