few even of the best informed among the critics were aware of what was going on in Russia, and it is scarcely strange that London's first experience of the Russian Ballet took the majority of us utterly by surprise.
During the last few years a mighty revolution has had to be worked in our ideas concerning the whole art of the dance. And this not only as regards the dances of the ballroom. In the theatre the change has been no less striking, and we have found ourselves in the position of being forced to develop a completely fresh set of æsthetic standards so as to keep pace with the development of a tradition which for us, previously, had been little more than a dead and obsolete form. In this task we have been obliged to proceed mainly by the light of nature. There have been few to guide us, and
3
