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Show 30 CODE OF TERPSICHORE. The Chica is now banished from the balls of the white women of South America, being far too offensive to decency ; and is only sometimes performed in a few circles, where the small number of spectators encourage the dancer. At Cairo, where there are no theatres, there are a sort of actors, or leapers, who go about to private houses, and represent various scenic performances, wherein the most licentious and obscene attitudes bear a strong resemblance to the Chica, and the ancient mimics. Many of the Greek and Roman dances may be compared to the Chica and Fandango, and especially those practised at the time of the decline of dancing in both nations, when this art naturally became an object of contempt among men of taste and morality. I am almost inclined to believe that the Chica owes its origin to some of the ancient dances. Greece, so fertile in productions of every kind, and which gave birth to So" crates and Diogenes, Phocion, and Alcibiades, Homer, and Aristophanes, Agoracrites43, Cleophanes44, Calli-pides 45, all of most extraordinary, but opposite, talents, Greece, I think the most likely nation to have created this voluptuous dance. The dance of the Angrismene, usually performed at festivals in honour of Venus, and still very common among the modern Greeks, may bear me out in m y opinion. THE ANGRISMENE. The Angrismene, or la Fachee (the angry maiden), is performed by two persons of different sexes. A young girl first appears dancing (the music plays a languid andan-tino); after she has gone round in a glissade kind of step, a young man presents himself, also dancing; he plays about her with a handkerchief he holds in his hand, and attempts to approach her, but she, by her countenance |
