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Updated: June 9, 2025
Born in a kennel in Tunis, she had figuratively and literally fought her way to the upper reaches of the gutter, sleeping in filth, eating it, listening to it, living it; dancing for a meal, selling her strangely seductive body for a piastre or so, settling her quarrels with a knife she carried in her coarse, crisp, henna-dyed hair, with one goal before her slanting orange eyes, that of dancer in chief, prima ballerina, or what you will, in some house of good repute; the explanation of which phrase would overtax my oriental knowledge I fear.
On the very western limit of Villefranche, on the winding white road which rises out of Nice, a road so frequently passed over by automobiles that a haze of dust always hangs over it, is a modest little villa, so modest that a ballerina would scorn it and a duchess ignore it. It is, in truth, a pensione, where only those who come well recommended are accepted as guests.
The whole fight in Paris raged round the question whether, regardless of period or nation or style of music, the prima ballerina is entitled to wear the scanty parasol skirt and petticoats in which she delights. The ladies of the ballet, with modern tradition on their side, resent any alteration in costume.
But, gaze as he might into Bully's wrinkled mask, the judge never for an instant lost consciousness of the weak hind quarters, the sidelong drag of the club-foot. Very nippily the clever little Welshman went through his nimble paces, dancing to the wave of his master's handkerchief on toes as springily supple as those of any ballerina.
Cities and villages nestle in bays or crown frowning promontories; and sheltered from northern winds by mountains rugged and lofty, the vegetation is tropical and rich. Often a guide will point out some little palace and dramatically whisper that this will be the villa of a famous ballerina, or Spanish dancer, or opera singer, or some duchess whose husband never had any duchy.
A duke sent me an invitation to take supper with him, as if I were a ballerina! I sent one of the American chorus girls, a little minx for mischief. She ate his supper, and then ran away. I understand that he was furious. Only a few months more, Nell, and then I may come and go as I please. Come to Venice. Capricciosa. Hillard did not stir. Another labyrinth to this mystery!
Whereupon Achmed fled precipitately in the wake of her who had annoyed, and snatching a whip beat her smartly on her plump but ill-formed shoulders, the while he urged the prima ballerina of the establishment to anoint herself and depart right quickly to the pacifying of the great Hahmed, which order, alas, put a totally wrong idea into her Tunisian-Arabian pate. Long native pipe.
"The ballet was distinguished by nothing remarkable, except that the principal she-dancer went into convulsions because she was not applauded on her first appearance; and the manager came forward to ask if there was 'ever a physician in the theatre'. There was a Greek one in my box, whom I wished very much to volunteer his services, being sure that in this case these would have been the last convulsions which would have troubled the Ballerina; but he would not.
Mademoiselle Sarcy sued her manager because he tried to make her depart from traditions; and, although she is a prima ballerina, required her to wear flowing petticoats in the ballet of Hérodiade. The matter stirred Paris prodigiously. With us, of course, the ballet has ceased to be of importance.
Whatever of living tissue may have shrunk and quivered deep beneath the surface of Miss Hoag was further insulated by a certain professional pride that of the champion middleweight for his cauliflower ear, of the beauty for the tiny mole where her neck is whitest, the ballerina for her double joints. "Wanna come up and dance with me and find out?"
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