Their
skates seem as much a part of them as tails to mermaids. It is
bedtime now for sane folks, but at this moment a certain madness
which does not at all fit in with the true German temperament
descends on the crowd. Some go upstairs to another part of the
building, where there is a dancehall called the Admiralskasino;
but, to the truly swagger, one should hasten to the Palais du Danse
on the second floor of the big Metropolpalast in the Behrenstrasse.
This place opens promptly at midnight and closes promptly at two
o'clock in the morning.
Inasmuch as the Palais du Danse is an institution borrowed outright
from the French they have adopted a typically French custom here.
As the visitor enters - if he be a stranger - a flunky in gorgeous
livery intercepts him and demands an entrance fee amounting to
about a dollar and a quarter in our money, as I recall. This
tariff the American or Englishman pays, but the practiced Berliner
merely suggests to the doorkeeper the expediency of his taking a
long running start and jumping off into space, and stalks defiantly
in without forking over a single pfennig to any person whatsoever.
The Palais du Danse is incomparably the most beautiful ballroom
in the world - so people who have been all over the world agree
- and it is spotlessly clean and free from brackish smells, which
is more than can be said of any French establishment of similar
character I have seen. At the Palais du Danse the patron sits at
a table - a table with something on it besides a cloth being an
essential adjunct to complete enjoyment of an evening of German
revelry; and as he sits and drinks he listens to the playing of a
splendid band and looks on at the dancing. Nothing is drunk except
wine - and by wine I mainly mean champagne of the most sweetish
and sickish brand obtainable. Elsewhere, for one-twentieth the
cost, the German could have the best and purest beer that is made;
but he is out now for the big night. Accordingly he saturates his
tissues with the sugary bubble-water of France. He does not join
in the dancing himself. The men dancers are nearly all paid
dancers, I think, and the beautifully clad women who dance are
either professionals, too, or else belong to a profession that is
older even than dancing is. They all dance with a profound German
gravity and precision. Here is music to set a wooden leg a-jigging;
but these couples circle and glide and dip with an incomprehensible
decorum and slowness.
When we were there, they were dancing the tango or one of its
manifold variations. All Europe, like all America, was, for the
moment, tango mad. While we were in Paris, M. Jean Richepin
lectured before the Forty Immortals of the Five Academies assembled
in solemn conclave at the Institute of France. They are called
the Forty Immortals because nobody can remember the names of more
than five of them. He took for his subject the tango - his motto,
in short, being one borrowed from the conductors in the New York
subway - "Mind your step!"
While he spoke, which was for an hour or more, the bebadged and
beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with
emotion; their faces - or such parts of their faces as were visible
above the whiskerline - flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously
they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the
evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were,
to its Revelation. I judge the revelation particularly appealed
to them - that part of it appeals to so many.
After that the tango seemed literally to trail us. We could not
escape it. While we were in Berlin the emperor saw fit officially
to forbid the dancing of the tango by officers of his navy and
army. We reached England just after the vogue for tango teas
started.
Naturally we went to one of these affairs. It took place at a
theater. Such is the English way of interpreting the poetry of
motion - to hire some one else to do it for you, and - in order to
get the worth of your money - sit and swizzle tea while the paid
performer is doing it. At the tango tea we patronized the tea was
up to standard, but the dancing of the box-ankled professionals
was a disappointment. Beforehand I had been told that the scene
on the stage would be a veritable picture. And so it was - Rosa
Bonheur's Horse Fair.
As a matter of fact the best dancer I saw in Europe was a performing
trick pony in a winter circus in Berlin. I also remember with
distinctness of detail a chorusman who took part in a new Lehar
opera, there in Berlin. I do not remember him for his dancing,
because he was no clumsier of foot than his compatriots in the
chorus rank and file; or for his singing, since I could not pick
his voice out from the combined voices of the others. I remember
him because be wore spectacles - not a monocle nor yet a pair of
nose-glasses, but heavy-rimmed, double-lensed German spectacles
with gold bows extending up behind his ears like the roots of an
old-fashioned wisdom tooth.
Come to think about it, I know of no reason why a chorusman should
not wear spectacles if he needs them in his business or if he
thinks they will add to his native beauty; but the spectacle of
that bolster-built youth, dressed now as a Spanish cavalier and
now as a Venetian gondolier, prancing about, with his spectacles
goggling owlishly out at the audience, and once in a while, when
a gleam from the footlights caught on them, turning to two red-hot
disks set in the middle of his face, was a thing that is going to
linger in my memory when a lot of more important matters are
entirely forgotten.
