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9 CAUSE OF PRESENT TANGO CRAZE? ASTRONOMERS BLAME IT ON THE SUN! Explanation of the New Dances and of the Waltz, Which Aroused the Same Protests a Century Ago Tango ' Is Likely to Be Standarized Soon and Then There Will Be No More Cause for Complaint THE SUN, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1914. Rude sailors of the Brest ASTIiONU Will 1.1! not mt'i STItoNOMEHS say that the tango last till 1924. Which docs mean that the Archbishop of New York, the Kaiser of ltcrlln nml tli' Duchess of Norfolk In London will iu! ifiuniiih In their views upon the tUliJfl't. Tin' tango of the nstronomers Is the tantio type, the poetry of motion, the iimmv also and perhaps the Very Mus tard .ill those dances of graceful atti tudes 11 tul syncopated measure, chefs JH'tivrr of rhythm and gesture, the titKatlnii of romp and the whirling tknl-h movement. Hut xve may oven see folks waltz, for tie arc in a dancing period. It Is the .Jll ! fault. i:vcr Uxly knows that sun spots regu late il mclng; and as It Is a critical (tried of .-nlar activity none may hope and few would desire to keep folks tri'in being charmed liy rhythmJc move nt nt Yon Imagine that you dance be-au-f it is the tango, when It Is the tarn:., treatise you dance! Wl.11 h comes to this, there Is a time t.i dance and a time to tire of dancing. The sun's periods of eleven years, Its m.iumums of thirty-three years nnd rrand maximum of once n century cor roi'imd very perfectly to the waltz of 1512. the wallop of (which nisi, u.d.ercd In the sehottlsoho). the maztuka of 1S30, the polka of 1S4."i, the 'iii.ulr.lle of ls.-.L', the lancers of 1S01, !l.t tutuon of 1S69, the pas de quatre f lb!C the Mostun of 1Mi3, the cukc ,ilk of ISO" and the tango of 1U13. An astronomer could even point out th. grand minimum of nothing dolus uf'.r ISTO, and the thirty-three year m.iNlmums which save, Just thirty !hne jears apart, the notable dances of '.(.I- mazurka, quadrille and lioston. It is on this principle of ma ml re rudescenee that the tango type ought .1 last till FJIU. Given the present tango anarchy worse than a certain ' land of pickles, there are ISO varieties ' may well require some time to tra.hten out the new dances. iti.-o they are new. The quadrille nas Mew, though nothing hut the contre datise tevlved. What matters that f saw "Dmi Padllla" tangoed at Cadiz In 1SD2? 1 .-.ih the cakewalk done at Philadelphia in l'T IJoth were brand new to the wi.rl l when their time came, . It mint Madet In 1'arls culls the Mos ton a waltz for pale persons." Jn (Vlitiiig tango which Is surely new she defines as "a lioston for paler por-ni- ' Truly its clutches and wriggles have nothing of the free grace which made Marthe l.'rbaln call the tango vthe mimii .if the twentieth century." It is all i.u'lu. the waltz went through simi lar ulwiitures Just a hundred years aco. A I imlred years ago the armies of .Vaiornii found the peasants of Thur.ngia dancing a new dance. It was k K.o nnd audacious, so heart nulling ar.d laminating In its music, so novel In H(-m nml tempo that the soldiers of the llramle Armee ull but stopped lighting tn it am it, It w is danced by couples. The man i'ik h iiartner by the waist, while sho urii: 1 , his shoulder. The remaining arm were held outstretched, hand claspmn hands. And round and round the ..,,i s whirled, round and round to miimi ,f , new lilt which brought tears lo th. ( ips, a measure at once languor "') in 1 .i.t.tted, soothing und exciting, t'-ntmi. r, al. diabolical. ".V w that Is some dancing!" said Hip Mr il irn of Napoleon. Tlnv look the dance with them, taiu'li' ,! ui the conquered nations as full . "Hipens-atlon and somewhere waltzing very correctly around 1S12 the waits came to Paris and London. Imagine a walls bringing tears to your eyes! Yet Dchycourt called It "the. folly of the day." Simultaneously In Paris they waltzed In 1,800 piibllo balls! Youl might think It the tango. Young folks could not eat Ices on the terraces of Kagatellc without Jumping up every ten minutes to waltz on the lawn. They waltzed everywhere. In public. In prl vale, In all ctasstn. "from Countesses to Queens" nnd "maids and valets waltzed behind the scenes." In the midst ot 