Everybody seemed to be out of step at the American Ballet Theater. For six months, the company and 77 dancers--soloists and the corps de ballet--have been bickering over salaries and travel expenses.

A sotto voce complaint, in addition, was that Soviet Defector Alexander Godunov had been offered a six-figure salary to dance with the A.B.T.

or about as much as management seemed willing to grant the lesser dancers all together in raises. So bitter were feelings that the company canceled performances, while superstars like Gelsey Kirkland joined the picket line. Last week. Godunov complicated things by abruptly resigning from the A.B.T. before ever dancing a single pas because he had become an issue. Not so, insisted the dancers in a group note urging him to reconsider and requesting "the honor and privilege of being your friends." Balletomanes are awaiting the next act with understandable interest.

Prince Philip picked the spot, a wooded glen on the grounds of Balmoral Castle. There, to mark the 32nd wedding anniversary of Britain's Queen and her husband, photographers recorded them with their three sons and their married daughter. Eleven royal dogs uncomposed some of the pictures as they flitted about the family feet. So, too, did First Grandchild Peter Phillips, 2, who distracted Mother Anne, 29, Uncles Charles, 31, Andrew, 19, and Edward, 15, and his grandmother with a lively game of Ring-a-ring of roses in which Master Peter dropped delightedly to the turf when he came to the line "A-tishoo! A-tishoo! All fall down!"

Tis the season to see Perry, fa la la la la. For the 16th year, Perry Como returns to television on Dec. 14 as host of his annual Christmas show. This year the singer, 67, celebrates "Christmas in New Mexico," aided by Greer Garson, a Como friend since Hollywood days. Garson, who now works a cattle ranch called Forked Lightning near Santa Fe with Husband Buddy Fogelson, welcomes Easterner Como to her adopted Southwest and recites the poem "Christmas Eve in Santa Fe."

"Stone walls do not a prison make," said the poet, "nor iron bars a cage." Tell that to petite Brunette Maria-Christina ("Putzi") von Opel, 28, playgirl heiress to a vast German auto fortune. Last week von Opel found herself behind walls and bars facing a ten-year prison term after a French court in Draguignan found her guilty of financing a 1977 scheme to import Middle East hashish into West Germany, and Italy via Saint-Tropez. Why should an heiress worth $70 million involve herself in a drug ring? Neither von Opel nor any of her seven co-defendants ever said, but the longer her three-week trial went on, the more it became apparent that she was less a pawn than a principal in the plot. Cousin Guenter Sachs, himself known mainly as a playboy, blamed von Opel's predicament on an unhappy childhood and a latter-day regimen that included two bottles of vodka daily. So convinced of her guilt were the French judges who heard the case that they doubled the recommended five-year punishment.

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