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 Name:_______________________ CSCI 2490 C++ Programming
Armstrong Atlantic State University
(50 minutes) Instructor: Dr. Y. Daniel Liang

(Open book test, you can only bring the textbook)

Part I: Multiple Choice Questions:

1
12 quizzes for Chapter 7
1 If you declare an array double list[] = {3.4, 2.0, 3.5, 5.5}, list[1] is ________.

A. 3.4
B. undefined
C. 2.0
D. 5.5
E. 3.4
2 Are the following two declarations the same

char city[8] = "Dallas";

char city[] = "Dallas";

A. no
B. yes
3 Given the following two arrays:

char s1[] = {'a', 'b', 'c'};

char s2[] = "abc";

Which of the following statements is correct?

A. s2 has four characters

B. s1 has three characters
C. s1 has four characters
D. s2 has three characters
4 When you pass an array to a function, the function receives __________.

A. the length of the array

B. a copy of the array
C. the reference of the array
D. a copy of the first element
5 Are the following two declarations the same

char city[] = {'D', 'a', 'l', 'l', 'a', 's'};

char city[] = "Dallas";

1
A. yes
B. no
6 Suppose char city[7] = "Dallas"; what is the output of the following statement?

cout << city;

A. Dallas0
B. nothing printed
C. D
D. Dallas
7 Which of the following is incorrect?

A. int a(2);
B. int a[];
C. int a = new int[2];
D. int a() = new int[2];
E. int a[2];
8 Analyze the following code:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

void reverse(int list[], const int size, int newList[])

{
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
newList[i] = list[size - 1 - i];
}

int main()
{
int list[] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
int newList[5];

reverse(list, 5, newList);
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
cout << newList[i] << " ";
}

A. The program displays 1 2 3 4 5 and then raises an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.

B. The program displays 1 2 3 4 6.
C. The program displays 5 4 3 2 1.
D. The program displays 5 4 3 2 1 and then raises an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.
9 (Tricky) What is the output of the following code:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

2
 int main()
{
int x[] = {120, 200, 16};
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
cout << x[i] << " ";
}

A. 200 120 16
B. 16 120 200
C. 120 200 16
D. 16 200 120
10 Which of the following statements is valid?

A. int i(30);
B. int i[4] = {3, 4, 3, 2};
C. int i[] = {3, 4, 3, 2};
D. double d[30];
E. int[] i = {3, 4, 3, 2};
11 Which of the following statements are true?

A. The array elements are initialized when an array is created.

B. The array size is fixed after it is created.
C. Every element in an array has the same type.
D. The array size used to declare an array must be a constant expression.
12 How many elements are in array double list[5]?

A. 5
B. 6
C. 0
D. 4

3 quizzes for Chapter 8

13 Which of the following function declaration is correct?

A. int f(int a[3][], int rowSize);

B. int f(int a[][], int rowSize, int columnSize);
C. int f(int a[][3], int rowSize);
D. int f(int[][] a, int rowSize, int columnSize);
14 What is the output of the following code?

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

3
 int main()
{
int matrix[4][4] =
{{1, 2, 3, 4},
{4, 5, 6, 7},
{8, 9, 10, 11},
{12, 13, 14, 15}};

int sum = 0;

for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++)

cout << matrix[i][1] << " ";

return 0;
}

A. 3 6 10 14
B. 1 3 8 12
C. 1 2 3 4
D. 4 5 6 7
E. 2 5 9 13
15
Which of the following statements are correct?

A. char charArray[2][2] = {{'a', 'b'}, {'c', 'd'}};

B. char charArray[][] = {{'a', 'b'}, {'c', 'd'}};
C. char charArray[][] = {'a', 'b'};
D. char charArray[2][] = {{'a', 'b'}, {'c', 'd'}};
Part II: Show the printout of the following code:

a. (2 pts)
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

void swap(int n1, int n2)

{
int temp = n1;
n1 = n2;
n2 = temp;
}

int main()
{
int a[] = {1, 2};
swap(a[0], a[1]);
cout << "a[0] = " << a[0] << " a[1] = " << a[1] << endl;

return 0;
}

4
b. (2 pts)
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

void swap(int a[])

{
int temp = a[0];
a[0] = a[1];
a[1] = temp;
}

int main()
{
int a[] = {1, 2};
swap(a);
cout << "a[0] = " << a[0] << " a[1] = " << a[1] << endl;

return 0;
}

c. (4 pts) Given the following program, show the values of the array
in the following figure:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
int values[5];
for (int i = 1; i < 5; i++)
{
values[i] = i;
}

values[0] = values[1] + values[4];

return 0;
}

5
 After the last statement
After the array is After the first iteration After the loop is in the main method is
created in the loop is done completed executed

0 0 0 0

1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

Part III:

Part III:

1. Write a function that finds the smallest element in an

array of integers using the following header:
double min(double array[], int size)

Write a test program that prompts the user to enter ten

numbers, invokes this function, and displays the minimum
value. Here is the sample run of the program:

<Output>

Enter ten numbers: 1.9 2.5 3.7 2 1.5 6 3 4 5 2

The minimum number is: 1.5

<End Output>

2. Write a function that counts the number of letters in

the string using the following header:
int countLetters(const char s[])

6
Write a test program that reads a C-string and displays the number of
letters in the string. Here is a sample run of the program:

