Ballet by Boccaccio

Published 500 years ago "as an aid and comfort to women in love," Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron reputedly contains every basic plot ever written. It has provided aid and comfort for novelists, short story writers, dramatists, Hollywood and TV hacks. Now Boccaccio has been set to the dance. At Italy's Nervi Festival, Russian-born Choreographer Leonide Massine last week presented the premiere of his Human Comedy, a three-hour interpretation of nine of Boccaccio's lustiest tales.

Set to 14th century melodies orchestrated by Composer Claude Arrieu, Comedy combined humor, poetry, drama and sex in lurid mixture. Some of the sequences were unabashedly bawdy: an aged fool heaves over a medieval chamber pot, is lured into bed by a seductive young thing who promptly decamps with the old man's clothes and money. Some were queasily off-color: a visiting sultan caresses a "lovely young boy" only to discover a female under the fabric. One of the most famous of the tales had to do with the scholar who revenged himself on the lady who deceived him by luring her naked to the top of a tower and leaving her there to be broiled by the sun and chewed by the mosquitoes. For his ballet corps from 15 countries, Massine, 64, recruited as many married male dancers as possible on the theory that "married men are more convincing when they make love on stage." During the five months of rehearsals, he insisted on demonstrating each step to the dancers, with a pince-nez perched on the end of his nose and his head shielded from the Italian sun by a black umbrella.

Against abstract sets resembling medieval stained glass, the Nervi dancers last week reeled off their figures in the feverish, exuberant style of such post-classical Massine creations as Fantasy at Grand Hotel. Predictably, the crowd-stoppers were the sexy numbers, so torrid that the Festival Committee had at first been threatened by the censor: an undulating dance by an all-but-nude ballerina waiting for the arrival of her lover; a passionate embrace in the course of which two lovers move across the stage in angular jetes. The best dancing was provided by young Italian Ballerina Carla Fracci (TIME, Feb. 22), who gave a moving, superbly disciplined portrayal of a grieving girl. The whole thing ended with an epilogue demonstrating that for all the Boccaccian low jinks, virtue triumphs after all. Somewhat baffled critics found Comedy "monumental" and an "extraordinary spectacle," but the highest praise came from Massine himself. Said he: "I've done a miracle."

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