The amusements of the people are harder to change than their politics. 

But the performances which they follow with such shining attention are precisely those which enchanted the aristocracy of pre-revolution days. The amusements of the people are harder to change than their politics. Years ago Isadora Duncan came out of the west to tell the Russian ballet that all this artificial toe-stepping was out of date. An emperor received Isadora; the revolution crowned her for a while Goddess of Reason in the Dance. And one of her pupils and adopted daughters, Irma Duncan, in her studio, in a former palace, still teaches the children of the proletarians to throw their arms earthward from whence all good comes and revel in the free and untrammeled expression of their revolutionary souls. But at the Grand Opera, Mme. Gelzer, aged fifty-five and fat-legged now, in such ancient pieces as "Esmeralda," "The Sleeping Beauty," and "The Lake of the Swans," twiddles her toes in the same old way, and gets the same applause. The ballet seems eternal its expenses reduced by the inheritance from the old regime of 100,000 pairs of silk tights and innumerable costumes. And the ballet school goes on training the prettiest Russian proletarians in the ancient gesture, grimace and acrobatics. [The New Russia (1928) by Dorothy Thompson, chapter First Impressions, p.31]
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Duncan, Isadora and Irma, 31 [53]

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The New Russia
by Dorothy Thompson

https://archive.org/details/newrussia008934mbp
https://archive.org/download/newrussia008934mbp/newrussia008934mbp.pdf
https://archive.org/stream/newrussia008934mbp/newrussia008934mbp_djvu.txt
https://archive.org/download/newrussia008934mbp/newrussia008934mbp_archive.torrent
https://archive.org/details/newrussia008934mbp/page/n10
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.75629

Publication date 1928
Publisher Henry Holt And Company
Collection universallibrary
Contributor Universal Digital Library
Language English
Barcode 127799
Call number 8934
Copyrightowner Henry Holt And Company
Digitalpublicationdate 2004-04-26
Identifier newrussia008934mbp
Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2g737k8m
Numberedpages 330
Pagelayout FirstPageLeft
Pages 371
Scanningcenter RMSC-IIITH
Totalpages 354
Unnumberedpages 24

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