SCIENCE AND DANCING 177 



preserved in Russia. It is not easy to explain, but the 

 fact is that two peoples so far apart as the Russians and 

 the Spaniards are more devoted to dancing than any 

 other European nationalities. Successive Tsars have 

 spent large sums in maintaining colleges in St. 

 Petersburg and in Moscow, where boys and girls are 

 lodged and carefully educated whilst they are trained 

 from the age of ten years in the art of stage-dancing. 

 The greatest musical composers have been encouraged 

 to write " ballets," and the ablest designers and " pro- 

 ducers " have been secured by large salaries. Something 

 like £80,000 a year is spent by the Tsar on the 

 maintenance and development of this beautiful art, which 

 is dead elsewhere, but seems to fit the genius of the 

 Russian people. A new respect for Russia, a profound 

 admiration for the Russian artists, has been the result of 

 the revelation of the Russian ballet by the recent visits 

 of its members to this country. 



During the last thirty years of its period of nurture 

 and development in Russia the ballet has developed in 

 two directions. Neither of these are popular and success- 

 ful in Russia, where the old traditional and established 

 ballet of the early nineteenth century — what may be 

 called " academic " dancing — is alone in demand. What 

 we call " the Russian ballet " is dramatic in nature, and 

 includes such wonderful combinations of music, scenery, 

 costume, and perfect artistic expression by dancing and 

 gesture as we have seen in Scheherazade, Cleopatra, 

 Prince Igorre, Tamar, and Petrouschka. It promises 

 in its latest development to supplant the musical drama 

 known as " opera," in which the human voice is used. 

 But the most striking development is that in which 

 dancing appears as the exponent of lyrical poetry. It is 

 to the teaching of Isadora Duncan that the Russian 



12 



