Time to Start Pushing

The dancers had rehearsed for months. On the eve of their premiere performance, they worked nearly twelve hours, dancing on into the night. In the basement of their three-story studio, a tailor and six seamstresses attacked a stack of white tutus: the ballerinas had danced so hard for so long that their costumes no longer fitted them. Then the lights went down in George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium, and Washington got its first glimpse last week of the National Ballet Company--the city's first professional resident troupe.

The young dancers looked their eager best in Hommage an Ballet, choreographed by the company's director, former Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Premier Danseur Frederic Franklin. In their premiere of Early Voyagers, a new work by Valerie Bettis (A Streetcar Named Desire), the dancers deserved more praise than the ballet, and a packed house rewarded them with 13 curtain calls.

It was clear that the dancers were ready for Washington, but was Washington ready for the dancers? The city already had an amateur company,* and the issue of whether professionals were needed or wanted had boiled for months in the Washington Ballet Guild. Finally, Franklin and Guild Founder Mrs. Richard J. Riddell withdrew from the Guild to start their own group in July 1961. Encouraged by the support of Dance Master George Balanchine (who charged Franklin with carrying on in Washington "what I started in New York") and Mrs. Riddell's money (she blessed the first season with nearly all of its $108,000 budget), Franklin opened a ballet school last summer and began casting for his company.

After only six months, the school had 250 students and the company had 25 dancers. "The enthusiasm ran so high at first that after three weeks, everyone fell exhausted," Franklin says. "Now we're at full pitch, and we plan to develop our own ballerinas and soloists from within our group. First, we must build a repertoire; then we will build our season. At the same time, we must build our audiences.

"It's high time for ballet in Washington," Franklin says. "We're going to become a truly resident ballet by taking a part in civic affairs. It's an uphill fight in a town that has not been exposed to much ballet, but we'll just have to push the citizens along a little. Why not? I think they're ready to be pushed."

* Washington is also headquarters now for the American Ballet Theater, mainly a touring company.

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