Ballet -for Helicopters

"Ballon," says The Dance Encyclopedia, is "the ability [of a dancer] to remain in the air for a length of time." To Nijinsky, that was a simple matter: "You have just to go up and pause there a little." But the Paris Opera Ballet's Choreographer Serge Lifar has a more modern solution.

Last week at Paris' Orly Airfield, some 500,000 spectators peered into blue skies and clutched their ears as U.S. and British jet fighters screeched past in France's National Air Fete. President of the Republic Vincent Auriol sat pleasantly and peacefully in his box, a study in pearl grey. Then, suddenly, a little man dressed all in white, wearing a white baseball cap and carrying two paddles walked on to the field. It was Choreographer Lifar.

Looking very intense indeed, as if he were about to land a very hot jet job on a jeep carrier's flight deck, Lifar climbed up on a little box and stared hard at three helicopters parked near him. Then he stretched his arms straight out from his shoulders, and his study in ballon--with motorized ballerinas--was on.

With another gesture from Lifar, the helicopters hoisted themselves 30 feet into the air. As he paddled frantically from the ground, the giant pinwheels sashayed around each other with all the grace of circus elephants. So far, only one thing had gone wrong. Lifar had planned to have his helicopters dance to The Beautiful Blue Danube and a Berlioz march; somebody had forgotten to switch on the loudspeakers.

At first, from a distance, the dust cloud kicked up by the prancing pinwheels looked like a small grey ball, growing darker and darker. Then at the President's box, the blue uniforms of his honor guard began to turn a dusty white. Suddenly, as the helicopters changed direction, M. Auriol himself could be dimly seen making violent gestures-that were clearly not applause.

When it was over, Choreographer Lifar himself seemed to have disappeared in a cloud of dust. Reporters raced to the committee box. Why had there been no music for Lifar's ballet? Said one grim spokesman: there was "no ballet." But, insisted the reporters, it was billed in the program as a ballet; what were Lifar and all those helicopters doing out there? Said the spokesman, his face set: "No ballet. Just helicopters."

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