<Output>

Enter a string: 2010 is coming

The number of letters in 2010 is coming is 8

<End Output>

7
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
unrelated turns, jumps sidewise and up in the air, entrechats and kicks,
bears about the same relation to choreographic argument as a cat’s antics on
the keyboard of a piano does to the work of a musician.
It will of course be understood that the ballet-master’s problem is
complicated by requirements and limitations not even touched upon in this
work. Conformity to his accompanying music, for instance, is alone a
matter of careful study. In former generations, before the present relative
importance of music, the musical composer followed the scenario of the
ballet, which was composed first and independently. Nowadays—owing to
causes as to which speculation is free—the procedure is reversed. The
ballet-master must not only follow phrasing as it is written; he must move
his people about the stage in felicitous group evolutions, basing their steps
on a fixed number of musical bars and beats. This requirement disposed of,
he should interpret the music’s changing moods with appropriate steps.
Taking as an example a bit of the Ballet of the Hours in Gioconda: the
music of the hours before dawn is largo and dreamy, breaking into a
sparkling allegro as the light comes, increasing in speed and strength until a
forte tells of the full-fledged new day. There are steps and combinations to
render these motives with the utmost expressiveness. Failure to employ
them does not represent lack of competence on the part of the director, so
often as it does inadequacy of the human material at his disposal. In
America, at present, the task of producing effects with people whose
incapability he must conceal is perhaps the most serious embarrassment the
ballet-master has to face.
The dancer’s supreme virtue is style. If, beginning as a naturally graceful
youngster, he has been diligent for from four to seven years in ballet school,
he will have it; some acquire it by study alone. With practice from two to
four hours every morning, and half an hour to an hour before each
performance, he is likely to keep it. What style is, is not for words to define.
To preserve mathematical precision in a series of definitely prescribed
movements, while executing those movements with the flowing sweep of
perfect relaxation; to move through the air like a breeze-wafted leaf, and
alight with a leaf’s airiness; to ennoble the violence of a savage with a
demi-god’s dignity; to combine woman’s seductiveness with the
illusiveness of a spirit—these things are not style, but the kind of thing that
style makes possible, the magic results from the perfect co-ordination of
many forces, both æsthetic and mechanical. Some of the latter, as to theory,
are readily enough understood.
Of the ballet dancer’s ever-surprising defiance of the law of gravity, the
more obvious means are the plié, to soften a descent, and a manner of
picking up the weight so quickly that the body seems buoyant. Of perhaps
no less value, though not so obvious, is the straight knee. To the eye it gives
a sensation of sure architectural support—doubtless through the suggestion
of a column. The mechanical importance of the straight supporting knee is
no less than the æsthetic, since a firm foundation is essential to perfect
control of body, arms and head. When the knee “slumps,” the usual
consequence is a softened back and a collapsed chest. The muscles of the
body “let down,” the fine, hypersensitive control of head and arms is gone.
Crisp movement being impossible to them without a sound, springy body as
a base to work on, the work becomes monotonous and soggy.
The theory of a straight supporting axis applies also to the foot as soon
as it rises sur la pointe. The foot of Madame Pavlowa en arabesque (see
reproduction of her photograph) illustrates the principle. Mechanically,
there is definite advantage in an absolutely vertical support; while the
spectator’s visual impression asserts without hesitation that the figure above
the foot is without weight whatever. The superb line of the ankle,
continuous in sweep over the instep, is not the least of the wonders of what,
if one were writing in Spanish, one could without extravagance refer to as
“that little foot of gold.”
It should not in the least modify admiration of this superlative bit of
technique to dispel the not uncommon belief that rising on the toes is a
cause of physical torment, a feat requiring extraordinary strength, or in
itself an achievement to insist upon. Quite the contrary. Like every other
position in the dance, any half-trained performer or student can get it, all
except the quality. As soon as a pupil has acquired the equilibrium that
ought to precede toe-work, the necessary muscular development has taken
care of itself, as a general rule; and she takes position on the point without
special effort. Help is given the foot by the hard-toe slipper, combining as it
does the support of a well-fitted shoe with a square, blunt toe. The latter,
though of small area, furnishes some base to stand on. Stiffening in the
fore-part of the shoe protects the toes against bruising in the descent from
leaps.
 Position on the point justly claims attention as an acrobatic wonder,
when it is taken barefooted. And a dancer who, barefooted, can perform
steps on the point, supporting herself easily with one foot off the floor, is
simply hyper-normal in strength of ankles, feet, and legs. Miss Bessie
Clayton is such a one, and very likely the only one. It is a feat whose
absence from formal dancing is not felt, though its use would be effective in
some of the re-creations of Greek work. There is evidence that the early
Greeks practiced it, as before noted. In our own times, there is only one
instance, among the stories ever heard by the authors, of barefoot work on
the point being done in public; and that performance, oddly enough, took
place in precedent-worshipping Spain. The occasion was one of those
competitions that Spaniards love to arrange when two or more good dancers
happen to play the same town at the same time. Tremendous affairs; not
only does rivalry approach the line of physical hostilities among the
spectators, but the competition draws out feats of special virtuosity that the
dancers have practiced secretly, in anticipation of such contingencies. La
Gitanita (the Little Gipsy), one of the competitors in the event referred to,
had, for some years, put in a patient half-hour a day on the ends of her bare
toes, without the knowledge of any but the members of her family. When,
therefore, at the coming of her turn in the competition, she threw her shoes
to the audience, and her stockings behind a wing, and danced a copla of las
Sevillanas on the point, the contest was settled. Most of the spectators never
had heard even of the existence of such a thing as toe-work, because it does
not exist in Spanish dancing. The experience to them was like witnessing a
miracle; so it happens that La Gitanita, many years dead, is still talked of
when Spanish conversation turns to incredible feats of dancing.
With such rare exceptions as the above, however, the person who is
happy in seeing difficulties overcome is best repaid by watching the manner
instead of the matter. There is hardly a step but can be floundered through,
if real execution be disregarded. The difficulties that take years to master,
that keep the front rank thin, are those of nobility, ease and precision of
action. Naturally, it is harder to preserve these qualities through a renversé
than in a pas de Basque; but there is no merit in exhibiting a renversé badly
done. The latter is a pertinent instance of things difficult to do well. A
fouetté tour “inward” is not safely attempted by any but the most skilful;
nor is either a fouetté or a rond de jambe, finishing in arabesque. To keep
the movement continuous, imperceptibly slowing it down as the arabesque
