No. 6 for Sol

For four years now, Soviet dancers have represented a sizable hunk of Impresario Sol Hurok's business. Since 1958, he has imported five companies,/- toasted the dancers with champagne and caviar at hotel rooftop parties, and sent them off to the vast American steppes to spread cheer and make money. Last week a shy girl in a flowered robe and korsetki (a kind of satin juniper) stepped to the footlights at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera house and uttered the words "Miz Ukraini" (We are from the Ukraine). Sol had brought in No. 6.

The 100-member Ukrainian Dance Company, predictably, was a smash. Like the Moiseyev dancers before them, the Ukrainians offered ersatz folk dances--works grounded in folk traditions but theatricalized beyond anything that a wandering muzhik ever saw in a village square.

For the most part--with the exception of some sentimental daguerreotypes of love and courtship--the program was superb entertainment. At its heart were the soaring jumps and the knee-wrenching kicks around which the rituals of all Russian folk companies are built. The Ukrainians, moreover, displayed a talent for close-order drill that should turn the Radio City Rockettes green, plus body control that enabled them to shift speeds with the smoothness of a car accelerating in fluid drive. Among the highlights: a dance competition in which the men, in soft boots and duffel-baggy pants, remained squatting while they whirled, pivoted, bounced on knees and toes, while, with arms folded, they placidly pumped their legs in eye-blurring, right-angle kicks.

When the air was finally clear of flying dancers, the audience rose and gave the performers the old Sol Hurok Opening Night Locomotive. The dancers applauded back with enthusiasm. The reviews glowed. Box offices along the company's 16-city cross-continent route rang to the clink of coin. As for Impresario Hurok himself, his restless eye was probably already roving the map of Russia that was included in the official program. A ballet troupe from Monchegorsk, perhaps? Or sword dancers from Pinsk?

/- The Moiseyev Company in 1958 (and again in 1961), the Beryozka Company in late 1958, the Bolshoi Ballet in 1959, the Georgian State Company in 1960, the Leningrad Kirov Ballet in 1961.

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