One may ask, however, what is the position of England in regard not only to ballet, but to the other arts? We have State, and County Council Art and Craft schools; we have the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College, the Guildhall School, and numerous private schools and “academies” where music and the dramatic arts are taught; all admirable as far as they go. We have, as yet, no State-aided theatre and no State-aided opera-house, to which, as on the Continent, an academy for the study of the dance and ballet is attached. Is it not strange that the richest city in the world should be deficient in these things?
It may be that there is greater vitality in the arts when they are pursued only under the conditions of competitive, private enterprise; but it is curious that in practically every other country the dramatic arts have been fostered by the State, and that we in this country seem ever to show a greater welcome to foreign singers and dancers than we do to our own.
There is, of course, always a great danger that an institution, secure in the support it receives from the State, may become conventional; the spirit of its art may grow arid and unprofitable, but at least it ensures a standard of technical efficiency, and, if there be a vital spirit in the nation, that spirit will show itself in the work of such an institution. Russia has proved all this.
Given a National Opera-House, to which were attached a Royal Academy of Dancing, what might the future of Ballet be in this country?
The answer depends mainly, one feels, on the extent of the possibilities to which the art of Ballet could be realised by those who lead in the artistic expression of the national spirit. The poet, the artist, the musician, the Master of Dance, and the dancers—men and women—realising the possibilities of the composite art of Ballet, might foreshadow possibilities greater than any we have seen. Yet greater possibilities might be foreshadowed of one who was all these things; and could combine (as Mr. Gordon Craig would have the master of the Art of the Theatre combine) all the arts of the theatre.
It would seem that now and then, through lack of technical efficiency in one or other of the arts which go to the making of ballet, that ballet itself has not always attained its highest possible level in England.
But without that basic technical efficiency in the living material which he manipulates, how can the creator of the ballet express himself? A standard of technique at least should exist. That given, what might not yet be done with this art, which history shows has always been so plastic in the hands of the master-artist, so responsive to the artistic or national moods of the people among whom it has been found.
It has the value and significance of painting, together with the vital and impressive effect of drama. It is not the art of depicting reality; but the art of pictorial suggestion, giving life and form to poetic ideas.
At the Royal or Ducal Courts of earlier days the compliment to monarch or to minister would be conveyed by means of a courtly ballet, the story of which dealt outwardly perhaps only with the doings of some mythic hero of the classic past. But the art of Ballet always had greater possibilities than courtly compliment, in that it is always a plastic vehicle for the expression of all ideas; and, given the standard of efficiency which makes production possible at all, it only becomes a question of what theme shall be treated by this means rather than by the arts of painting, or of music, or drama, or of literature.
On these two points—the standard of technical efficiency attained by those associated in the production of ballet, and on the choice of theme and manner of treatment by the artist-mind ultimately responsible for the production, depends the whole future of the art of Ballet. The spirit of the artist and his means of expression; there lies the future.