Prairie Pirouette

The Winnipeg Ballet came home in triumph last week from its first tour of the cow country and wheatlands to the West. Receipts for the swirl through Regina, Saskatoon and Edmonton did not quite meet expenses, but there were satisfying compensations. Wrote the Regina Leader-Post's critic: "Ballet is in Regina to stay."

In its own hometown again, the amateur company immediately put on three sellout performances ($1.25 top) in the municipal Playhouse Theater. Director Gweneth Lloyd, energetic Englishwoman who founded the Winnipeg Ballet in 1938, had three new productions in her repertory: Les Coryphees, inspired by Degas' paintings and set to Tchaikovsky music; Kaleidoscope, a suite of national dances; and Dionysos, a mythological affair. Like 15 other Lloyd ballets, including An American in Paris from the Gershwin score, these were choreographic originals.

Over the seven years since the Winnipeg Ballet was born, Director Lloyd had reared a sprightly corps of young dancers (she regularly gives bit parts to children). Sets and costumes, like the dancers, are native to Winnipeg.

At first, the Winnipeg Ballet started ambitiously with a 48-piece orchestra in the pit, put a heavy handicap of debt on the troupe. But in 1941 the success of Walt Disney's Fantasia led to a money-saving experiment in canned music. Now the ballet is danced to recordings, boomed at the spectators from loudspeakers. Despite the tour, the company is out of the red.

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