Summer Nights (Cont'd)

P:Of the numerous U. S. localities which maintain open-air summer concerts, only the Hollywood Bowl pretentiously labels its performances "Symphonies Under the Stars." One night last week Peggy Wood, Marlene Dietrich, Josef von Sternberg, Jeanette MacDonald, Corinne Griffith and some 18,000 others heard Otto Klemperer play Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Al-beniz, Berlioz in the Bowl's opener. Conductors to follow during the eight-week season : Willem Mengelberg, Ernest Schelling, Bernardino Molinari, Jose Iturbi.

From the Hollywood Bowl last week many an auditor glanced up at a hill 1,000 ft. away where, once an evening, a spot light picked out a man in a flowing robe stumbling along with a cross. In an out door theatre beneath the hill was being performed the Pilgrimage Play, a 15-year-old event in California. Compiled by the late Christine Wetherill Stevenson, a rich Bible student who left money to assure its performance, the Pilgrimage Play presents the entire life of Christ. The actors, like Ian Maclaren who has been Christ for six years, are professionals. The director is Phil Whiting, professional Los Angeles pageant producer. A hidden orchestra plays softly, voices chant ancient church music. The Pilgrimage Play goes on nightly for ten weeks.

P: When Nijinsky, Karsavina, Rubinstein danced in the peerless Diaghilev Ballet, it was more often than not to works created by Michel Fokine. Today Fokine runs a dancing school in Manhattan. His dancers, who bolstered a faltering season last summer at the Lewisohn Stadium, were again sent to its rescue this month. They performed old Fokine favorites, introduced some new ballets. By this week, when they were to wind up the engagement, the Fokine dancers had impressed critics as no more than mediocre. There was, however, one exception--22-year-old Paul Haakon (pronounced hawk-on). In Scheherazade he was a lithe Favorite. Slave. In Les Sylphides he was the sole male dancer, pirouetting classically in white tights and black blouse. In Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice he was an exuberant Broom, bounding about until he ripped his tights open. And, decked with pink blooms in Le Spectre de la Rose, the role which Nijinsky made his own, Haakon managed to be swift and sure" in the soaring leaps.

Born in Fredericia, Denmark and orphaned early, Paul Haakon Longreen was adopted by Christ Nielson Panduoro, a bachelor who had made money in the embroidery business. Christ Panduoro took Paul Haakon to San Francisco, had him study dancing for his health although the boy disliked it. When they returned to Denmark the 9-year-old was put in the Royal Opera Ballet School. The "elevation" (leaps and jumps) at which he is expert today he learned in the rigorous oldtime manner, practicing in heavy harness which when it was removed made him feel more airy. In 1924 Christ Panduoro lost his money, returned to San Francisco to begin again in the embroidery business. Paul Haakon studied with Theodore Kosloff, made his debut in a San Francisco vaudeville house. In 1927 in Manhattan he danced as a faun in Cleopatra, managed to get in Pavlova's troupe a few months before she died in 1931.

Haakon can do three tours-en-l'air, 14 pirouettes, five entre-chats.* No Nijinsky, he says: "I do not like it when I am compared to Nijinsky. ... I do not think there is a dancer, no matter how good, who can do the things Nijinsky has been credited with lately. . . . Each year his ability grows in the minds of people who saw him 20 years ago and cannot forget. All the time they add a little to what he did."

*Romola Nijinsky says her husband did ten such leg flicks in air, more than any other dancer on record.

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