This new dance hysteria seemed to be of an epidemic nature. The vogue for crude and sensational dances held the whole western world for nearly half a century in its iron grip. With the exception of Scandinavia and Russia, all Europe and America were affected by a decadent dance taste. Novelty was reckoned far superior to beauty. Cleverness was placed high above talent and genius. It was seemingly a prelude to a subsequent effeminacy that was to spread over Occidental art and life. CHAPTER XVI THE NATURALISTIC SCHOOL OF DANCING The ‘return to nature’; Isadora Duncan--Duncan’s influence: Maud Allan; Duncan’s German followers--Modern music and the dance; the Russian naturalists; Glière’s ‘Chrisis’--Pictorial nationalism: Ruth St. Denis--Modern Spanish dancers; ramifications of the naturalistic idea. I During the last part of the past and the beginning of the present century, when the outside world was ignorant of the existence of the Russian ballet, circles of more serious-minded students of art began to voice protest against the cult of skirt and fire dancers, jongleurs and kickers, and the time was ripe for any movement that would bring relief from the prevailing deterioration of such a noble art as dancing. Even the general public grew bored of acrobatic performances and as during every period of decadence ‘there were a few teachers who consistently resolved to impart to their pupils only what was good and beautiful in dancing, whose voices, feeble as they sounded, were nevertheless strong enough to carry weight and rescue their art from the deplorable condition into which it had for the time fallen,’ as a dancing critic of that time aptly writes. One of the most ardent advocates of a new classic art of dancing during this time was Mrs. Richard Hovey. In all her teaching and preaching Mrs. Hovey based the principles of the prospective style upon the plastic art of the ancient Greeks. She made a vigorous propaganda for this in New York, Boston and California. Whether directly or indirectly Miss Isadora Duncan, who had been interested in initiating a reform of human life in its least details of costume, of hygiene and of morals, felt the impulse of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda and joined the worthy movement.