Ballet in the Black

Despite its recent vogue, ballet cannot yet walk on its own pirouetting feet; it is still borne up by hopeful angels.

Last week in Montreal, Leonide Massine's new ballet company began a summer road tour that gave every evidence of becoming a moneymaker. The audience of 10,000 packed Molson Stadium -- at a nice profit, too -- and vigorously applauded Massine's Ballet Russe Highlights.

Glossy-haired, 46-year-old Dancer-Choreographer Massine, a veteran of at least six richly endowed ballet companies, knows where the money goes. Instead of the orthodox company of 30 or 40, he has just six capable dancers -- Irina Baronova, Andre Eglevsky, Rosella Hightower, Yurek Lazowsky, Kathryn Lee, Anna Istomina --trained to perform in quick succession the twelve to 16 short ballets he will crowd into each program. In a pre-tour show at Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium last week, the Highlights company danced against a black backdrop; in Montreal, where the audience surrounded the platform, the decor consisted of eight well-potted palms.

Massine booked half of the road performances in open-air stadiums where the potential box office exceeds $10,000. (Just to be on the safe side, he also took in as business partner Y. D. Scales, a Fort Worth auto dealer, whose daughter, pert Kathryn Lee, a musicomedy dancer, wanted to be a highbrow ballerina.) Said Massine, flushed with the opening success of Highlights: "My conception of repertoire is the same as that of chamber music in relation to symphony. ... I feel I am restoring some of the basic elements of Russian ballet. . . . Today ballet has become, with big companies, a kind of musical comedy. . . ."

Balletomanes did not agree with the box office. They felt that Massine had slipped noticeably, both as a dancer and a choreographer. Best received numbers were two classic favorites, Le Spectre de la Rose (choreography by Fokine) and The Bluebird (by Petipa).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.