Every Little Movement: A Book About Delsarte

This book is dedicated to

and I wish to thank:

Louise Gifford, of the Drama Department of Columbia University for reading the manuscript, making valuable suggestions, and for writing the introduction to this book.

Lucien Price, of the Boston Globe

Walter Terry, of the New York Herald Tribune

Carol Stone, actress and disciple of Delsarte

Ed Menerth, of the drama department of Miami University

Joseph E. Marks, III

John Christian

all of whom read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions.

Virginia Butterfield, who not only read the manuscript, but read printer’s proof for me.

Madame Hèléne Poitier de la Housaye

Pauline Lawrence Limon

Doris Humphrey

Genevieve Oswald, Dance Archives Curator, New York Public Library

Juana

Mrs. Clarice Burrell

all of whom helped me to secure access to valuable source material.

La Meri, who for three successive years invited me to give a series of lectures on Delsarte at her Ethnologic Dance Center in New York.

—————

Copyright, 1954, by Ted Shawn. Every Little Movement copyright 1910 by M. Witmark & Sons, copyright renewed. The quotation from Every Little Movement is used by the gracious permission of M. Witmark & Sons, and Otto Harbach who wrote the lyrics of Madam Sherry.

This is an unabridged republication of the Second Revised and Enlarged Edition published in 1963 by the Author, and is one of a series of republications by Dance Horizons/Princeton Book Co., Publishers, POB 57, Pennington, NJ 08534. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-28049. ISBN 0-87127-015-3. Printed in the United States of America.

Third printing 1988

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: I AM SPEAKING OF TED SHAWN by Louise Gifford, Columbia University School of Dramatic Arts

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

SECTION I. FRANÇOIS DELSARTE, THE MAN AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

SECTION II. A STATEMENT OF THE LAWS OF DELSARTE’S SCIENCE

SECTION III. APPLICATION OF THESE LAWS TO THE ART OF THE DANCE

SECTION IV. THE INFLUENCE OF DELSARTE ON THE AMERICAN DANCE

APPENDIX—BIBLIOGRAPHY, WITH COMMENTARY

CONCLUSION

Preface To The Second Edition

As was said in the first edition of EVERY LITTLE MOVEMENT the only missing important source work at the time of publication was the book by Alfred Giraudet, published in Paris in 1895, under the title Mimique—Physionomie et Gestes; Methode Pratique d’apres le systeme de F. Del Sarte. Pour servir a l’expression des sentiments. While there is reason to believe an English translation was made and published in this country by Edgar S. Werner, search by me, aided by a number of friends, has failed to track down a copy. The French edition in the Boston Public Library was briefly studied by me, and then by having a micro-film made, and having this printed on paper, same size as the original book, by Xerox process, and having this translated into English for me by Mrs. Virginia Butterfield, only within the last year, this second edition has finally been made possible.

There has been some revision of the text of the first edition, and I have added as No. XII in the Bibliography a summary and an evaluation of Giraudet’s book. My friend, William Thomas, working from the drawings of Gaston le Doux which illustrated Giraudet’s book, has provided me with six charts included in the second edition. Using the first edition of this book as a textbook with my own classes in Mime for nine years, I found that one of the areas of difficulty was that students found it hard to understand the chart of the nine-fold accord, since I had given that chart only in its abstract form. These added charts show how this principle is applied to attitudes of the head, stances of the legs, positions, or expressive uses of the hand, etc. etc. I hope these charts will make it easier to understand the nine-fold accord.

Footnotes have been added to the original text of the first edition to enable the student to compare what I had given them as from Mrs. Hovey, Mrs. Stebbins, Mme. Arnaud and other sources with the same material as presented by M. Giraudet. Some other additions have been made to bring things up to date, such as the changed situation in Louisiana State University, as to the accessibility of the Delsarte material there.

I have been very gratified that this book has been of help not only to dancers and choreographers, but also has been used as a text book in the speech and drama departments of colleges and universities, and I have had many testimonies as to the diagnostic value of this science to psychiatrists and those working in personnel and guidance.

