Anna Pavlova

The ‘return to nature’; Isadora Duncan—Duncan’s influence: Maud Allan; Duncan’s German followers—Modern music and the dance; the Russian naturalists; GliÈre’s ‘Chrisis’—Pictorial nationalism: Ruth St. Denis—Modern Spanish dancers; ramifications of the naturalistic idea.

I

During the last part of the past and the beginning of the present century, when the outside world was ignorant of the existence of the Russian ballet, circles of more serious-minded students of art began to voice protest against the cult of skirt and fire dancers, jongleurs and kickers, and the time was ripe for any movement that would bring relief from the prevailing deterioration of such a noble art as dancing. Even the general public grew bored of acrobatic performances and as during every period of decadence ‘there were a few teachers who consistently resolved to impart to their pupils only what was good and beautiful in dancing, whose voices, feeble as they sounded, were nevertheless strong enough to carry weight and rescue their art from the deplorable condition into which it had for the time fallen,’ as a dancing critic of that time aptly writes. One of the most ardent advocates of a new classic art of dancing during this time was Mrs. Richard Hovey. In all her teaching and preaching Mrs. Hovey based the principles of the prospective style upon the plastic art of the ancient Greeks. She made a vigorous propaganda for this in New York, Boston and California. Whether directly or indirectly Miss Isadora Duncan, who had been interested in initiating a reform of human life in its least details of costume, of hygiene and of morals, felt the impulse of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda and joined the worthy movement.

The fundamental principle of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda was the return to nature. According to the theory of this new movement, dancing was declared an expression of nature. Water, wind, birds and all forces of nature are subject to a law of rhythm and gravity. Not the tricky, broken lines, spinning whirls and toe gymnastics, but soft, curved undulations of nature, are close to Mother Earth. Thus also man in his normal life and savage state, moved rather in slow curves than in quick broken lines. This, briefly, was the principal argument of the few reformers who inspired Miss Duncan. Already Noverre and Petipa had emphasized the fact that ancient Greek sculpture and Greek designs gave the best ideas of graceful lines and pleasing human forms. But the votaries of the new school explained that in a return to the natural gesture of human life Greek art was the only logical criterion. Miss Duncan in her essay, ‘The Dance,’ says:

‘To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms—this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: “To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature.” Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.

‘My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavor to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.’

Thus Miss Duncan started her career by interpreting natural qualities by means of natural movements. ‘I have closely studied the figured documents of all ages and of all the great masters, but I have never seen in them any representations of human beings walking on the extremity of the toes or raising the leg higher than the head. These ugly and false positions in no way express that state of unconscious Dionysiac delirium which is necessary to the dancer. Moreover, movements, just like harmonies in music, are not invented; they are discovered,’ writes Miss Duncan. To her the only mode of dancing is barefoot. According to her ‘the dancer must choose above all the movements which express the strength, the health, the grace, the nobility, the languor or the gravity of living things.’ Gravity to Miss Duncan is natural and right. A ballet dancer, a Pavlova, Nijinsky and Karsavina, eager to defy the laws of gravity, is to her a freak.

Prince Serge Volkhonsky, who has been a conspicuous figure in the Russian dance reform-movement, writes of Miss Duncan’s school in comparison with that of Jacques-Dalcroze: ‘Her dance is a result of personal temperament, his movements are the result of music; she draws from herself, he draws from rhythm; her psychological basis is subjective; his rhythmical basis is objective; and, in order to characterize her in a few words, I may say Isadora is the dancing “ego.” This subjective psychological basis of Isadora’s art I find clearly emphasized by Mr. Levinsohn’s words: “The images or moods (Stimmungen) created in our mind by the rational element—music—cannot be identical with every one, and therefore cannot be compulsory. Just in that dissimilitude of moods and uncompulsoriness of images resides the best criterion for the appreciation of Isadora Duncan as a founder of a system. Her dance is precisely not a system, cannot found what is called a ‘school’; it needs another similar ‘ego’ to repeat her. And according to this it seems quite incomprehensible that some people should see in Miss Duncan’s art ‘a possibility for all of us being beautiful.’ No, not at all for all of us; for not every temperament, while embodying ‘images or moods’ called forth by music, will necessarily create something beautiful; one cannot raise the exceptional into rule. In order to be certain of creating something beautiful, no matter whether in the moral or the Æsthetical domain, it is not in ourselves that we shall find the law, but in subjecting ourselves to another principle which lives outside of ourselves. For the plastic (choreographic), this principle is Music. It is not instinct expressing itself under the influence of music—which with every man is different, and only in few chosen natures beautiful in itself—but the rhythm of music, which in every given composition is an unchangeable element subjecting our ‘ego.’ This is the basis of living plastic art. And in this respect Isadora’s art satisfies the double exigencies of the visible and the audible art as little as the ballet. Her arms are certainly more rhythmical than her legs, but as a whole we cannot call her rhythmical in the strict sense of the word, and this appears especially in the slow movements: her walk, so to speak, does not keep step with music; she often steps on the weak part of the bar and often between the notes. In general it is in the examples of slow tempo that the insufficiency of the principle may be observed. The slower a tempo the more she ‘mimics,’ and the farther, therefore, she strays from the music. If we look at the impression on the spectators we shall see that all in the paces of the quick tempos the movement must enter into closer connection with the music; in cases of very minute divisions of the bar the simple coincidence of the step with the first ‘heavy’ part already produces a repeated design which makes ear and eye meet in one common perception. If the representatives of that particular kind of dance were to realize this they would endeavor to introduce into slow tempos the rhythmical element instead of the mimic, which leads them out of the music and converts the dance into a sort of acting during the music, a sort of plastic melo-declamation.”’

