Music: Indianapolis Dancer

In Indianapolis some 14 years ago, a healthy 12-year-old child, free from funny fixations, was taken to see Anna Pavlowa dance. The child had no notions of dancing, was to all appearances just a midwesterner with an eight-letter name—Ruth Page, daughter of Dr. Lafayette Page, now director of the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Hospital for children in Indianapolis. But she left Pavlowa’s recital starry-eyed, went home and practiced pirouettes in the parlor.

A year later when Pavlowa returned to Indianapolis, Ruth was taken to see her, did a toe-dance of her own composition. Pavlowa saw talent and beauty of face and body. She spoke encouragingly, advised Mrs. Page to take Ruth to Chicago to study during the summer with the Pavlowa Ballet. There followed further study in Manhattan under Adolph Bolm while the necessary general education was attended to at a suitable school for girls. Then in 1918, while Dr. Page and a son were with the A. E. F. in France, Ruth met quite by accident Victor D’Andre, husband of Pavlowa, at a Manhattan Sunday-night concert. He suggested that she tour with the Pavlowa company in South America. Followed a swift decision, passports, and at the age of 15 Ruth Page was a trouper.

For a year and a half the Pavlowa company trekked down the East Coast of South America, across the Andes, up the West Coast to Panama, thence to Cuba, Mexico. When she returned to the U. S., Ruth was given the leading role in John Alden Carpenter’s ballet, The Birthday of the Infanta, presented by the Chicago Civic Opera Company, later in Manhattan and other U. S. cities. Engagements and prestige came fast. She was premiére danseuse of the Bolm Ballet Intime, of Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue; she danced with the Chicago Allied Arts productions in Chicago (a defunct organization then dedicated to modern ballet); for a summer in Europe as the only U. S. citizen ever with the Diaghilev Russian Ballet. She is the wife of Thomas Hart Fisher, son of Taft-time Secretary of the Interior Walter Lowrie Fisher, a lawyer in the Chicago firm of Fisher, Boyden, Bell, Boyd & Marshall. During the summers she has been premiere danseuse and ballet mistress at Louis Eckstein’s Ravinia Opera; in the winters a solo dancer at Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan. Last year she made an eight-months’ tour of the Orient. Last week in Manhattan she gave a recital with her own ensemble.

Precise little mechanical steps grouped to suggest the scaffolding of the classic ballet, a circus girl teetering on a tight rope, a novice tempted by visions of earthly pleasures, a campus flapper inspired by John Held Jr.’s caricatures—of such varied and original material did Ruth Page create the Manhattan program. Particularly interesting were the Balinese impressions gathered from the recent visit there;* a dance called Sun-Worshippers showing a beach group in bathing suits against a backdrop of skyscrapers; blues done in crazy, geometric design.

Exhibition

Parisians and their police were baffled last week by an offense little short of criminal but against which there is no Paris law. One evening at the opera, Tenor Franz was in the midst of a favorite aria when out upon the stage from her box climbed a young person later identified as one Sylvia Peres of Italy. Apparently overcome by an exhibitionist impulse, she threw herself into a vigorous and not inept display of fancy dance steps. Tenor Franz stood speechless. The orchestra stopped, gaping. Mlle. Peres danced on with abandon, coming to a climax with one heel on Tenor Franz’s shoulder. The police, unable to arrest her, lectured her severely.

Ins & Outs

There were important happenings last week at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House:

¶ Joseph Rosenstock, new German conductor from Wiesbaden (TIME, Nov. 11) resigned. As the result of critics’ railings, he admitted to nervous collapse, presented a doctor’s certificate advising retirement. Artur Bodanzky, his predecessor, will return temporarily as guest conductor.

¶ Soprano Frances Alda (real name: Fanny Adler) announced that this season would be her last at the opera house. Aged 46, no longer shapely or spry, she began a radio career by singing Madame Butterfly for a plumbing advertisement.

¶ Gladys Swarthout, young and comely Kansas City mezzo-soprano, donned drab grey for her Metropolitan debut, smeared her face with ash-colored chalk, sang the role of the blind mother in La Gioconda. Her acting, typically operatic, was credible. Her voice, though sometimes unsteady, was agreeable.

*The island of Bali is a day’s journey east of Java. Danseuse Page is the first white woman to study and reproduce the dances there.