't " great protest similar to that of the present Kaiser, the King of Ituly, certain Hlshops In "Wild Waltz" in Paris 100 years France, the Duchens of Norfolk In Eng land and the Mayor of l'ittsfleld, Mass., arose ncnlnst the popular new dance. In Paris two famous society leaders not to mention a very famous Kmperor Mme. de Cenlis and Mine, tie Stnel. proclaimed themselves respectively agaliiMt it a ad for It. The Countess de Genlls, who was also the Marquise tie Slllery- -of the first great champagne mark -obtained her Immense Influence by her genius as a writer and her early position as gov erness in the royal family. At that moment Napoleon w.ih paying her JC.OOO a year to write him weekly let ters on literature and morals. Mine, de Stael, daughter of the famous Necker, Minister of Louis XVI., w.-fs charming as a woman and a notable writer, who with Chateaubriand opened the modern age In all kinds of thought. Napoleon did not like lief and he did not much like waltzing. Napoleon requested Mme. de Genlls lo give earnest meditation to the ttugo pardon, I mean the waltz and to please to write It out for him. They were agreed against. Mme, de Stael was for. To-day she would bo In favor of the tango. And all three were right and would be right to day. "Inconvenient" waltzing of 1S12 was as objectionable as Infighting Specimen of Dancing tango. For months the fate of the waltz trembled In the balance, when tlenlle (Jenlls, In her strife with Stael Would e'en proscribe It from a Paris ball! Hut, unlike the Kaiser, Napoleon hesitated to move decisively against "the folly of the day." Lord Myron Joined the fray nnd In his celebrated "Ode" expressed his disapproval of tak ing your partner by the waist, while to keep a grip on her unengaged hand "To press that hand so pressed by none but thine" appeared to him the limit. So he summed It up: Can nUKht from cold Kamsrhutku to Cape lliirn With WnlU compare, or nfter Waltz be born? Kvldeutly, yes, the tango. And now It !s alt the same thing over again. Prog ress Is an eternal advance around a circle. To understand the strife that divided society nnd animated Lord Myron's "Ode to the Waltz," one has but to glance at the dance prints of the period. There were twenty ways of waltzing, when the waltz was new, Just as to day the tango but I said that. Half of them wen- good and half of them were bad. There I an old twopenny colored print to-day worth $10 of rude sailors of the Mrest waltzing very correctly. The man does not touch his partner. With elbows crooked, very saucy, he rests his two hands on his two hips nnd lets the girl cling to his shoulders. Crulkshank depicted modest London waltzing. The couplts kept far opart. Sometimes the man clasped his hands ago. Napoleon considered it as bad as gingerly behind his partner's waist while sho gripped bis shoulders. Or he Just touched her waist with open palms. A daring couple whirled with his arm around her waist, her right nrm leaning on his left shoulder. The other extreme was a "wild waltz" of Paris the man held his partner so snugly In hi right arm that she could luxuriously repose on his shoulder. As Washington Lopp said to the King of Spain while teaching him the lioston: "It's a touchstone of refinement." And the same might be said of Jig, cake walk nnd tango. Little by little good taste prevailed and the waltr. arrived at veritable heights of delicacy in Paris. The zenith, around 1S30, was the "valse roule," the partners going side by side, with their hands clasped behind their backs. Ine present danger of the tango Is, of course, Its infinite variety, When I saw Alexander Kahn, late of lioston, dance the tango with Marthe l'rbaln, proi'titly of the Paris Opera, In Kahn's offices of the rue Tronchet In Paris to the simple music of a piano, I ncelvetl the Impression of n veritable sweep of gracious movements antl noble attitudes. Hack and forth and in and out they went very much as I had seen "Don Padllla" danced at Cadiz. It looked a subtler, suppler minuet. by Cruikshank. A to the position of the partners, the modern Idea In waltzing Is perfectly accustomed to your having your arm round the girl's waist. And to lead her you must keep her close. In the tango of Kahn and L'rbaln, and that of