Ballet Dancers.
The reader may be supposed to be familiar with the architectural splendors of the Paris Opera House. To some minds these splendors will perhaps become more vivid when it is said that they cost 40,000,000 francs, say $8,000,000. I omit all general description and pass at once behind the scenes to thefoyer de la danseor green-room of the ladies of the ballet.
It is a splendid room, decorated with allegorical panels and mirrors. All around the room run bars fixed against the wall, and covered with red velvet. The dancing “subjects” use these bars to stretch and twist their legs, and to exercise the muscles of their backs. Before the fireplace stand the children and small fry of the ballet. On each side of the fire, dozing and gossiping are the mothers of the figurantes, armed with baskets and knitting needles. In the middle of the room is a little group of men, hats in hand, carefully dressed, chatting, laughing, and apparently waiting for something.
They are thehabitues, and they are waiting for the arrival of thepremiers sujets.
Soon these ladies appear, one by one, walking with that movement of the hips that only dancers have, the foot turned outward and enveloped in loose gaiters, which make them look like CochinChina hens. These gaiters are destined to preserve their satin shoes and stockings from dust and dirt. With a little watering-pot that they carry with their finger tips, like shepherdesses in Watteau’s pictures, they proceed to water about three square feet of floor; then flinging into the glass a general and collective ogle at the group standing behind them, they go through a variety of steps, pirouettes, smiles and capers for five minutes.
Then comes a little repose. The group of men breaks up, and those who are intimate enough approach and talk to the dancers. What they say to them is a secret. Meanwhile, the call man cries with a voice like a rattle, “Gentlemen and ladies, they are beginning.” This is not true. It is like saying dinner at six for half past. The incident, however, is useful to those ladies who wish to cut short a tiresome conversation. The reply is a caper.
After a few minutes the call man returns: “Gentlemen and ladies, they have begun.”
This time it is almost true. Then the ladies take off their gaiters, hand the watering-pots to their mothers, to their chamber-maids, or to the persons who combine these two offices, and with much strutting and muscular mannerism direct their steps toward the stage.
Those who enjoy the privilege of the entry to thefoyerof the opera are the subscribers, the Ministers, influential journalists, and a few other persons whom it pleases the director to gratify. All rich folk, you may be sure, for unless you are rich you cannot be an habitue of the opera. As Hector Berlioz used to say, “Music is essentially aristocratic, a girl of noble lineage, that princes alone can endow nowadays.”