that a few musical phrases require such plastic, particularly in such compositions as Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan,’ or Drigo’s _Papillons_, which Pavlova has visualized so magnificently. But to apply the same style to express the romantic, poetic, tragic and other human emotions, to apply the toe-technique to every form of dancing, is really abnormal. Prince Volkhonsky, who has contributed so much to the Russian ballet reform, writes with striking argument and vigor: ‘Movement cannot be an aim in itself; such a movement would be nonsense. What does a dancer express when he imitates a spinning-top? What does the ballerina express when with a fascinating smile she regards caressingly her own toe, as she toe-dances over the smooth floor? What does her body express, the human body--the most wonderful instrument of expression on earth--when, carried away by gymnastic enthusiasm in an acrobatic ecstasy, with panting chest and terror in her open eyes, she crosses the stage diagonally, whirling on one toe, while with the other she executes the famous “thirty-two fouettés”?’ ‘Gymnastics transform themselves into fantastics,’ exclaims Levinsohn; ‘but I assure you, when in the circus the man-serpent, all dressed in green scales, puts his legs behind his shoulder, this is no less fantastic.’ The so-called tunic (the French _tutu_)--a light short garment of pleated gauze--has, with Mr. Levinsohn, not only a physical justification from the point of view of comfort but a logical explanation, an æsthetic sanction; it ‘lends to the body a seeming stability.’ ‘Do you catch this?’ he continues. ‘The perpendicularity of the human figure in our eyes is, so to speak, balanced by the horizontality of the skirt; just the principle of the spinning-top. Now, is it possible to invent a more deplorable formula for transforming man into a machine? Is it possible to give a more definite expression to the principle of eliminating one’s “ego”? Is not art the expression, the manifestation, the blossoming of man? And what, finally, shall we say from the purely æsthetic point of view of that exaltation of a costume which by its umbrella-like stiffness cuts the human body into two? Shall we remain indifferent to the beauty of folds, to the obedience of the flowing veils, to the plastic injunctions of the living movement?