Music: Sur les Pointes

The gentleman all in pink who soars through the young girl’s room (Le Spectre de la Rose), the fantastically white-faced can-can dancer in La Boutique Fantasque, the jolly hussy of a street dancer in Le Beau Danube, the slim bluebird and her lightly-leaping partner in Aurora’s Wedding—these favorite characters of U. S. ballet fans were once more on the stage of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House last week. They were personified by Paul Petroff, Léonide Massine, Alexandra Danilova, Tatiana Riabouchinska and David Lichine of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, starting a six-month U. S. tour. Balletomanes were pleasantly surprised to find Massine still a member of the troupe. Successful Impresario Wassily de Basil (whose last two U. S. tours grossed more than $1,000,000 each) had temporarily made up his differences with his maître de ballet and choreographer (TIME, Aug. 30). But Massine will join René Blum’s ballet next year with a new U. S. corporation, World-Art, Inc., backed by Julius Fleischmann and other rich patrons for $500,000.

One who is missing from the de Basil line-up this year is Tamara Toumanova—one of the three ballerinas who at their debuts were so publicized for their beauty and tender years. She is now in Hollywood. In her absence Sono Osato, a Japanese-American trained under Adolph Bolm, one of the company’s youngest dancers (17), is by far its most exotic looking. As a dancer, she has not yet advanced beyond petit sujet (ranking in ballet hierarchy above a corypheé, below a grand sujet). Irina Baronova, now 18, is a brilliant and imaginative artist, still addicted to lengthening her snub nose with putty, Tatiana Riabouchinska, usually superb in pale, willowy roles, last week turned flamboyant in a ballet the troupe is doing for the first time in the U. S.—Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or. As the golden cock which warned silly King Dodon whenever disaster impended (which was often), Riabouchinska leaped frantically, shook dazzling tail feathers against the bizarre, glaringly-colored backgrounds of Nathalie Gontcharova. With the often repetitious opera airs of Rimsky-Korsakov cut to ballet length, Le Coq d’Or made good colorful sense, its choreography by Michel Fokine a happy blend of pantomime, burlesque, Russian boot kicks and the classic style at which the Monte Carlo troupe excels—dancing sur les pointes (on the toes).

This week Dancer Lichine, increasingly a disciplined, powerful artist, showed his mettle as a choreographer who may be useful to Colonel de Basil when veteran Massine departs. The troupe’s three other new ballets were all done by him, performed in London during the summer. The Gods Go ABegging, music by Handel, is an old Diaghilev work, with old scenery by Bakst. With décor by Pierre Roy, French modernist, The Amorous Lion is based on a fable by La Fontaine which begins with this couplet: Love, love, when you invade our hearts, That moment common sense departs. Lichine patterned Francesca da Rimini after an episode in Dante, just as Tchaikovsky used Dante as the basis for the tone poem which is the ballet’s music.