THE SONG SINGS THE BIRD

“A classical art accords with certain fundamental principles that are founded in natural law. It speaks to the whole man, spiritual, mental and physical, and is for humanity and all time.” From Chapter 1.

In Western Europe today, Roger Tully is perhaps the last direct link to the tradition associated with the glorious period of the Maryinskii Theatre, that saw the likes of Vaclav Nijinskii, Tamar Karsavina, Mikhaïl Obukhov, Nikolaï Legat and Anna Pavlova emerge. Where others of his generation have bowed off, discouraged by the craze for brazen physicality, Roger Tully, born in 1928, continues to teach at London to this day.

Why you should read this book.

Although the technical core of the Manual has been written for professional dancers and teachers, its Introduction and Chapter 1 can be read with profit by any layman interested in ideas, for they situate classical dancing as an expression of natural law, and thus of progress in man and society.

But fine words are nothing if the ideas behind them fail to work in the physical world. Do the principles defined in the Manual lend the dancer ease and freedom from parasitical tensions, even in tour de force and bravura work? Are these principles so rigorous as to appear at all times and in every movement? Do they enable him to ward off injury? And do the physical processes so put into motion speak to the public through forms “classical since their very inception”, in Roger Tully’s words? The book invites the reader to put the ideas to the test of practice.

Roger Tully taught children for twenty-five years, and stresses the extreme vulnerability of the artistic temperament. In his view, the myriad thoughts, feelings and emotions that characterise such a temperament - not readily accessible to the man in the street - must never be mocked or crushed through drill-and-grill systems aimed at training a “product”. Finally, the teaching concept discussed here is also a choreographic one. Many now consider the advanced step combinations of Bournonville and Cecchetti out of reach technically, and would prefer to dismiss them as dated. The vocabulary available to choreography has thus shrivelled. Were dancers and teachers to consider the principles presented here, what we now believe to be undanceable may again be performed to the highest standards, and fresh horizons opened to choreographers in our time.

"This volume reflects twenty years' work by a visionary. The principles stated here by Roger Tully are universal, appearing, as they do, in every classical art form. For Tully, classical dance is neither artificial nor forced, but an expression of the body's own natural arrangement, and indeed, on stage, only le naturel allows for true freedom."

PERFORMING ARTS
Dance Section, Chief Editor: Professor Flavia Pappacena. Rome, Italy.