By no means do I wish to imply that the dance of the theatre will ever be merged in that of the people, still less that it is desirable that it should. The dance of art demands the entire surrender of the artist’s life. It is more than a pastime or a recreation. And as we demand that it shall become more and more expressive, so the study of the dancer must needs become more searching and minute. What new forms the dance is going to take, what new spirit is going to inspire it, only the future can show, but without pressing too far into the region of conjecture, it is possible to suggest the probable direction of its development. In spite of the renewed vigour which the Russians have given to the ballet, it is difficult to believe that the strict, academic school of ballet-dancing has still a long term of life before it. Indeed the Russians--I am speaking exclusively of the Diaghilew company--have renewed the ballet by revolutionising it. Not only have they utterly transformed its spirit, but they have introduced a new manner and gesture. In _Cléopâtre_ and _Scheherazade_ how little remains of the strict technique of the classic ballet! The ballet is turning away from Milan and looking towards Greece and the East. Anna Pavlova has pointed out the way by which the academic style can find salvation. Her dancing is transitional. From the ballet technique it derives its precision and firmness of outline, but to these are added a fluency, a multitudinous play of the nuances of light and shade, a capacity for expressing an intense personal life. The fatal defect of the academic style is that it is impersonal. It is the geometry of the dance. If the personality of the dancer succeeds in disengaging itself, it is not so much expressed in the movements of the dance as violently imposed upon them. How drearily impersonal it can be, we are realising afresh now that the success of the Russian ballet has let loose a flood of indifferent ballet-dancers upon the stage. It permits a high degree of technical accomplishment divorced from the slightest emotional significance. It is the dance _par excellence_ for the uneducated and unintelligent dancer--and it is she who must be banished from the stage. It justifies the gentle sarcasm of Pius IX. who, when asked for his consent to the presentation of a diadem to Fanny Elssler at Rome, assented, but remarked that in his priestly simplicity he had always believed that crowns were designed for the head and not for the legs. The famous Austrian dancer scarcely merited the reproach, for she above all other dancers danced with the head and the heart; but in general it is a just indictment of the ballet technique that it has disproportionately emphasised the importance of the legs and the feet. In the period of the decline of the ballet, the dancers of Paris and Milan in particular were little more than automata agitated by a pair of muscular legs, which worked with the precision and monotony of clockwork.