Art of Stage Dancing — Chapter 12: Ned Wayburn's Acrobatic Dancing

[Illustration] There is a very decided distinction to be drawn between acrobatics pure and simple, and acrobatic dancing, which is quite another matter.

It is, of course, acrobatic dancing that you see on the stage accompanying and accentuating the more formal dancing steps in musical comedies, revues, and spectacular performances, and it is this acrobatic dancing that receives wide attention in the teaching of the dancing art in the Ned Wayburn courses.

There are properly two divisions into which acrobatic dancing is naturally separated: (1) _Bending exercises_; including the back bend, hand-stand, inside-out, front over, back limber, cartwheel, tinseca, nip-up, the various splits, and several more advanced feats that should be attempted only after thorough physical preparation.

(2) _High-Kicking exercises_; including all the so-called "legmania" varieties of dancing, which are best acquired by thorough preparation of the body in the Ned Wayburn foundation technique and studious attention to the drill in the Ned Wayburn Americanized ballet technique.

All of the acrobatic dancing tricks that are properly classified under bending exercises have for their foundation the back bend and the hand stand, as they are called, both of which must be mastered absolutely before attempting other and more complicated acrobatic exercises.

I want to go on record with the emphatic statement that acrobatic dancing must not be attempted except by those who are entirely and absolutely physically fit.

The acrobatic dancer must possess unusual strength in the arms, in order that the weight of the body may be safely supported; and there must be strength and flexibility of the waist muscles and the abdominal muscles, and of all the muscles of the back and shoulders, to enable the performer to execute the front and back bends and their companion strenuous exercises.

First, the pupil must have an unusual adaptability to this type of dancing, and then must prepare carefully and properly in advance of entering upon the real work of the course.

The best development comes from our limbering and stretching exercises.

There is nothing else like it nor anything equally as good as a foundation for all types of dancing, and it is especially needed by the amateur entering upon an acrobatic dancing career.

We have put literally thousands of pupils through this course, and every student of our acrobatic dancing classes who has taken this essential preliminary course has come through in fine shape.

You must be extremely careful if you have or ever have had any abdominal trouble.

You must get the abdomen strengthened before you undertake any acrobatic work.

If you have had an operation for peritonitis, appendicitis, hernia, or elsewhere in the abdominal cavity or region, you must, out of consideration for your own health, avoid any violent bending exercise.

This does not imply that you should not exercise properly.

You should, for it is easily possible to strengthen the tender muscles into a normal condition by suitable and systematic exercises.

Try this test: Lie flat on your back on the floor.

Now, without aid of the hands or elbows or any outside assistance, bring your body to a sitting position.

If you cannot do this, get your back muscles into training before you attempt any difficult exertion.

If you succeed in your test, you can safely consider your abdominal muscles to be in sufficiently good condition to go ahead with acrobatic dancing.

Let me describe a few of the most common of the acrobatic tricks that all acrobatic dancers must know, and you will no doubt recognize them as being also favorite tumbling acts of boys and girls on the lawn.

The most complicated and difficult acrobatic exercises are taught in full in the Ned Wayburn Studios, and are printed in detail, with simple instruction for their successful accomplishment, in the Ned Wayburn Home Study Course in Stage Dancing.

The few we give you here are not difficult, and can be mastered at home by anyone who persistently practices and follows the descriptions with care.

[Illustration: ACROBATIC DANCING PRACTICE.

] BACK BEND

Stand erect.

Spread the feet about fifteen inches apart.

Have the toes pointed well out, at about a sixty degree angle.

Raise the arms directly overhead, the hands shoulder-width apart.

Put your head back, pushing forward with your knees.

Lean back, bending the arms as far back as you can, till the palms of the hands rest on the floor.

In doing the back bend, relax the lower jaw and keep the mouth slightly open to breathe.

Throw the strain of the bend in the small of the back.

To come up, acquire a little rocking motion forward and back, lean forward, and you will come up easily.

_How to do a back bend while standing near a wall.

_ Stand about 3 feet from the wall, with your back to the wall, feet about two feet apart.

Bend back, touch the wall with the palms and walk down the wall with your hands until you touch the floor.

Then walk up with your hands until you are erect.

[Illustration: _The Back Bend on the Flat, and Near a Wall_] HAND STAND

Take a wide step forward with the left foot, place both hands flat on the floor at least eighteen inches apart in front of the left toe, fingers open and pointed directly front, right leg perfectly straight, extended straight back.

Swing the right leg up and over and follow it with the left leg, and when you come down bring down the left leg first, then the right leg, bringing the left knee close up to the chest.

Do not kick hard or you will go over.

_How to do a hand stand while standing near a wall.

_ Advance whichever foot comes natural to you to do this act (people are right and left footed as well as right and left handed); let us say your right foot.

Stand facing the wall with the right foot advanced to within about two feet of it.

Place both hands on the floor, about eighteen inches apart, in front of left foot, fingers open and pointed front, right leg extended back and straight.

Kick up with the left foot over your back so as to bring the soles of both feet against the wall, the left foot reaching the wall first; knees straight, heels together.

[Illustration: _The Hand Stand on the Flat (A, B), and Near a Wall_] CARTWHEEL

The cartwheel is the hand stand done sidewise.

Instead of kicking up, as in the hand stand, put one hand down and then the other, going sidewise, kicking your feet up.

Keep your head back, so as to retain your sense of direction.

[Illustration: _The Cartwheel_] One of my star pupils in acrobatic dancing is Miss Evelyn Law, a principal dancer of the "Follies," and in "Louie the Fourteenth."

She came to me four years ago, a little girl fifteen years old.

There are few girls who have worked so hard to succeed as has Evelyn, and there are certainly few who have achieved the top line in their profession as quickly as she has.

In every respect, Miss Law is a credit to the American stage.

She started in her first appearance in an engagement which I got for her at a salary of . 00 a week.

Then her salary jumped to . 00 a week, in "Two Little Girls in Blue," plus her mother's fare; later, as a featured member of the "Follies," which engagement I was also very happy to secure for her, her weekly salary reached the . 00 mark.

But Evelyn deserves her good fortune, because she has worked hard.

Indeed, no girl could do the remarkable work which she is doing were she to live anything but a life of rigorous attention to every detail pertaining to health and physical fitness.

She not only has ability, but she has the capacity for putting her heart into her job.

She writes: "The encouragement which I have received urges me on to greater effort; and I am constantly trying to improve myself.

I realize that only by constantly striving can I hope to win the recognition of producers and at the same time please the public."

She writes of her present work that it is "a privilege which must be honored by my unflagging effort to put forth my best."

There's inspiration for all my dancing pupils in Evelyn Law's success.

[Illustration: NW]