The writer has attended a number of Genée’s performances in Europe and in America, and does not agree entirely with Mr. Beerbohm’s eulogy. As already explained above, Bournoville’s method was a great improvement over the French-Italian schools of dancing, in that it emphasized the dramatic issues and individual traits in the ballet, which Genée has exactly followed; but unfortunately the evolution of the Danish ballet stopped with Bournoville. The art remained in its preliminary state of development and ended with the Dresden-china steps. It is this very style that makes Genée an attractive museum figure. In this she stands unrivalled. She exhibits an art of the past, with every detail sedulously studied. You can see how mathematically exact is the position of the fingers, the attitude of the head, the lines of the arms and limbs, and so on. ‘Every step has its name, every gesture belongs to its code; there is only one way and no other of executing them rightly, and that way is Madame Genée’s,’ writes one of her admirers. But the dance is more than an exhibition of mathematical figures. The studied smile and sorrow fail to arouse the emotions of the audience. The Dresden-china step is a fossilized thing of bygone centuries. It somehow does not belong to the stage. The significance of the Danish ballet, and its influence upon the evolution of the art of dancing is greater than it is universally admitted. The Danes introduced the element of drama into the ballet in order to make the dancing a kind of mute acting. They were the first to revolt against many time-worn rules of the old schools. They were the first to advocate the imitation of nature to a certain extent. Bournoville said ‘as nature moves in curves and gradations rather than by leaps and turns, dancing should take that into consideration.’ The Russian ballet was influenced through the Danish and Swedish. The Danish ballet was a stepping-stone between the academic French-Italian and ethno-dramatic Russian schools. It has accomplished a great task in the evolution of the art of dancing by making the ballet a dramatic expression on academic lines. CHAPTER XIV THE RUSSIAN BALLET Nationalism of the Russian ballet; pedagogic principles of the Russian school; French and Russian schools compared--Begutcheff and Ostrowsky; history of the Russian ballet--Didelot and the Imperial ballet school; Petipa and his reforms--Tschaikowsky’s ‘Snow-Maiden’ and other ballets; Pavlova and other famous _ballerinas_; Mordkin; Volinin, Kyasht, Lopokova. I