As in the physical so in the spiritual world there prevails a kind of circulation of energies and life; growth, maturity and decline. Individuals seem nothing but the beginnings where the universes end, and vice versa. As a man mirrors the world in his soul, so a protoplasm mirrors the man. An invisible hand pushes a worm along the same road of evolution as it does an imperious CÆsar. One and the same feeling heart seems to beat in the breast of man that beats in the action of the constellations. Yet the hand of evolution that tends to adjust the equilibrium between the individual and the cosmic will gives by every new turn a new touch of perfection to the subjective and the objective parties. This tendency manifests itself in the history of individuals and races, and also in the history of art. The greatest genius of to-day is surpassed by another to-morrow.

The art of dancing, as it stands to-day, promises much encouragement for to-morrow. It is near the beginning of a new era—the era of the cosmic ideals. The past belongs to the aristocratic ideals, in which the Russian ballet reached the climax. The French were the founders of aristocratic choreography; the Russians transformed it into an aristocratic-dramatic art; to the Americans belongs the attempt at a democratic school.

‘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 stereotype, I do not think that the appearance of Isadora Duncan would have called forth such enthusiasm. In Isadora we greeted the deliverance.’ The chief merit of Duncan lies in destroying the aristocratic foundation of the ballet, and in attempting to find a democratic expression. She meant to find the solution in ancient Greek ideas and tried to imitate them. But she forgot that she was an outspoken American individualist and grasped only the democratic principles of a young race. All she achieved was to prove that the democratic essentials are no more satisfactory in the future Æsthetic evolution of the dance than were the aristocratic traditions of the bygone centuries. The question remains, where is to be found the true basis of the coming choreography?

It is strange to contemplate what different directions the development of the dance in various countries and in various ages has taken. In ancient Egypt and Greece the primitive folk-dances developed into spectacular religious ballets, in Japan they assumed the same impressionistic character as the rest of the national art, in aristocratic France the folk-dances grew to a gilded salon art, in Italy they became acrobatic shows, while in Russia they transformed themselves into spectacular racial pantomimes. In every age and country the art of dancing followed the strongest Æsthetic motives of the time. If a nation worshipped nobility it danced the aristocratic ideals, if it worshipped divine ideas it danced them accordingly. The social-political democratic ideals of the New World have exercised a great influence in this direction upon the art of the Old. Though imitating aristocratic Europe, America has not failed to add an element of its own to the Æsthetic standards of the former. But had America been only democratic there would be little hope left that it could attribute anything to the future beauty, particularly to the future dance. There are, however, other elements that give encouragement to something serious and lasting, and this is the cosmic tendency in American life and art.

The chief characteristics of the American mind are to condense expressions and ideas into their shortest forms. This is most evident in the syncopated style of its music, in its language and in its architecture. Like the American ‘ragtime’ tune, an American skyscraper is the result of an impressionistic imagination. Both are crude in their present form, yet they speak a language of an un-ethnographic race and form the foundation of a new art. Instead of having a floating, graceful and, so to speak, a horizontal tendency like the Æsthetic images of the Old World, the American beauty is dynamic, impressionistic and perpendicular. It shoots directly upwards and denies every tradition. The underlying motives of such a tendency are not democratic but cosmic. While a nationalistic art is always based on something traditional, something that belongs to the past evolution of a race, the cosmic art strives to unite the emotions of all humanity. The task of the latter is very much more difficult. It requires a universal mind to grasp and express what appeals to the whole world. It requires a Titanic genius to condense the Æsthetic images so that in their shortest form they may say what the others would express in roundabout ways. This gives to beauty a dynamic vigor and makes it so much more universal than the art of any nation or age could be. But this requires the use of symbols, and tends to subjectivism. However, the symbols employed in this case are fundamentally different from those employed by the Orientals. Since the earliest ages the Orient has made use of symbols in art and religion. But the Oriental symbols have been mystic or philosophic in their nature. The American symbols will either be purely intellectual or they will be poetic.

The future of the art of dancing belongs to America, the country of the cosmic ideals. This is evident from its evolution since Isadora Duncan’s dÉbut. The Russian New Ballet (of Diaghileff’s group) is the best proof that the traditional racial plasticism is being transformed into a cosmic one. Compare the steps and gestures of Karsavina and Nijinsky with those of Pavlova and Volinin. Where the former have become realistically dramatic, the latter remain acrobatically academic. There is more symbolism in Karsavina’s and Nijinsky’s art than in that of Pavlova and the followers of the old ballet. But the plastic symbols of Lada are far more condensed than those of Karsavina. This is what we have termed the essential of a cosmic choreography.

