The Washington herald., 1913-09-21
CHILDREN TRAINED
AS BALLET DANCERS
Boys and Girls Are Put Through
Strict Courses at Imperial Theater
School in St. Petersburg.

St Petersburg. Sept. eO-Eaeh year
about 80 nine-ye year-old boys and girls.
including children of ballet dancers, and
often children of stagehands. present
themselves at the ballet department OF
the Imperial Theater School in St
| Petersburg. As there are only from ff-
! teen to eighteen vacancies annually, "a
I selection must be made
| The youngsters are medically examined.
and proportion of them are rejected.
! Those who pass this test are brought be-
! fore a commission of dancers and ballet
masters. who put them through a most
| thorough examination. watching critical
| ly every movement and every physical
| perfection or fault. The members OF the
commission note those they consider to
| be the best. and on their collective opin-
| ion depends the choice of somewhat over
eighteen of the children, who are sc-
cepted Professionally. All the newcomers
are then on trial for year At the
end Of that time those not considered
good enough are dismissed
During this period the girls wear, ex-
Cept when dancing, the brown dress and
black apron, which are the uniform Of
all schoolgirls in Russia The boys
wear no special clothes 20 mark their
position. Each girl. when she is ac-
cepted finally. receives a beautiful corn
flower blue uniform dress. which reaches
to the ground. and black aprons with
white aprons for festive occasions For
the dancing lessons she wears the short
ballet skirt, not of gauze. but of light
gray-green cotton, with tights of the
same color, or of grayish olive-green.
The more talented of the pupils find
themselves, in due course. in a higher
class, and then wear pink ballet skirts
as marks of distinction. The highest
ha ub Iin hal
skirt. The boarding school for these
dancers of the future holds forty-eight
girls and thirty-four boys. In addition.
some twenty-five girl pupils and twenty
boys live at home The girls and the
boys are taught their dancing apart,
but are together in the school for other
lessons. The pupils are awakened at
o'clock in the morning. At midday they
are taken for a walk. The mornings are
devoted to dancing; the afternoons to the
learning of languages. a little geography,
and arithmetic. Fencing and mining
are taught also. Further, the boys have
TO learn how to hold the girls while they
are pacing and twirling during their
dancing. an exceedingly difficult art.
The work of the dancing is indeed. and
obviously. very hard; none substantiate
this statement more certainly than the
great dancers. Only the other day. for
instance, NINE Anna PaVlONa. talking
to a London newspaper man. said:
To dance for a living is it good-for
the health-for the woman? 1t is
splendid; but it is life of hardship-of
remuneration. We who dance must be
prepared to sacrifice all other things to
our art give to the dancing all
our thoughts and all our energies Dane
ing is quite unlike every other form of
art. There are arts at which one works
hard-then success comes and one can
work less hard. But it is not so with
dancing. Here the more one progresses
the harder il is necessary to work
Today l work harder at my art
than ever before. One must practice
everlastingly in order to make progress,
and when progress comes one must still
ce-practice-practice: There is no
stopping place-the life of a dancer is a
life Of continual hard work from begin !
ming to end. With those who
dance as a hobby it is not as with those
who dance for living. The latter must
have the spirit of dancing in their blood |
so that they do not regret the many
things that they sacrifice in order that
they may dance"