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
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