Myzterious Martha

The first U.S. dance company to hit Pans since the war had been greeted by a very small Allo. The French like ballet but they like it classical; and the Ruth Page-Bentley Stone Ballet Company's big number, Frankie and Johnny, was just raw American barbarism to the French audience (TIME, May 22). As the first shock wore off, the audiences and critics became more tolerant but hardly less puzzled. Last week a second wave of U.S. dancers reached Paris.

When the curtain went up in the same Theatre des Champs-Elysees, remnants of the Parisian elite, teen-aged American fans, and unwashed philosophers from St.-Germain-des-Pres saw a dark-eyed, intense little dancer in a clinging, stone-colored gown standing starkly alone. It was barefoot Modernist Martha Graham, on her first excursion abroad with her own company.

Twisting and turning, she took her audience with her on her Errand into the Maze, the soul's fight against fear. After that one, Martha took seven curtain calls. But as she proceeded with her company into other labyrinthine concepts, such as Eye of Anguish and Cave of the Heart, the applause dwindled. At the finale, most of the bravos came from U.S. fans.

In the lobby afterwards, owlish Alexander Volinine, Pavlova's partner for 13 years, muttered: "Verry myzterious." A pallid Parisian hostess shuddered: "It's like looking into the souls of horrid people --the ones one walks away from." Wrote Combat's critic: "Martha, by her continuous internal tension, as in a trance, is able to communicate all the scale of human sentiments." Le Monde found that 'those naked feet lifted, brandished menacingly ... end by being an obsession." Martha Graham took this French coolness in her stride. "You see," she said, "it's a universal problem. Some like it;' others don't like it; and others are puzzled . . . It's like modern music and art. We have sometimes to wait . . ."

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