Ted Shawn

Jacob’s Pillow

July, 1963.

Introduction

I AM SPEAKING OF TED SHAWN

By Louise Gifford

of the School of Dramatic Arts, Columbia University

Every artist should have it, but only the greatest will understand it. So said Richard Wagner, the composer.

Wagner was giving his appraisal of the then recent discoveries of François Delsarte, discoveries of the principles whereby man, through his body, gives form to feeling.

Have records been kept of these discoveries? Where are they to be found today? Has anyone ever really used them?

This book gives the answers to these questions: These records have been collected, preserved and used by Ted Shawn, whose accomplishments in art and education place him among our greatest. It is an accepted fact that Mr. Shawn’s vision, plus hard concentrated work, has been the greatest single factor in achieving the recognition of The Dance as an art form in its own right and as a dynamic educational force, worthy to be listed for study as an accredited academic subject.

Many years ago Mr. Shawn said, The art of the dance is too big to be encompassed by any one system, school or style. On the contrary, the Dance includes every way men of all races, in every period of the world’s history, have moved rhythmically to express themselves. To learn the dances of many races is to learn to love the peoples of many races. To this end, and because it needed to be done, Ted Shawn dreamed up and founded a University of the Dance. Here each season combinations of artists are brought for performing and teaching which can never be seen or met anywhere else in the world. Here students from far and wide can study and learn as nowhere else in the world. That from the one universal feeling of good health with good will there springs endless diversity of rhythmic expressions called dance, a few have realized, and the educational and cultural value of this fact is constantly talked about. But Ted Shawn is the one who DID something about making such an educational experience possible.

This University of the Dance and the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, originated, managed and directed by him, is a success both artistically and economically. Have you ever tried to organize and run a school? Then you know what it takes. The success of this University alone would justify the quotation, Ted Shawn has an ineradicable place in the history of American culture.

As a concert artist Shawn has had top billing throughout America, Europe and the Orient. As a performer, his artistry is unexcelled. As a choreographer, his works have been revolutionary. It was he who gathered together a group of athletes, formed them into a company that played over 1250 performances to enthusiastic audiences in 750 cities in the United States, Canada, Cuba and England, and disbanded it in 1940, when, for the second time in his career, war and military service claimed him.

As a lecturer Ted Shawn keeps the close attention of his audiences by warmth of presentation, clarity and scholarship, plus the value of material offered. You have lectured? Then you know the study, care and preparation it takes.

As an educator his influence is unique and unrivaled. Years before founding the University of the Dance, Mr. Shawn, in collaboration with his artist wife, Ruth St. Denis, founded the Denishawn schools and managed the companies recruited from those schools, companies which toured the world during two decades. Graduates of these schools and companies include such recognized dance leaders as Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman and many others who went on to form schools and companies of their own. No campus today has escaped the influence of these teachers and directors, whose opportunities were opened to them—and to countless others—because of the creative teaching and directing of Ted Shawn.

Of present interest, too, is the fact that over 27,000 people travel from all parts of the country every summer to attend the programs given at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. These programs are assembled under the guidance of Ted Shawn. Have you developed latent talent in others and made opportunities for their success? Then you know that this is quite an achievement.

And now may I mention that the book in your hands, written, compiled and published by Ted Shawn, is in two ways the most generous book ever to be written. (1st) Mr. Shawn could have presented most of this material as his own discovery. Instead, he has chosen to claim the truth—his original use and application of the material. Here is generosity and integrity in capital letters. (2nd) A man of achievement and success is interested enough and cares enough to share what has been of priceless value to him in his own career. This is the generous teacher in the superlative. This book is bound, cover and back, in generosity. Where is there another author who has so bound his book?

As for the charts so carefully preserved, it takes preparation to understand them. It takes preparation to read the symbol H2O. In this cold, odd symbol, H2O, there is no possible suggestion of the play of color, the sound and the rippling flow, of any such substance as water. It takes preparatory training to receive thoughts and ideas from cold, odd marks called letters. Symbols which explain and chart the secrets of the atom are, to most of humanity, only scribblings conveying no sense.

