STAGE AND SCREEN
FOLK-DANCE
The Albert Hall Festival
IN the early days of the revival of folk-dancing or, to be more precise, of the attempt to preserve the remaining vestiges of these village-rites before they were buried under the levelling process of modern civilisation—in those early days the capering of dancing dons was regarded with that mild amusement which one group of superior persons is apt to watch the activities of another such group. The dons, and of course they were not all dons, were really doing valuable work, not because they were " preserving part of our national heritage," as the phrase goes. For national heritages are not artificially preservable once they have lost their vitality and reality of meaning, and their preservation can then only be of historical, sociological and anthropological interest—all adjectives that smell of the museum. The value of their dancing lay precisely in the fact that they enjoyed it, which meant that the tradition was alive, even though overlaid with a certain air of suburban genteelness. It was that air that provoked the superior smiles.
Although it is true enough that these dances are better to do than to watch—since they were, with obvious exceptions like the ritual horn-dance of Abbots Bromley, not intended for exhi- bition—they can give pleasure to a spectator by their vigour and grace of movement. The highly skilled teams from Cecil Sharp House, who performed at the annual festival in the Albert Hall last week, combine precision with a convincing air of spon- taneity. One thing that must have struck all the spectators was the modification produced in similar kinds of dance by local conditions and habits. The morns-dances to pipe and tabor from the home counties take on a different aspect in Lancashire where the wearing of clogs introduces tap-steps and a clattering rhythm to the music of mouth-organ and accordion. The thing becomes brighter, more vulgar per- haps, and rather more urban. It was interesting to note, too, the differences in the highly elaborate footwork of the Irish and Scottish solos. The Irish, danced by a boy whose chest bore more medals than an Italian general, was heel- and-toe with a marvellous intricacy of side-steps and flourishes, while the arms hung rigid. The Scottish sword- dance was nearly all elegant toe-work with the arms and hands making their curious hieroglyphic gestures, the whole curiously effeminate in so stalwart a dancer.
The influence of our native movement has made itself felt abroad, and seven teams from foreign countries took part in this year's festival, thereby curtailing the usual proportion of the English dances. None of these teams, all genuine peasant- dancers, showed the high standard of skill displayed by our crack dancers from Cecil Sharp House. But they were more the real thing and all contributed something individual to a remarkable and admirably arranged spectacle, for whose smooth organisation Mr. Douglas Kennedy deserves the highest praise. The Lithuanians danced with a virile swing and their women with a lovely grace. The Dutch brought a note of homely humour ; the Norwegians with their round- songs a note of dignified courtesy ; the Danes much spirit in a social kind of dance. The French dancers from the Vendee had a more sophisticated style, with many leaps and a lifting of their partners at the end. They danced a courante, which had no doubt descended from court-circles, as Queen Victoria's bonnet descended through the social degrees till it served to adorn Mr. Belcher's early charladies. At the other end of the scale of sophistication were the Rumanians with a strange and monotonous ritual that seemed at one remove from Le Sacre du Printemps, and the fierce kilted Macedonians from Jugoslavia who performed a slow and solemn sword- dance to keep away evil spirits. These were of anthropological interest rather than of seizing beauty. Those qualities com- bined in the queer and stately procession of the Abbots Bromley dance, whose stealthy movement and odd restrained humour produced an effect both beautiful and eerie. How the reindeers' antlers carried by the dancers came to Stafford- shire and what may be the meaning of the mummers who accompany them, are things hard to descry, but that this mystery arouses in the spectator intimations of some queer, forgotten past is as good a proof of its validity as any Euclidean
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