Fun at the Ballet

The curtain of Manhattan's City Center opened on a ballet set--a large, white Chopin medallion suspended like a full moon against velvety blackness-- but the first figure the audience saw, a hefty man in swallowtail coat, headed across the stage to play Chopin on a grand piano. Yet it was a ballet after all, a new one called The Concert. Made up of Choreographer Jerome (Peter Pan) Robbins' irreverent ideas of what might go on in a listener's wandering mind during a musical evening, it turned out to be the funniest farce in a blue balletomoon.

Up into the Flies. During the pianist's first selection an odd audience (of New York City Ballet dancers) entered, carrying folding chairs. There were: a deep-down music lover who listens a la Rodin, a pair of candy-sucking bobby-soxers, a long-legged young thing who practically climbed into the piano in her love of music (Ballerina Tanaquil LeClercq), a bored couple and, finally, a young fellow who trampled all the other concertgoers while trying to find his seat. At that point the Chopin medallion zoomed up into the flies and madness descended.

In rapid succession, there were 1) a waltz in which boys lugged girls onstage like grainsacks, let them dance a bit, then lugged them off again; 2) a dizzy rain scene, with umbrellas flapping open and shut; 3) the "Minute" Waltz, timed by a football second hand and ending precisely at 60 seconds. Best spoof of all was the "mistake" dance: one girl or another always managed to have arms up when the rest had them down or to be facing the audience when the rest were faced about, etc.--old stuff, but done with a deadpan zip that had the real audience howling. Just about half an hour after it began, The Concert drew to a close as the dream characters rushed for the wings and the original group of concert listeners dashed on and assumed their original poses in time for the last note.

All in 13 Minutes. Choreographer Robbins barely finished his work in time for its first-night curtain, was already trimming and tightening before the second performance. He had been scheduled to restage another ballet as well, but spent all his time on The Concert, and the City Ballet's Boss Choreographer George Balanchine had to step in at the last minute. His new work: Allegro Brillante, set to the only movement (the first)* Tctiaikovsky completed of his Third Piano Concerto. With a corps of four men and four women and with Ballerina Maria Tallchief and Leading Dancer Nicholas Magallanes dancing the solos, it was as graceful and satisfying to the eye as a perfectly tuned orchestra is to the ear, perhaps one of Balanchine's most attractive works. He calls it "everything I know about the classical ballet--in 13 minutes."

* He first planned the music for his Sixth Symphony, then as a piano concerto, but apparently was not sufficiently interested in the material to complete it.

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