Evelyn Law
Mr. Wayburn Addresses a Class in Acrobatic Dancing
I have watched this class with a great deal of interest. You really are getting a physical foundation here for wonderful dancing; you are beginning to handle yourselves in a scientific way. I congratulate you.
To make a success at acrobatic or any other dancing you must not strain yourselves. Train, but don’t strain. Be patient and keep practicing, and you will go far.
You are very wise to develop your ability along the line of acrobatic dancing rather than as an acrobat. There is a vast difference. As a mere acrobat one has to be a top-liner and wonderfully expert to get any kind of a salary at all, but as an acrobatic dancer you can command a place in the very best stage productions, high class musical comedies, musical revues, vaudeville, etc., and also in the better grade motion pictures and presentations, and get a very good salary. But if you let the acrobatic tricks dominate your dance, you will be classed as an acrobat, and not as an acrobatic dancer; so look out—keep your dancing up to grade and throw in these acrobatic tricks as a surprise and a climax, and you’ve got something the public and the producers want and will pay for.
After you have acquired these wonderful tricks and gotten hold of your bodies, and succeeded in bringing out in a physical way all the grace that nature gave you, then you can be taken and schooled in the soft, beautiful Americanized ballet work, and you will find that after this training you are now getting, our ballet technique will delight you and be comparatively easy for you. You know, of course, that in this course the ballet is not taught in the old, antiquated way, taking years of your time before you are permitted to do solo work. We teach you our own modern, scientific way, giving you first our foundation technique, then letting you learn how to use your arms, head, the upper part of your body and your legs gracefully and prettily, and making you as good ballet dancers as the old long-drawn-out practice ever made, enabling you to qualify for a paying engagement without a discouraging wait of years and years. Pavlowa, you know, was kept subordinate twelve years before she was permitted to attempt a solo dance in public. Imagine our American girls submitting to such apprenticeship! Not one of you would consider such a thing. And fortunately you do not have to, for we have revolutionized all that.
Now you are getting a wonderful dancing repertoire, with acrobatic dancing, musical comedy work and the tap and step dancing. When you add our ballet course to that, then you are ready for any call that may come to you in your lifetime. This is my aspiration for you. We are trying to realize ideals. When you have finished here you will be accomplished dancers, not mere machines going through a bunch of set exercises. Add the spiritual touch to your work now as you start on the home stretch. Finish here going strong, and your speed will carry you far.
Don’t be satisfied to qualify merely as acrobats. When you come to me for a letter of recommendation to some first-class theatrical manager, I don’t want to have to say to him: “Enclosed you will please find one acrobat.” I have better hopes of the graduate pupils of my courses than that.
I want to say a word here to any who feel that they are slow and not keeping up with the pace set by the rest of the class, and that word of advice is, take the same class for another four weeks’ period. Don’t have any false pride about it. You want to fit yourself perfectly for your profession. If the four weeks you have already had here are not time enough to do that, go in for another month. Really, two months is a very short time for completing a training of so much value to you.
I tell pupils in the courses in the other branches of dancing we teach, that if they feel stiff or have difficulty in performing their steps, they would do well to go into this class, the acrobatic dancing class, for a month, because here the students get all sorts of primary acrobatic tricks and gain in strength and flexibility. All dancing is easier to those who take this work. And besides, if you go out and accept an engagement you will be proficient in cartwheels, splits, and many other neat tricks that will be of great service to you. These are stunts that you cannot learn in a theatre; no one has time to teach them to you, nor the necessary equipment or facilities, and you want to be ready when the stage director calls for those who are capable of doing something unusual, to show him on the spot. And you cannot afford to try to learn things from another girl. You may injure yourself severely if you do. These difficult feats should only be attempted under the best instruction. Do not allow any girl or boy who is inexperienced to try to teach you anything in the line of acrobatic work.