correct Paris society to-day, it Is less amazing. While the position of the man's right arm and the left arm of the girl are the same as In all modern waltzing, the tango step itself demands that the dan cers keep apart from each other, One of the prettiest figures seemed to me a so-called backward movement, when the left arm of the man and the right hand of the girl were Wedged In between the two partners. Mut when I see paid dancers at the tango tea of the Grand Cafe In Paris It Is not that nt all. It Is quite different. It Is something like wrestling at a fair "every grip permitted" and n gallant man helping a poor girl to pick her way out of a miwy plate. There are now 120 figures, they say, of the tango. It was so easy In the beginning, and now you know why It is s i difficult at present. So few knew the beau tiful old dance In the beginning that whoever dubbed himself a teacher might ndd something that was all his own. Doubtless, also, It got tangled In the Argentine. One great danger comes from all this. It Is the tendency to pair oft nnd dance continually together. A couple who are used to the same figures dance well to- "Don Padllla." gether. On the other hand a p.flr who do ' Slipping back nnd forth from maxixe nut know or do not like e tch other's ten-1 to tnngo stops those sleeping sickness dencles fir cannot readily feel or guestnngo wriggles, while the music alone the Kaiser considers the tango. what the other Is going to do find It very dltllcult to tango together. Kven more, the very conception of the tango differs with the person. So much so that In Paris It is pretty well agreed that this really grand dance will have to be standardized by way of return to the original simplicity which made it nt first the easiest of dances. I do not say "a return." but "returns." That early tango, welcomed as the ensleM of dances, which any one could learn and which stout matrons of 60 rejoiced In, would be tango A. And half a dozen other models every one will come to know them will bring order out of chaos antl preserve the first great modern dance of unhastc from a bad name. How otherwise has it an excellent reputation here and a less excellent there? Why does the King of Italy rule It out ami the Czar of Itussla rec ommend It? Why do certain French bishops bland It as a "powerful dissolv ent of French morality," while the re mainder observe benignant neutrality? Kvltlently there must be something more than Individual good taste. There arc two tango tendencies! So much so, 1 repeat, that ulready In some of the highest Paris circles tho tango Is danced under another name! The alias Is the maxixe, the "Mrazillan maxlse." This "charming dance,'" whose attitudes are "Infinitely graceful," will not shock the prejudices against which the tango struggles. As an aristocratic American matron said to a French duchess, "Thank goodness, It cannot cause the least offence to the niimt dell-cate!-" Its character Is "essentially different." And, note you, nil this Is true In a way. While the tango Is becoming more and more u wilfully and Intention ally slow dance, the maxixe Is a dance of movement, and Its attitudes are gayer, franker anil more varied. And here Is another good thing. While the figures of the maxixe are far less numerous than those of the tango, yet the positions of the couples change continually! Finally the essential step of the maxixe Is a lengthened polka step, very glid ing, You will therefore be surprised to learu that the music Is so similar that It Is possible to dance the maxixe to the tango mid the tango to the maxixe! To step from one to the other and back again Is a f.ivr 'c amuse ment of the young In the beginning of P.iH' Some call It tin; tnaxlxe tango. Others call It the tango m.txKe. Still others call It Just the maxixe, the Mrnzlllan maNixe. In truth It Is simply standardizing tnngo. In some of the stricter public dancing teas, they don't dance any other. I have watched them at the Saus-Souci in Paris and it r"sembles very perfectly the dance of Kahn and t'rbaln. It resembles also S' ttfr Height of waltz delicacy in Paris around 1830. It is the "valse roule. would keep the couples going In. a' sweeping dunce of dignity and beauty, music has done great harm. Fortu