It is worth while remarking that when any Russian dancer appears in England or America, she is almost invariably described as the “première danseuse of the Russian Imperial Ballet.” This denomination is vague, and usually inaccurate. Theoretically there can be only two _ballerine assolute_ in all the Russias--one in St Petersburg and one in Moscow. As a matter of fact, in St Petersburg at the present moment both Kschesinskaya and Preobrajenskaya hold this rank, although of the two, the former is granted precedence. The latter has now nominally retired, but she continues to make six or eight appearances every season. Madame Kschesinskaya has never performed in England. She once visited London privately, but when she found that an engagement there would necessitate appearing nightly, she declared that such a task was “blood-drying work,” and fled incontinently to Russia. In the Russian capital she herself chooses the occasions when she deigns to appear. The _ballerina assoluta_ of Moscow is Mademoiselle Catrina Geltzer, who has recently appeared at the Alhambra. Madame Pavlova belongs to the grade known as _ballerina_, or _première danseuse_, the next below that of _ballerina assoluta_. She is marked out to succeed to the place vacated by Madame Preobrajenskaya in the supreme rank in the hierarchy. Madame Karsavina and Mademoiselle Balashova are at present equal in degree to Madame Pavlova. Madame Lydia Kyasht is in Russia still only _première sujet_. [Illustration: LYDIA KYASHT _Photograph: Ellis & Walery_] CHAPTER XII THE ENGLISH BALLET In a retrospect of the performances of the Russians in London this year, a correspondent of _The Times_ summed up the effect of their achievement upon the state of mind of the spectator of the English ballet in these words: “This summer of 1911 has brought more than an æsthetic revolution with it: in bringing the Russian ballet to Covent Garden it has brought a positively new art, it has extended the realm of beauty for us, discovered a new continent, revealed new faculties and means of salvation in ourselves. Alas! many pleasant illusions have been shattered thereby, many idols have tumbled from their pedestals; we have grown up terribly fast and lost the power of enjoying things that pleased our callow fancies a year or two ago. Who can go back now with the old zest to the robust vivacity of X or the amateurish _minauderies_ of Y? Who will put up any longer with the battered themes, the insipid music, the ingenious setting, and the clumsy grouping to which we were accustomed once? They will still have their public, those things; they will serve for entertainment, for stuffing to that pillow on which the backbone of the British nation leans till bedtime; but they will no longer do for the ‘seven hundred honest folk’ who seek at that hour for the means to ‘make their souls.’”