When I was about six years old, my mother came home one day and found that I had collected half a dozen babies of the neighbourhood-all of them too young to walk-and had them sitting before me on the floor while I was teaching them to wave their arms. When she asked the explanation of this, I informed her that it was my school of dance. She was amused and placed herself at the piano. She began to play for me. This school continued and became very popular. Later on, little girls of the neighbourhood came and their parents paid me a small sum to teach them. This was the beginning of what afterwards proved a very profitable occupation.
My mother took me to a famous ballet teacher, but his lessons did not please me. When the teacher told me to stand on my toes I asked him why, and when he replied "Because it is beautiful, " I said that it was ugly. and against nature and after the third lesson I left his class, never to return. This stiff （僵硬） and commonplace gymnastics which he called dancing only disturbed my dream. I dreamed of a different dance. I did not know just what it would be, but I was feeling out towards an invisible world into which I guessed I might enter if I found the key.
My art was already in me when I was a little girl, and it was owing to the heroic and adventurous spirit of my mother that it was not prevented, I believe that whatever the child is going to do in life should be begun when it is very young. I wonder how many parents realize that by the so-called education they are giving their children, they are only driving them into the commonplace, and taking away from them any chance of doing anything beautiful or original.