In standardized tango they will go uately the maxixe is danced chiefly to' Listening Haw vnrlmiK til emplnyme nt hnm tho world rail .li, nml who JuMly In return KntFcius t hit t buy world tin idler t". -Wili.hh cowrzK. T HUOl'GH the little narrow street crawled a funeral procession dragging Its sombre way north ward toward the Williamsburg llridge. On cither side of the street rickety houses reared their shabby fronts toward the gray sky. Draggled women and plaintive liable. crouched on dilap idated doorsteps, frowsy men ami grimy children slouched on tho side walk. And through this gloomy quar ter the tiny white hearse with its reti nue of black carriages rumbled and rattled Its way. The hearse was drawn by a pair of gaunt gruy horses, skinny to emacia tion, miserable brutes, seemingly pre ordained to Just such dismal tasks. The driver, despite his tall hat and rusty frock coat, displayed no remnant of dignity, for his ret! eyes and dropping, scrubby Jowl betrayed his weakness, The little white vehicle Itself was fear fully nnd wonderfully made. Its thin white paint was scratched off In many places, its soiled glass scarcely revealed the tiny tasket within, tho tawdry palnled figures of kneeling angels, perched tremulously on the four cor ners, were almost ridiculous In their raw crudity: the swaying tassels, once white, were now frayed Into limp threads and stained a dirty yellow, Mut the spectators saw none of these things; Indeed the common feeling was voiced by the Hps of a blowsy woman, who peered nearsightedly nfter tho procession, as sho rasped, to her curious neighbors: "Sure, dears, it Is a grand funeral th Glordanls be havln'." I T was between three nnd four of a Fifth avenue tho wonderful traf beautiful afternoon. Up and down lie of the town rolled like n broad belt drawn forever over an Invisible lly wilieel. Motors, caTilnges, ponderous clattering buses surged on and on In endless succession, save where at the street corners the white gloved hand of the truffle policeman checked nnd held for a moment. In the middle of Forty-second street, where the bustle was most dense, stood n tall, superbly erect policeman, gray mustuched and gray haired, n man Craze of the day, back to ancient music. Modern tango to the who might well have been the object of Arnold Mennett's famous query: "Who Is that In the blue uniform? A grand duke?" Perfectly calm, wonder fully ellltient, this slnisle man noise lessly and surely stopped and started, swerved and switched, the humming tangle of vt'ilelcs. Over on the eastern sidewalk a mass of people teeteled and craned forward, waiting for an opportunity to cross. Tlie policeman, turning to them, shook his head, beckoning them to wait for a moment; but even lis he forbade pas sage theie skipped out from the crowd an elderly, much overdressed, more overpowdered woman. Uy no less t'-inn n miracle she dodged a speeding lim ousine, slithered under u horse's nose and reached the centre of the driveway determined to push her way acros. In that rush of tralllc It seemed that si'.ie must he struck and hurled down be neath the grinding wheels; hut Just at the very instant that she passed the policeman there came a shrill blast from the police whistle, blown directly in her ear. The shock seemed fairly to hoist rile woman two feet Into the air, and as she came down txo olllcer, with a quick forwattl step, seized her arm, Then, with hand lifted In warning, he escorted the woman to the curb with the ex quisite courtesy of an ambassador, bowed gravely, and returned to his post. Again tiiie tralllc shot forwaid. nnd the olllcer, turning toward the inter ested crowd, slowly antl solemnly winked one eye. B' F.FOHF. a certain shop window adjacent to (llceley Square was gathered a large group of peo ple. Nor was the group compoed ex clusively of men, for through the shov ing mass Jostled many women, young nnd old, chic and shabby, all craning to peer through tlie plate glass. Impelled by the Inevitable metropoll. Ian curiosity that stampedes a 'crowd nt tho wall of a fire engine or clots It before a steam riveter, even though an engine pnsses every day and n riveter plies its deafening clatter every hour, the Itusy Idler sifted through the Jam und saw: a wn