I
have been trying to determine whether the variety acts described below in
Nabokov's ADA are based on actual performances or are imaginary. No luck--in
part because I have no idea of how to approach the question. What such acts
are called? Have any of you seen such acts?
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FROM
NABOKOV's NOVEL ADA.
The
stage would be empty when the curtain went up; then, after five heartbeats of
theatrical suspense, something swept out of the wings, enormous and black, to
the accompaniment of dervish drums. The shock of his powerful and precipitous
entry affected so deeply the children in the audience that for a long time
later, in the dark of sobbing insomnias, in the glare of violent nightmares,
nervous little boys and girls relived, with private accretions, something
similar to the ‘primordial qualm,’ a shapeless nastiness, the swoosh of
nameless wings, the unendurable dilation of fever which came in a cavern draft
from the uncanny stage. Into the harsh light of its gaudily carpeted space a
masked giant, fully eight feet tall, erupted, running strongly in the kind of
soft boots worn by Cossack dancers. A voluminous, black shaggy cloak of the
burka type enveloped his silhouette inquiétante (according to a
female Sorbonne correspondent — we’ve kept all those cuttings) from neck to
knee or what appeared to be those sections of his body. A Karakul cap
surmounted his top. A black mask covered the upper part of his heavily bearded
face. The unpleasant colossus kept strutting up and down the stage for a
while, then the strut changed to the restless walk of a caged madman, then he
whirled, and to a clash of cymbals in the orchestra and a cry of terror
(perhaps faked) in the gallery, Mascodagama turned over in the air and stood
on his head.
In
this weird position, with his cap acting as a pseudopodal pad, he jumped up
and down, pogo-stick fashion — and suddenly came apart. Van’s face, shining
with sweat, grinned between the legs of the boots that still shod his rigidly
raised arms. Simultaneously his real feet kicked off and away the false head
with its crumpled cap and bearded mask. The magical reversal ‘made the house
gasp.’ Frantic (‘deafening,’ ‘delirious,’ ‘a veritable tempest of’) applause
followed the gasp. He bounded offstage — and next moment was back, now
sheathed in black tights, dancing a jig on his hands. pp. 183-4
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For the tango, which
completed his number on his last tour, he was given a partner, a Crimean
cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating frock cut very low on the back.
She sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod
znóynïm nébom Argentínï,
Pod
strástnïy góvor mandolinï
‘Neath
sultry sky of Argentina,
To
the hot hum of mandolina
Fragile,
red-haired ‘Rita’ (he never learned her real name), a pretty Karaite from
Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel, kizil’,
bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as
she was to look ten years later. During their dance, all Van saw of her were
her silver slippers turning and marching nimbly in rhythm with the soles of
his hands.
pp. 185