With a Yankee Twang

Lucia Chase is a comely green-eyed woman who has been stage-struck since she was seven; she is also a very determined woman. Ten years ago, fed up with Russianized ballet, she went to work on a ballet company whose accent would be American. Today she has one: the U.S.'s best company, Ballet Theatre.

Last week, to celebrate its tenth birthday, Lucia Chase's Ballet Theatre put its name back up on the Manhattan marquee where it first appeared. When the curtain went up in Rockefeller Center's huge (3,000 seats) Center Theatre, fans saw Les Sylphides, which opened Ballet Theatre's first program. No one in the audience needed opera glasses to see how far Ballet Theatre had come in polish and precision in the interval. But the fans reserved their biggest applause for American ballets such as Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend--just the kind of ballets that Lucia Chase had always maintained they would cheer.

Twinkling Talents. The daughter of Irving Hall Chase, a Connecticut clock (Waterbury) and brass millionaire, determined Lucia Chase had talked down the skeptics who told her that a company without "Russe" in the title was impossible. For five years, while Russian Balletomane Sol Hurok had his hands on the company, its American accent became thick with borsch, but Dancer Chase brought Ballet Theatre safely past that stage. She encouraged more ballets by English Choreographer Antony Tudor and let aspiring young U.S. choreographers have a chance. One of them, Jerome Robbins, repaid her by giving Ballet Theatre one of its biggest hits, Fancy Free (TIME, May 22, 1944). The Yankee twang was sharpened even more by commissioning new ballet scores from U.S. composers.

She had wanted a company that would play as a company--without stars. But in ten years, the emergence of some bright, twinkling talents could not be denied. Manhattan-born Nora Kaye had come out of the first corps de ballet to a position as the U.S.'s finest dramatic dancer; Illinois-born John Kriza had grown up from the line to become the company's most versatile star; Texas-born Nana Gollner was a fit and fleet classical partner for Russian-born Igor Youskevitch, who is perhaps the finest danseur noble afoot.

Break It Up. In 1945, Lucia made tall, gifted Broadway Producer-Designer Oliver Smith her codirector. (Says Smith: "It's still Lucia who stomps into backstage arguments, claps her hands, and says 'Come on, let's break it up and get back to work.' ") Their Ballet Theatre Foundation brought in outside financial help, but even so Ballet Theatre almost went under two years ago. Lucia's own contribution: close to $1,500,000 from the fortune left her by her carpet-heir husband, Thomas Ewing Jr., who died in 1933.

Last week Director Chase had more cheering signs that Ballet Theatre is at the head of the class. This summer, when the Ballet tours the Continent for the first time, makes its second trip to England, it will go with U.S. State Department endorsement. DOS is giving its blessing because it "recognizes the great value of the arts as media for interpreting to other peoples the spirit of the United States and in furthering international understanding." It was that line about "the spirit of the United States" that Lucia Chase was particularly pleased to hear.

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