Made in U.S.A.

Signboards outside Manhattan's dingy Metropolitan Opera House still advertised "The greatest in Russian Ballet." But of Ballet Theatre's 45 dancers on display inside, 31 were American-born--and only three were Russian.

In the days of the great impresario Diaghilev, ballet had artists like Picasso and Matisse to do the sets, composers like Stravinsky and Ravel to do the music. Now dancers, designers and choreographers had made-in-the-U.S. stamped all over them, had borrowed as heavily from Broadway as Broadway has from them (Oklahoma!, Carousel, etc.). Last week, with ballet's fall season under way, Manhattan audiences had seen premieres of three new ballets:

P: On Stage! was a lightweight backstage parody by Manhattan-born Michael Kidd, 28, in which dancers in practice costumes smoke pipes, mug around, indulge in such ballet blasphemies as yelling and talking. The plot: a Charlie Chaplin-like handyman helps a shy girl applicant get her chance.

P: Gift of the Magi is O. Henry's Christmas story told more with mime than footwork, by Latvian-born Simon Semenoff, to an American's music, and an American backdrop.

P: Interplay, the best of the lot, is as free of story as a nonobjective painting. It is done by youthful Jerome Robbins, who did the choreography of the jazzy 1944 sailor ballet, Fancy Free. Interplay, a pleasant trifle, had a summer Broadway run in Billy Rose's Concert Varieties revue, has been improved considerably since.

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