settles into its final pose, requires ability of a rare grade.
As the little alternating steps furnish the means of regaining equilibrium
after a big pas or tour, it follows that their elimination from an
enchainement represents a tour de force. This is especially true if the big
steps be taken at a slow tempo (as an adagio, so called); and difficulties are
compounded if the artist performs the entire adagio on the point. Few there
are in any generation who can attempt such a flight.
But there are many qualities justly to be demanded of any artist who
steps before an audience. Crisp, straight-line movements should be cleanly
differentiated from the soft and flowing. An entrechat not as sharp-cut as a
diamond represents incompetent or slovenly workmanship. The same
applies to other steps of the staccato character—as battements, brisés,
pirouettes sur le cou-de-pied. Each dancer rightly has his own individuality;
and the movements of one will be dominated by a liquid quality, while
another’s will be brilliant, or “snappy.” But a dancer who is truly an artist
has, within his scope, a good contrast between the several types of
movement. Lack of such contrast may cause a sense of monotony even in
very skilful work. Elevation also is important in preserving a sense of
variety. Not only plié and rise are made to serve; raisings of the arms add
immensely to the sense of vertical uplift when height is sought.
A certain conformity to geometrical exactness is necessary to the
satisfaction of the spectator’s eye, and is observed by all but the
incompetent. Not that movement should be rigid—very much to the
contrary. “Geometry” is a sinister word; interpreted in a sense in which it is
not meant, it would be misleading. An example is sometimes clearer than
attempted definitions or descriptions.
If, having given an order for a grandfather’s clock, the recipient found on
delivery that it did not stand quite straight, he would be annoyed. Suppose
then that further observation revealed that the face of the clock was not in
the middle, that the centre of the circle described by the hands was not the
centre of the face, that the face was no more than an indeterminate
approximation of a circle, and that the numerals were placed at random
intervals; the eye of the clock’s owner would be offended. Various æsthetic
and psychological arguments might be applied to the justification of his
feeling, but they are not needed. The futility of near-circles, approximate
right angles and wobbly lines is felt instinctively. Yet the eye rejoices in the
“free-hand” sweep of line correct in placement, though not subjected to the
restrictions of straight-edge and compass. Asking for acceptance in such
sense of the terms “geometrical” and “precision,” we may return to our
discussion of the ballet.
The decorative iniquity of the hypothetical clock attaches to all dancing
that fails to give to precision the most rigourous consideration. The
imaginary circle described in a pirouette for example, is divided into halves
and quarters. Let us suppose the pirouette to end in arabesque, stopping on
the half-circle, bringing the dancer in profile to the audience: a very few
degrees off the half-circle are, from the ballet-master’s point of view, about
of a kind with a few centimetres separating the misplaced clock hands from
their proper situation in the centre of the dial. The petit rond de jambe has
its imaginary quarter of the great circle in which to play, and which it must
fill. In a fouetté, the sweep of the foot starts at the quarter-circle (marked by
an imaginary lateral plane through the dancer’s body), and reaches back just
to the half-circle (defined by a similar plane, drawn longitudinally). The
lateral elevations of the legs are likewise subject to law, the imaginary
vertical circle described by the leg as radius being divided into eights, to
allow the leg to use the angle of forty-five degrees; experience shows that
this diagonal, half a right angle, is pleasing to the eye and not disturbing to
the senses.
The hands and forearms are turned in such a way as to eliminate elbows,
the coincidence of a contour of the arm with an arc of a big (imaginary)
circle being always sought.
The convention of “toeing out” has as an object the showing of ankles
and legs to the best advantage. On the flat foot the advantage is not so
apparent; but experiment shows that pointing out and down greatly helps
the appearance of a foot in the air. The supporting foot and leg also show
the benefit of the device as soon as the dancer rises to the ball of the foot or
the point. Moreover, it is obvious that the pointing of a supporting foot
forward would necessitate changes from the classic form of many steps.
Recent years have brought out a volume of protest to the effect that the
classic ballet’s restriction of movement too severely limits expression. The
protest is right or wrong according to point of view, and point of view is a
matter of historical period. The French school comes to us from a time
when men kissed hands and drew swords in exact accordance with accepted
forms, and the favoured house-decoration was a tapestry designed on lines
purely architectural. The present is a moment of much concern about
freedom of the individual, and its expression. Curiosity is at boiling-point.
Narrative is sought. We want something to happen, all the time. And those
who fail to see the actual occurrence want the story of it to be graphic.
Moving pictures are very satisfying to the majority. Acres of popular
pictures are painted in boisterous disregard of order or harmony of line and
form. It would be very pleasant for those who enjoy optical beauty, if public
taste required beauty as a first requisite for popularity. Nevertheless,
popular pictures as they are do no particular harm, probably, either to those
who like them or to those who do not.
But, if the world’s great and beautiful mural decorations were suddenly
painted over with frenzied or sentimental illustrations, to “modernise” them,
it would be a different matter. That little public to whom beauty is as a
necessary sustenance—by coincidence the same public that includes the
leaders of thought in each generation—would have a good deal to say in the
line of objection to such desecration. Now, the ballet is essentially a mural
decoration, potentially very great in power to exalt. If a large element
should have its way, the next few years would see that decoration painted
over with a huge choreographic story-picture, sentimental or frenzied,
realistic; and beauty be hanged.
This anarchistic mania is in no wise a doctrine of the Russians. But their
undiscerning admirers, seeing in their work only the lines of departure from
old-established formulæ, shout to heaven that any restraint of individual
caprice is wrong. Innocent of suspicion that such things as æsthetic
principles exist, they force their expression of “individuality” to the limit of
their invention. And some of them certainly are inventive.
Fortunately the great dancer is great largely because of his perception of
the value of order and form. The best of the Russians are great dancers;
great artists in the full sense of the word. They are the ones who will
profoundly influence the æsthetic thought of the present generation, and
their influence will be sound and good. Opposing it will be many a “hit” by
skilful characters, and a dangerous numerical force among the public. It is
easily possible that the latter influence may prevail. The grand ballet is still
an experiment in the America of this generation. It was here thirty years
ago, and fell into the hands of Philistines, who shaped it into the silly thing
they thought they wanted, and then were forced to abandon it because it
was silly.
Than the present, there never was a more important crisis in the cause of
choreographic good taste. The outcome depends upon the manner and
degree in which those who stand for good taste assert themselves during the
next few years.
 CHAPTER V

