In her progress through the two floors of the studios our newcomer is absorbing inspiration continually. To enumerate some of the features that make an impression on her receptive mind as she proceeds from room to room:
There is the Call Board in the main office. Now in the theatre the Call Board is an established institution, placed handily to the stage door and inspected daily by all members of the company for such information as the management wishes to impart. Our Call Board serves a similar purpose, and we encourage its daily perusal by all the students. We post thereon press notices that our graduates send us of their own success as reported in the newspapers; also notices of my own producing activities in many cities; the date of the next makeup classes; information of every nature that concerns the studio or its clientele.
There is the Grand Ball Room, the most complete room for its purpose that was ever constructed; its floors clear-maple, its walls full-length mammoth mirrors; its windows large, its ventilation perfect and easily regulated; its double rows of practice bars; its clocks regulated and wound electrically by the Western Union Telegraph Co. every hour, striking to announce the opening and closing of the class instruction.
In this Grand Ball Room, the large Ballet studio, the various classroom and private instruction and rehearsal studios, the gymnasium, and especially in the Demi-Tasse Theatre, which is a corporate part of our studios,—in all these there is accumulated a fund of inspiration that suffices to start the new student with a hopeful and expectant spirit of future accomplishment that is a prime essential to her success.
On the day in which instruction is to start, the pupil returns to the studio and is assigned to a dressing room. Here she finds expert maid service, the maids being on continuous duty during all instruction periods. She is accommodated with a locker, if one is required, with her individual key. She is introduced to the row of modern shower baths, and finds accompanying them every form of up-to-date sanitary appliances and fixtures. She is now "at home," a full-fledged member of the "happy family," and her education in her chosen art is about to commence.
She takes her seat in her first classroom. She finds herself surrounded by a number of other young ladies who, like her, have come here imbued with the laudable ambition to advance their interests in health, beauty, accomplishment of grace, and to fit themselves for an independent and lucrative career, not one of whom is any more advanced than she is. Her inspiration is furthered by this contact with those who are to become her fellow classmates. She takes note of the heavy felt floor-pads beneath her feet, the practice bars along the wall, etc., and is thus assured that every care is being taken here for her security from harm as well as for her comfort and advancement.
Her instructor, she finds, is a professional dancer of wide stage experience, who knows every one of the actual steps he is teaching, for he executes them before her, aiding her eyes by a living example, while he at the same time informs her understanding by telling her what each step and motion is and why it is done. His every word and action is inspirational. She feels now that she is on the highroad to success.
Presently, I enter the room and proceed to organize the class for service, following which I address them on matters concerned with their courses, seeking to instill into each prospective star an ambition to reach out for perfection. And from this hour the inspiration is enhanced with each new day's progress.
As I often say, in one of my class talks, "Inspiration plus perspiration equals one good dancer."