These critics have pointed out the subjective nature of Miss Duncan’s dance and her impatience of rules and formal technique. They believe that because of these two qualities of her art it cannot be repeated, except by ‘another similar ego.’ But as if in direct answer to these charges come Miss Duncan’s pupils. They are by no means highly selected material or ‘similar egos,’ but each (among the more mature pupils) is a beautiful and individual dancer. To each she has transmitted her spirit; in each she has preserved the native personality. They are the best evidence thus far obtained of the truth of Miss Duncan’s dictum of the ‘possibility for all of us being beautiful.’ Moreover we must not suppose that Miss Duncan’s contempt for formal technique is a contempt for technical ability. She herself is a marvellously plastic and exact dancer, and she demands, ultimately, no less of her pupils. The limited range of her technique, so often complained of, is the deliberate result of her belief that the only movements proper to the dance are the natural movements of the human body. She stakes the success of her art upon the proposition that these movements alone are capable of the highest absolute and interpretive beauty. As to the truth of this proposition each observer must judge for himself from the results. Again, Miss Duncan does not always ‘dance the music’ literally, note for note, according to the theory of the Jacques-Dalcroze system. Her interpretation is frankly emotional and subjective, but it does not pretend to transcend the music.

In further justice to her efforts we should consider Isadora Duncan as much a prophet of a new movement, as a dancer of a new school. Her influence has been more far-reaching in Russia than anywhere else. She practically brought about a serious revolution among the Russian dancers, of whom we shall speak in another chapter. She influenced the art of dancing in Germany, France, Italy and England. She was the striking contrast to all the deteriorated stage dances of the early twentieth century in America. She has given a powerful impulse to all dance reforms by counteracting the academic and time-worn views. She is the indirect motive of the Diaghileff-Fokine break with the old Russian ballet and their striving for new rules and ideas in the art of dancing. To her is due the gradual increase of refined taste and higher respect for the stage dance. Personally we have found that her dances failed to tell the phonetic story of the music. Her selection of the compositions of Gluck, Schubert, Chopin and Beethoven has not been uniformly successful, since most of them were never meant by the composer to be danced. Compositions of this kind lack the necessary choreographic episodes and often even the plastic symbols. No genius, we believe, could visualize the slow cadences and solemn images of any symphonic music of those German classics, whose works have been the choice of Miss Duncan. With a few exceptions, such as the Moments Musicals and some other pieces, we have never been able to grasp the meaning of the phonetoplastic images of Isadora Duncan’s dances.

II

It was only natural that Miss Duncan’s laureated appearances in various European cities quickly found followers and imitators. The best known exponent of Duncan’s naturalism has been Miss Maud Allan, a talented Canadian girl, whose dancing in England has made her a special favorite of the London audiences, before whom she first appeared in 1908. How favorably she was received by the English audiences is evident from the fact that the late King Edward invited her to dance for him at Marienbad. Like Miss Duncan, Maud Allan has danced mostly barefoot, her body slightly clothed in a loose Greek drapery. The most sensational in Miss Allan’s repertoire has been the ‘Vision of Salome,’ compiled from passages from Richard Strauss’ opera, in which she has tried to give the impression of the ghastly Biblical tragedy by means of plastic pantomime and dancing. Among her artistically successful dances has been the Grieg Peer Gynt suite, of which the London critics speak as of ‘a beautiful art of transposition.’ ‘The faithfulness with which her movements follow the moods of the composer is probably only fully realized by those who are musicians as well as connoisseurs of dance. Her translation of music has not seldom the rare quality of translations of being finer than the original, and there are not a few who, when they hear again, unaccompanied, the music which her dancing has ennobled, will be conscious of a sense of incompleteness and loss,’ writes an English dance authority of her art.

