Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, June 27, 1915, Page 16

Miss H-l.;\ Moller, as Lightly Costumed as the Children in the Scene, ér pearing as Photographed in an Outdoor Performance of “Ovpheus.” A Striking Manifestation of the Closer-to-Nature, Evolution of Recent Years. Interesting Facts About the ‘Newest Health Fad---and the . Question They Raise About g8 Where the Final “Clothesline’’ Is to Be Drawn HE closer-to-nature ideal cherished . from different viewpolnts in every civilized community seems to be making progress in practical ways. A few years ago such scenes as are photographed from life on this page could have existed only in the wildest imagination. Their existence, in fact, probably would have stirred the police into unwonted activity. To-day these out-of-doors displays of bare feet and limbs, with bddles. velled by only the scantiest flowing draperies, are in- dulged in and encouraged by women, girle and young children belonging to the best social eircles, - Dancing upon the green- sward with bodies as lightly covered as was the custom in ancient Greece is a fea- ture of several fashionable schools ' to which families of the best socldl standing send thelr young daughters. The childhood note is dominant ' all through this particular manifestation of the closerto-nature ideal. Nearly all of the women who make it their profession to teach dancing as that art was practised by care-free youths and maldens in the Golden Age of Greece surround them- selves with children. Children hate clothes anyway, and seem to belong to such scenes squally with the trees and the grass. Besides, the natural grace of these joyous young animals doubtless gives val- uable points to thelr instructors. Isadora Duncan, the world's first and chief ex- dancing children, her puplls. Lady Constance Richardson, the English noblewoman who threw down her deflance to aristocratic soclety when she became essional dancer of the bare-footed, ightly draped type, publishes the fact that she is bringing up her own ¢hildren as nearly as possible in conformity with the closer-to-nature ideal. In the se- clusion of her garden the little ones run about in pleasant weather very nearly .~ The keynote of her idea is that the sun and the fresh air showd come into direct contact with the body, and that the wearing of clothes unnecessarily too, have shown Miss Elsie Kuehne and Children in an Out- door “Orpheus’” Dance. in public are no longer the special privi- lege of innocent childhood; the mature instruotress enters the competition with a zest which the faithful camera is incap- able of disguising. Up to the present time a certaln per sonal reserve has been noticed—as fin- dicated In the accompanying photographs. All the persons involved, even the chil- dren, affect to conceal their identities. They are not of these times, but of the times when such gambels were a popular custom. They are pretending to be maids and children of two or three thousand years ago, their draperies stirred, not by the breezes of Mt. Kisco,'N. Y, but by zephyrs 'from the classic Aegean Sea, be- fore joy in nsture had been disturbed by Plato over problems of the soul. You see here the Junoesque Miss Helen Moller ruhning over the grass with a fronp of children, her graceful limbs no a8 bare than those of her small com- dons. But it is not really Miss Moller, t is & character in the Greek play, “Or- pheus,” given in an outdoor theatre at Mt. Kisco. The dancer is clothed in a gar- ment called an {llusion, and can therefore feel no embarrassment. The situstion is the same in the case of Miss Marle Mann, ‘whose bare right foot is pointing at 2:30 m, on an imaginary dial. las Mann—it is & character in This Brookside open-air theatre at Mt Kisco is & representative centre for the rmbo of closer-to-nature ideals. The 'best people” are seen in the audience, and the daughters of the best people, won- drously open-minded as to clothes, may sometimes be seen gamboling there on nature's green stage, Another institution where nature is baving & fair chance is the fashionable girls' school malntained by Mrs. Florence Fleming Noyes, at Petersboro, N. H. Here, too, there are frequent opeu-air dis- plays of bare limbs in the classic dance— with personalities carefully disgulsed, as “Faun,” “Bacchus,” “Bacchante,” and so on. It should not be forgotten that the world's greatest physical instructors are firm supporters of this shedding of clothes in the open. The famous Lieutenant Muel- ler of Denmark—who gave health lessons to the Kaiser and to Colonel Roosevelt— maintains that we are being slowly. s cated by our clothes, The skin, he BayS, must have light and the free circulation of air, along with buoyant exercises. Dancing, as well as other forms of physical exercise, has the physical accom- paniment in a sense of rhythm. This agreement unites the physical instructors and the teachers of classic dancing. On this point Mrs. Noyes, of the Peterboro school, says: “When we cultivate the sympathetic nervous system throi the right use of rhythmic movements We will be capable of great things in creative art, since all the beauty which we feel and to which we respond registers on the brain. No less an authority than G, Stanley Hall, of Clark University, bears me out in this theory, and maintains that the cultivation and appreciation of the beautiful has a Copyright, 1915, by the Star Company. Great Britain.Rights Reserved. Protos © ey UNDERW00D & UNDERWOOD" Ny Miss Mary Wolston, in Her Barefoot ‘“Orpheus” Dance. de- very definite sclentific value in the velgpment of the brain, and influences its output to an extent little realized in this materialistic age. “Qur garb here_is not so much.to mi- tate the Greeks as it is to give the body Miss Marie Mann, as She Appeared in a Greek Play Performance at the Outdoor Theatre, « Mount Kisco, N. Y, perfect freedom of movement and expres- slon. To attempt to express rhythmic emotions in modern fashionable attire would be absurd. Just the moment one throws asfde ordinary clothing and puts on this little costume one gets immediate- ly into the atmosphere we want. Not a muscle bound or hampered, not an articu- lation contracted. It is a matter of laying aside all our stiff-necked Puritanism and forgetting the specifications which wrong training and false ideals have developed , in all of us. We must gri back to child movements and animal rhythms, to natural gestures and free motion.” And they do—no question about that. But again crops up that bothersome ques- tion about drawing the line—the clothes- line, so to speak. Mrs. Noyes confesses that the ideal is “perfect” freedom of mo- tion Even the innocent bystander some- times has a logical mind, and will ask: “How can you have ‘perfection’ by leaving off only part of your clothes?” etc., ete. Reverting to the recognized value of bodily movements thet are rythmical, there exists a sclentific “Theory of Eurhythmics,” originated by Prof. H. Jaques-Dualcroze, of France, who has made of it the leading principle of an educa- tional system. Of his system he writes: “The object of the method is, in the first instance, to create by the help of rhythm a rapid and regular current of communication between brain and body, and ‘what differentiates my physical exer- cises from. those.of.present day methods of muscular development is that each of them is conceived in the form which can most quickly establish in the brain the image of the movement studied. “It'is a question of eliminating in eve! muscular- movement, by the help of’ wl{{ the untimely-intervention of muscies use- less for the movement in question, and thus ' developing attention, consciousness and will ‘power. Neurasthenia is often nothing less than intellectua! confusion produced by the inability of the nervous system to obtain from the muscular sys- tem’ regular obedience to the order from the brain.” Professor .Daleroze also links hands with the closer-to-nature classical dancers, for he remarks: “I like joy, for it is life. 1 preach joy, for it alone gives the power| of ‘creating useful and lasting work.” Out-of-doors . bare-foot. dancing appears, from the camera reports, to be a joyou.’ proposition. Perhaps there is no occasion to worry about the ultimate no-clothes- line.. Somebody can usually be trusted to step in at the psychological moment and save the situation—as Mayor Curley of Boston did when he told some perfectly well-meaning bare-foot soclety damcers: “Go right home and. put your-stockings onth