Читать книгу The Art of Ballet онлайн

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There is no lack of testimony, pictorial and literary, to the ancient Greek love of the Dance.

Among the various arts of war and peace that Vulcan engraved upon that wondrous shield which he fashioned at the entreaty of sad Thetis for her son Achilles, the Dance was not forgotten; and the Homeric singer must have been a lover of the art to limn as clear a picture as is given in the eighteenth book of the Iliad.

“There, too, the skilful artist’s hand had wrought

With curious workmanship, a mazy dance,

Like that which Dædalus in Knossos erst

At fair-haired Ariadne’s bidding framed.

There, laying each on other’s wrists their hand,

Bright youths and many-suitored maidens danced.”

“Now whirled they round with nimble practised feet,

Easy, as when a potter, seated, turns

A wheel, new-fashioned by his skilful hand

And spins it round, to prove if true it run:

Now featly moved in well-beseeming ranks.

A numerous crowd, around, the lovely dance

Surveyed, delighted; while an honoured Bard