Music: Old Faces & Feet in Paris

Two oldtime cutups gave Paris a lively week of ballet and proved that they still could draw crowds.

Jean Cocteau, the eccentric 55-year-old poet-artist, designed and wrote a violent ballet for the up & coming Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Called Death and, the Young Man, it was danced to a Bach passacaglia. Cocteau’s hero, a young artist abandoned by his sweetheart, after much shoving, kicking and smashing of chairs, dramatically hangs himself in his garret. Even more startling than the story was the purely physical feat of husky 23-year-old Dancer Jean Babilee, a former Resistance fighter, who hung by the neck for over a minute until Death (his sweetheart in a mask) entered to lead him off.

Two nights later at Paris’ big Salle Pleyel concert hall, 42-year-old Serge Lifar celebrated the end of his year’s suspension (for collaboration) from dancing in France. “I fear nothing,” egotistical, Russian-born Lifar told the press. “Fear is for the likes of kings.” But just for his safety there were 100 police on hand to protect him from getting the royal treatment. When the great green curtains went up on Lifar and his company of seven, there was first a moment’s silence, then a typically Parisian uproar of cheers—and no hisses. In a costume of blue lame and gold shoes, Serge Lifar led his ladies one by one through steps from Swan Lake, Giselle and Romeo and Juliet, finally got around to dancing his own Afternoon of a Faun. Londoners had booed & hissed Li-far’s narcissistic faun last summer (TIME, July 9) but Parisians found it to their taste. They recalled Lifar for 21 curtain calls, presented him with several truckloads of flowers. At the Paris Opera, Lifar’s old job of maitre de ballet was soon to be filled by his former ballet master, George Balanchine. The Salle Pleyel may have been full of Lifar’s friends, but the rest of Paris was not.