Art of the Dance

Even in small U. S. towns where ten years ago anything approaching an esthetic gesture would rouse the citizenry to barbaric yawps, dancing is a form of art now highly regarded, whether provided by the Ballet Russe or the Hopi Indians. In Manhattan this week the newly cosmopolitan art of the dance was honored in an ambitious exhibition of no less than 1,304 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, masks, dolls and costumes drawn from dancing in most of the nations of the world. It was the opening event in a no less ambitious festival called "Dance International," designed to keep balletomanes buzzing all this month.

Named as if in competition with the Communist International, the Dance International was conceived about six months ago by a wide-eyed, energetic young woman from Richmond, Va., Louise Branch, who runs a book shop in Manhattan and is secretary to famed Sculptor Malvina Hoffman. She thought it would be nice to have something like Olympic Games in dancing, to bring world artists in that medium together for the sake of Peace. Miss Hoffman, who has sculped native dancers in Asia, Africa and the South Seas, thought so too. During the summer Miss Branch and Miss Hoffman traveled 12,000 miles by automobile through Europe, extracted from galleries, artists and officials every scrap that they could find of valuable art connected with the dance.

Back in Manhattan they formed a committee which enlisted such distinguished names as those of Photographer Arnold Genthe, Director Philip N. Youtz of the Brooklyn Museum, Poet Lincoln Kirstein, Choreographer Leon Leonidoff, Connoisseur Julien Levy, Designer Donald Oenslager, Publisher W. W. Norton, Critic John Martin, Radioman David Sarnoff. Patrons Edward M. M. Warburg and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt. Third in command was Miss Anne Morgan, J. P. Morgan's impressive sister and Sculptor Hoffman's longtime friend. With this backing,.Dance International steamed ahead to hold a competition among U. S. painters and sculptors, supplementing European and Oriental objects of art already contracted for.

Socialites and dance-lovers, wandering this week through eight big galleries in Rockefeller Center's International Building, found rare things in rich profusion: Sculptor Hoffman's plaques of Pavlova and such of her studies of ceremonial dancers as the Mongolian Bowman (see cut); designs and sketches by such famed Europeans as Christian Berard, Mariette Lydis, Giorgio De Chirico, Andre Derain. Pablo Picasso, Georges Roualt, Leon Bakst; drawings made by Nijinsky in his Swiss sanatorium; masks from Africa and masks by W. T. Benda; sculpture by Rodin, sketches of Isadora Duncan by Abraham Walkowitz; photographs by top-flight Austrian, Swedish, French and U. S. photographers. The handsomely printed program announced for Dec. 12 an "Evening of Ballet" to include the three foremost U. S. companies, for Jan. 2 an "Evening of Modern Dance" contributed by Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, Tamiris and Charles Weidman.

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