There exists a legend principally dealing with a certain intangible quality she is said to have possessed. This legend is not exaggerated. In any assessment of Anna Pavlova, her company, her productions, I ask the reader to bear in mind that for twelve years she was the only ballet pioneer regularly touring the country. She was the first to bring ballet to hundreds of American communities. I should be the first to admit that her stage productions, taken by and large, were less effective than are those of today; but I ask you, at the same time, to bear in mind the development of, and changes that have taken place in, the provincial theatre in its progress from the gas-light age, and to try to compare producing conditions as they were then, with the splendid auditoriums and the modern equipment to be found in many places today. Compare, if you will, the Broadway theatre productions of today with those of thirty-five years ago. Anna Pavlova was a firm believer in the “star” system, firmly entrenched as she was in the unassailable position of the _prima ballerina assoluta_. Her companies were always adequate. They were completely and perfectly disciplined. They were at all times reflections of her own directing and organizing ability. Always there were supporting dancers of more than competence. Her partners are names to be honored and remembered in ballet: Adolph Bolm, with whom she made her first tour away from Imperial Russia and its Ballet: Mikhail Mordkin, Laurent Novikoff, Alexandre Volinine, and Pierre Vladimiroff; the latter three, one in the American mid-west, one in Paris, and one in New York, still founts of technical knowledge and tradition for aspiring dancers. In its time and place her repertoire was large and varied. Pavlova was acquainting a great country with an art hitherto unknown. She was bringing ballet to the masses. If there was more convention than experiment in her programmes, it must be remembered that there did not exist an audience even for convention, much less one ready for experimentation. An audience had to be created. It should be noted that at this time there did not exist as well, so far as this continent was concerned, as there did in Europe, any body of informed critical opinion. The newspapers of the wide open spaces did not have a single dance critic. In these places dance was left to music and theatre reporters in the better instances; to sports writers on less fortunate occasions. Conditions were not notably better in New York. Richard Aldrich, then the music critic of _The New York Times_, was completely anti-dance, and used the word “sacrilege” in connection with Pavlova and her performances. More sympathetic attitudes were recorded later by W. J. Henderson of _The Sun_, and by Deems Taylor. About the only New York metropolitan critic with any real understanding of and appreciation for the dance was that informed champion of the arts, Carl Van Vechten.