Dance: The Comers

“We have always had the cream,” boasts New York City Ballet’s George Balanchine, “but now with more danc ers going through the sieve, the cream is richer than ever before. Our company is packed with great dancers. Any one of them would be a prima ballerina with any other company.”

Like a proud father, Balanchine this season has exposed a wealth of gifted young girls in a variety of major roles, almost to the exclusion of the older principal dancers. Patricia Neary, 22, for example, who graduated from the corps de ballet just last year, has per formed 47 solos so far this season, while Maria Tallchief, 39, long the company’s biggest box-office attraction, has danced but eleven times. Tallchief, the fourth of Balanchine’s five ballerina wives, says wistfully: “When I was married to Mr. Balanchine, he created his greatest roles for me; it is hard to watch others doing them. I have not danced enough this season, that I know.”

Balanchine does not like to see a dancer transform his choreography into a vehicle for her own virtuosity. “You have to watch out,” says one member of the troupe. “If you get too good at a role, you’ll lose it.” He discourages the star system by refusing to announce in advance which dancers are performing. Audiences queuing up at the New York State Theater last week for Ballet Imperial did not know whether they would see Tallchief or, as it happened, a budding teen-ager named Suzanne Farrell. In the past, explains Balanchine, when a soloist fell ill he had to scratch the ballet. Now, he says happily, he can confidently call on any one of several dancers to fill any role.

Lately arrived from the provinces with mothers in tow, many of the new dancers have yet to reach voting age. Offstage they are disarmingly shy and giggly. Cloistered in temples of the dance since childhood, they are strangers to the ways of the world and such diver sions as dating and social dancing. The best of the new generation is notable for their agility and stature. (“I love tall girls,” says Balanchine. “The more you can see the better.”) Most prom ising of Balanchine’s new favorites:

∙KAY MAZZO, 18, a willowy, fragilely pretty girl from Chicago. A sickly child, she began dancing at age six on the ad vice of her doctor, went on to tour with Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: U.S.A. before joining the New York City Ballet two years ago. She has danced leading roles only eight times, but memorably, especially in Afternoon of a Faun, a ballet perfectly attuned to her feathery, sweetly feminine style.

∙PATRICIA NEARY was fixing to enlist in the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall when Balanchine drafted her. A tall (5 ft. 71 in.), long-stemmed native of Miami, she is known as “The Technician,” and has excelled in an extremely wide range of roles in her year as soloist. Her precise, whippet-quick movements are best showcased in Four Temperaments. She spends all her off hours baking brownies and cakes (“Oh, they’re sooo tempting, but I can’t touch them”) for the theater’s canteen, which is run by her mother, a former vaudeville hoofer.

∙SUZANNE FARRELL (nee Roberta Sue Picker), 19, was president of the New York City Ballet Fan Club in Cincinnati just five years ago. “Now I practice right next to Maria Tallchief,” she says. “I can’t believe it!” She started dancing at eight to overcome her “tomboy habits,” has since blossomed into a softly lyrical dancer, marvelously expressive in the pas de deux to Tchaikovsky’s Meditation. Says Balanchine: “She is an alabaster princess; you couldn’t design a better figure.”

∙GLORIA GOVRIN, 21, has been in tutus since she could walk. As a Newark schoolgirl, she haunted the backstage of the New York City Ballet collecting autographs. Now she is a veteran soloist, a fine comedienne in Stars and Stripes and Western Symphony. Her role as Queen of the Amazons in Midsummer Night’s Dream was type casting; she is the tallest (5 ft. 7½ in.) girl in the troupe. Thick-legged and saucer-eyed, she is a steady, remarkably effortless performer whose spectacular leaps put some of the male dancers to shame. “Gloria is beautiful and strong like a Clydesdale horse!” says Balanchine. “Her leg extension spans light-years.”

∙MIMI PAUL, 21, daughter of a Washington physician and a fashion designer, trained in Washington and abroad before joining the New York City Ballet in 1960. She is cast in the classical mold, a perfectly proportioned ballerina of ravishing grace and serene lyricism. Her expressive arms, arching back, and regal stage presence lend grandeur to a role, as exemplified by her Adagio in Symphony in C.

∙PATRICIA MCBRIDE, 22, was born in Teaneck, N.J., rose meteorically through the ranks to the coveted plateau of principal dancer at 18. Her versatility and repertory, from the affected beauty in La Valse to the man-eating insect in The Cage, are unmatched by any dancer her age. Petite (5 ft. 3 in.), she relies more on speed, beauty of line and polished precision than strength. She frequently tours independently in tandem with the company’s acrobatic male virtuoso, Edward Villella.

With a recently awarded $5,925,000 Ford Foundation grant, Balanchine & Co. figure to be skimming off the cream of U.S. dancers for years to come. But with so many gifted young dancers already on hand, there is scarcely any room at the top.