Isadora Duncan’s naturalism has probably made the most powerful direct impression upon German aspirants, first, through the school of dancing of Isadora’s sister, Elisabeth, and second, through the pretended appeal to the moods by means of classic ideals, and yet requiring comparatively little technique. Assiduously as a German student will practice in order to acquire the most perfect technique for being an artist, musician, singer or architect, he lacks the painstaking persistency of a Russian, Hungarian, Bohemian or Spaniard in acquiring a thorough technique for his dance. He is inclined to interpret music by means of the most easily acquired technique, such as seemingly the naturalistic school requires. For this very reason, Miss Duncan has been the greatest dance genius for the Germans, as that is so clearly to be seen in the excellent work of Brandenburg, Der moderne Tanz. This book from the beginning to the end, written in a fine poetic prose, is a eulogy of Duncan’s naturalism, and an elaborate display of the minutest pretty moves of the German exponents of the movement. Among the praised geniuses of Brandenburg are the sisters Wiesenthal, who attracted widespread attention in some of Max Reinhardt’s productions.

The sisters Wiesenthal, Elsa and Grete, were received with unparalleled enthusiasm at home and in consequence made a tour abroad, on which occasion one of them danced in New York. How little she impressed the New York audience, can be judged from what one of the most favorable critics wrote of her as having ‘a pretty fluttering, tottering marionette manner of her own.’ Our impression is that the sisters Wiesenthal proved most successful in the quaint, naÏve and simple ensemble performances which they gave in Germany. They displayed some excellent ritartandos and a few successful adagio figures. One could see that their steps and arm twists were not a result of systematic studies but of spontaneous impulses, since in repetitions of the music there was no sign of a well trained art, the wing-like arms of the first phrase being arabesque-like in the repetition, etc. They showed that they possessed a poetic conception of the dance, but failed to grasp and express its intrinsic meaning. They were rather poets than dancers, rather actresses than designers in the choreographic sense. Their acting often interfered with dancing and brought about an unpleasant disharmony with the musical rhythm. They may have danced better on other occasions, but what a number of impartial connoisseurs of the dance saw of them stamps them as talented dilettantes rather than accomplished artists of a school.

A girl who enjoyed a great reputation in Vienna, Munich and in other German cities in the first decade of this century, but of whom was heard nothing later, was Miss Gertrude Barrison, an Anglo-Viennese. Her art was more clever and more in style with the principles of the naturalistic than that of the sisters Wiesenthal. She won the ear of Austria for the new message. With a certain assurance in the conviction of her individuality, Miss Barrison treated her art with freedom and loftiness. She enforced her personality more than her art upon the spectators, and this was, to a great extent, the secret of her phenomenal success.

The best of all the German dancers of this century thus far has been Rita Sacchetto, a pretty Bavarian girl, who made her dÉbut in Munich, and was at once recognized as an artist of much talent. Though the Berlin critics did not receive her with the enthusiasm that they had shown to the Wiesenthals, she was by far the biggest artist of all. Her slighter recognition was possibly due to her lighter style of work and an unfavorable repertoire, lacking in music that was of timely importance. This withholding of recognition has always been peculiar to Berlin. Tired out by hundreds of aspiring virtuosi and artists of every description, an average Berlin critic, like one of New York, grows at the end of a season nervous in the presence of the vast majority of mediocrities and press-agented celebrities, so that he is likely to ignore or tear down the serious beginner, if her performance coincides with his ‘blue’ moods. This is what probably happened to Miss Sacchetto. The connoisseurs and authorities of other countries who have seen her dances speak of them in highest terms as pretty and exceedingly graceful exhibitions of poetic youthful soul. What has become of Miss Sacchetto lately the writer has been unable to learn.

