The fine quality of the performances of the Russian ballet is undoubtedly due in the first place to the prolonged and thorough training, not only of the principal dancers but of each individual performer. An average of five or six hours’ dancing a day is the rule rather than the exception; for a ballet that is to be performed at night is always rehearsed during the day, however many times it may have been given before. The counsel of Carlo-Blasis, the eighteenth-century ballet-master is fulfilled to the letter: “Il faut encore étudier,” he wrote, “lors même qu’on sera tout-à-fait formé.... Dans la musique, dans la peinture, etc., l’on n’a pas besoin d’un travail aussi opiniâtre pour conserver ce que l’on sait. L’art du danseur, comme tous ceux d’exercice, ne jouit pas de cet avantage.” In the Russian ballet there is a perfect co-operation between the performers and an all-round technical excellence quite unlike anything that has ever been seen in this country. Moreover the art of the male dancer, which had almost died out in other countries, has not only been kept alive in Russia but has been developed equally with that of the ballerina. The “principal boy” of the English stage is, as we know, always a girl. A note of character and energy disappeared from the ballet when it became solely the medium of feminine dancing. The strength and breadth of the Russian ballet have gained enormously by the retention and development of male dancing. Indeed its virility is one of the most striking features. The fierceness of the warrior dances in _Prince Igor_ and the adroitness of the dance of buffoons in _Le Pavillon d’Armide_ are among its most memorable achievements. _Scheherazade_ without Nijinsky would be like _Hamlet_ without the Prince of Denmark. We realise now that without the masculine element the ballet is as incomplete as an orchestra without the bass.