The celebrated saying of the German poet, ‘_Und neues Leben blüht aus den Ruinen_’ applies better than anything else to the Russian ballet, which has risen out of the West European choreographic ruins. The Russian ballet marks a new era in the history of the art of dancing. The Russian ballet is a new word in the dance world. It brings the smell of trees and flowers, the songs of birds, the leaps of gazelles and lions and the very soil of nature to the stage. It breathes the spectral shadows of the trees and mountains; it begins with the simplest mushroom and ends with the most complicated hot-house plant. It emanates nature with all its uncouthness and grace. Like the Russian composers and poets, the Russian dancers strive to echo Nature with all its majesty and mystery. Even with the beginning of the nineteenth century the Russian ballet begins a course entirely different from that which the schools of Western Europe were preaching and teaching. Though the ballet-masters and instructors are foreigners, yet they are actuated by outward circumstances to apply their academic theories to the conditions of a different school. With the advent of a national school of music and drama, at the head of which stood Balakireff, Borodine, Seroff, Moussorgsky, Tschaikowsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff in music, and Ostrowsky, Turgenieff, Gogol and others in the drama, the Russian ballet is forced in the same channels. The Russian ballet grows gradually into a new nationalistic art, and separates itself altogether from the French-Italian aristocratic academicism. The frequent remarks of the foreign critics, suggesting that the Russian ballet was and is a direct offspring and copy of the classic French-Italian schools, are absolutely wrong. It is true that the Russians borrowed from the French the skeleton and from the Italians the mechanic contrivances, but they built up the body themselves and created something entirely different from what Western Europe knew of the ballet. A born dancer, the Russian could never stand the prescribed poses, smiles, tears, steps and gestures, that were and are still practised outside. He is ready to undergo the most strenuous training, and follows microscopically the instructions of the teachers, in order to acquire the necessary technique; but when it comes to a performance, he will put his spontaneous ideas and impulses above the technique and act according to his emotions and inspiration. This is a peculiarity of the Russian. He is and remains an individual. No school can put him on the same level with his fellow-students. Is not Pavlova quite different from Fokina or Karsavina?