III

Though none of the above mentioned dancers of Germany has pretended to be a follower of Miss Duncan, yet all belong to the new movement that was brought into being by her persistent efforts. They all defy the principle of the classic ballet, they all pretend to interpret music in their ‘plastic art,’ as they have preferred to term the dance. Traditionally the German music has been either inclined to classic abstraction, or to strictly operatic lines. The spectacular ballet of Richard Strauss, ‘The Legend of Joseph,’ belongs more to pantomimic pageantries than a class of actual dance dramas, of which we shall speak in another chapter. The music of a foreign school and race is always lacking in that natural stimulating vigor that it gives to those who are absolutely at home with racial peculiarities choreographically. In this the Russians have been lately more fortunate than other nations. A great number of talented young Russian composers have written an immense amount of admirable dance music, ballets and instrumental compositions that could be danced. They have an outspoken rhythmic character, which is the first requirement of the dance. In this the recent German composers have remained behind the Russians. The compositions of Richard Strauss, Reger, SchÖnberg and the other distinguished musical masters of modern Germany offer nothing that would inspire a new school of the art of dancing. In the first place they lack the instinct for rhythm, and in the second, they lack the plastic sense so essential for the dance. This circumstance has been most detrimental to those of the young German dancers who attempted to follow the naturalistic movement.

How much better than the German Duncanites have been those of Scandinavia, Finland and France in this direction is difficult to say authentically, though they have had the advantage over the Germans, of having at their disposal the works of some of the most talented young composers of dance music. Grieg, Lange-MÜller, Svendsen and many others have written music with strong rhythmic and choreographic images. But superior to all the Scandinavian composers, in the modern dance music or music that could be danced, are the Finns: Sibelius, Jaernefelt, Melartin, Merikanto and Toiwo Kuula. Many of Sibelius’s smaller instrumental compositions offer excellent themes and music for dancing. A few of them are real masterpieces of their kind. But the Finns have shown up to this time little interest for the modern dance movements. The Danes, Swedes and Norwegians have been more affected by the new ideas that are connected with the stage, though none of them has shown any marked achievement that would be known in wider circles. Ida Santum, a young Scandinavian girl in New York, has given evidence of some graceful plastic forms and idealized folk-dances. Thus far she has not shown anything strikingly appealing to the audiences. Aino AktÉ’s Salome Dances are purely operatic and have no bearing upon our subject.

Among English and American girls who have followed the footsteps of Miss Duncan are Gwendoline Valentine, Lady Constance Stewart-Richardson, Beatrice Irvin, and a number of others, but the writer has been unable to gather any sufficient data for critical arguments.

Undoubtedly the most talented dancer of the naturalistic school whom we have known among the Russians is Mlle. Savinskaya of Moscow. In power of expressing depth and subtlety of dramatic emotions Savinskaya is supreme. She is an actress no less than a dancer. Her conception of naturalistic dancing is so deeply rooted in her soul and temperament that it often acts against the plastic rules and grace, often displayed by the dancers for the sake of pleasing effects. Miss Duncan herself strives to create moods by means of classic poses, but Savinskaya’s ideal is to express the plastic forms of music in her art. She is romantically dramatic, more a tragedian than anything else. Her dance in the graphically fascinating ballet Chrisis by Reinhold GliÈre, in Moscow, revealed her as an artist of the first rank, and perhaps the first thoroughly trained Duncanite whose technique and dramatic talent rival with any ballerina, of the new school or the old.

Probably the lack of suitable music has been thus far the greatest obstacle in the way of the naturalistic dancers, though they pretend to find their ideals in the eighteenth and nineteenth century’s classic compositions. No doubt some of the old music can be aptly danced, such as the light instrumental works of Grieg, Mozart, Chopin and Schumann, but the proper music has yet to be composed. The phonetic thinking of past music was involved, hazy in closed episodes and often disconnected in structural form. There is one single theme of a poem in a whole symphony. To illustrate this plastically is a physical impossibility. Maud Allan’s and Isadora Duncan’s attempts to dance symphonies of Beethoven and other classic idealists have been miserable failures. Those who pretend to see in such dances any beauty and idea, are ignorant of musical and choreographic principles.

To our knowledge Reinhold GliÈre, the genial young Russian composer and director of the Kieff Symphony Society, is the first successful musical artist in the field of naturalistic ballets. His ballet Chrisis, based on an Egyptian story by Pierre Louis, is a rare masterpiece in its line.

