Modern Deportment
The modern girl has become an almost threadbare butt for criticism now. Even her most ardent barrackers usually manage to temper their praise with a qualifying statement of some sort.
Latest to pass judgment on her is Santos Casoni, the famous teacher of dancing in London. He. says that she can’t walk! “I like the modern girl,” is the way he expresses it. “She is healthy minded, independent without being insolent, goodtempered, a good sport and radiantly healthy. My only complaint is that she is graceless, “Despite all the care she takes in the choice of clothes and the clever way she uses them to accentuate her personality, she shows not the slightest knowledge of the most primitive and attractive grace of all—how to walk.
“Take your stand at a street corner and observe her pass on her confident, allconquering way. Does she walk with rhythm, carrying herself gracefully? Do you think that her movements express the poetry of motion? I hate to say it, but, to my mind, the modern girl waddles or shuffles along. In other words, she walks with dead legs. The first essential of bodily balance is graceful deportment, and this she does not seem- to exercise. In fact, she gives me the idea that she is walking on stilts or props instead of stately legs. From waist to neck she is inanimate, lifeless; from waist downwards like an automatic machine.
“Even the best of silk stocking manufacturers cannot make a shapely leg move well. How can he, when the owner wills to move as if it were a crutch instead of a wonderful piece of mechanism? The leg moves with muscles, tense or relaxed, according to the work it has to perform, and should help to complete a harmony of human expression.
“If only our girls would pay as much attention to the art of perfect walking and dancing as they do to personal adornment, they would add some joyous abandon to this overmechanized, unimaginative age.”
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Southland Times, Issue 21100, 4 June 1930, Page 12
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333Modern Deportment Southland Times, Issue 21100, 4 June 1930, Page 12
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