On Their Toes

The golden call of a trumpet blazed last week in a rococo Manhattan theatre. On the stage, blonde, hollow-cheeked Dancer Tatiana Riabouchinska, in the blazing gold costume of the cock in Coq d'Or, soared in the grand jete, the ballet's classic leap. On other nights, when the stage was ranked with silk tights and tutus (tarlatan ballet skirts), pretty, plump-cheeked Irina Baronova and dark, lissome Tamara Toumanova took the spotlight for effortless spins, whirls, leaps.

These three, reunited, were the "baby stars" who seven winters ago, when they were in their teens, began making the U. S. ballet-conscious. Then their director was an ex-Cossack colonel named Wassily de Basil, who founded the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe in the great tradition of the late Serge Diaghilev, named his troupe for the little principality where it first danced. Last week, after many complicated schisms in the Russian ballet, the troupe was called the Original Ballet Russe. Colonel de Basil was still its director. But its boss, who hoped to keep it going in Manhattan through the winter, was shrewd, bland S. (for Sol, for Solomon) Hurok, famed concert manager.

Sol Hurok has another ballet to his string. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, directed by swart, 44-year-old Leonide Massine, onetime maitre de ballet for Colonel de Basil, had opened in Manhattan, had now begun a 22-week tour of the U. S. The Massine ballet lacked pretty young stars and its ensemble would not make the Rockettes jealous, but it had two of the world's best ballerinas: dark, svelte British Alicia Markova, who excels in classic ballets like Giselle and Swan Lake, and dark, vivacious Alexandra Danilova, who was in the old Diaghilev company, Danilova --once married to Massine's rival choreographer Georges Balanchine--dances with a gaiety and precision which belie the fact that, in her late 30s she is old for a ballerina.

Dancer Massine now confines himself to character dancing; like an actor, he knows how to give an effect of brilliance and vivacity by piecing out simple footwork with deft body movements, well-timed claps and stomps. But where the De Basil ballet is short on men--its best is David Lichine, choreographer as well as dancer--the massine troupe has four of the best: Roland Guerard of Flat Rock, N.C. one of the first U.S.-born Ballet Russers who was allowed to dance under his own name; Frederic Franklin, exuberant British onetime hoofer; and two genuine Russians, Igor Youskevitch and Andre Eglevsky. These dancers perform capably the difficult leaps, entrechats (crossing of the feet in midair) tours en l'air (twirls in the air) demanded by the classic style.

For all its eye-filling and breath-taking qualities, the Ballet Russe has its shortcomings--shortcomings the more grave because much U.S. money has gone into the ballet, notably from such backers as Edsel Ford and Yeast Scion Julius Fleischmann. Whereas Diaghilev was imaginative, ahead of his time, and not above shocking his audiences. Mr. Hurok's two troupes make little effort at even keeping up to date. Massine's ballet, St. Francis, whose music by Paul Hindemith is among the best in the modern theatre, has slipped from the repertory; Sol Hurok does not like it. Among the new ballets now presented by the two companies, the best has to do with a man who died a century ago, Fiddler Paganini.

Yet Sol Hurok is probably well satisfied with the current state of ballet. The U.S. can perhaps support two touring troupes, neither of them competing with the other, neither showing much interest in the U.S. time and scene. Sol Hurok can book them, through NBC Artists Service, which is one-half of the U. S. concert monopoly. If one of the companies crumbles away, he still has the other, and the title of No. 1 impresario of the Russian Ballet.

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