New Ballet in Manhattan

Two men and a woman, in black tights shingled with iridescent spangles, which made them look like Japanese beetles, huddled in the spotlight on the dim stage. The woman and one of the men began to posture in a slow dance. The other man inserted himself between the couple, reared up impassively, slithered like Bill the Lizard down the male back to the floor. That over, the three handed around arms and legs with poised abandon. In the pit, the orchestra sounded tentative about what sounds it would make next, a little anxious about what it would hear next from the solo violinist, who was worming a long, crawling melody from his fiddle.

Such was Balustrade, a ballet presented last week in Manhattan by Sol Hurok. It was the windup of the longest season of Russian ballet--14 weeks--the city had ever seen. Balustrade, like the ballets of the old days in Paris, was a pudding of the several arts. The music was by Igor Stravinsky, and conducted by him. It was his Violin Concerto, played by Samuel Dush-kin, who helped "edit" it ten years ago and is about the only fiddler who ever saws it through. The choreography was by George Balanchine (born Balanchivadze in Russian Georgia), who never tires of finding things for legs to do. The scenery and costumes, mostly black, white and silvery grey, were by plausible Artist Paul Tchelit-cheff, whose white balustrade, in receding fool-the-eye perspective, gave the ballet its name.

What Balustrade was about, no one knew. Since there were no program notes, it made for good guessing as well as good watching. It seemed to have bugs, or birds, or airplanes in it, and it definitely had a shapely leopard. Safe guess: the spangly men in black (Roman Jasinsky, Paul Petroff) were up to no good with the woman in black (dark, pretty Tamara Toumanova).

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