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DANCING

L OUIS XIV brought public interest in the ballet to a point of eager

excitement; indeed, the influence of a monarch’s consistent patronage,
including the foundation of a national academy, added to the example of
his prominent participation in about thirty allegorical dancing spectacles,
could not fail to be powerful.
With the growth of public interest and intelligence, the ballet and the
technique of dancing developed commensurately. The two enthusiasms of
public and artists reacted on each other to the advantage of both; in the
uninterrupted enrichment of the ballet the public never failed to find its
attention repaid in ever-increasing fascination. Dancers, composers and
directors, on their side, abandoned themselves to their work with the zeal
that comes of certainty that no good thing will pass unnoticed.
Such conditions bring good results more than can be foreseen even by
those actively engaged. As, in fiction, the miner in trying to loosen a nugget
usually uncovers a vein, so it may occur in the arts. For instance, Camargo
found that her entrechat was difficult and ineffectual under the weight and
length of the fashionable skirt of the period. She therefore had a skirt made
reaching midway from knee to foot. A simple solution? Certainly. But it
was thought of only after centuries of submission to clothes that considered
fashion and disregarded the problems and possibilities of the dancer’s art.
And it represented the species of decision that risks acting counter to an
accepted, unquestioned institution. It was not an effort to draw attention by
means of a spurious originality. Camargo’s work explained the change. The
public understood and approved. The ballet was directed toward its
costume; a long journey lay ahead of it, but it was rightly started.
Liberty of movement so attained at once put a premium on higher and
more open steps; technical invention was set to work as never before. The
balloné, various pas battus and ronds-de-jambe that followed immeasurably
enhanced the scope of the ballet as an instrument of ocular-orchestral
expression. New enchainements, striking in the contrast of little work with
big, soon made the court dances—which for a period had constituted the
ballet’s working material—look old-fashioned. The stage now required
considerable elevation, decided contrasts, increasing scope. And, whatever
the cost in skill and energy, there were dancers eager to expend the energy
and to give the needed years to acquiring the skill.
Since the days of the Roman Empire, masks had been worn to identify
characters. Not a bit of cloth to cover the face, merely; but cumbersome
things with plumes, wings, metallic spikes (i. e., the rays of the sun worn by
Louis XIV in the Ballet of Night) or what-not, so extended that they
restricted the action of the arms, so heavy as to interfere with steps. It was a
clumsy convention, but it was as integrally a part of stage representation as
scenery is to-day, and the few who wished its abolition were outvoted by a
cautious majority. At last, according to her custom of helping an enterprise
that is doing well, Fate took a hand. Auguste Vestris failed to appear for a
certain performance; as the time for his entrance drew near, the anxious
stage director asked Gardel to “go on” in Vestris’ part. Gardel, an until-that-
time ineffectual rebel against the mask, consented; but with the condition
that the mask be omitted. In default of arrangements more to his
satisfaction, the director consented. The public at once saw the advantage of
the change, and were pleased with Gardel’s appearance. So began the end
of the dominion of the mask.
Of the notable personalities that the early rays of the eighteenth century
illuminated, the aforementioned Auguste Vestris was the interesting son of a
more interesting father. The latter was a genius of the very first water, with
a conceit so incredibly exaggerated that it is almost lovable. “This century,”
he was accustomed to observe, “has produced but three great men—myself,
Voltaire, and Frederick the Great.” He sometimes signed himself “le Diou
de la Danse”; himself a Florentine, the relation of French spelling to
pronunciation was contrary to his ideas. The phrase as he put it had a
special merit, and as “le Diou de la Danse” he was known through his long
life. A lady, having stepped on his foot, expressed a hope that she had not
hurt him. “Le Diou” depreciated the hurt to himself, but informed the lady
that she had put Paris into a two-weeks’ mourning. Of his son’s leaps he
said that if Auguste did not remain in the air forever, it was because he did
not wish to humiliate his comrades.
The foundation of the Opera was another of the impulses to act
favourably, if indirectly, upon the interests of dancing. Its modest beginning
had been made a few years after that of the ballet academy. The two arts at
once combined to produce a new variety of musical spectacle, namely,
opera. Great music came to the fore in response to the added
encouragement—but digressions must be repressed.
Contemporary with Camargo and Sallé was a dreamer of dreams too
great to be realized in his own time, but whose ideas take place among the
lasting good influences in art. Garrick called him “the Shakespeare of the
Dance”: his name was Noverre.
To the post of ballet-master at the Opera he brought the experience of
years in similar service in Stuttgart, Vienna and St. Petersburg. His work he
regarded with the broad vision of cultivated understanding of painting,
music, story, acting and dancing, and the functions of each. His genius was,
above all else, constructive; his ideal was to bring the arts into a
harmonious union, to which each should contribute its utmost, while all
should be informed with and dominated by a single æsthetic purpose.
The obstacle always blocking his path was not incompetence of aides
and artists, not lack of money, nor any of the bêtes noires to which more
recent idealists are accustomed. His enemy was the inert, impalpable and
almost invincible force of custom, paradoxically persistent despite the
public’s demand for new things. It was custom that the composer of a ballet
should always arrange for the introduction of the specialties of the several
principals, irrespective of motives. Custom obliged him to arrange
entrances in the inverse order of the artists’ relative ranks—he of least rank
“going on” first, the star being the last to appear. Noverre broke up this
usage, and characters thereafter entered at times consistent with plot-
development. Plots had been crippled by accepted beliefs that certain dance
sequences were unalterable; a Gavotte, for instance, had to be followed by a
Tambourin and a Musette; the sequence had not been questioned. Noverre
saw the possibilities of dancing as an instrument of expression; he insisted
that steps and enchainements should be composed to intensify the motive of
the passage. Scenery, he held, should contribute in the same way to the
mood of the act it decorates. Pretty it had been, and executed by capable
painters; but Noverre found its composition lacking in consideration of
proper relationship to the other elements of the production. With himself he
associated Boucher and one or two other decorators of lesser name; under
his comprehension of the scene’s dramatic intent, settings were designed
that reasserted in line, form and colour the argument of the scene’s plot,
music and dance. In this department he was less successful than in others.
Boucher made beautiful sketches, some of which are extant. But one has
only to consider opera in his own day to realise that any influence Noverre
exercised toward the unification of scenery with music and plot, was not
strong enough to last. Stories taken from legend, set among surroundings as
realistic as skill can paint them; tragic scenes among architecture and
foliage coloured in the key of care-free frivolity—to enumerate the familiar
discrepancies is unnecessary. Tradition specifies a bright first-act “set” for
Carmen, and grey for the prison interior in Faust. But the profound
correlation of colour and line with the explicit mood of the piece has
remained for the Russian, Léon Bakst. In the recent volcanic renaissance of
dancing effected by his fellow-countrymen, M. Bakst and his ideas have
been a force second only to the marvellous work of the dancers themselves.
His scenery strikes the note of the drama, attunes the spectator with its
mood, at the rise of the curtain. His knowledge of pictorial composition he
has extended to the designing of costumes; his broad artist’s intelligence he
has applied to the composition and direction of ballets! It is his happy rôle
to realise Noverre’s dream.
