An Hour with Delsarte - 1891 Author:Anna Morgan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. PLEA FOR FLEXIBILITY. "IT OW beautifully you perform! " said I one day to a pianist; and she replied, " Yes, but my performing, beautiful as it appears,... more » represents many years of patient practice under skilful masters; I have given five hours a day for several years to preliminary practice alone." If this be true of an art, the exercise of which requires trained fingers merely, with how much more force does it apply to one in which the entire body is concerned! The lack of training in art is most apparent when there is the greatest absence of flexibility, which is the basis of freedom, and is essential to grace in expression. We have seen the enormities of physical bearing which vices of habit and custom have entailed upon us, and the necessity we are under of removing them before we are able to conform to a standard of natural grace. In other words, we must free the body from the stiffness of individuality by yielding it up to the claims of universality. We must break down error before we can build up truth. This object is attained in physical training bysurrendering the body to the discipline of an aesthctical gymnastic drilling. Delsarte's inventive genius has furnished us a series of mechanical exercises which subject all the joints and muscles to a flexing or freeing process, which is the first step toward restoring them to the pliancy of unconscious freedom. They destroy that unbending muscular rigidity largely imposed by conventionality, and infuse an air of elastic independence,— so fundamental an element in a graceful carriage. They correct all faults of negligent personal habit, and overcome hereditary tendencies which sometimes, if unchecked, result in grave consequences to health. These are among the purposes of Delsarte's scheme of mechanical movement...« less