Leaps and Sounds

On a balmy summer evening, the plaza at Manhattan's Lincoln Center is as cheery a spot as Venice's Piazza San Marco without the pigeons or quite the grandeur. People gaze, mesmerized, into splashing fountains or relax at a sidewalk cafe, sipping Campari or sucking fruit ice from paper cups. For a change of meter and mood, conventioneers might duck the cacophony of the Garden in exchange for the mellow sounds at Alice Tully Hall, where July is Mostly Mozart time. Unfortunately, with Spain's dazzling pianist Alicia de Laroccha currently in residence, it is also mostly sold out, but there are last-minute cancellations anyway.

Tumbling across the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House are 175 assorted singers, dancers, musicians, mimes--even a troupe of Eskimos--all belonging to Igor Moiseyev's Russian Festival of Music and Dance. Audiences applaud their colorful costumes and boisterous folk art, especially the Ukrainians' vigorous squat jumps and the male toe dancers of the Georgian State Dance Theater.

Just to the left of the Metropolitan Opera, in a grassy glade surrounded by hedges and maples, free concerts by the Goldman Band are given at Damrosch Park on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8 p.m. The hottest tickets in town, however, remain those at the New York State Theater box office, where baleful balletomanes hang out trying to cadge freebies and spares to any performance by ex-Soviet Superstars Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov at the American Ballet Theater. Americans Gelsey Kirkland and Fernando Bujones trail only slightly behind. On Wednesday night, July 14, fancy footwork and aerial illusions should abound when the whole caboodle appear on one bill: Kirkland and Bujones in the 19th century Russian classic La Bayadere, and Makarova and Baryshnikov in Jerome Robbins' 20th century American classic Other Dances. This artistic cross-cultural event ought to drive fans to yet a new pitch of hysteria.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.