iMiwiinn!."!!,. i ii u i iiBmpqapapmm and the limit to this is -when any artist coming from across the waters is honored for that reason alone, and any artist born on our own soil, no matter how fine, is considered infe rior on the ground: "What .good can come out of Nazareth?" Ruth St. Denis is an American girl, horn in New Jersey of New England parents. She lived on a farm near Somerville until she was about 13. She loved to dance and despite pov erty secured spme training and went into vaudevifle. Then she joined Be lasco's company and for five years played speaking parts, but finally conceived the idea of the Oriental dances which have revolutionized the world of dance. . But at first the fact that she was an American weighed against her. After she had spent years abroad and her work had received unstinted praise from every Old-World capital, she returned to America and re ceived from her own people belated approval, given only after they were sure that this was something that "dear old London went crazy about. Ruth St. Denis is now gathering about her an all-American company. She believes that America provides the best material in the "world for dancers. At the school of '"Deni shawn" she hopes to establish an in stitution where American girls and boys can study this wonderful art and come to fruition in their own country. Strange to say, the Russian re naissance which has been so pat ronized by the American public ad mits the majority of its influence as due to Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, two American girls. They were the first, each in her own way, to start this great wave of dance which has deluged the world. The Ruth St. Denis school is the "individual" school; that is, using the material and traditions of the past only when needed and really useful, and out of them in the white-heat of inspiration, fashioning works of art! which are unique and distinct from the conventional patterns of the past Constantly' out of this great mind are coming pictures of beauty and dances of marvelous freshness. Con sider "The Spirit of the Sea," how she rises undulating from her long green draperies and tossing her foam-colored hair. And then how fjy quality the heavily kimonoed fig ure of such precise movements. Here let it be said that the Japan Society of American officially com mended Ruth St Denis' Japanese dance plays and asked her to go to Japan and persuade the modern Jap anese girls to return to the classic dances of old Japan instead of taking up the awful "rag" dances of the present day. o o WHAT DAME FASHION IS DOING By Betty Brown Are skirts to be longer or shorter? Neither Paris nor New York seems to know, and they will probably not issue any final decision. The length or brevity of a skirt depends much on the person who wears it and on the material used, also on the gen eral lines of the gown that each de signer must be a law unto herself and make the skirt to become the wearer rather than to please-Dame Fashion. Most of the new eveningv gowns are two-toned, and two or Ijiree ma terials tulle, lace, chiffon are used in their creation. The orchid shades are leading all others, though a love ly color for a brunette is the new shade of bronze. Pockets pouch out on almost every one-niece gown. Some of them ar just make-believe patches, with not Cj) even a place in them for a "hanky." Plaid hosiery came in for sports suits, but girls who never golf are wearing plaid stockings. o o Youngstontown, 0., has nominat ed Caradog Davis for dogcatcher. '