Among Danish ballet dancers the most conspicuous figures are Adolph F. Stramboe, Johann Ferdinand Hoppe, Waldemar Price and Hans Beck. They all follow the footsteps of Bournoville, whose reforms in Danish dancing are equal to those of Noverre in France, or Petipa in Russia. Bournoville’s main efforts were to make dancing a serious dramatic art. In this he succeeded. The influence of the Danish ballet upon the Russian is of far-reaching extent. Didelot, having been a ballet-master in Stockholm, was inspired by Bournoville’s attempts, and followed his example after becoming a ballet director in Russia. But the art of dancing has its period of youth, maturity, decay and rebirth. The Danish ballet stopped its evolution after Bournoville. It has remained what it was half a century ago. It is sound, classic, and noble in its spirit, but it lacks the fire and soul of youth. II The writer has a record of the young living solo dancer of the Danish Royal Ballet, Mrs. Elna Jörgen-Jensen, whose exquisite delicate plastic art in Strindberg’s _Brott och Brott_, and Gabriele d’Annunzio’s _Gioconda_ aroused stormy enthusiasm among Copenhagen’s audiences. Haagen Falkenfleth, the celebrated ballet critic of the _Nationaltidende of Copenhagen_, writes of her; ‘Mrs. Elna Jörgen-Jensen, the _prima ballerina_ of the Danish Royal Ballet, entered the Copenhagen Ballet School as a child, as the result of an episode that is still little known. Her parents knew that little Elna was passionately fond of dancing, but their surprise was great when one day she disappeared from her home. It appeared that she had run after a street organ-grinder to whose screaming tune she was dancing in the middle of the street to the surprise of the occasional spectators. At the age of seven she became a pupil of the Royal Ballet School in Copenhagen, where the children are taught not only dancing and _calisthenics_, but also the general school subjects, in the same way as the dancers are educated in the Russian Imperial Ballet School in Petrograd. As a pupil she was favored with small dancing parts in certain ballets. She was excellent for little fairy rôles. In this way she received a gradual training for the stage and had already mastered her routine when she made her real début in Drigo’s “Harlequin’s Millions.” She had personified Sylvia’s child in d’Annunzio’s _Gioconda_ and the page in Schiller’s _Don Carlos_. Her dancing was so sure, her movements so graceful and her mimicry so true to life that her reputation was instantly established; but how versatile she was became known only later.