In music Noverre worked with Gluck, in certain productions at least; and
happily. “Instead of writing the steps on prescribed airs,” in a free
translation of his own words, “as is done with couplets of familiar tunes, I
composed—if I may so express myself—the dialogue of my ballet and had
the music made for each phrase and each idea. It was just so that I dictated
to Gluck the characteristic air of the ballet of the savages in Iphigenia in
Tauris; the steps, the gestures, the expressions of the different personages
that I designed for him gave to the celebrated composer the character of the
composition of that beautiful bit of music.”
The abolition of the mask was among Noverre’s desires; its fortuitous
accomplishment at a later time already has been described. In his ideals for
costume reform in general he was only partly successful. What he strove for
seems to have been costuming in something of the sense of its present-day
interpretation by the Russians; garments wholly in character with the beings
represented, in regard to race and period, yet conceding enough in line and
colour to enable them to be used as part of the material of abstract
interpretation. At the beginning of his administration of the Opera he found
each performer dressed, for the most part, according to individual choice:
either the drawing-room costume of the period, or the same with shortened
skirt, à la Camargo. To this was added the mask, an enormous wig
(unrelated to the character) and some such symbol as a leopard skin, a
wreath of flowers, or more likely a property such as a bow and quiver of
arrows, or a pair of bellows. In the order mentioned, such articles
represented a bacchante, Flora, Cupid, and Zephyrus. Excepting the
superadded marks of identification, artists provided their own wardrobe.
The lack of consistent supervision and its natural consequence is
exemplified in an anecdote of a member of the corps de ballet in Le
Carnaval et la Folie: in the performance she exhibited a series of gowns of
Adrienne Lecouvreur, which she had thriftily picked up at a sale of the
recently deceased tragedienne’s effects.
In the ballet of The Horatii, of Noverre’s own composition, “Camilla
wore a huge hooped petticoat, her hair piled up three feet high with flowers
and ribbons. Her brothers wore long-skirt coats, set out from their hips by
padding.” And so forth.
It is to be noted that Roman and Greek mythology lived and flourished,
but no longer excluded other lore from the composer’s use. A list of
Noverre’s ballets d’action includes The Death of Ajax, The Judgment of
Paris, Orpheus’ Descent into Hell, Rinaldo and Armida, The Caprices of
Galatea, The Toilette of Venus and the Roses of Love, The Jealousies of the
Seraglio, The Death of Agamemnon, The Clemency of Titus, Cupid the
Pirate and The Embarkation for Cythera. His work of permanent value, still
read by composers and ballet-masters, is his book Letters on the Imitative
Arts. For his light composition, Les Petits Riens, the music was by Mozart.
Notwithstanding his failure to accomplish all he hoped in the several
departments of his organisation, and in spite of his rather pessimistic
opinions of early eighteenth-century conditions affecting the ballet, the
dance was entering its golden age. Pantomime—largely owing to the
enrichment he had given it out of the fruits of his study of Garrick’s
methods—had exponents who could touch the heart. Writings began to
show intelligent and explicit criticism, and that of a nature to prove that
choreographic execution had reached a high point. The added scope
afforded by new acquisitions of material in the steps allowed artists to go
far in development of individuality. Camargo charmed by perfection of
technique; “she danced to dance, not to stir emotion.” Her special steps are
enumerated: besides the entrechat, she shone in jetés battus and a
frictionless entrechat coupé. About her work there was a healthy public
controversy, a vigourous minority protesting against idolisation of one who
they asserted had virtuosity only. And the protests show analytical
understanding of the dance.
Sallé’s more deliberate, probably more feeling work, has been noted in
an earlier chapter. Her popularity hardly could have been less, all told, than
that of her rival.
Mlles. Allard and Guimard were two stars who followed a little later in
the same period. The former combined extraordinary vigour with pathetic
pantomime. The work of Guimard was delicate, pretty, light. “She is a
shadow, flitting through Elysian groves,” one of her contemporaries wrote
of her. Certainly she had the art of pleasing, on the stage or off. The list of
eminent competitors for her affection is eloquent not in its length, but in the
number of occupants of high station—including three princes of the
Church. With a passion for theatrical and political intrigue she combined a
spirit of the utmost generosity. To her the painter David owed his
professional beginnings; he was an art student without means to study, and
engaged in house-painting for a livelihood, when Guimard secured him a
pension that afforded him study at Rome. Some of Fragonard’s best
decorations were made for her establishments.
Her refusal to have any rival about her kept the Opera in an uproar.
Perfectly appointed little theatres in both her country and city homes
enabled her, with her taste, means, and popularity among the people of the
stage, to give performances for which invitations were most highly prized.
For these performances she made a practice of setting dates to coincide with
court receptions, knowing from experience that the best wit and most of the
elegance of Paris would make excuses to the court. From this estate she was
reduced, partly by the storm of the Revolution, to a condition of miserable
poverty lasting until her death; which was delayed until her seventy-fourth
year.
Men did not fall short of women in merit and recognition. Beside the
Vestris, father and son, fame touched Javillier, Dauberval, and the comedy
dancer Lany. Maximilian Gardel, he who substituted for Auguste Vestris on
condition of appearing without the mask (Apollo, in Castor and Pollux was
the rôle), was a composer of note as well as a dancer. His brother Pierre
added to these qualities skill as a violinist.
 The progress of the ballet was halted by the Revolution. Gardel headed
an effort to keep it in motion with the aid of a spectacle La Marseillaise as
vehicle; but the people were on the streets, dancing la Carmagnole, and
nobility were as far from Paris as possible. It is probable that the ballet was
set down as an aristocratic institution. Napoleon included a corps de ballet
in the equipment of the campaign in Egypt; but it signified nothing to the
advantage of the art. Immediately after the Terror, eighteen hundred dance-
halls were opened in Paris, to furnish, seven nights a week, relief for fever
and frenzy. Even England was too preoccupied to offer the ballet a
dwelling; its organisation, for the time being, was lost.
But only for the time being. History records a bit of international
negotiation indicating Europe’s readiness to return to the realities of life and
the happiness thereof. In 1821 an ambassador of a great power acted
officially as an impresario of dancers.
England, whose best public taste never has been satisfied with the work
of her own people, was, within a few years after the peace, again seeking
dancers in France. Efforts to get the best were handicapped. The national
character of the French Academy makes its pupils and graduates wards of
their government, in effect; government permission is and was necessary as
a condition to leaving the country. Negotiations therefore were put into the
hands of the British ambassador, less formal dealings apparently having
failed to produce results. The agreement was incorporated in the form of a
treaty, France agreeing to lend England two first and two second dancers,
England in return agreeing not to attempt to engage any others without the
Academy’s consent.
M. Albert and Mlle. Noblet were the first two artists to be taken to
London under the new arrangement, at salaries of £1700 and £1500
respectively. During the same period, and for years after, Her Majesty’s
Theatre had the services of Carlo Blasis, one of the most capable ballet-
masters of his time, father of several virtuosi, and the writer of books of
lasting value on the subject of his profession. Dancing reached a popularity
that would seem the utmost attainable, were it not for disclosures to be
made in the years soon to come.
Beauty and its appreciation will carry a public to a condition of ecstasy.
If to this be added the incessant discussion attendant on a controversy, with
