If the English ballet has yet produced no native ballerina worthy to rank with the great Continental dancers, the absence of a male dancer of any distinction is still more remarkable. An exception can scarcely be made in favour of Mr Fred Farren, who fills the dual rôle of _premier danseur_ and _maître de ballet_ at the Empire. Neither as a composer of dances nor as an executant has he created anything that calls for special notice. His most successful achievement has been an adaptation of the French Apache dance. _La Valse Chaloupée_ was originated, or rather popularised, by Max Dearly and Mademoiselle Mistinguette, a dancer who has brought into the dance all the nervous excitement of modernity. In introducing the Apache dance into _A Day in Paris_ at the Empire, Mr Farren modified its more _outré_ characteristics and at the same time gave it a more deeply passionate and dramatic significance. His able partner, Miss Beatrice Collier, imported into it a note of human tragedy that was more moving than the mere devilry of Mistinguette. Probably the real reason why England has failed to produce a great school of ballet is principally owing to the absence of a _maître de ballet_ of genius. The late Madame Katti Lanner and Madame Cavalazzi both possessed a thorough knowledge of technique, and were capable of designing dances that were suited to the capacities of their pupils; but their ideas were limited and their imagination feeble. There is no reason in the nature of things why English dancers should not rise to the same level of excellence as those of St Petersburg or Moscow. Probably the material is there, but the artist who can mould it into a design of the highest plastic beauty is lacking. The dancer, after all, is very much in the position of a pawn in the game. She can provide an individual note of fine quality and tone, but it requires the genius of a master to provide the orchestration. The ballet is perhaps more responsive to the attitude of the public than any other branch of art, and the absence of a public seriously and critically interested in the dance has doubtless been responsible for the fact that the ballet has failed to attract the energies of men of talent. The priority of Russia in the art of the ballet is due above all else to that atmosphere which England lacks, an atmosphere of keen and enlightened criticism, of understanding sympathy and serious interest, among the public at large no less than among the artists themselves. That this is a condition absolutely essential to the success of the ballet is clearly shown in an instructive passage by the writer whom I have quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Speaking of the excellence of the Russians he says: