On Saturday last at the Educational Conference in University College,
Gower Street, Mr. Cecil Sharp delivered a lecture on dancing, in which he insisted that all children should be taught to dance. But he would not have pirouetting on one toe and the " Russian ballet stuff "which tries to be narrative. "Russian ballet," insisted Mr. Sharp, "is not a development of the true folk-dancing, which was common to all countries a couple of centuries ago. Dances should be like the singing of a bird, which sings not so that others may hear, but because it wants to express its own emotions. I am sometimes asked 'What Is the object of these daru3es ' If I could put that into words I should not dance it, or teach anybody else to do so. Logs can't talk," he continued, "so what is the use of trying to make them ? " He would have natural dancing. Here, we fear, speaks the obscurantist in Mr. Sharp. Because English dancing does not happen to tell stories, it is Insular to dub all those dances " unnatural " In which the men of primitive races all over the world have told, with poised spear, how the bear or the lion was killed in the hunt, or in which the women have related the birth of a god. Surely Ruskin has shown UB the Nemesis which awaits those who call unnatural those arts which they do not happen to like.
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