Fresh air in your lungs, correct diet, and nine glasses of water a day will do wonders for you in many ways. You have heard me say this before. Well, I shall say it a good many times more, just as long as I have students under my charge who want to be “healthy, wealthy and wise”—and good looking and good dancers. And please do not treat this advice lightly. I can only ask you to observe these simple rules. I have no way of enforcing them, and possibly because they are simple you do not give them the consideration they deserve. Now let me tell you some facts, and then you decide whether or not you think it wise to neglect yourself.
Surely none of you will object to taking a glass of water nine times a day. Do not drink ice water, nor take water with meals. Liquids taken while eating will bloat you, make you fat, or make it impossible to assimilate your food properly, and that will keep you underweight. Take a glass on arising, one after breakfast, one before and after dinner and luncheon, one at about eleven in the morning and another at four, and one just before getting into bed. Water taken into the system this way induces a healthful perspiration which eliminates the bodily impurities. Your skin must be ventilated, which means that the pores must be opened, and water-drinking as I have directed will do this. If you drink milk, sip it slowly; don’t pour it down. Don’t eat between meals. Have a meal an hour and a half before class or before a performance, then the digestive process will have had time to complete its work and leave you in the best condition for mental and physical exertion.
After exercising here in your class, do not dress and hurry out into the street until your pores are closed. You have free shower baths at your disposal in your dressing rooms here in the studios, put there for just the purpose of enabling you to get into perfect condition before you go outdoors. Use them, with my compliments, please, and keep fit; then take a good rub down.
It is important to you to have a good clear skin and complexion. Some of you have it, and you want to keep it; some will be glad to know how to get it. I am going to tell you just how to acquire it and keep it, and clear up any little blemishes on your skin,—but it is so simple I am afraid you won’t think it worth doing. To have clear skins you must have pure blood and good circulation of the blood, and to obtain these you must breathe deeply and correctly and so get fresh air, full of oxygen, into your lungs. That’s all there is to it. And now, here is the correct way to breathe to accomplish all this, and I wish you would practice it now here in the class as I tell you about it:
Breathe in through your nostrils, with the mouth closed. Inhale slowly and way down deep, filling your lungs as full as you can; then exhale slowly through your mouth. Do this as an exercise, and do it ten times before you stop. Then do it again whenever you think of it, not less than three times a day. You cannot do it too often, no danger of that! It won’t hurt you or cost you a cent. The air drawn into your lungs this way expands your chest and increases your lung capacity. This makes good wind for dancing, and all dancers need lots of wind; you have to have it, you have to call for lots of breath when you dance rapidly or long. Start in right now, and by the time you have a stage engagement you will be prepared with a bellows that will furnish all the air you call for—and meanwhile watch your skin and your complexion put on the clear, healthy, beautiful appearance that every woman envies. The air in this room, as in any room, is not entirely free of impurities; it is not the best air for your breathing exercises. Outdoors—say, over in Central Park, only a block from here—is where you find the beautifying, pure oxygen that will start your blood tingling, expand your chest, and give you the real beauty of skin and complexion that nature meant all women should have. Walk. Exercise. While you’re out walking, take your beauty-breathing exercise as you go.
In my office I have a list of foods, with sixteen rules for good health. The word “diet” suggests starvation and going hungry and a lot of disagreeable things like that, I suppose, and so you would much rather not hear about it. Well, it isn’t as bad as you think, and a proper diet is a health insurance, and should be carefully observed. Do you know that I have made a study of diets and dieting, and of anatomy—the structure of the human body? My interest in dancing and in my pupils here—and in my own health—has prompted me to study that subject thoroughly. I could tell you a great deal about getting and keeping healthy, if you cared to hear it and if I had time to go into the subject.
My best dancers, and all good dancers, diet. That is, they are careful to eat what is best for them, and not everything that may tickle the palate yet raise a rumpus inside one and upset the whole system, and make them cross and cranky and homely and bad actors generally.
Good food, pure air, plenty of water, internally and externally, the right amount of sleep, not more than eight hours, and not less than seven, proper exercise and practice—all of these are essential to make good dancers—to make you good dancers.
Come in to my office tonight after class. Weigh yourselves before you come in. Then talk to me about yourself and get my diet list to take home, please.