For the most part they merely wore their fancy
dress and walked and talked or played instruments, but now and then
there was a dragon and a champion boxing it and these certainly earned
their money. At intervals came bearers with trays on which were comforts
for the next world or symbolical devices, while, to infinity both in
front and behind, banners and streamers and lanterns danced and jogged
above all. A miracle-show of the middle ages can have been not unlike
it.
THE LITTLE GEISHA
I left Japan, as I have said, just before the cherry-blossom festivities
began, but I was able to see a number of the dances--which never change
but are passed with exactitude, step for step, gesture for gesture and
expression for expression, from one geisha to another--as performed by a
child who was being educated for the profession. Although so young she
knew accurately upwards of sixty dances, and the pick of these she
executed for a few spectators, in a little fragile paper-walled house
outside Yokohama, while her adoring aunt played the wistful repetitive
accompaniments.
The little creature--a mere watch-chain ornament--had a typical Japanese
face, half mask, half mischief, and a tiny high voice which now and then
broke into the dance. But dances, strictly speaking, they are not. They
are really posturing and the manoeuvres of a fan. To me they are
strangely fascinating, and, with the music, almost more so than our
Western ballets.
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