the hot partisanship that accompanies the coexistence of rival stars, the
devotional flame is augmented by fuel of high calorific value. Not without
cause were the hostilities of Pylades and Bathyllus, of Sallé and Camargo,
associated with great public enthusiasm. To artistic appreciation they added
the element of sporting interest.
In Marie Taglioni and Fanny Ellsler, Europe had the parties to a years-
long competition that was Olympian in quality and incredible in its hold on
the sympathies of the public. Both goddesses in art, their personalities and
the genres of their work were at opposite extremes. In Pendennis Thackeray
asks, “Will the young folks ever see anything so charming, anything so
classic, anything like Taglioni?” Of Ellsler, Flitch quotes words equally
enthusiastic—and less coherent—from the pen of Theophile Gautier, who
was an incurable maniac and copious writer on the subject of dancing:
“Now she darts forward; the castanets commence their sonorous clatter;
with her hands she seems to shake down clusters of rhythm. How she
twists! how she bends! what fire! what voluptuousness of motion! what
eager zest! Her arms seem to swoon, her head droops, her body curves
backward until her white shoulders almost graze the ground. What charm of
gesture! And with that hand which sweeps over the dazzle of the footlights
would not one say that she gathered all the desires and all the enthusiasms
of those that watch her?”
This referred to a Cachucha that she had brought from Spain; a dance
whose steps have been recomposed under other names, its original name
forgotten except in association with the name and the art of Ellsler. It was a
perfect vehicle for the exploitation of the ardent qualities that the little
Austrian was made of, and on her rendering of it was based a great part of
her fame.
Taglioni, in contrast, was a being of spirit, innocent of mortal
experience, free from ties of the earth. Her training was strictly within the
bounds of the classic ballet; during her career she greatly amplified its
range, yet she always kept within its premise. Though born in Stockholm,
her father was an Italian ballet-master, and two of her aunts were dancers of
reputation. Her achievements represented a triumph of choreographic
inheritance and training over an ill-formed body; in childhood she is said to
have been a hunchback. With training her figure became normal in strength,
and attained a quality of form in keeping with her selected rôles. But
overstrong features deprived her of the dancer’s adventitious aid of facial
beauty. Her triumphs were achieved by art alone.
 Vienna she conquered at the age of twenty, in 1822, the year of her
début. Paris was not so readily moved; but a success in that capital was a
practical necessity to a great career, and Taglioni never rested until she
secured its approval, expressed in terms that penetrated Europe. Business
generalship was not the least of the attributes of the Taglioni, father and
daughter; they recognised the propitious hour for an engagement in London.
The contract included pensioning a number of their family, and £100 a
performance. Results more than justified the terms; ticket sales for
Taglioni’s nights usually were of the nature of riots. It is as fair to connect
with this box-office success, as with any quality of the artist herself, the
story of her “holding up” a performance until the management of the theatre
should make a substantial payment on an account due. It is unlovable in an
artist to keep an audience waiting, and put a manager to the necessity of
making explanations. It is unlovable in a coal dealer to discontinue supplies
until a debt is settled.
Taglioni paid as heavily for the excellence she put into her work as ever
did miner or merchant for the goods he put on his scales. Her training began
in early childhood, and covered probably twelve years before her début. Her
professional career, with its inevitable anxieties, in no wise reduced the
rigour of study, discipline, and precaution. Under her father’s eye she
practiced hours daily. She went to the length of having installed in her
London lodgings a stage built to duplicate the slope of the stage in the
theatre.
Apart from the possession of ideals of sheer execution that undoubtedly
were higher than any that her predecessors had dreamed of, and whose
attainment involved almost superhuman effort and patience, Taglioni was a
productive inventor of new steps. Flying brisés and other aërial work make
their first appearance in her work, according to Mme. Genée’s historical
programme of ballet evolution. We infer that her effort was directed toward
the illusion of flight; a writer of the period refers to an arabesque that
conveyed that sensation with striking reality. The great addition she made to
elevation may naturally be attributed not to any interest in that property for
its own sake, but rather to an endless search for lightness. And that, above
all others, was the quality she made her own. La Sylphide (not the
composition recently popularised by the Russians) was the part with which
she was most unified in the minds of the public. Her work appears always
to have had the creation of fairy fantasy as a definite purpose. In pantomime
she was limited. She had none of the stage artist’s familiar tricks devised to
capture the audience, nor did she avail herself of any vivid contrasts in her
costume. She dressed her hair in Madonna fashion, surrounded by a wreath
of little roses; further adornment she deliberately avoided.
Ellsler was six years the younger; and, at some sacrifice of time in the
acquisition of fame, she reserved Paris as the last of the great cities in which
to appear. Taglioni therefore was well established when her destined rival
first showed her steps to the Parisians. In fact, she occupied a box at
Ellsler’s first Paris performance, where it is said she silently wept before the
end of the other’s first number.
The Swede had succeeded almost in spite of circumstances; Ellsler’s
natural endowment contained almost everything the gods in a generous
mood can give. The perfection of proportion of hands, feet, wrists and
ankles were hers, as well as a Greek perfection of figure. Though her legs
were of steel, and her strength in general that of an athlete, not a line
suffered in sculptural grace nor a movement in freedom. Her face had a
beauty that captivated an audience at the moment of her entrance on the
stage, and a range of expression covering the moods of the human mind.
Her training, like Taglioni’s, had begun early. Mozart, for whom Ellsler’s
father worked as copyist and otherwise, had interested himself in her to the
extent at least that her early years were not misspent. With her technical
tuition—whatever it may have been—she absorbed stage experience almost
from the days of infancy. She danced in a children’s ballet in Vienna when
she was six years old. Before appearing in Paris she had succeeded in
Naples, Berlin and London. The audience of l’Opéra therefore saw her first
at the full maturity of her art and equipped with ample knowledge of how to
present it to the best advantage.
Her success was not in doubt for a moment. The opening number was a
riotous triumph, the morning papers were undivided in praise of the
newcomer. Taglioni felt that Ellsler had been brought to Paris expressly to
undermine her, and the appearances are that Ellsler lost no time in putting
herself on a war footing.
London theatre-goers soon were in a position to question whether, after
their elaborate provisions to get good dancers, they had not made a rather
embarrassing misplay. Ellsler had danced at Her Majesty’s Theatre; the
public had enjoyed her work, but, owing either to her lack of a great
continental reputation or their own misgivings about the soundness of her
work, had refrained from very hearty demonstration. On the first night of
the engagement, the manager of l’Opéra—who was in London to form an
estimate of the Austrian’s work—signed her for the following season.
Contrary to the metier of her rival, Ellsler’s art consisted of a romantic
glorification of life’s physique. One gathers that she gave, instead of an
ordered and consecutive poem, a thrill of delighted astonishment. She was
of a newly forming romantic cult that worshipped the torrid, the savage, the
violent. Her most pronounced success was on her rendering of the dances of
Spain; she used her hips and her smile, and men—more than women—went
into rhapsodies. Gautier, who had seen the best dancers in Spain, wrote that
none of them equalled Ellsler. Which is credible, with reservations and
conditions. If the sole aim of Spanish dancing is to express fire and
temperament, to astonish and inflame, it is more likely to be realised by a
