Ballet in Force

Never had Manhattan been more decisively invaded, and conquered, by ballet. Last week, 65 young British lads and lassies had bundled into two B.O.A.C. planes, bound for New York. The girls, uniformly pretty, were outfitted in the latest British fashion, in the forlorn hope that dollar-heavy dowagers in the U.S. might be persuaded that London, as well as Paris, can turn out smart women's clothes. But the major part of their mission was far from forlorn. This week, socialites, diplomats and balletomanes were flocking to the Metropolitan Opera House to see them. Even at $9.60 top, not a seat was empty for the U.S. debut of the finest classical troupe west of Moscow: the Sadler's Wells Ballet from London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

The British had only gotten around to creating a national company after Diaghilev's death (1929), though ballet had been a London rage since the 18th Century. Under the stern direction of a tiny Irish-born former Diaghilev dancer named Ninette de Valois, they had modeled their company after the classical Russian patterns. But in 20 years, it had become as British as meat pie.

The Sleeping Beauty. There was one Russian dancer: Violetta Elvin, but she is married to a Briton who brought her out of Moscow after World War II. The two stars with the brightest shine were born in Surrey and Fifeshire: dark-haired Margot Fonteyn (TIME, April 15, 1946) and red-haired Moira (The Red Shoes) Shearer. The leading male dancer, Robert Helpmann, is somewhat of a foreigner--from Australia. Chief Choreographer Frederick (Cinderella, Facade) Ashton was born in Ecuador of British parents. Some of the ballets had unmistakably British subjects, among them The Rake's Progress (De Valois) and Hamlet (Robert Helpmann).

This week, in the first top-hat event of the season, first-nighters saw England's fine company do a Russian masterpiece the way it is still done only in the Soviet Union and Covent Garden. They sat, charmed, through the complete three-act, three-hour-long Tchaikovsky-Petipa ballet The Sleeping Beauty. Few could say they had ever seen a more lavish spectacle and dancing grace on a U.S. ballet stage. It took Conductor Constant Lambert a full five minutes to get the music in motion again after the thunderous ovation for Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann's third-act pas de deux.

In the four weeks to come, Met-goers would get to see eleven more ballets made in England. And before the Sadler's Wells troupe went back to London, eight other U.S. and Canadian cities would get to see them too.

The Boiled Egg. A few blocks up Broadway, ballet fans and theatergoers were also getting a chance to see--and whistle at--what the French had to offer. Canny Showman Lee Shubert had brought over a show that Parisians and Londoners had been cheering for the last year: handsome, 25-year-old Roland Petit's lusty new Ballets de Paris.

In the first three ballets (one by U.S. Choreographer William Dollar), the theatergoers got the best break, particularly in Petit's The Boiled Egg, a sexy slapstick burlesque in Broadway revue style that scattered buckshot all up & down the Great White Way. But Carmen, Petit's piece de resistance, hit all comers right between the eyes. In front of some of the most exciting sets (by the Spaniard Antoine Clave) Broadway has seen in many a year, Dancer Petit (as Don Jose) and a leggy young wind-blown-bobbed ballerina named Renee Jeanmaire (as Carmen) writhed, stomped, flashed and seduced in a way that only passed the censors because it somehow stayed within the boundaries of beauty and art.

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