During the last few years there has been a great stir in the dancing world. Some time ago Isadora Duncan gave a private exhibition at the New Gallery of certain dances in a style intended to be a revival of old Greek dancing.
A little later Miss Ruth St Denis presented in public some strange, quite beautiful, performances consisting of dancing, miming and posturing supposed to suggest ideas of Indian life, and her finely restrained, truly artistic work deeply impressed both the critics and audiences.
Afterwards came Miss Maud Allan, alleged--no matter with what degree of truth--to be an imitator of Isadora Duncan, and she made a great "hit," her most popular performance being a "Salome" dance, which was considered by some people to be indecent. Certainly of her costume the French phrase "_qui commence trop tard et finit trop tôt_" might justly be used, for she carried nudity on the stage to a startling degree. In a good many other dances her work was rather pretty and quite unobjectionable, but vastly inferior to the art of Isadora Duncan or Ruth St Denis.
The theatrical season of 1908 ended in a blaze of--dancing. At what is generally deemed about the dullest moment in the year Isadora Duncan appeared at the Duke of York's Theatre, and kept it open and well attended for almost a month. The affair is unique in the history of our theatre. One can imagine a playhouse running on the basis of a big ballet, with a story, popular music, magnificent scenery, gorgeous costumes, huge _corps de ballet_, half-a-dozen principals and immense advertisement. In this case we have had more or less isolated dances to music generally severe; for scenery only a background of subtle yellow, taking strange tones under the influence of different lights; for costumes only some beautiful, tranquil, simple Greek drapery; for _corps de ballet_ a few children; for principals one woman, with an intelligent face, but certainly no great beauty; and in the way of advertisement very little, except some honestly enthusiastic press notices, and fortunately nothing in the form of photographs of nudities or half-nudities.
There has been a triumph of pure art under austere conditions, such as can hardly be recollected on our stage, unless in the case of _Everyman_--pure art akin to the theatrical, indeed parent of the drama. The word histrionic is derived through the Latin from an Etruscan word which means "to leap" and was originally applied to dancers.