Looking back at the great dancers of the past, we see that all illustrate the incalculable value of personality in art. The technique of a Camargo or Sallé, Taglioni or Grahn, Karsavina or Génée, has the same foundation--the traditional “five positions,” which are to the Dance what the octave is to the sister art of Music. Before a dancer can hope to appear with success on any stage she must have acquired a knowledge of those “five positions,” and their possibilities of choregraphic combination. The ease and rapidity with which she illustrates them, the fluidity of the phrases and melodies of movement which she evolves from them, and the qualities of “finish” and “style” are finally achieved only by incessant practice. She must attain as complete a mastery of the mechanism of her body as can be attained. No technique in any art is acquired without labour; and no success is won without technique. That much therefore can be taken for granted in any great artist. But persistent practice and the acquisition of a fine technique may still leave a dancer merely an exquisite automaton if she has not “personality”; a quality not readily defined, but which undeniably marks her as different from others. Perhaps that is, after all, the truest definition--a differentiation from others. Endowed with the royal gift of personality, Mlle. Génée had worked incessantly before she made her first appearance in London at about the age of seventeen. Born in Copenhagen of Danish parents, the famous dancer began her training when only eight years old, under the tuition of her uncle and aunt, Mons. and Mme. Alexander Génée, both of whom (the latter as Mlle. Zimmermann) had won considerable reputation as dancers, and producers of ballet, at various continental opera-houses and theatres in the ’sixties and ’seventies. They had appeared at Copenhagen, Vienna, Dresden, Munich, Budapest, and at Stettin, where Mons. Alexander Génée had a theatre for some years, and where Mlle. Adeline made some of her earliest appearances as a child. Subsequently she went to Berlin and to Munich, and it was while dancing in the latter city that she was called to London by Mr. George Edwardes on behalf of the Empire management.