Identifier: dancinghelenmoll00moll (find matches)
Title: Dancing with Helen Moller; her own statement of her philosophy and practice and teaching formed upon the classic Greek model, and adapted to meet the aesthetic and hygienic needs of to-day, with forty-three full page art plates;
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Moller, Helen Dunham, Curtis
Subjects: Dance Dance
Publisher: New York : John Lane company London, John Lane
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ly borne out. Although we havenot, at least in the same degree, the serene repose of mindand spirit which the ancient Greeks possessed as a heri-tage, we find that the habitual practice of dancing asthey danced has a happy tendency to overcome any suchdeficiency. With our mercurial temperament we areable to add a certain gayety which, evidently, was not intheir character; but it is, nevertheless, health-inspiring ofitself, while broadening our powers of interpretation. Not only health, but alertness of mind and generalphysical efficiency are the reward of truly beautifuldancing. Such a dancer walks like a superior being, sur-rounded by an atmosphere of personal triumph. What-ever the kind of work she does, it is performed with sucheconomy of physical effort that her body hardly feels thepoisons of fatigue. Having the soundest of health, she Eighty-nine Representing joyous abandonment to an impulse of Natures gently per-suasive mood—as of floating forwcird borne upon a Summer breeze.
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Our Contribution to Health is never handicapped by the inhibitions of depressedspirits. Efficient in dancing as dancing ought to be, andwill be, she is efficient in all else she undertakes—accord-ing to her natural endowment of ability. In considering the details which enter into thishealth consummation, these are important: The vitalorgans of this ideally normal being are not strangled bycorsets laced up to the last notch—any form of stays, infact, are prohibited as ridiculous. Toes are not dislo-cated in efforts to compel them to bear the bodys entireweight; the effect of buoyancy is more effectively pro-duced by graceful and natural poising of the body uponthe ball of the foot. Neither are the feet, with their axisa straight line from the attachment of the Achilles ten-don to the ball of the great toe, forced outward to form agrotesque right angle to their natural position—a tortur-ing and injurious strain to the whole extremity to theheight of the knee and a positive menace

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