eriences that you are recommended to undertake in your own
behalf in the chapter I have called "Making a Name" will be invaluable
aids to you in harvesting a lot of the best grade of showmanship.

Travel will help you learn a lot. The traveled and successful
theatrical person is always alert, quick, bright, posted in all
important matters that concern the profession and all who are
connected with it.

Those who take my courses as students of dancing are given a wide
mental as well as physical training, to prepare them to cultivate
showmanship that shall complement their skill as dancers when they
become professionals. I call my lectures "inspirational talks," for I
do want what I say about their future careers to be inspiring to them,
and encouraging and beneficial. I speak to my pupils from many years
of stage experience, and I know if what I say is heeded and given full
consideration they will be better dancers and secure better
engagements, and do so in less time, as a result.

[Illustration: HELEN FABLES]

Good showmanship in dancing consists also in being able to "sell"
one's own personality in a dance. Select your offerings to suit your
public. Put in the effective "tricks" in your exits that are so
important in inviting applause. And learn to leave your audience
"hungry" for more of you. Let them go away with a wish that they might
see more of your dancing. That is your cue in successful showmanship,
my dancers. Let the audience come back to see the same show again in
order to once more enjoy your pretty work. That means "repeaters," and
repeaters, as I told you, mean successful showmanship, and both
artistic and financial success.

It is never good showmanship on the part of the dancer, or of an actor
or actress in any part, to let the audience know that you know they
are out there. The way you handle an audience will have much to do
with the opinion of your work that will be held by the big men in the
theatrical world, who may be among those present at any performance,
you never can tell when--and they, remember, are hiring good dancers
now and then. Their judgment of how you handle an audience is worth
consideration.

And bear in mind, too, that the most important part of your dance is
the very end of it, the finish, upon which always depends the applause
and the recall. You like to earn your bow, and that is right. Take
your bow in front of the audience gracefully and quickly. Don't milk
the audience