clever Northerner than by a Spaniard. The headlong enthusiast is not
bothered by delicate considerations of shading, development, and truth of
form; seizing the salient and exotic, an exaggeration of these and the
elimination of all else is sure to produce a startling result. Execution at an
abnormally rapid tempo will conceal inaccuracies from all eyes but those
trained to the dance, and backed by a knowledge of its true forms.
All this by no means intends to assert that Ellsler was not a dancer of a
high degree of skill, and perhaps of some degree of greatness. It is
significant, however, that her encomiums concern themselves only with that
which, boiled down, amounts to praise of a beautiful woman, performing
evolutions at that time novel and surprising, and frankly—withal in a
perfectly clean manner—appealing to sex. The quality that might be called
decorative truth does not appear to have been an impressive element of her
work. Assuredly that is the foundation of dancing entitled to any
consideration in connection with the quality of greatness. Temperament,
expressing what it will, of course is as necessary to animate the form as true
form is to begin with; but temperamental exuberance cannot take the place
of a proper substructure. Granting the inadequacy of data, and speculating
on a basis of indications only, one is justified in wondering if Ellsler
coming to life to-day could repeat her impression on Paris, with its present
knowledge not only of Spanish dancing, but also of feats of supreme
virtuosity.
 Years only augmented the heat of the feud between the two goddesses.
Europe divided itself into acrimonious factions of Taglionites and
Ellslerites. The latter were shocked, however, when, to bring to a flat
comparison the question of merit, Ellsler announced her intention to play
La Sylphide. Taglioni had made the part her own; for another to undertake it
was at least an act of doubtful delicacy. Nor was the idea better advised on
grounds of strategy. La Sylphide in its composition was a tissue of the
ethereal, even if Taglioni had not made it so by association with herself.
Ellsler was insistently concrete. Effects followed causes. Her most ardent
partisans could not say after the performance that the attempt spelled
anything but failure.
America’s first vision of a star dancer was the direct consequence of
Ellsler’s vexation over the fiasco. Our fathers and grandfathers unharnessed
the horses from her carriage, and counted it an honour to get a hand on the
rope by which the carriage was drawn; carpeted the streets where the
carriage was to pass, strewed flowers where the divinity was to set her foot,
and in all ways comported themselves as became the circumstances, during
the period of two years that she stayed on this side of the Atlantic.
Ellsler’s professional collapse was connected not with art, but politics.
After her return from America she danced several seasons in Milan. The
ballet academy of la Scala had been founded in 1811, interest in the art ran
high, and was fed by the Austrian government as a hoped-for means of
distracting the public mind from the revolutionary sentiment of the mid-
century. In 1848, on the occasion of a performance especially provided to
smooth over a crisis, it was arranged that the people of the ballet should
wear a medal recently struck, representing the pope blessing a united Italy.
Ellsler conceived a suspicion that the idea represented an intent to insult her
as an Austrian; she refused to go on unless the medals be taken off.
Meantime the corps de ballet had made its entrance, wearing the medals.
They were removed at the first opportunity, and promptly missed at the
ballet’s next entrance. The explanation of the change travelled through the
house; the première, when she entered, was received with hisses. Tense with
political excitement, the audience saw in her only the representative of the
power that controlled the Italian sceptre. Her efforts received no answer but
furious insults. She fainted.
After three comparatively uneventful years she retired, rich and—in the
main—popular. Her contributions to religion and charity had been
impressive and so continued until her death in 1884. Her wealth was
estimated at one and a quarter million dollars. Taglioni’s end was in
miserable contrast; during part of her latter years she held a petty position
as teacher of deportment in a young ladies’ school in England. She died
lonely and forgotten, after a most unhappy old age.
Among the many dancers brought out by the period of enthusiasm were
three women of whose work the records have only the highest praise. To
Carlotta Grisi, Gautier gave the credit of combining the fiery abandon and
the light exquisiteness of the two great luminaries of the day. Fanny Cerito
and Lucille Grahn were ranked with her. For Queen Victoria there was
arranged a pas de quatre by Taglioni, Grisi, Cerito, and Grahn. That
performance, in 1845, represents one of the climaxes of ballet history,
including as it probably did the greatest sum total of choreographic ability
that ever had been brought together.
But it was the milestone at the top of a high mountain, from which the
road turned downward. Except in England, Taglioni’s prestige was dimmed.
Queen Victoria’s reign, however uplifting in various important respects,
undeniably was depressing in its influence on all the imaginative arts; and it
was an influence that reached far. Furthermore, the elements that
constituted opera began to assume new relative proportions. The voice of
Jenny Lind called attention to the factor of singing. In the present day of
subordination of the dancer to the singer, it is almost incredible that opera
of seventy years ago assigned to the dancer the relative importance that the
singer enjoys now; especially difficult is this conception to any one whose
acquaintance with opera is confined to its production in America. General
indifference has reduced operatic ballet in this land to a level compared to
which its condition in continental Europe is enviable. Though reduced from
past importance, in countries that support academies it has at least retained
standards of execution.
But the strictly modern interpretation of opera, minimising
choreography, has been accepted. New operas are written in conformity
with the altered model. It is likely that the present renaissance of dancing,
though no less vital than any that have gone before, will effect little change
in the art’s importance in opera structure, which has become a distinct
organism to be heard rather than seen. Aroused interest and intelligence
inevitably will force improvement on old organisations, new appreciation
will justify it from the box-office point of view. But the American dance-
lover’s hope lies in the new-old form of ballet pantomime. This is the
expression that the great new romantic movement has taken, as though in
express recognition of those of us to whom the use of ears has not atrophied
eyes.
Against the suddenly discovered passion for singing, the art of Grisi,
Cerito, Grahn and their colleagues could not hold public attention.
Steadfastly the French and Italian academies held to their creeds of
choreographic purity. Upon their fidelity to ideals the latter nineteenth-
century reign of artistic terror made no impression; to their preservation of
the good is due the ability of the present romantic renaissance to come into
its complete expression without the intervention of a century of rebuilding.
Russia and Austria too had founded national academies for instruction
along the lines made classic by Paris and Milan. Others followed. But it
appears that the technical virtuosity of Taglioni had set a pace that was both
difficult and misleading. Being a genius, perfection meant to her a means of
expression. During a period in which no great genius appeared, efforts to
win back the lost kingdom took the form of striving for technique as an
object. The public was unjustly damned for failure to respond to
marvellously executed students’ exercises. With equal lack of justice, it
became fashionable to include the whole school of the ballet’s art in the
accusation of stiffness and artificiality.
The half-century ending about 1908, during which the stage was given
over to all the flashy choreographic counterfeits that mediocrity could
invent, was saved from complete sterility by the dances that are rooted in
the soil. Jigs and Reels, Hornpipes and Tarantellas held their own like
hardy wild flowers in a garden of weeds; like golden, opulent lilies, the
Seguidillas of Spain held their heads above malformation and decadence.
This is a fitting point at which to consider the nature of some of these
ancient expressions of the heart of men who dwell away from courts.
 CHAPTER VI