Though built on the style of the conventional ballets, its music is meant for naturalistic interpretation and lacks all the pirouette, chassÉe, and other semi-acrobatic ballet music forms. Like the principles laid down by Delsarte and his followers, GliÈre’s music ‘moves with the regular rhythm, the freedom, the equipoise, of nature itself.’ It has for the most part a slow ancient Egyptian measure, breathing the air of the pleasant primitive era. It suggests the even swing of the oar, the circular sweep of the sling, the rhythmic roar of the river, and all such images that existed before our boasted civilization. It gives a chance for the dancer of the naturalistic school to display pretty poses, primitive gestures and ‘sound’ steps. Like all GliÈre’s compositions this is exceedingly lyric, full of charming old melodies and curved movements that occasionally call to mind Schumann, Schubert and Chopin. The ballet begins with Chrisis in the majestic valley of the Nile spinning cotton on a spinning-wheel, which she stops when a soft music, coming from a far-away temple, comes to her ears. It is the music of the morning-prayer. She prays, dancing to the trees and the clouds. At this time Kise, another little maiden, is passing with food for her parents and Chrisis calls her. They dance together and spin for a while. There is in the background a sacred tree. Chrisis approaches it in slow dance and utters her secret wish. During this time Kise meets on the river shore a blind musician carrying a lyre. He plays a gay dance to the girls, to which they dance so exquisitely that phantom-like nymphs and fawns emerge from the river, and stop to watch. Finally a shepherd, who has been looking on from the top of the hill, becomes interested in the dance and makes friends with the girls. There ensues a passionate love scene and dramatic climax for the first act, Chrisis going into a convent. The second act takes place in an ancient convent, Chrisis as a dancing priestess. The last act takes place with Chrisis as a courtly lady with every luxury around her. It is a magnificent piece of work musically and choreographically, and should find widespread appeal.

We may count as belonging to the naturalistic school of dancing the exponents of idealized and imitative national dances, though they do not belong among the Duncanites. Particularly we should mention Ruth St. Denis, who is widely known through her skilled imitation and idealization of the Oriental dances. As Isadora Duncan sought by the ancient Greeks the ideal of her ‘natural’ dances, so Ruth St. Denis attempted to find choreographic beauties in the art of the East. In this she has been strikingly successful. Her Japanese dances can be considered as real gems of the Orient in which she has made the impression as if an exotic old print of the empire of the Mikado became alive by a miracle, though it was in the Indian sacred dances that she made her reputation. This is what a dance critic writes of her:

‘Clad in a dress of vivid green spangled with gold, her wrists and ankles encased in clattering silver bands, surrounded by the swirling curves of a gauze veil, the dancer passed from the first slow languorous movements into a vertiginous whirl of passionate delirium. Alluring in every gesture, for once she threw asceticism to the winds, and yet she succeeded in maintaining throughout that difficult distinction between the voluptuous and the lascivious. The mystic Dance of the Five Senses was a more artificial performance and only in one passage kindled into the passion of the Nautch. As the goddess Radha, she is dimly seen seated cross-legged behind the fretted doors of her shrine. The priests of the temple beat gongs before the idol and lay their offerings at her feet. Then the doors open, and Radha descends from her pedestal to suffer the temptation of the five senses. The fascination of each sense, suggested by a concrete object, is shown forth in the series of dances. Jewels represent the desire of the sight, of the hearing the music of bells, of the smell of the scent of flower, of the taste of wine, and the sense of touch is fired by a kiss. Her dancing was inspired by that intensity of sensuous delight which is refined to its farthest limit probably only in the women of the East. She rightly chose to illustrate the delicacy of the perceptions not by abandon but by restraint. The dance of touch, in which every bend of the arms and the body described the yearning for the unattainable, was more freely imaginative in treatment. And in the dance of taste there was one triumphant passage, when, having drained the wine-cup to the dregs, she burst into a Dionysiac Nautch, which raged ever more wildly until she fell prostrate under the maddening influence of the good wine. Then by the expression of limbs and features showing that the gratification of the senses leads to remorse and despair, and that only in renunciation can the soul realize the attainment of peace, she returns to her shrine and the doors close upon the seated image, resigned and motionless. So she affirmed in choice and explicit gesture the creed of Buddha.’