figure! Mut such a figure! Resplendent in rose paint nnd white enamel, effulgent in taupe silk anil cr.vstull.lnc rhlne stones, the lovely lady sat, hypnotiz ing her admirers with a saccharine smile that Circe herself might have eu by Debucourt. old "Mrazillan" music of real value and a raru and taking rhythm. Certain of them aru old popular airs, like "Don Padllla," and must lie described as pure chefs d'leuvre of rhythm. So the tango when I. come to Its own ngaln. Of course, you know. It Is not really Ar gentine, and in a recent symposium of London society leaders Lady llelmsley struck tlie true note. "It Is a pity," said Lady llelmsley, "that the old Spanish dunce, the tnngo, quite graceful In Its original form, ahould in the cou.-se of Its indirect in troduction into our country have ac quired so many of the objectionable characteristics now nssocinted with It," Antl finally Ijidy Myron has Just called It a "romp." Unfortunate tnngo! I would back Fngllsh girl to romp through almost anything: but the tango, whatever be Its faults. Is the negation of romp! And here Is Its charm. Its reason for being. Mepose, ah, repose' Previously when any but sixteen-year-old girls waltzed or quadrtlled they got tired. Men, especially after !!4, had no desiro to whirl and get winded. Quite young men had come to say, "I don't dance," Hostesses wen- so hard up for dancing men that they founded a play on it, "The Man From Whlteley's." Hut they dunce the tango! Why? lie cause the tango eliminated the Jump and brought In an easy plastic move ment. Why, the primitive tango, which we all leariu-il was the easiest of dances, as the waltz is the hardest. It will become as easy again, a eny as the minuet uud as precious for developing grace. I speak of tango type, the tango ot the astronomers. 1 speak of standardized tango, ancient Spanish tango, tango maxixe, or what ever healthy forms are bound to come. In any case It Is the first dance since the minuet and the gavotte to do away with the "whirling dervish movement" which captured the world with the waltz. A hundred years Is a long time to whirl. I d 1 u s y e r vied. Mut it was neither the face nor the smile that held the throng. Not at all. Indeed, be It salt! truly, tho waxen lady owed her attractive qualities to the cut of her skirt, if a awning gap from hem to waist ma he de. scribed as a cut, and through the re vealing charm there appearing almot a yard of sheerest brown hosiery clasped Just above tlie knee by an un believably scintillating band of Jew elry. Mut the tenets of morality are Irre fragable and vice can never he Haunted In the face of virtue, for tint next morning found the lovely lady veiled and enshrouded In lovely taiipo drapery, so discreetly cemented together that hut tlie merest tip of a blown slipper ventured to the gaze of Mroad way. IT Is not the purpose of the Muy Idler to enlarge upon racial tils Unctions nor to indulge in invid ious or uneomplluientary comparisons letweeii white and black. However, a little incident thai occurred recently mi a Columbus avenue car seems worthy of note and may Induce a moiu charitable view toward the black brother. It was in one of those rickety and antediluvian street cars that still elt In New York that the incident tool; place. Tills car, introduced Into tin service long before the era of the cross seat, was Jammed as usual with a ihiong of hoiiiegiier. The parallel seats were Jammed, nnd several men were standing, Inn when all old woman liitlVletl down Hie car a gray hailed old darky, dressed In careful black, rose and with a respectful how offered Ills seat net to a motherly negro mammy, who was eUdcntly his wife. Mut before the feeble old woman could reach the vacant place a much besot ten white man had lurched into thu gap. The darky said nothing, did not even alter the expression on his face, until presently the interloper began to address insulting lemarks to the col oreil maium The old negio endured this for a block or two, but finally as his wife looked at him appe.iliugly ha leaned over quietly, picked up 111 bag, nnd, beckoning his wife to follow, got off the car. Tlie white man looked after thktn suddenly, then quickly dozed off to sleep, murmuring something about ''them fresh niggers."