Volinsky, A. K.
From The Book of Exultation - The Vertical
Volinsky, A. K., (1983) "From The Book of Exultation - The Vertical" from What is dance? : readings in
theory and criticism pp.255-257, Oxford: Oxford University Press ©
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A. K. VOLINSKY
255
dancing. By 1800 dancers raised their legs ninety deggrees for a movement such as the développé. This advance is to be associated with a
change of costume. As long as for their classical pas ballerinas were
wearing voluminous eighteenth century skirts, a greater agility was
impossible. The earlier history of baUet can be most tersely written as a
history of costume. It was Camargo who, in the first place, somewhat
shortened the skirt and adopted the heelless shoe.
lSometimes the variations in a baUet take their names from the music
alone. Thus the naming of the Waltz and Mazurka in Sylphides refers
solely to Chopin's music and not to the dances set to this music.
A. K. VOLIN SKY
From THE BOOK OF
EXULTATION
THE VERTICAL: THE FUNDAMENTAL
PRINCIPLE OF CLASSIC DANCE
In ballet, ballerinas commonly dance on their toes. At first
sight this deportment seems both unnatural and senseless. To
understand so important an aspect of ballet, one must investigate
the nature and meaning of the vertical in human life.
What is a vertical line? It is an upward-aspiring straight line.
Things lie and stretch themselves along the earth, horizontally;
or they soar away from it and free themselves of unnecessary
supports. Man is so formed that impressions take shape in his
mind in different ways, depending on whether he sees something lying or standing, horizontal or vertical. In the first case,
the psychic sensation is restful and regular, without strong emotion; in the other, his soul is made to feel exalted. If I were to see
a tree trunk floating in a river, in my mind's eye I would swim
alongside it, as it does, quietly and still. One has only to see the
same trunk set upright, aspiring from earth to the sky, and the
soul is grasped by an involuntary impulse in a heavenward striving. A slithering snake awakens one impression; when it raises
itself, another. A bear, too, changes when it rises swiftly and
256
GENRE AND STYLE
fearlessly confronts a menacing danger; and a gorilla ceas~s to
resemble an ape when, staggering with exertion, it holds Itself
upright on its hind legs. High churches, obelisks, columns,
mountains draw the soul upward. AB man's eyes glide from
below to above, earthbound and often pressingly heavy feelings
and thoughts follow irresistibly.
Once man crept on all fours and lived in the trees as the apes
do now. He lived horizontally then, without raising his glances
to the stars, and he thought horizontally, too, about hunting his
helpless prey over trees and ground. After a development process of many thousands of years, he came down from the trees,
stood upright and straight on his legs and freed his arms for a
deliberate battle with his environment. This was the moment of
the greatest bloodless revolution in the history of mankind. Man
ceased to be horizontal and became vertical. From this time on
he is identified as a man, not an ape or a primate resembling
man. At the same time, he acquires dominion over nature and
becomes its master. This lordship is the result of the fact that man
becomes conscious of his liberated arms and hands, he engages
them usefully, and perfects his means of battle. He sharpens
stone, manufactures arrows, stretches the bow, tosses boomerangs, which return to him, after birds, employs a lever, builds a
hut, entices animals into traps, and so on. With the vertical
begins the history of human culture and the gradual conquest of
heaven and earth.
This is how the problem was viewed, too, by the Italian physician Moscatti, who lectured on the natural superiority of horízontality to verticality. Women, he maintained, woul.~ gi~e birth
more easily were they to move on all fours. Moscatti s discourss
was taken up sympathetically by Immanuel Kant, the founder of
modern critical philosophy. He agreed with Moscatti's supposition that to crawl is more natural, but emphatically asserted
standing upright as an act of the spirit that overcomes the natural
state and raises man above nature ....
The Greeks clearly set the vertical in opposition to the bent
and crooked, not only in the geometrical but in the comprehensive spiritual meaning of the word. To see straight, to speak
straight-all
this is at once pictorially sensible and heroic. An
upright city is a city of good and high morals that rests firmly on
its foundation in a state of political and economic welfare ....
This is the meaning of the vertical in its widest sense. All peoples agree about its worth. In their languages the way of saying
MICHEL FOKINE
257
"straight" always means "honest." With every step the English
take, they appeal to the "upright"; the Romans demanded that
the heart burn as a flame, high and heavenward. Mountainward
tend our souls-that
is the sense of the Latin sursum corda.
Ancient and modern are one in this perception of life. Antiquity
understood all this even more deeply than we do. In our times,
this type of word usage all too often is turned to allegory, that
is, to a picturesque but not full-toned manner of expression.
Only in ballet do we possess all aspects of the vertical in its
exact mathematically formed, universally perceptible expression.
Everything in ballet is straight, upright, as a taut string that
sounds a high note. Of course, I'm speaking of classic dance and
not character or social dance, which purposefully and in keeping
with their character permit all manner of crookedness. But in
ballet, everything-the
dances on the ground and in the air-is
the direct heritage passed down to us by the sublime, proud, and
pure antiquity ....
(1925)
MICHEL FOKINE
LETTER TO "THE TIMES,"
JULY 6TH, 1914
To the Editor of "The Times."
Sir-I am extremely grateful to the English Press for the attention which it has given to the "Russian Ballet," now appearing
at Drury Lane Theatre, but at the same time I should like to point
out certain misconceptions which exist as to the history of the
ballet and the principles on which it is founded.
The misconceptions are these, that some mistake this new
school of art, which has arisen only during the last seven years,
for the traditional ballet which continues to exist in the Imperial
theatres of St. Petersburg and Moscow, and others mistake it for
a development of the principles of Isadora Duncan, while as a
matter of fact the new Russian ballet is sharply differentiated by