Art of Stage Dancing — Chapter 42: Dancing and Cheerfulness
DANCING AND CHEERFULNESS
"For the good are always the merry," says William Butler Yeats, Ireland's foremost living poet, in "The Fiddler of Dorney."
This is an old truth, too often ignored or forgotten.
There are, unhappily, many persons who have conceived the strange notion that goodness means a gloomy outlook toward the world and those who inhabit it.
To them this earth is a vale of tears; everything is evil and steadily growing worse; if every prospect pleases it only emphasizes their conviction that man is vile.
Natural instincts that prompt mankind to rejoice and be glad, to lift up their voices in cheerful songs, or to express their abundant vitality by joyous dances, are to them evidence of sin and depravity.
If they could have their way they would abolish every manifestation of happiness, and carry their conviction that man is doomed to endless pain and woe into the life beyond.
[Illustration] That this peculiar idea of the relation of goodness to happiness at one time represented the prevailing sentiment of what are termed the enlightened peoples, is undeniably true.
Yet always there has been a saving remnant that protested against the solemn, serious, and sad railers against mirth and merriment, and at last these dissenters are finding that they are rapidly becoming the majority.
No longer are normal men and women ashamed to show that they are glad to be alive;
that they believe that they were meant to be happy and should seek happiness; that they do not agree that goodness means repression of natural impulses.
Perhaps they are less concerned with abstract standards of conduct than were their ancestors.
For them life is a joyous adventure, and they wish so to live that they may experience to the full all that it has to offer.
Not the least encouraging sign of the changed and changing attitude of humanity toward the old repressions and fears, is the world-wide extension of interest in all forms of popular amusement.
People no longer think that to be good--or moral--whatever those words may mean, is to be a doleful machine, wearily going the rounds of earning a livelihood.
They question the authority of those who try to inflict upon them their narrow standards of life.
They ask questions.
They want to know many things.
Why, they ask, should it be a virtue to wear a gloomy face, to shun pleasure, to avoid their impulses to sing, play or dance?
They have capacity for enjoyment.
Why should they starve their natures, and go without pleasures that are rightfully theirs?
It has often been said that Americans have not as a rule known how to play.
They are changing all that, and as the level of education and intelligence rises, as wealth accumulates and is more widely diffused, as old inhibitions lose their force, this country is destined to become the great playground of the world.
The American people are above all else cheerful and optimistic.
They know what they can do because they know what has been done, ever since their brave pioneer forefathers cleared the forests, subdued the wilderness, spread out across the wide prairies, and established the mightiest empire of the earth.
The present and all coming generations that enjoy the fruits of pioneer labor and sacrifices have a right to be joyous.
They are free, prosperous and filled with vitality, vim, pep and go.
They want more from life than any other people.
There are among them no country peasants, or city proletariat, no class distinctions, no artificial aristocracy.
Strong, confident, fearless, they work not merely, as the masses in other lands, for a bare existence, but as a means for providing the comforts and pleasures to which they feel they are entitled.
Whether people are cheerful because they dance, or dance because they are cheerful, may not easily be decided.
One thing is certain, that if from an assemblage of men and women there should be selected those with smiling, happy faces, by far the greater percentage would be found to be dancers.
"For the good are always the merry," the lighthearted, free from care and worry, who sing, or dance, or play because of their superabundance of vital energy, and because in so doing they are in harmony with the primal laws of being.
[Illustration: NW] [Illustration: "LITTLE OLD NEW YORK," FOLLIES OF 1923] DANCING AND COUNTRY LIFE