In this same way, many have glanced at the Delsarte charts and found them meaningless. But those who, through previous training, are able to understand the symbols of the charts, realize in them the symbols of life and the secret of how feeling becomes form. It will therefore take time, discipline and preparation to use this book.

Every artist should have it, but only the greatest will understand it, and these will be ever grateful to Ted Shawn for his careful preservation and generous sharing of this material—his material now by right of possession and use. Access to one of the world’s great discoveries has been generously offered to all who care to take advantage of it by Ted Shawn, the author of the book now before you.

Author’s Foreword

TO THE FIRST EDITION

"Every little movement has a meaning all its own,

Every thought and feeling by some posture may be shown."

Otto Harhach

In 1910 the new musical comedy hit was Madam Sherry, and from that show the one most popular song, which is remembered and sung today, was Every Little Movement. Current trends in life, politics and art provide the raw material from which the musical show distils its satires, takeoffs, burlesques. And so Every Little Movement reflected the epoch-making new chapter which had been opened in the world of the dance. Whereas, for some generations previous to 1900, the dancing in the theatre and in the ballet was almost exclusively acrobatic and meaningless, with the advent of Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan, a whole new approach to movement had come into the dance world—that at all times, dance should express something. The movement might be expressive of wind and waves, or have dramatic, emotional, narrative content, kinetic or symbolic values—but certainly every little movement had to have meaning, and not be performed merely as technique, as steps or as an acrobatic spectacle.

In turn, this Renaissance of the Dance was based on a previous movement which had swept this country—Delsarte. Steele Mackaye, one of the greatest single figures in the history of American theatre, having studied in Paris with François Delsarte, in 1871 started to lecture in America on the science which Delsarte had evolved, called by Delsarte Applied Aesthetics and taught by him continuously in France from 1839 until his death in 1871. As I intend to show later, in the first section of this book, Delsarte was a true scientist: setting out to discover how the human body moves under the stimuli of emotions, he collected a vast amount of data from first hand observation of the human being in every possible circumstance and condition, and from these hundreds of thousands of examples, deduced basic laws. Nothing was done arbitrarily, or from a priori hypotheses—he operated always in a truly scientific manner, codifying and systematizing, from facts, the effects of emotion upon the human body as seen in gesture and in speech. While Delsarte himself was known during his lifetime largely as a professor of singing and declamation, and perhaps two thirds of all his lectures dealt with diction, tone and other aspects of the speaking and singing voice, it was his laws of gesture, ignored and not even recognized by the dancers of Europe of his day, that so profoundly affected the American dance some thirty years after his death.

It seemed obvious to Steele Mackaye that if anyone was to use these laws effectively, the instrument of the human body had to be disciplined and prepared. A controversy has raged for many years as to Delsarte’s own use of exercises, but it seems evident to me that Delsarte propounded a pure science, and that Steele Mackaye, his famous American pupil, worked out the system of exercises which he called Harmonic Gymnastics and which, spreading from Steele Mackaye and his pupils, swept this country for the two decades up to 1890 and was always referred to as Delsarte; for in those two decades a man’s name had gradually become a common noun in our language.

Steele Mackaye had used his Harmonic Gymnastics as a means to an end—the preparing of the actor and orator to become a more proficient performer. But his pupils, and pupils of his pupils, with a smattering of this knowledge, evolved something which was not only never intended by François Delsarte himself, nor by Steele Mackaye—it falsified and travestied and made ridiculous what was then, and is now, the most complete and perfect science of human expression.

Born in 1891, in my own childhood I saw only the distorted and already outmoded falsifications—statue posing, in which amateur entertainers, costumed in bulky, graceless Greek robes, whitened skin, and white wigs, took poses supposedly expressive of grief, joy, shyness, anger, defiance, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseam. This was a complete reversal and falsification of the science which Delsarte taught, for he said that emotion produced bodily movement, and if the movement was correct and true, the end result of the movement left the body in a position which was also expressive of the emotion—but that it