Ballet Underground

Ballet has become such a big business that it has almost forgotten how to be an art. Promoters demand more & more "premieres" to ballyhoo; and most of the quickie new works are shoddy. Promising dancers, instead of toiling faithfully to become ballerinas, have taken easier and better-paying Broadway jobs. Big, expensive ballet companies are losing money competing with each other on the road.

Last week Sol Hurok, ballet's Barnum, who has done as much as anyone to make the art an industry, confessed in Variety: "Ballet, we must admit, is not an essential commodity. The public can live without it."

In Manhattan, a new nonprofit company called Ballet Society set out to de-emphasize ballet and take the high pressure out of it. It had the well-heeled help of Lincoln Kirstein, who in the past 14 years has organized or helped support five attempts to "de-Russianize" U.S. ballet. And as its artistic director Ballet Society had Russian-born George Balanchine, the best choreographer in the U.S.

Ballet Society intends to work out new ballets at its own pace, with no need to rush onstage with them. For the first two or three years it will not try to reach a big public, will make no tours. It plans about four performances a year, open to subscribers only ($15 and up). Last week, in Manhattan's Hunter College Playhouse, subscribers saw their second show. There were two new ballets by Balanchine. Critics (whose papers had to buy them memberships to get them in) liked best his linear Divertimento, had kind words for Renard the Fox, to music by Stravinsky. Ballet Society has commissioned scores by Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and Aaron Copland. Says Choreographer Balanchine: "In spite of all we have done, Americans do not appreciate ballet unless you bring something from Europe. We want to show that Americans are good."

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