The Bismarck Tribune

Famous Dancer Pioneer in Profession

Flapperizing the classics is the latest occupation to be opened to women.

Vanda Hoff, dancer and pioneer in the new industry, which introduces the classics flavored with jazz, says it has infinite possibilities as long as the dance craze and the supply of music masters holds out.

Tschaikowski concertos, Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite", Rimsky Korsakov's "Sadko", Bizet's "Carmen" and numerous themes of Chopin are among the productions that have been served up a la paprika for the flapper's dance.

"'When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down'", explains Vanda Hoff, "has done something different. It has absorbed Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song' but has not made it its theme.

I get so blue thru & thru when the leaves come a-tumbling down from the trees

It is these bars which I hear hummed while dancing that make the number popular.

"Thousands who never heard of the 'Spring Song' now sing 'When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down', little realizing that a part of it is one of the world's greatest musical classics, but that it took a catchy bit of jazz theme to make this classic known everywhere.

"There has been some disapproval from the highbrows of the so-called 'violation of the classics', but the fact remains that it took flapperization to get the world at large interested in this most beautiful Mendelssohn melody.

"I, for one, cannot see how learning classics via jazz college in any way violates their beauty, and the public is showing a decided preference for classical jazz as proved by a recent survey which revealed the fact that more music of this type is sold than any other.

"This convinces me more than ever that popular dance music is a great educational factor and coming to mean more to us every day, and that from this union of the new and the old will be born a new musical craze which students will assiduously study a century hence and refer to as the classics of old."

"Thus will time vindicate twentieth century popular music."