Regarded as a fine art, and not merely as a pastime, dancing has frequently great beauty in its simple quality of the rhythmic movement of decorative form and colour. The dances depicted on Greek vases had this character, and so, with varying degree of merit, have the ballets common during the last fifty years in London and other great centres. But before this period the makers of ballets (a word originally signifying to dance, to sing, to rejoice, and representing three modern words--ballet, ball, and ballad) did not aim at a mere exhibition of living rhythmic decoration, but at the production of a theatrical performance in which a story is told only by gesture and dancing accompanied by music. The real modern founder and exponent of the ballet as thus understood was Noverre, a Frenchman (called by Garrick "the Shakespeare of the dance"), who died in 1810. He brought to a high degree of perfection the art of presenting a story by pantomime, and he never allowed dancing which was not the direct expression of a particular attitude of mind. His professed effort was to introduce the steps and poses of ancient Greek dancing shown in sculpture and painted pottery--as _the_ model for stage dancing. And he succeeded. The great dancers of the past who are known to us by tradition--Vestris, Camargo in the eighteenth, and Cerito, Grisi, and Taglioni in the earlier half of the nineteenth century--were not merely perfectly trained as dancers, but were actors, and possessed poetic imagination. Women did not appear in the ballet until the time of Louis XIV, and Mlle. Camargo was the first to wear the conventional short stiff ballet skirt.
"Convention" has a great weight in such matters. But it seems to be undeniable that the conventional ballet-skirt conceals the beautiful movement of the leg on the hip joint, a disadvantage from which the male dancer does not suffer. Skirts are, in fact, out of place in really fine dancing. Flowing light drapery, or better still the Circassian jacket and full gauzy trousers fastened at the ankles, are the only possible dress for a really great _danseuse_.
The dramatic ballet or _ballet d'action_ lasted until the end of the fifties in London, and then ceased almost suddenly to occupy the leading position which it once held at the Opera House. In London, as in Paris and Vienna, it was transformed into a mere spectacular display of costume and meaningless rhythmic drill. The dramatic ballet ceased to exist. The great tradition of fine stage-dancing and ballet-drama was, however, 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 "producers" 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.