Danseur Noble

In a thin wedge of midtown Manhattan last week, most of the populace seemed to be dancing--or watching. At the Metropolitan Opera House, Moscow's phenomenal Moiseyev Dance Company was playing to capacity crowds, while the waiting line for standing room coiled around the block. To the north, aficionados flocked to the spring rites as celebrated by Martha Graham and her dance company. But most excitement focused around Denmark's Erik Bruhn, a handsome, blond, well-muscled performer for the American Ballet Theater who not only has the best profile since Barrymore's but may just be the finest classical male dancer now before the public.

The Moiseyevs came to town with a towering advance sale ($500,000) and a big reputation--based on their successful cross-continent tour of the U.S. three years ago. In 14 numbers (ten entirely new, including a hilarious spoof of rock 'n' roll), they gave their audience the full catalogue of spins and jumps, lifts, and meshed-gear movements that they are famed for. The Graham company offered two new numbers: a rollicking, Shakespeare-inspired romp called One More Gaudy Night, and Visionary Recital, a somewhat murky exposition on the three faces of Delilah (Awakener, Betrayer, Seducer) in which Martha Graham (as Awakener) triumphed over her 67 years with a modicum of disciplined effort. Neither of them was topflight Graham but both were performed with top-drawer skill that kept overflow audiences applauding long after the curtain came down.

Technique Is Not Enough. The Ballet Theater has fallen off from its earlier, more sparkling days, but any shoddiness in its corps or weakness in the orchestra was forgotten on opening night in the performances of Erik Bruhn and Oklahoma-born Maria Tallchief. Appearing in the lead roles in Miss Julie, based on the theme of Strindberg's chilling play, they gave one of modern ballet's truly electric performances--taut, technically polished, tingling with passion. The following evening, in the more elegant climate of Swan Lake, they were equally convincing, and had critics groping for comparisons with such a legendary dancing pair as Nijinsky and Karsavina.

Trained in Denmark, Bruhn leaped to fame in 1955, when he appeared in Giselle with the American Ballet Theater in a performance that Dancer-Choreographer Ted Shawn recalls as "one of the two greatest performances I've ever seen." Back home Bruhn, 32, is the idol of the Royal Danish Ballet, where he has brought new life to the classic roles reserved for a premier danseur noble. His technical credentials include a fine dramatic sense and an ability to leap with a high-arching grace, to turn with cat quickness and fluidity on the ground or in midair, to project emotion with vivid movements of arms, legs and body. But Bruhn long ago became aware that "technique is not enough," and he is remarkable for the feeling of tension he can convey by his mere presence. Poised and trim (5 ft. 7_in., 140 Ibs.), he somehow rivets an audience with the promise of action before he has danced a step.

Greatness Is All. Bruhn devotes four months of the year to the Royal Danish Ballet, the rest to Ballet Theater and to a staggering round of guest appearances. When he accompanied the Ballet Theater to Russia last year, he was so applauded (one critic called him "the greatest male dancer to perform in the Soviet Union in the past 25 years") that the Bolshoi Ballet has invited him as a guest soloist for six months, starting next fall.

As Bruhn soars ever closer to his apogee, he spends restless nights reviewing roles in his mind. He has surprisingly little of the vanity that goads most performers; he does not want audiences to pay, he says, "only to see me jump." Furthermore, he would rather "be bad in a good ballet than be great in a bad ballet." But to be great in a good ballet? To do it, says Erik Bruhn, "it is important, even if you performed a role the night before, to think, 'This is the first time this is going to happen.' "

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