The truth may possibly be that that freedom from convention in which she glories is in reality a bondage. In her own words, “dancing is the spontaneous expression of the spiritual state.” The dance is “not an acquired but a spontaneous art, revealing the temperament of the dancer.” She is compelled to acknowledge the necessity for technique, but she fears that if it becomes excessive the art will no longer be able to stir the soul. In this theory lurks a certain element of danger. The dance, like all the arts, seeks the effect of spontaneity, of inevitableness, but this spontaneity is highly self-conscious. And it expresses itself most readily by technique--for technique, when it is really fluent, does not hinder but facilitates the expression of temperament. For us moderns the “spontaneous” gesture is the clumsy, inexpressive movement of everyday life; the dancer requires a conscious technique that comes more naturally to her than the unconscious technique of the street, in order to be truly spontaneous and expressive. It is perhaps her detestation of the stereotyped steps of the ballet that causes her to incline to the opposite extreme. But she herself would be the first to admit that her art has cost her pains no less than that of the ballet-dancer. It is one of her complaints that many suppose that she has learned to dance with no more than the exertion of a fluttering butterfly. It is not for Miss Allan herself, but for her imitators, that the theory that technique is relatively unimportant is so dangerous a pitfall. The conventions of classical or “natural” dancing are not yet so fixed as those of the ballet. Where the path is less clearly marked out there is more danger of going astray. Would-be dancers of the “natural” school, imagining that nothing is so easy as to dance “naturally,” forget that they have to unlearn the movements they are accustomed to before they can produce anything worthy of the name of art.