Trial Leaps

Manhattan was deluged with ballet, but not overwhelmed. There were three companies (the Original Ballet Russe, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Ballet Society) on hand, and a fourth (Ballet Theater) in the wings. Each did its best to come up with something new Most important premieres:

Jerome Robbins' Pas de Trois, a posturing satire on classical ballet done to Berlioz' thundering Damnation of Faust. In it two men and a ballerina maneuver to upstage each other; one mugs shamelessly, another surreptitiously corrects a pose, or looks bewildered and terrified when he can't remember what he is expected to do next. Good clean fun, and skillfully done, it is also a symptom of ballet's present introversion. Pas de Trois was postponed twice because of Ballerina Alicia Markova's illness, was finally put on without her. Critics found her substitute, veteran dancer Rosella Hightower, a good dancer if not yet a great one.

Ballet Society, a new nonprofit company which had gone underground to experiment (for members only, who paid from $15 to $50 a season to look on), put on three premieres. The Minotaur was a well-conceived but not always well-executed marriage of classical myth, classical and modern dance (by John Taras), modern music (by Elliott Carter) and modern art (by Joan Junyer). In Zodiac, weak music and dance were overpowered by blinding costumes and sets. Highland Fling, in which sylphs run in & out of an interminable Scottish wedding to faintly Scottish and vaguely dissonant music, was an unhappy case of incompatibility.

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