Feet First

Brooding before a video-tape machine, a cigarette drooping from his mouth, Eliot Feld was working and reworking the choreography of his 1972 ballet of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale. Two dancers stood by. Finally, Feld snapped off the TV and nodded to the pianist. Spinning out a series of steps, he recited, "Passe, chasse, saut de basque, heel, toe." On the next run-through, he renamed the steps: "Strength, will, talent, musicality, perseverance, time."

Feld has built a career on those six nouns. His dance company's current Manhattan season is S.R.O. and has been extended. At 33, with 22 ballets to his credit, Feld has entered the golden circle of U.S. classical choreographers. Only George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins stand ahead of him.

In 1967 he burst upon the scene with Harbinger. He was only 24, a soloist at the American Ballet Theater. The son of a Brooklyn lawyer, he had been dancing since he was twelve. Harbinger is a young man's work--brisk, sunny and humorous. In the ballet world, it kicked up the same sort of commotion caused 23 years earlier by Fancy Free, Jerome Robbins' first success.

Extravagant Bluster. For a time, however, it looked as if Feld could think only with his feet. A year after his triumph he left ABT with extravagant bluster. Said he: "They wouldn't make me director of the company, they wouldn't give me the whole company to do with what I like." That outburst was enough to make critics write off Feld with a hauteur that resembled his own. Unrepentant, he set up shop as the American Ballet Company, but ran out of money within two years. He had just about decided to give up choreography when the Rockefeller Foundation offered to be his angel. New York Shakespeare Festival Director Joseph Papp volunteered free space at the Estelle Newman Theater in downtown Manhattan. Eighteen months ago, the new Eliot Feld Company opened for business.

With reasonable security, he has worked on building his repertory selectively. This fall's new works, Excursions, a lusty frontier-style piece, and Mazurka, to Chopin's music, are his most popular premieres since his 1969 ballroom ballet, Intermezzo. Mazurka is technically ferocious. But, says Feld, "with its angular line and hot and cold jazz rhythms, the ballet is like caviar."

Fortunately, he has some excellent dancers taking on his flights of ferocity. "I believe in good dancers, better dancers and great dancers," he says. Like Balanchine, he wants a starless troupe, but whether he likes it or not, Christine Sarry easily stands out. As the mercurial waif of Excursions or the buoyant ballerina of Mazurka, she is fleet-spirited and light-legged.

Concealed virtuosity is a Feld hallmark. To the ordinary eye, double turns tucked into simple curves of movement spring up casually from the current of music. Girls rarely hurtle through the air, rather they float by like Chagall figures. Then, in a sudden mid-air reverse, they switch directions altogether.

In the Balanchine-Robbins manner, the ballets are storyless. Feld plots feelings, not fairytales, and gives them a friendly arms-around-the-waist folksiness. Detractors sometimes complain his work resembles that of Robbins. Feld claims to have seen only 20 to 30 ballets in his life. "I'm a doer, not an audience. When I like what I see," he admits, "I find it very threatening." He finds all his inspiration in music; one of his brightest moments occurred when he found he had enough money to open a charge account at a record store.

As a teenager, Feld was a voracious reader, but he has given up books. "To a certain extent what shaped me is over," he reflects. "Before, everything was coming in. Now everything is going out." There is no limit to his vision: "Balanchine represented in 1940 what I represent now. He succeeded. I may not. Now I'm here to build."

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