On the basis of the old formal steps and positions Fokine built a freer structure of movement whose chief aim is not virtuosity or pure beauty of line, but expression. In this new style more modern music was not only possible, but necessary. Meanwhile, setting and costume of the most imaginative type--often futuristic--had to be developed. They all set to work with an ardor possible only to tradition-breakers and are producing an art which is likely to achieve the supreme place first dreamed of by the inventors of modern opera. Here is another keenly interesting relation brought to light by Mr. Kinney. Everybody knows, of course, that opera was begun during the Renaissance as an attempt to revive the Greek drama. It now appears that in our present Renaissance the revived ballet is probably much nearer the highest form of Greek drama than opera or anything else ever has been. The early drama of Athens, according to Mme. Nelidoff of Moscow, consisted largely of pantomime, dance, and chorus. Words were introduced for the literal-minded. As the size of theatres increased, the actors came to use megaphones, to conceal which the mask was invented. The masks were made larger and heavier to add to the height. With this handicap to dancing, the actor had to depend more on his voice and stature; and the elaborate dialogue, combined with the high heels of the cothurnus, gave dancing its final blow. This kind of drama, says Mme. Nelidoff, appealed largely to the less imaginative and uncultivated, on account of their desire to know in detail what was going on. The other kind, however, continued being developed for smaller audiences, and retained its purer beauty of form in space, sound, and thought. We have little record of it outside of sculpture simply because there were few words, and a choregraphic vocabulary had not been invented. We have almost no record of Greek music, either. It is a bit shocking to think that Aeschylus and Sophocles were, perhaps, contributors to an inferior art, but there seem to be grounds for the ingenious theory. Everyone who has been to a "movie show" knows how effective even crude pantomime can be. But make your pantomime a portrayal of moods and emotions rather than of events, give it visual beauty which will occasionally wring tears from anyone sensitive to line, and accompany it with music whose most complex rhythm and harmonic color are intensified by the stage picture, and you have an expression on a plane of the imagination where the introduction of a spoken word is like the creak of a piano pedal. If we can't lead the people back from the movies to "plays," can't we give them the modern ballet?