Very strange yet effective are the dances of Ruth St. Denis in which she exhibits the marvellous twining and twisting art of her arms, which act as if they had been some ghastly snakes. Her arms possess an unusual elasticity and sinuous motion which cannot be seen better displayed by real Oriental dancers. The hands, carrying on the first and fourth finger two huge emerald rings, give the impression of gleaming serpents’ eyes. Miss St. Denis is apparently a better musician than Miss Duncan, while in her poetic sense and in the sense of beauty she remains behind. However, as a musician she is excellent, and always acts in perfect rhythm with the composition. But unfortunately all her dance music is just as little Oriental as Miss Duncan’s is Greek. Ruth St. Denis seemingly is ignorant of the numerous Russian Oriental compositions which would suit her art a thousand times better than the works of the Occidental classics. In justice to her efforts it must be said that she is a thorough artist in spite of the fact that she has never studied her dances in the East. Her slender tall figure and semi-Oriental expression give her the semblance of an Indian Bayadere. It has always impressed us that she minimizes her art by affected manners and an air that lacks sincerity. We believe her to have very great talent, but for some reason or other, she has failed to display it fully.

IV

The modern Spanish dances as performed by Rosario Guerrero, La Otero and La Carmencita, are in fact a perfected type of Spanish folk-dances. The Kinneys write of them as follows: ‘So gracious, so stately, so rich in light and shade is the Sevillanas, that it alone gives play to all the qualities needed to make a great artist. When, a few summers ago, Rosario Guerrero charmed New York with her pantomime of “The Rose and the Dagger,” it was the first two coplas of this movement-poem that charmed the dagger away from the bandit. The same steps glorified Carmencita in her day and Otero, now popular as a singer in the opera in Paris. All three of these goddesses read into their interpretation a powerful idea of majesty, which left it none the less seductive.’ It is clear that none but a Spaniard could perform the more or less perfected folk-dances of the country. It requires a physique with born talent and traditions to give the dance its proper fire and brutal elegance.

Havelock Ellis gives a graphic picture of the Spanish dance. ‘One of the characteristics of Spanish dancing,’ he writes, ‘lies in its accompaniments, and particularly in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators are themselves performers. In flamenco dancing, among an audience of the people, every one takes a part by rhythmic clapping and stamping, and by the occasional prolonged “oles” and other cries by which the dancer is encouraged or applauded. Thus the dance is not the spectacle for the amusement of a languid and passive public, as with us. It is rather the visible embodiment of an emotion in which every spectator himself takes an active and helpful part; it is, as it were, a vision evoked by the spectators themselves and upborne on the continuous waves of rhythmical sound which they generate. Thus it is that at the end of a dance an absolute silence often falls, with no sound of applause; the relation of performer and public has ceased to exist. So personal is this dancing that it may be said that an animate association with the spectators is necessary for its full manifestation. The finest Spanish dancing is at once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent or unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be transplanted but remains local.’

The naturalistic school of dancing is by no means an invention of Isadora Duncan, though she has been one of its most persistent preachers. The true psychological origin belongs to Delsarte, whose method of poetic plasticism inspired Mrs. Hovey to give lessons and lectures on the subject. It branched out like a tree. Every country was interested in the new idea in its own way. America, having no Æsthetic traditions whatsoever, found the pioneers in Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis; Germany found hers in the sisters Wiesenthal, Miss Rita Sacchetto and others; France, in Mme. Olga Desmond; Spain, in the refined and talented folk-dancers; Russia, in the rise of a new ballet, and so on. Like a magic message, the idea filled the air and was inhaled by special minds. There was a strong argument in favor of its development, and that argument was the spiritual yeast that set the world into a ferment. The more it was opposed and fought the more it spread and grew. The naturalistic dance has been thus far more an awakening than a mature art. As such it is apt to be crude and imperfect. There is no reason to fear that a fate like that which befell the Skirt Dance may overtake the ‘classical’ dancing of the naturalistic school. It has accomplished a great service in bringing the audiences to realize that the argument of natural plasticism is based on philosophical truth. Soon the ranks of those who believe that ‘natural’ dancing is that which requires the least technique will decrease in favor of those serious minded artists, who seek the solution in technique plus talent. ‘The theory that a dancer can ignore with impunity the restrictions of technique, that she is bound to please if only she is natural and happy and allows herself to follow the momentary inspiration of the music and dances with the same gleeful spontaneity as a child dancing to a barrel-organ is a doctrine as seductive as it is fatal.’ The future solution of the movement lies in perfection of the technique and in grasping the deeper depths of musical relation to the art of dancing.

‘The chief value of reaction resides in its negative destructive element,’ says Prince Volkhonsky. ‘If, for instance, we had never seen the old ballet, with its stereotyped character, I do not think that the appearance of Isadora Duncan would have called forth such enthusiasm. In Isadora we greeted the deliverance. Yet in order to appreciate liberty we must have felt the chains. She liberated, and her followers seek to exploit that liberty.’