The fundamental principle of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda was the return to nature. According to the theory of this new movement, dancing was declared an expression of nature. Water, wind, birds and all forces of nature are subject to a law of rhythm and gravity. Not the tricky, broken lines, spinning whirls and toe gymnastics, but soft, curved undulations of nature, are close to Mother Earth. Thus also man in his normal life and savage state, moved rather in slow curves than in quick broken lines. This, briefly, was the principal argument of the few reformers who inspired Miss Duncan. Already Noverre and Petipa had emphasized the fact that ancient Greek sculpture and Greek designs gave the best ideas of graceful lines and pleasing human forms. But the votaries of the new school explained that in a return to the natural gesture of human life Greek art was the only logical criterion. Miss Duncan in her essay, ‘The Dance,’ says: ‘To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms--this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: “To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature.” Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source. ‘My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavor to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.’