Цитата: ON THE DECAY OF THE DANCE
ON THE DECAY OF THE DANCE. Last night I went to a dance. I had leisure to observe the humours of the crowd, for I had injured my foot earlier in the day during an excursion into domestic carpentry, […] So I could not dance. I sat, a black wallflower, and noted the demeanour of the dancers. The first, last, and throughout the dominant impression was one of deep and settled gloom. The host was bored, the hostess was bored, and all the guests were bored exceedingly. In the slow circlings of the waltz bored faces turned and weary-looking; bodies gyrated mechanically. We dance nothing but the valse now in the suburbs, one set of lancers, perhaps, thrown in during the course of the evening. Nobody laughed, few smiled; except, of course, in the pauses of the dance, when politeness exacts a smile or two from the least gay. And I wondered to myself. For dancing has meant many things. It has meant religious enthusiasm: it has seized on the most improbable. Even David danced once-with disastrous domestic consequences. […] What royal fare of varied steps formed the menu on my first dance programme. How well I remember that first dance. It was at Clapham, and She was there, in white muslin, with many flounces, and a sash of blue and green tartan. […] We danced the quadrille that evening, a long laughing line of us all down the big room ; and we danced the lancers and the Caledonians, and, what is more, we knew the figures, every one of them. We danced the Redowa and the Mazurka, the Polka and the Circassian circle, as well as the Schottische, plain and Highland. And we waltzed quite as much as our elders thought seemly. Are these dances all dead?
Источник: Pall Mall Gazette - 21 May 1898
Цитата относится к: 1898 г.
Дата первой найденной публикации: 1898 г.
Подобрал цитату: Алина Логвиненко (Файзганова)