For they are favorites, as an hour at any modern playhouse where the newer dances are featured, will demonstrate.

It is at the behest of the great American audience that these newer toe dances are with us. You and the rest of the public that constitute our audiences demand action, tricks—or at least tricky and novel touches here and there—in your dancing entertainment. The old stuff doesn't "get over" with you any more. So we invent new things that present what you are bound to like, and the eccentric and acrobatic toe dances are the result.

It may be jumping down a flight of steps on the toes, or a continued hopping on one toe for 16 counts to music, or a swinging of one leg back and forth, like a pendulum, in an acrobatic way while the dancer hops on one toe—such stunts as these are the applause-getters nowadays, and they are well worth applauding, too, for they are pleasing demonstrations of real skill, and are acquired by the dancer only after long and continued effort and practice. Few if any, I am sure, fully appreciate the time and labor it takes to make a modern toe dancer, one who shall be able to perform something new and catchy in a clever way,—a real feat nowadays, and one that theatrical producers are quick to see and seize when it appears.

The fact is, the tricks I have spoken of must never dominate the dancing, but must be entirely secondary and incidental, as it were. Otherwise the dancer becomes an acrobat. You don't care for straight acrobatics, Mr. Public, but acrobatic dancing, or dancing with a neat acrobatic stunt thrown in incidentally as a bit of seasoning, is really very palatable and pleasing to you. It must remain a beautiful dance, aided and added to by a pretty surprise in the form of a bit of unexpected toe work—then you like to see it, so we are careful in my courses to promote in this kind of work only that form for which there is a demand,—and this is equally true with every other kind of dancing that we teach.

Before any toe dancing is undertaken by the ambitious student there must be a foundation laid to build upon that shall be lasting and efficient. The body must be under perfect control; every muscle immediately responsive and ready, strength placed where it is essential. Our students who have passed through the limbering and stretching course (foundation technique) and have advanced to the ballet work and through that, are ready for the advanced features in modern toe dancing. We work this way with such of our more promising pupils as desire it, and then teach them the "tricks," as we call it, that are so effective when properly done. Every toe dancer should have one-hour lessons five days each week till perfected, and at least three hours daily practice six days in the week at home.

I have already stated and now say it once more in this connection, that children should not go on their toes in the dance until they have taken what I know to be a necessary foundation course, to fit them to do so without danger of permanent distortion of feet and legs, enlarged ankles, and other ill effects. It is the parents' fault, of course, when children are forced into toe dancing at too early an age or without proper preparation. I simply will not consent to do it. I have seen children of sixteen who ought to be at their best at that age in this work, yet because of the forcing process in early years were incapable of sustaining themselves on their deformed feet.

Many of my well-known graduate pupils have been seen in the Follies and other first class productions. Their work is an inspiration to all who love exquisite dancing of this kind. They secured the right foundations on the start, and now have strength, speed, grace, and ability to do what their dances call for. There are lots and lots of toe dancers graduated from my courses, and I cannot think of one who has failed to make good.

That, I think, is because their personality plus practice plus honest and capable instruction and a knowledge of showmanship and stage-craft absorbed from my "inspirational talks" has brought forth the natural result.