The best of all the German dancers of this century thus far has been Rita Sacchetto, a pretty Bavarian girl, who made her début in Munich, and was at once recognized as an artist of much talent. Though the Berlin critics did not receive her with the enthusiasm that they had shown to the Wiesenthals, she was by far the biggest artist of all. Her slighter recognition was possibly due to her lighter style of work and an unfavorable repertoire, lacking in music that was of timely importance. This withholding of recognition has always been peculiar to Berlin. Tired out by hundreds of aspiring virtuosi and artists of every description, an average Berlin critic, like one of New York, grows at the end of a season nervous in the presence of the vast majority of mediocrities and press-agented celebrities, so that he is likely to ignore or tear down the serious beginner, if her performance coincides with his ‘blue’ moods. This is what probably happened to Miss Sacchetto. The connoisseurs and authorities of other countries who have seen her dances speak of them in highest terms as pretty and exceedingly graceful exhibitions of poetic youthful soul. What has become of Miss Sacchetto lately the writer has been unable to learn. III Though none of the above mentioned dancers of Germany has pretended to be a follower of Miss Duncan, yet all belong to the new movement that was brought into being by her persistent efforts. They all defy the principle of the classic ballet, they all pretend to interpret music in their ‘plastic art,’ as they have preferred to term the dance. Traditionally the German music has been either inclined to classic abstraction, or to strictly operatic lines. The spectacular ballet of Richard Strauss, ‘The Legend of Joseph,’ belongs more to pantomimic pageantries than a class of actual dance dramas, of which we shall speak in another chapter. The music of a foreign school and race is always lacking in that natural stimulating vigor that it gives to those who are absolutely at home with racial peculiarities choreographically. In this the Russians have been lately more fortunate than other nations. A great number of talented young Russian composers have written an immense amount of admirable dance music, ballets and instrumental compositions that could be danced. They have an outspoken rhythmic character, which is the first requirement of the dance. In this the recent German composers have remained behind the Russians. The compositions of Richard Strauss, Reger, Schönberg and the other distinguished musical masters of modern Germany offer nothing that would inspire a new school of the art of dancing. In the first place they lack the instinct for rhythm, and in the second, they lack the plastic sense so essential for the dance. This circumstance has been most detrimental to those of the young German dancers who attempted to follow the naturalistic movement.