The tendency of every art is from the simple to the complex and then again from the complex to the simple. The greatest dancer is the one who can express the most complex musical images in the simplest plastic forms. Dancing in the future will be nothing but a transformatory process of the time-emotions in the space-emotions. ‘Rhythm is in time what symmetry is in space—division into equal parts corresponding to each other,’ said Schopenhauer. Arthur Symons called dancing ‘thinking overheard.’ ‘It begins and ends before words have formed themselves, in a deeper consciousness than that of speech. * * * It can render birth and death, and it is always going over and over the eternal pantomime of love; it can be all the passions, all the languors; but it idealizes these mere acts, gracious or brutal, into more than a picture; for it is more than a beautiful reflection, it has in it life itself, as it shadows life; and it is farther from life than a picture. Humanity, youth, beauty, playing the part of itself, and consciously, in a travesty, more natural than nature, more artificial than art: but we lose ourselves in the boundless bewilderment of its contradictions.’ It follows that a neo-symbolism is the logical outcome of the future dance. Dancing will become an independent stage art and take the place of the obsolescent opera. But before it reaches that stage, composers will be compelled to realize the importance of the new choreography, and produce music that contains all the graphic designs, the plastic possibilities, the dynamic drama and, above all, that structure of sounds which gives ample possibility for symbolic plasticism and yet contains a message.

The real future dance will be expressionistic and subjective. Instead of copying life it will suggest its deepest depths and highest heights by combining the plastic symbols with the musical ones. It will not try to imitate nature but transpose it, as a painting transposes a landscape. Our mind is growing tired of the prevailing naked realism and its photographic effects. The realistic drama is gradually losing its Æsthetic appeal. The aristocratic opera seems to belong to past centuries. Opera has lost its grip on the modern mind. Our Æsthetic conception has reached the point where our subjective mind requires not imitation but inspiration. Instead of traditional beauties we require dynamic ones. We enjoy a suggestion of an Æsthetic sensation more than an accurate description of it. This proves that the symbolic sensations will sooner or later take the upper hand, and symbolic dancing will be the watchword of the coming age.

Since, according to our theory, the future of the art of dancing belongs to America, we should take into consideration those primary elements of musical art that form the foundation of every dance. American art naturally lacks fundamentally national elements; it strives toward cosmic ideals instead. Miserable as is the syncopated form of American popular music it yet constitutes the musical VolapÜk of all the nations. This same syncopated form of expression manifests itself in American architecture and in its social dancing. The broken lines, the irregular dynamics, and the restless corners here and there that we find predominant in American architecture are nothing but a transposed form of popular music. It is evident that neither one of the arts has yet found its foundation. A New York skyscraper is a silent ‘ragtime’ tune, and vice versa. But the ‘ragtime’ rhythm can be modulated to the same Æsthetic expressions as the skyscrapers. Unconsciously the dance follows the patterns of architecture and music. The future choreography does not necessarily need to be based upon syncopated rhythm only, but upon the various factors of the style, the method of expression and the spiritual issues.

The physical and spiritual bases of every folk-art lie in the rural life. A folk-song or a folk-dance is and remains the product of idyllic village atmosphere. It mirrors the joys and sorrows, hopes and passions of the country people. It has been molded under the blue sky, in sunshine and storm. The songs of birds and the voices of nature form its Æsthetic background. A village troubadour or poet is usually its creator, and simplicity is its fundamental trait. It exalts the rural atmosphere, poetry and characteristics. The place of the birth and growth of syncopated rhythm and broken symmetry is exclusively the city. It exalts the noise, rush and triviality, also the alertness and forces of the street. It suggests motion and intellectual fever. It leaves images of something artificial and fatal in the mind. The spirit of the country is different in every nation; but the spirit of the city is a similar one all over the world. It is in this very fact that we have to look for the logical foundation of the future choreography. It will emanate from no particular race, from no particular country, nor from any particular element of national art. It will come from the artificial city, the mother of cosmic idealism. The symbolism of the city is destined to take the place of the symbolism of the country. The New York plasticism will be also the plasticism of Paris and Petrograd.

The ethnographic and aristocratic era in the art of dancing has reached the climax of Æsthetic development. We are entering the era of cosmic art. We begin it with the same primitive steps that our ancestors made so many centuries ago; only with this difference—that now we view the problem from a universal point of view while our forefathers beheld it from a nationalistic and aristocratic point of view. We are in the cosmic current of evolution and begin our circle where it was left by those who had passed the current of a certain race or class. The future dance will grasp beauty from a broader stretch and deeper depths than the greatest virtuosi of the past and present could do. The fundamental law of all spiritual as well as physical evolution is to bring about a better equilibrium between the individual and the universal powers.