By what glaring ethical impropriety had a fly-by-night amour with a stranger in a draughty railway inn invested this woman with such chastened and spiritual a dignity?
I was fired with the preposterous fantasy that if woman has been the pack mule for the transgressions of man it is because by some alchemy of her actions, she is within herself incapable of sin. She undeniably behaves in all contingencies as if assured of a transcendental sanction.
DRAMA
CRYSTAL PANTOMIME
Everything is a black background — in front a beautiful slim maiden dances — all very white — tentatively towards a witch — all very hazy smoke grey — who teeter away from and towards each other — the witch enticingly — the maiden doubtfully — the witch holds in her hand a crystal globe.
High above them a tiny beam of light, supposed to be reflected from the moving crystal, plays fitfully on the black background — as the dancing beam on a ceiling cast from a diamond or mirror reflecting the sun. And attracted to this dancing beam a “creature,” a homunculus with propeller-like wings — as much like a blue bottle or a striped wasp as possible — bumps toward and away from the spot of light. This homunculus must be artificial, his wings whirring just like a fly’s, and the motion of quadrille imitating the to-and-fro darting of a summer morning housefly — which is one of the finest rhythms observable.
The dance of the maiden and the witch ends by the maiden deciding to gaze into the crystal.
The crystal begins to grow larger and larger (the homunculus disappears) until the round spotlight which has taken the place of the crystal becomes the whole scene.
The scene is circular instead of square — and represents the interior of a crystal globe with its curved planes and depths.
The maiden is now to see her life in the crystal and it is the story of the maiden’s future which is to be portrayed by the ballet. Only, as this maiden lived in the times when maidens waited at home while the youths went out into the world, it is rather the adventures of the young man that she will eventually marry — leading up to this, her future marriage, that the maiden will see in the crystal.
Her only appearances will be her meetings with him and her waiting — and at last her union with him.
The first scene is the village green — where little girls are dancing skipping rope and little boys are playing marbles while mixed groups play shuttlecock and battledore. The whole of the ballet takes place in a transparent crystal world — and the personages partake of this crystalline appearance, particularly their clothes and their hair. This gives an impression of ethereal beauty that cannot be equalled — and the ballet takes the spectators into an evanescent dream world so irreal and tenuous that it will take their breath away. The crystal shuttlecocks of bright colors are enormously big and the curves of the glittering skipping ropes are a great addition to the attitudes of the dance.
The shuttlecocks afford color motion up in the air — and the equally enormous glass marbles of the playing boys, a balance on the ground. The dance of the skipping ropes will be simultaneous to a leapfrog dance of the boys — the circular motion of the skipping ropes and the swift horizontal movements of the boys — who seem to fly across the stage when leapfrogging — as Nijinsky did in The Spirit of the Rose, giving an interesting modern rhythm. The subject of the ballet will appeal to everyone because, being so simple, the high-brows will enjoy it with that humorous compassion they afford for the souvenir sentiments and the general public will “get” it without effort. It is rich in possibilities as all simple eternal subjects are.
The maiden appears in this scene for she is the principal little girl with yellow glassy plaits tied with a blue ribbon. The little girls and the little boys mock one another in their play. But the principal little boy takes a shy notice of the little girl. He snatches her blue glass hair ribbon and offers the little girl his marble. The little girl scoffs at his attentions and, chucking the marble into the hollow of a nearby tree, dances off jeeringly while all the children dance and disperse. That is the end of the childhood recollection. The little boy looks at the blue ribbon he is holding and stuffs it into his pocket.
The scenes change while the crystal becomes cloudy. The nearer scenery is constructed of a transparent material like glass and the distant scenery is thrown onto the crystal planes by a kind of magic lantern — from the back if possible in order not to reflect on the dancers. The magic lantern scenery enhances the ethereal effect of unreal beauty.
The second scene is adolescence meeting at a country fair. One or two booths with fancy trifles which lend themselves particularly to bright glass colors — very much exaggerated in size — and diminished in number to give a decided decorating effect of composition — a little of the ridiculous that lends so much charm to ancient art and the sufficiency of a symbol to express a more complex actuality. There is at this fair an arbour of green glass trellis and climbing plant and in this arbour is a round table at which can be partaken of enormous glasses of vivid colored syrup.
The maiden visits the country fair chaperoned by her mother and grandmother. The grandmother is bent over a cane and dances with faltering steps. She wears a dolman cloak and ballet-dancer’s legs. The mother wears a pork pie hat tipped over her nose, carries a lorgnette and her ballet skirt is a draped bustle with a tail of bunched drapery such as hung down the back of bustle skirts — but the skirt is absent — the movements of her dance give the poker-swan-like effect of the period — only her slim legs are also in tights — there is no skirt — with her hanging draperies she gives the effect of a gracefully slim-legged bird with its tail dragging.
There is a dance of ceremonies of meeting and introduction. The youth invites the maiden and her maternal ascendants to partake of monstrous syrups in the bower. This incident is very brief — the grandmother and mother dance off rigorously with the maiden — who glances back once — and sees the youth contemplating the blue bow he stole from her when a child.
Later: Twilight falls — the fair disappears. The maiden steals out in the dusk and dances to the hollow tree on the village green — a dance of fireflies induced by moving lights — always with that together and apart dancing of insects in the air which gives the leit-motif to most of the rhythm of this ballet. The maiden has stolen to the hollow tree to look for the marble she had so long ago thrown away — it is the hour of sentiment and she is thinking of him. The fair is invaded by amorini who turn on the merry-go-round (a reproduction of the one in Paris with silver horses and mermaids). They fly away, the scene changes to a field of long grass. Several ladies are plucking fancy grasses — the cupids attack them from behind puffy little clouds in the sky — they run hither and thither affrighted, their arms outflung — under a shower of golden arrows—“the maiden” is hit. This scene is called “Ladies in a Love Storm.”
The maiden has seen the youth contemplating her blue ribbon. She has been hit by cupid and she wants to have something to remember the youth by. So she searches in the hollow tree and finds the marble he gave her years ago — the marble bounds out on to the middle of the stage — where it appears as an enormous replica of itself with its coloured lines and twists. The maiden leans against the tree gazing at it — and gradually it evolves out of itself “the spirit of the marble”—it is a slim, a lithe sprite in all-over tights, coloured like the marble. He is almost incorporate with the marble. This dance must be danced by a very fine acrobat contortionist who can curve and squirm round the orb, push it with his pectoral muscles and when it rolls, remain with it by throwing his body and legs over his head. He must stand on his head on it, but otherwise his motion must identify itself with the circular rolling of the orb. This dance, for the maiden’s eyes, expresses the personification of objects through sentiment — and that stirring of the imagination at dusk, that apprehends some living entity in the phenomena of nature that please or arouse the dream-sense.