SPANISH DANCING

S INCE earliest Occidental history, the dances of Spain have been famous.
To-day their richness, variety and fundamental nobility give them a
position in advance of any other group of national dances of the
Occidental type. Whether certain of the Oriental expressions are superior to
the Spanish is wholly a matter of point of view on dancing. But dancers and
dance-lovers, of all beliefs and prejudices, unite in conceding to Spain the
highest development of “characteristic” or national dancing. More even:
though the French and Italian ballets in general hold their schools to be the
very fountainhead of the choreographic art, not a few disciples of the
academies of Milan or Paris concede to Spanish dancing superiority over
all, in that aspect of beauty that is concerned with majesty of line and
posture.
It is as though Terpsichore herself had chosen the dwellers of Iberia to
guard her gifts to mankind. Gadir, the city now called Cadiz, was a little
Paris in the day of the Carthaginian, with dancing as its most highly
developed art and notable among its diversions. When the Romans took the
city they were delighted with the dancers they found there; for centuries
after, Spanish dancers remained a fashionable adjunct of great
entertainment in the capital, and Cadiz the inexhaustible source of their
supply.
When Rome, too infirm to resist, left Spain to be overrun by the
Visigoth, she left the arts of the peninsula to the mercy of a destroying
barbarian. Architecture and statuary he demolished, books he burned.
Dancing eluded his clumsy hand; in places of retirement children were
taught the steps and gestures that had crossed the sea from Egypt in the
days of the Phœnicians.
In the eighth century came the Moor: slayer, organiser, builder; fanatic,
dreamer, poet; lover and creator of beauty in all its manifestations. His
verses were epigrams of agreeable and unexpected sounds, formed into
phrases of eloquent metaphor. His architecture and its ornament, too, were
epigrams; combinations of graceful and simple lines and forms into
harmonious symbols more eloquent than description. To him the dance was
verse and decoration united, with music added; entertainment and stimulus
to contemplation. Under his guardianship and tuition the Spanish dance
strengthened its hold on the people, and increased in scope. A certain class
of it retains to-day a distinctly Moorish flavour.
The “Century of Gold” that followed the expulsion of the Moors and the
discovery of America found the dance surrounded by conditions than which
none could have been more favourable. Gold looted from the new continent
was lavished on masques and fiestas that emulated those of neighbouring
monarchies; courtiers were so preoccupied with the diversion that a memoir
of the period contains a complaint that “sleep in any part of the palace has
become impossible, since persons of all degrees have taken to continuous
strumming of the music of the zarabanda.” The less exalted had in the
dance
 “La Malagueña y el Torero”
Eduardo and Elisa Cansino
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an expression for every emotion, an exercise whose magic ennobled, and a

magic whose exercise raised them above the reach of sordid cares. In the
Church, while bishops in other parts of Europe were questioning or
protesting the dance as an act of worship, their brothers in “la tierra de
Maria Santisima” were insisting upon it as a most appropriate part of the
highest ritual.